D&D General A glimpse at WoTC's current view of Rule 0

[Thomas Shey]

Or number of 'Likes' you have received. One of the two I think?

I'm not sure myself.

 

[dave2008]

A year's labor where I continuously lowered my expectations until it became "anyone? Anyone? Bueller?" left me too disheartened to keep trying. Thankfully, I now have a very good 5e DM (even if I don't care for 5e as a system), but I've pretty much given up finding a long-runner 4e group. As far as I can tell, they just don't exist.

If your looking for a 4e game, yes that will be quite a bit harder. Have you tried 13th age or PF2? They have some of that 4e feel to me.

 

[Dire Bare]

Well, I do have to point out Star Trek and LotR are both settings and systems, where D&D is avowedly just the latter. Someone telling you they're running a D&D campaign probably is telling you at least some minimalist things about the system in play, but it doesn't automatically tell you anything about which races and classes (as two examples) are available. I agree most people would expect it does, but that's not an absolute given (unlike someone, say, who says they're running a Forgotten Realms game).

D&D very much has an implied setting. Which includes dragonborn, tieflings, and goliath.

Now, the core books are pretty clear groups can play around with those implied assumptions when worldbuilding, but they are there as a baseline.

If I was invited to play with a new D&D group, and was not given a "house rules" or "campaign rules" document (or talk) at or before Session Zero . . . I would assume I could play a dragonborn or tiefling and would be irritated if I was later told, "Oh, no, dragonborn don't exist in my setting because reasons". And this sort of thing has happened to me multiple times over the years. I just walk from DMs like that. Not because I need to play a dragonborn, but I don't have a lot of patience for poor communicators or overly restrictive DMs.

 

[TwoSix]

A setting where the only explicitly supernatural classes are Psion, Assassin, Artificer, and Monk, and the other classes are "Machinist" (not my favorite name but it's my current placeholder), Warlord, Rogue, Fighter, and Barbarian? That's a fascinating world concept, one where obscure magic and occult phenomena are much more prevalent and involved than the usual spells we think of, which implies perhaps a more Lovecraftian bent, or maybe a Westeros-style thing where magic limitedly exists but is resurging, etc. Likewise, a setting where (say) humans were only recently introduced, and the dominant species are satyrs, wemics, kobolds, and changelings? That's bound to look quite, quite different from the bog-standard everyone's-seen-it-a-million-times superficially-Tolkienesque knockoff.

I'd be first in line to play those kinds of settings. That kind of experimentation is an exception to my general distaste for heavily defined settings.

 

[Dire Bare]

Don't forget--it wasn't just a wookiee. It was a wookiee Jedi in a Star Trek game, @Oofta. That's what I was being compared to for thinking that, because dragonborn are in the PHB, it's reasonable to think you can play one if the DM didn't say in advance that you couldn't.

Good point, I had forgotten the "Jedi" part of that strawman example.

If I had a player who wanted to play a Jedi in a Star Trek game . . . we'd have a conversation and probably make the character psychic, like Vulcans, but not on a Jedi-level of power. But we'd have that conversation, and I'd be happy to try and find a way to model the character into the game we all agreed to play.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

The amount of work seems relatively immaterial, since you are presumedly doing this as a leisure activity.

Of course it isn’t. Something that can be fun in small amounts might become a chore in large amounts. And as this indeed is leisure activity, if I don’t feel like planning something then I won’t.

 

[Emerikol]

Sure. If the premise doesn't sound fun to me, I won't bite. I've passed over applying to numerous games over the years because the pitch, premise, or limitations just weren't my speed. (As an example, I genuinely don't understand the point of trying to play low-power PF1e unless it's E6, and E6 doesn't appeal to me, so any PF1e game that is predicated on either idea I just won't even look at.)


Sure. That's precisely the process of having a sincere conversation should do. It is possible, though I think it should be quite rare, that genuinely no resolution can come out of it. Hence why I heavily raise an eyebrow when people declare, without any discussion in advance, that no it absolutely couldn't be possible and you'd better get used to it.

