D&D General D&D Evolutions You Like and Dislike [+]

[Zardnaar]

Another thread fallen to the "players should be able to play whatever they want" vs "DMs should be able to curate what content is allowed in their games" argument

Not much of an argument. New player gets eith the program or doesn't play basically.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Teams don't require close teamwork to get things done. You can in fact have a team where everyone has an individual role and it's left to each member to decide how best to help the team reach its goal.

THAT'S STILL TEAMWORK.

For God's sake, we aren't talking about that. Lanefan was very specific about how much antipathy he has for teamwork.

For someone who cares so much about meaning-in-context, you keep ignoring it whenever it's inconvenient to you.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Eberron and the Forgotten Realms have restrictions.

It's ambiguous if Eberron's gods exist or what they are if they do exist and in the Forgotten Realms divine power only comes from the gods.

I would not call "nobody knows for sure if the gods exist" a restriction. Especially since that can...literally just cease to be true at any time if the GM wants it. It's not like Eberron suffers a fatal exception error if you say "well, actually, the Sovereign Host are real, they just don't meddle in mortal affairs".

As for the latter...given the literal explanation is now "well...you don't personally worship a deity...and the deity never talks to you...and you never actually offered, exchanged, or proposed any services...and you never studied any deities...but you still definitely get your powers Somehow From A Deity", I think you can see why I don't actually find that restriction in any way meaningful. It's so full of exceptions at this point it functionally doesn't exist.

A Paladin who swears an oath, but is also actively hostile to all gods, would still get divine magic, because their adherence to their oath apparently impresses some unknown, never-identified, totally-silent deity THAT much. Even though that person could literally go on a crusade against the gods themselves. So......what, exactly, is the difference between that and just getting the power from the oath itself, other than a longwinded explanation?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Another thread fallen to the "players should be able to play whatever they want" vs "DMs should be able to curate what content is allowed in their games" argument

Alternatively, "Players should be allowed to advocate for their interests" vs "GMs should be able to do whatever they want whenever they want and players should be grateful they get anything ever" argument.

Pick your poison.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Yes, it's completely irrational to demand that DMs be forced to do whatever players want as long as they rules lawyer hard enough.

Are you freaking serious.

No one is talking about "rules lawyer hard enough."

It's VERY LITERALLY "I would like to play a tortle, because I think tortles are cool."

DMs have been banning broken or otherwise overpowered options since 3.5 at least and every official campaign setting has specific lore.

And they have also been banning feeble, weak options exclusively because they're new, often while claiming those new things are horrendously broken when they are nothing of the sort.

Are you seriously claiming it's unreasonable for DMs to ban Silvery Barbs just because it's in a book?

I'm seriously claiming that GMs ban silvery barbs because they foolishly think it's stupidly OP when it's simply a pretty good spell.

Which is what I think of a LOT of GM bans. Foolish, knee-jerk reactions without much thought or consideration--because I've seen it. Many, many times. Banning dragonborn because they're "munchkin" fodder, even though 5.0 dragonborn were the WEAKEST race in its PHB. Banning things solely and exclusively because they don't like it, or because it wasn't an option in 1985, or because they just don't feel like allowing it.

I almost never see people talk, for even a paragraph, about what is actually added by their restrictions. Instead, I have seen example after example after example of GMs crowing with glee because they locked out something solely on the basis of "it's not my taste, therefore no one can have it"--and such people VERY frequently then take to the bully pulpit to advocate that nobody be allowed to play such things, in any game. I saw it dozens of times during the D&D Next playtest. Didn't you?

 

[Lanefan]

THAT'S STILL TEAMWORK.

For God's sake, we aren't talking about that. Lanefan was very specific about how much antipathy he has for teamwork.

Hold on just a minute there, pardner...you're overstating my position just a bit.

I have no antipathy for teamwork where participating in said teamwork is a) my proactive choice and b) has a sound rationale behind it. If being part of the team is the best/safest choice for my character's perspective, then I'll happily stick with the team because that's what the character would do.

What I greatly prefer to avoid is teamwork where I'm forced to participate, even worse if it's teamwork just for the sake of teamwork without any further supporting rationale. In game, these instances often run afoul of my "do what the character would do" mantra, where a character's obvious best move in the fiction is to act alone but (and this I do dislike) meta considerations dictate keeping the party together.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

And then make it blindingly clear to players that the DM is allowed and-or expected to make those restrictions, thus don't assume everything in the books will be open for you to play.

Otherwise, the DM making restrictions comes off as the bad guy, every damn time.
<snip>
In game terms, the DM is the external circumstance forcing a limitation.

You cannot have both of these things.

The GM cannot simultaneously be someone with control that, and also a human merely implementing something they had no control over and thus you can't get mad.

It's either-or. Either you have control, or you don't. If you don't, why is your game so far out of your control that you can't even decide whether something gets included or not? Have you lost control of your game? And if you do have control, then why aren't you responsible for taking things away from your players?

You will never get an analogy between something like "we cannot make a game bigger than one megabyte, so figure out how to make that happen" and "I, the GM, freely elected to remove dungeonrisen from this game". Because the latter is not, in any way, forced.....except by the GM. So it is perfectly reasonable to say, "Uhh, GM, why did you ban this unobjectionable thing???"

