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

Mustrum_Ridcully said:

That might be true, but if no one else asked for this, why worry that more would do it then and it sets a bad precedent?

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If you accept it once, you have no good argument against it the next time, irrespective of how likely it is. I also don’t think that they reject the tortle just because of some slippery slope argument, the slippery slope is just an additional hurdle.

Mustrum_Ridcully said:

Maybe the topic is really too hypothetical, too much assuming "it's just some random dude on the internet asking, not one of my actual players"? I don't know.

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I assume that plays into it on both sides. It is one thing to walk from some rando’s game, you might be more willing to compromise when it is your friends

TwoSix said:

Is a game with no players actually a game? This seems like a "does a falling tree with no one to hear it make a sound?" kinda question.

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One player is plenty. Solitaire is still a game.

Paul Farquhar said:

That seems to be a misrepresentation of pretty much everyone’s position, but a comment on a forum is NOT a discussion.

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Do I need to link to one of the many posts that say "It's easy to add a tortle, it's just..." or "there's no reason to not add them"?

Because it sure seems like we're reading different threads.

A lot of this thread seems to be imagining people and situations to get mad at, because surely session 0 and talking to people in good faith would solve all of these problems 99% of the time?

But like…if a player REALLY insisted on being a tortle, and my setting REALLY didn’t have tortles, I would just let them be a tortle and not interact with that part of their character. There wouldn’t be any tortle npcs, no npc would ever remark on their tortleness. If they ever did something tortlely, I would smile and nod politely, then move swiftly on. If they don’t want to fully engage with the setting, I’m not obligated to fully engage with their fantasy. The game can still go on.

The vibe I get from the folks who really want to be a tortle (or whatever) no matter the setting is the same vibe I get from people who go to a chinese buffet and only eat the pizza. And that is totally fine. We are here for different purposes, but we can still hang out and have fun.

Now if all the players want to be tortles / some other off-setting option, then that’s different. It’s clearly not a chinese night, this is a pizza night. So I will make a delicious pizza for us all to enjoy (by which I mean I would either change or make a new setting to fit the vibe).

The notion that GM’s shouldn’t be too precious about their worldbuilding is very fair, but I think it applies to players too. Why do you insist on being a tortle? Maybe you would be better served commissioning some art of your OC, or getting into Second Life?

D&D, and especially 5e, is the kleenex of rpgs. Most people aren’t playing it for its breadth of options, they are playing it because it's the default. I feel like the expectation is that you are going to make the game your own, pruning some options and adding some others that better fit your table. Just talk to people about it.

Paul Farquhar said:

How frequently? Because it’s not a behaviour I’ve ever witnessed. This sounds like a strawman to me. But as I said before, anyone who absolutely insists on anything, is not a reasonable person, and you should not be playing with than person full stop.

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at least as frequent as the GM not even trying to compromise and simply saying ‘these are your options, pick one’ that some people claim happened. Not going through the thread for dozens of posts to quote.

I would have said at least @Remathilis and @GobHag, but apparently for the former that was more bad memory, they said since they were willing to compromise, just not on looks

EzekielRaiden said:

Except that the moment Session Zero begins, the player is expected to already be on board with 100% of everything simply because they accepted the pitch. That's a massive disconnect--and it really, really is the GM not getting the player buy-in. But the players are embarked; they already agreed, so now the GM has "absolute power" over them within the game, right?

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My take would be, as a player, if I walked into Session Zero not knowing details about what the game will be like (like the game will be in a custom setting that deviates from the game's norm), than I haven't actually accepted the pitch yet.

Part of the pitch should absolutely be explaining what system you're in, what the general setting frame is, and what kind of house rules or deviations from the core rules are present.

If you have pages of campaign notes that will impact my character generation, presenting those notes needs to be part of the pitch.

TwoSix said:

Is a game with no players actually a game?

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Yes. I'm looking at my shelf right now and I see Ticket to Ride, Cosmic Encounter, Arkham Horror and many other games that currently have no players.

The D&D game continues to be the DM's until he finds players for it. He's just not going to be able to play that game without any.

AlViking said:

Do I need to link to one of the many posts that say "It's easy to add a tortle, it's just..." or "there's no reason to not add them"?

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Not a discussion. You haven’t discussed what they mean by a tortle, what aspects of tortle they think will work well in the campaign, and so on. And of course because “tortle” is a hypothetical, no one who is posting here could give you a true answer.

I have seen a few people give answers to why not a tortle (or whatever)? That come across as “because my world building is more important than making the game fun”, which I suspect the posts you are thinking of where responding to. “Because tortles don’t exist in this world” is not a good answer in a world of magic, because they could be mutant terrapins or from another world. “Because everyone hates tortles” is not a good answer, since being hated by NPCs is something players are willing to deal with (see 2nd edition drow), “it doesn’t fit the theme of my Conan campaign” is a reason - to play with different people, because the player who wants to play a tortle clearly isn’t interested in that theme. No themed game works if they players don’t buy into it.

npick03 said:

The notion that GM’s shouldn’t be too precious about their worldbuilding is very fair, but I think it applies to players too. Why do you insist on being a tortle? Maybe you would be better served commissioning some art of your OC, or getting into Second Life?

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Yes.

As a player, your default should be "Oh, this race/class/concept doesn't work for this campaign idea? Let me switch it up."

As a GM, your default should be "Oh, you want to try race/class/concept? Let's come up with some ideas for working it into the game."

The issue is the players and GM that don't show that flexibility and consideration; because that's a red flag that they're not going to show the characteristics I'm looking for at my tables.

Turns out the Monsters Know What They're Doing - Again

The same thing they've always done