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

[TwoSix]

A lot o' people don't realize what's really going on. They view life as a bunch o' unconnected incidents 'n things. They don't realize that there's this, like, lattice o' coincidence that lays on top o' everything. Give you an example; show you what I mean: suppose you're thinkin' about a plate o' shrimp. Suddenly someone'll say, like, plate, or shrimp, or plate o' shrimp out of the blue, no explanation. No point in lookin' for one, either. It's all part of a cosmic unconsciousness.

Shrimp, plate, bard, katana, Heisenberg, Albuquerque.

I think my Akashic is broken and needs a reboot.

 

[Clint_L]

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.

I let a kid play a Jedi in my D&D game. It was easy - we used Hexblade warlock and re-flavoured some stuff. A current player doesn’t fully get the game concept and is modelling his wizard after Lebron James, of all things. We’re just rolling with it. The other characters see him as wierdly obsessed with the number 24, since he has it on all his clothes, and assume it has arcane significance.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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.

Real people cannot choose what species they are or what background they have, nor be told that some all-powerful author denies their application to be an X instead of a Y. There's simply no comparison here.

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

They asked me my thoughts. I gave them. I specified how I would prefer to see things. People can like whatever they like--but if you're serious about the books being a toolbox, the toolbox shouldn't be telling you that every job requires a wrench and a screwdriver, nor that it's weird to use metric sockets so just ignore the whole drawer containing them. The palette shouldn't prescribe that every work uses blue and red, but turquoise and yellow are weird.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think he means that the setting should drive the types of character created. The setting should not be driven by the characters created.

Now who's passing normative prescriptions against particular preferences @Micah Sweet?

In the vast majority of cases it's bi-directional. Preferences shape options, and options shape preferences. Acting like the setting is the only thing that matters is just as prejudicial as acting like the setting never matters.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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.

So you're fine with curating if it happens to suit your personal tastes, otherwise it is terrible GM tyranny?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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.

I mean, when I pushed for anything softer than "absolute authority" I was repeatedly rejected by multiple different posters, and at the time, I don't recall anyone (including Micah) delivering any sort of full-throated critique of how "absolute" authority was clearly a bridge too far. It's a bit frustrating to only now be told "no no no, not absolute authority, never!" when all of this was totally absent back when I was practically begging folks to back away from that terminology.

So. Final authority. What does that look like? Is it possible for a group to collectively exercise final authority? I should think so, given that group decision-making (please, for the love of God and all that is holy, don't use the base canard of dismissing all group decision-making as "design by committee"). Does that mean a DM with final authority is in fact utterly irreplaceable, or is it possible for other approaches to work? If other approaches are possible and valid, can there be things either side could learn from the other to do better? Pobody's nerfect, so I should think there would be.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

So you're fine with curating if it happens to suit your personal tastes, otherwise it is terrible GM tyranny?

Actually, I specifically chose things that aren't generally to my taste. I appreciate the creativity and the implications, but I'm not sure if I would want to play in either of those games not. The campaign premise would be doing all of the heavy lifting.

Nice job making this super personal and jabbing at me, yet again, when I was trying my utmost to be positive and constructive. Really helps eliminate that feeling of hostility and make everything feel so inclusive, y'know? I'm just awed at the warm fuzzy feelings.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I let a kid play a Jedi in my D&D game. It was easy - we used Hexblade warlock and re-flavoured some stuff. A current player doesn’t fully get the game concept and is modelling his wizard after Lebron James, of all things. We’re just rolling with it. The other characters see him as wierdly obsessed with the number 24, since he has it on all his clothes, and assume it has arcane significance.

So to come across as a judgemental elitist jerk a lot of people no doubt already perceive me as, that is genuinely painfully stupid to me. Like if you all are having fun, then more power to you, but I would not run such a game and if this was going on in game I was playing, I would walk.

Now if the participants are literal children, then the childishness is more understandable. I'm sure that as a twelve-year-old I did something roughly as embarrassing.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

For me-- the times when I get to play-- half the fun of character creation is finding something cool within the traits and assumptions of the setting within which to base my character around. If a setting only has certain classes, species, backgrounds etc... for me the juice comes from creating within those barriers rather than wanting/expecting complete freedom. Because oftentimes that complete freedom produces less interesting results. Restrictions often mean you can't just take the top surface level ideas but have to start digging further down, producing more creative and interesting things and combinations.

For my part, because I play so infrequently, there are particular things I've just really, really wanted to see or do for a very long time and haven't gotten to. Despite loving Paladins and playing them regularly, I've never played a high-level D&D Paladin in any game--ever. I'd really like to! High level is when you finally get the chance to have those face-to-face deity meetings that can be such incredible roleplay opportunities, for example.

 

[Scribe]

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.

This is what made WoW, the original one, the best one, so great. The world was the main character.