Personal example: 3e didn't have a separate Illusionist class, but I wanted to play a 1e-like Illusionist. I put a lot of thought and effort into how I could use what 3e gave me to build the nearest equivalent, and that's what I played. In replicating a 1e Illusionist the experiment wasn't a smashing success, but as a character she was lovely!

I mean, sounds to me like a lack of imagination on your GM's part. I'm more than willing--eager!--to put in the time to make something like that work for my players. If I have to draft an entire new class just for their use, I'll bloody well do it. Because nothing--nothing--is, nor should be, more important than securing the players' sincere, genuine enthusiasm. And, as I know I've said to you specifically before, "genuine enthusiasm" means that it isn't exploitative, nor abusive, nor coercive. "Exploitative" means violating the spirit of the game (be that system, campaign, or table spirit), "abusive" means treating the other players merely as tools to be used, and "coercive" means manipulating others into behavior against their will.

If the thing that would make a player blissed-out happy is drafting a real Illusionist class, then I'm going to bloody well give it my all. Reasonable leeway for tweaking and addressing differences in desired result should be allowed, of course, but as long as I've done my due diligence, going above and beyond "meet you halfway", if that's still not enough, then yes, I'd probably ask that player to leave--because that's becoming abusive, treating me as their pet designer. Fortunately, I have never once encountered a player like that, and I don't expect to ever do so.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Hold on just a minute there, pardner...you're overstating my position just a bit.

I have no antipathy for teamwork where participating in said teamwork is a) my proactive choice and b) has a sound rationale behind it. If being part of the team is the best/safest choice for my character's perspective, then I'll happily stick with the team because that's what the character would do.

What I greatly prefer to avoid is teamwork where I'm forced to participate, even worse if it's teamwork just for the sake of teamwork without any further supporting rationale. In game, these instances often run afoul of my "do what the character would do" mantra, where a character's obvious best move in the fiction is to act alone but (and this I do dislike) meta considerations dictate keeping the party together.

Okay.

Why do you assume that a game being designed so that teamwork is actually...fun and rewarding and the effective way to play...would be doing this to you?

 

[Lanefan]

It's VERY LITERALLY "I would like to play a tortle, because I think tortles are cool."

To which a DM should be well within rights to reply "Great; but sorry, you'll have to find another DM 'cause there ain't no Tortles* in this campaign's setting".

* - or whatever class-species is in question.

I'm seriously claiming that GMs ban silvery barbs because they foolishly think it's stupidly OP when it's simply a pretty good spell.

The two bolded things are IME often said about the same thing, whatever that thing might be: DMs tend to say the first while players tend to say the second.

Which is what I think of a LOT of GM bans. Foolish, knee-jerk reactions without much thought or consideration--because I've seen it. Many, many times. Banning dragonborn because they're "munchkin" fodder, even though 5.0 dragonborn were the WEAKEST race in its PHB. Banning things solely and exclusively because they don't like it, or because it wasn't an option in 1985, or because they just don't feel like allowing it.

I almost never see people talk, for even a paragraph, about what is actually added by their restrictions. Instead, I have seen example after example after example of GMs crowing with glee because they locked out something solely on the basis of "it's not my taste, therefore no one can have it"--and such people VERY frequently then take to the bully pulpit to advocate that nobody be allowed to play such things, in any game. I saw it dozens of times during the D&D Next playtest. Didn't you?

I'm one for tradition. I think it's one thing baseball really does right: a hypothetical record set in 1922 remains valid today as the game hasn't changed enough to render that record meaningless. The game just is what it is and keeps on keeping on just like it has since before 1900.

We don't have nearly enough of that in D&D. A character played in 1982 or 1992 or 2002 would almost universally be crushed if put in an arena against its direct 2026 species-class-level counterpart; and while surviving through 9 levels was a major accomplishment in 1982 (and took years of play to do) it's a relative triviality today and often done in just a few months.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I'm one for tradition.

So you play a game which chose to include a literal crashed flying saucer?

D&D has never been particularly enamored with tradition. It's only the players, deciding that some particular year was the year that Tradition Started, and then making everything be like that.

For the OG grognards, that date was sometime between 1974 and 1985. The "new" grognards--my term--set their date at 2000, when 3e was first published; that's why you saw things like the 13th Age Barbarian and Fighter getting absolutely screwed over for background points for no reason, because in the designers' minds, Fighters and Barbarians should simply be less skillful than other classes...something that only started in 3rd edition (and lamentably continued in 4th; 5e making things nearly equal across the board is among the few things I will unequivocally praise about it.) We will--almost surely--get a new crop of grognards rooted in either 5.0 or (IMO more likely) 5.5e, because that's what they started with. (Notice that it tends to happen in 15-25 year cycles.)

But the only "tradition" of D&D that I've ever seen is that we create what sounds exciting to play. OD&D/1e AD&D had that spirit, creating whole new classes (and thus races, because race-as-class!) left and right, adding bloody flying saucers and rayguns, turning totally random ridiculous plastic toys into new monsters to fight. OD&D knew what it meant to be open to the breadth of fiction and to do what makes sense, not what was set in stone by someone 50+ years ago.

I wish modern D&D had more of that culture, and less of the "ban this, ban that, ban ban ban ban ban" mentality. That was the foreign invasion which polluted the culture of D&D.