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

[Micah Sweet]

Are we allowed to take people to task for pejoratives then?

So I can do so if people refer to collaboration as "design by committe"? Or if folks immediately presume that DMs need absolute power in order to protect their games from bad-faith players?

Because this is absolutely something I would very much appreciate a clear go-ahead for.

Providing you're using their actual words, you have my blessing. I'll happily back off from loaded pejorative language if you call me on it.

I'm not a mod though.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

If what we are talking about is choice of races or classes, then I think in all cases, it will take place outside the game.

For other rules questions, I think most posters here agree that best practice would be to make a spot ruling and hash it out off-game time. That is incidentally, what is generally recommended when the GM legitimately doesn’t remember a rule and doesn’t have time to look it up.

That’s what I would tend to do, but the issue seems to be “who makes the spot ruling?”. There seems to be several people who cannot trust anyone other than themselves to make the spot ruling.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Absolutely. Here is the text:



I absolutely despise this and other things (like the "true exotics" phrase). These things openly prejudice the game toward specific things and away from others. They are emphatically not something a "toolbox" should EVER be declaring, period.

I see D&D as a toolbox. Sometimes WotC, often for marketing reasons, does not.

 

[FrozenNorth]

"hey guys, i'm using a star wars setting, you can be any species, from any planet, and go anywhere and do anything that's in star wars"
"what? i ONLY get to be ANYTHING from star wars? but that's so limiting!"

Let’s go back to the Wookie Jedi example. Though some posters have suggested that there are Wookie Jedi in canon, for the purposes of the example, I’ll assume that Wookie are weak in the force and can’t be Jedi.

If a DM pitches a Star Wars game and a player wants to only play a Wookie Jedi and is unwilling to compromise, they are being unreasonable. Particularly if the DM tries to meet them halfway:
« Wookies aren’t force sensitive. How about a Wookie that works for the Jedi order as an agent, but can’t use force powers? »

But the reverse is just as unreasonable. A DM who pitches a Star Wars game but doesn’t allow a player to play a Twi’lek Jedi and isn’t willing to compromise is being equally unreasonable, given that there are several canon non-human Jedi.

 

[TwoSix]

I'm not really sure how that responds to what was said. With a homebrew setting you've spent "hundreds" of hours building (word used not by you but by others in the thread), it's not possible for them to have read up. So now their play is going to be full of nearly unavoidable "well actually" moments because the players cannot possibly know the setting as well as the DM can. That very specific thing--the "you can't do X because that's incompatible with the setting as it exists in my head, which you cannot access"--is closely related to what @TwoSix is talking about.

Exactly. Avoiding the "well, actually" points of play is a major focus.

 

[Emerikol]

Nor am I yours.

At game start, when the idea is presented to potential players, they have zero invested. The DM as months invested. So I'm not going to work making something that doesn't resonate with me. I'm going to make a setting, probably different from my last one, that resonates with me because that will make me passionate and invested. That then will make a better experience for those players who do want that setting.

Note that this means you are assuming that every limitation always is done exclusively because not having that limitation would 100% guarantee that you're having a lousy time.

If I have an idea for a setting that intrigues me, then yes forcing in something I ruled out is going to ruin that setting. I've already done the work. It's an accept or reject.

Okay. And? I don't see your point.

The point is that it is a two way street. I offer and you either accept or reject. I'm not upset either way.

 

[Belen]

I see D&D as a toolbox. Sometimes WotC, often for marketing reasons, does not.

Truth.

I think they are moving in this direction. It has failed for them in the past.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

See for me, I want what you oppose. I want a good well crafted setting and a DM that is fair but doesn't indulge players who want to argue. I don't have the time for that stuff.

I don't oppose a "good well crafted setting." At all. You keep saying I do, and I keep telling you that that isn't true.

I just don't think ban-this, ban-that, ban-everything is conducive to a "good well crafted setting." I don't think that a "good well crafted setting" needs to have extensive detail about every possible factoid prewritten weeks in advance of the players ever potentially being exposed. I don't think it benefits from being precious, and in fact think that a good, well-crafted setting is one that leaves open lots of room for possibility and discovery even for the DM. I don't think DM improvisation, as a sometimes food used with care, is in any way automatically harmful to the quality and craft of that setting, and in fact, I think judicious use thereof is a major, major boon.

 

[TwoSix]

I wrote up a setting primer for my current campaign, and encouraged all my players to read it. Weirdly, I've not experienced any push back on this.

Because that's convenient.

 

[TwoSix]

How is learning about the world through the GM's description of your PC experience of it, based on your choices for that PC, not immersive? How else are you supposed to get that information? Is making it up and telling the table what you made up more immersive?

YES! A breakthrough!