D&D General The Monsters Know What They're Doing ... Are Unsure on 5e24

[Belen]

Gotta be honest, disliking Eberron and Star Wars, and hating FR to the point of not even playing in it, would be a major red flag to joining a table or inviting someone to a table.

They're just so bland and inoffensive; it's like hating Iowa. I don't have any plans concerning Iowa, but I'm certainly not chuffed at it enough to avoid it.

I love Star Wars. I just cannot play in an SW game set during the films. I love the universe but I feel disconnected when I know too much about events.

I have no trouble reading an FR novel or playing a FR video game but I am feel the same about playing in FR at all as playing in SW during the film periods.

Calling preferences that are not your own "red flags" feels like the intent is to insult. You may not intend it that way but it comes off that way.

In any event, if someone invited me to an FR game, then I would politely decline. It would be the same if someone was running Eberron or a SW game set during the Skywalker saga. I will not deny anyone their own fun or poop on a campaign they are excited about. I am not going to run those settings or play in them because that is my preference.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Miniature giant space tortle is awesome.

I'm now imagining the Astromundi Cluster as a bunch of hibernating giant space tortles, hiding away in their asteroid-like shells.

Do they have a miniature giant space loxodans on their back, and a miniature giant disc on their backs, with a miniature small sun circling around it?

 

[Belen]

I've had quite a bit of fun in Star Wars games set in the movie eras. Generally the trick is to have the characters off in another part of the galaxy, or if a named character shows up, it's for a cameo. I had one adventure where the group was sent to retrieve an item clandestinely, and turned out they were taking it to a post-clone war Captain Rex. In another, the group had to deliberately activate a beacon to alert Princess Leia and Luke to leave an asteroid field before a waiting-in-ambush Star Destroyer caught them (Graveyard of Alderaan, BTW).

To me (as GM or player), those moments are actually fun and help really feel like the game is set in that universe, not a look-alike.

Which is fine. I know a lot of people who have set games during the Skywalker saga and players who really enjoyed them. It is fine for people to run and play in those games. It turns me off.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I don't need bad definitions. In RPGs that's not what people mean when use realism in RPGs. You basically have 2 choices. 1) you can use it the way people in RPGs use the term. 2) you can be confused by the term and misuse it by applying it only to real world examples.

It's what the word means--because this is how people use it. If you don't like that, that's your prerogative, but I don't see where you can claim these definitions are "bad" when they come from the three most widely known professional dictionaries (Random House, Collins, and Merriam-Webster).

You don't get to declare the meaning of a word just because you don't like what the dictionary editors observed and recorded.

In RPGs Fantasy Realism is a thing.

Source? Because as far as I can tell this is just a you assertion. I've never heard the term, or anything particularly like it, in discussion of TTRPGs before.

 

[Dire Bare]

Wait. There are posts in this thread that AREN'T hyperbole?!?

Not many . . . I think even mine might have a pinch of it.

 

[Bae'zel]

I was bored of Forgotten Realms for most of my life (yes, even as a teen reading Drizzt books) until I played Baldur's Gate 3. Suddenly I "got" it. Or, at least, Larian Studios' take on it.

Sometimes you just need the right writers, designers and interpretations to make a setting "sing".

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Wow. You get down on me for inaccurately summarizing someone's position and then innaccurately summarize mine in the very next sentence.

I've never said DMs were deserving of respect just for being a DM. What I ACCURATELY said was...

Players should trust and respect the DM until/unless the DM shows that he doesn't deserve that trust, because if you can't trust or don't respect the DM, you have no business being in that game. Lack of trust and respect will disrupt the game if the DM hasn't shown he isn't deserving, and the game isn't worth playing in if he has shown he isn't deserving.

At no point, though, did I say DMs deserve respect simply because they are the DM.

What I said, though, was that nobody should be sacrificing their enjoyment. Everyone's enjoyment was equal. At which point you said "And that, precisely, is why GMs neither have nor should have "absolute power." Which means that absolute power is a bad thing because the situations might make everyone's fun equal, which is an accurate measure of that exchange.

Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, should be sacrificing their enjoyment of the game. Sacrifice is not the mark of a good DM. It's the mark of someone getting the short end of the stick, and is why a lot of DMs burn out and games fall apart early.

DMs are not claiming leadership. They are taking on one of the two roles of the game that they all play. Hell, a lot of the time a person is DM because nobody else will do it, not because they are claiming to be the leader over people.

DMs have no authority/leadership over the players.

Max, I bolded a sentence in your statement.

"Players should do X, unless Y" means you are specifically saying that the default is doing X. Meaning, GMs simply deserve to be trusted and obeyed. That's not an inaccurate summary. It's literally the argument you just made, and the same argument you've made many times before. Merely being a GM instantaneously confers trust, respect, obedience, etc. The GM must screw up badly to ever warrant even questioning those things, let alone rescinding them.

Which is exactly what I said. Your argument includes the idea that GMs simply deserve respect etc., solely because they are GMs. It is only after, if I may steal from the Declaration of Independence, "a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object" that those inherent grants may ever be removed. Hence: GMs deserve trust for the sole reason that they have declared they will GM. The players are wrong for ever even being reluctant to trust the GM until it becomes inarguable that that GM is behaving egregiously badly.

 

[Dire Bare]

Miniature giant space tortle is awesome.

I'm now imagining the Astromundi Cluster as a bunch of hibernating giant space tortles, hiding away in their asteroid-like shells.

You joke, but . . .

There are actually giant space turtles in the Spelljammer setting . . . gammaroids! The name sounds like a medical problem, but they are canon!

 

[Bae'zel]

Not gonna lie, I really DO want to convince some players to do a TMNT in Eberron campaign some day. 4 Tortle Monks with different specialties to reflect the characters somehow. Maybe via multiclassing.

Leonardo: Monk-Paladin
Raphael: Monk-Barbarian
Donatello: Monk-Artificer
Michaelangelo: Monk... Rogue? Bard? hmmm

 

[AlViking]

Not gonna lie, I really DO want to convince some players to do a TMNT in Eberron campaign some day. 4 Tortle Monks with different specialties to reflect the characters somehow. Maybe via multiclassing.

Leonardo: Monk-Paladin
Raphael: Monk-Barbarian
Donatello: Monk-Artificer
Michaelangelo: Monk... Rogue? Bard? hmmm

But is Eberron advanced and sophisticated enough to have pizza?