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

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.
The red flag for me is if they do not communicate ahead of time. I do not care about restrictions but I do want to get the information from the DM to plan correctly or, I will just ask if they do not provide anything to find it.

Dragonborn, tieflings, goliaths, etc are newer to D&D so I would not make the assumption that they are available.
 

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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.
See for me, someone insistent on playing a Wookie Jedi in a Star Trek game would be a red flag. It's not that I couldn't come up with something but I seriously doubt they'd be satisfied and I think they'd disturb the people who showed up to play Star Trek. I don't play those kinds of games anyway but I suppose the feeling is the same when someone just ignores your session 0 packet you send out ahead of time and shows up wanting to play something that does not fit the setting.
 

D&D very much has an implied setting. Which includes dragonborn, tieflings, and goliath.
I agree but for me the PHB is it. A new book of classes and races are optional even if put out by WOTC.

Now, the core books are pretty clear groups can play around with those implied assumptions when worldbuilding, but they are there as a baseline.
I agree with you that they should let you know early.

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.
As a player, is there no onus on the player to talk with the DM if they have some deal breakers? Now I agree the DM should communicate as well and I'd put most of the responsibility on him but is there none for the player?
 

I have no idea what this sentence means. What are "setting" and "character" in real life? Because as far as I'm concerned in real life both concepts have zero applicability. "Characters" and "settings" are both fictions. You might use a real place as the inspiration or basis for a setting, but it would still necessarily be a fictional thing some distance removed from the real one.
It means the world you live in exists before you do, so you are shaped by its traits and to some degree by its assumptions.
 

I have no idea what this sentence means. What are "setting" and "character" in real life? Because as far as I'm concerned in real life both concepts have zero applicability. "Characters" and "settings" are both fictions. You might use a real place as the inspiration or basis for a setting, but it would still necessarily be a fictional thing some distance removed from the real one.
I think he means that the setting should drive the types of character created. The setting should not be driven by the characters created.
 

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.
I think that is a good point and a type of middle ground I was talking about that @EzekielRaiden doesn't seem to see / feel. If you think final authority = absolute authority that is going to color your opinion / experiences quite a bit.
 

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.


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.

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.
Who cares if a DM's setting is derivative? Now.it just sounds like you're making value judgements about other people's preferences.
 


it hasn't got anything to do with the trophy points does it? is see Belen is at 164, I'm at 147 and still 'hero', i could definitely see 150 being the breakpoint there...
Could be? Certain numbers of positively-reacted posts turn into Trophy points as does certain numbers of total posts altogether, so any one of them might feed into the other. I have 174 Trophy points so it could be that as you said?
 

it hasn't got anything to do with the trophy points does it? is see Belen is at 164, I'm at 147 and still 'hero', i could definitely see 150 being the breakpoint there...

There used to be a list that told you on the site.

That said, I looked quickly at all y'alls accounts, and it isn't number of posts or reactions (because I checked between the different legends and heroes etc.), so it has to be trophy points.
 

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