I think somethings get mixed up in the discussion. I'm firm on in game discussions about a rules adjudication but it can be discussed after the session. I am open to discussing the campaign setting before we start and if a players idea can be integrated then it might get into the game. The issue though is who has final say and that final say rests with the DM. He has created an entire setting for the entertainment of his players. If he did it to my satisfaction, he did a lot of work. I'm going to respect that effort. If the theme or flavor is terrible for me as a player then I just won't play that time. I'll check back next time.

Personally, I think having a diverse range of options is all to the good. Not only does that mean you have significantly more valid subsets to work with, but it's also a lot more likely that even if options A, B, and C are out, your players will be content with something from options D-J instead. There are certainly limits; as I've said before, I think there's somewhere between 18 and 25 class fantasies that D&D more or less supports (specific things, mind; it's not a ranked list, but it is one particular list). Having that many classes to draw on enables an enormous variety of specifically-themed worlds by selecting subsets.

I agree but I want them to state that outright. I don't play or own any 5e stuff so they may have said it. Good for them if they did. A lot of player expectations are that the entire PHB will be used guaranteed every time.

Of course, I would also prefer that instead of the game making ridiculous and false blanket statements (like the idea that every fantasy world always has humans, elves, dwarves, and halflings, which the 5.0 PHB either outright says, for humans, or strongly implies, for the other three), the books instead go over both advice and examples for how class and race selections produce a particular campaign feel.

A setting where the only explicitly supernatural classes are Psion, Assassin, Artificer, and Monk, and the other classes are "Machinist" (not my favorite name but it's my current placeholder), Warlord, Rogue, Fighter, and Barbarian? That's a fascinating world concept, one where obscure magic and occult phenomena are much more prevalent and involved than the usual spells we think of, which implies perhaps a more Lovecraftian bent, or maybe a Westeros-style thing where magic limitedly exists but is resurging, etc. Likewise, a setting where (say) humans were only recently introduced, and the dominant species are satyrs, wemics, kobolds, and changelings? That's bound to look quite, quite different from the bog-standard everyone's-seen-it-a-million-times superficially-Tolkienesque knockoff.

I absolutely agree that curation of a setting can produce extremely interesting results. I just find that a lot of DMs-arguing-on-the-internet have a "vision" that is little more than that: a superficial Tolkien knockoff.

Well I have to admit that Tolkien is incredibly popular and it is the flavor of the original D&D. So I'm not surprised it has a popular following. Many people just want to play what they played in their younger days.

I'm open to changes but I do have my favorites. For example, I don't mind warforged or dragonborn. They both have exotic reasons for existing. I don't like Tieflings very much. I think most of those children would be burned at the stake early on in their lives. I think Monte Cooke's Arcana Unearthed (later Evolved) is a good example of a totally different world using mostly 3rd edition mechanics.

 

[TwoSix]

I was springboarding off this discussion, and mostly suggesting I think Rule Zero in general is a pernicious holdover; the specifics of the new version were not something I'm interested in.

I think the intent of the Rule Zero from the OP is much in the line of "Oh, I'm not a fan of how dual-wielding works, let's make this adjustment" or "I think Leomund's Tiny Hut should only last an hour, what do you guys think?"; it's definitely not trying to make any assertion as to who has authority over setting.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

If your looking for a 4e game, yes that will be quite a bit harder. Have you tried 13th age or PF2? They have some of that 4e feel to me.

I tried the former. The latter was still very very new at the time, so I wanted to give it some time for folks to figure it out first.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Really? Several people who post on this forum have said almost exactly that. Perhaps not those words, but certainly that meaning. Some of them would not say it, but would instead enforce it through being crappy to those who violate it until they "wise up" or leave. (Which, to be clear, is significantly worse than saying it outright, even though both things are pretty bad.) Again, I can give you a link for a post saying that very thing if you care for it, and I was one of the only people who called this person out for doing so.


Then your authority is not and cannot be absolute. If someone can reasonably petition for change and actually have some chance of getting it--even if that change is not at all guaranteed!--then the authority is not absolute. It admits correction from other sources. Yet "absolute authority", a term I have advocated against time and time again and been told no, it really has to be specifically "absolute authority" and nothing less, is what is always used as the line in the sand here.

As has been said, absolute authority and final authority are different things. No one has absolute authority at a game table IMO, but I have no issue with final authority.