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

tetrasodium said:

The next step where someone needs to "give" something is the player modifying their desired PC to fit unless the gm is not allowed to say "no" for some reason.

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the idea was to find a compromise, not to shoot everything down, remember?

mamba said:

yeah, he can say that he designed it like that, that doesn’t change that the effort to add a species is not all that different from doing so in FR or Greyhawk however

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Trivially easy, in other words.

Let's do the big one first.

SableWyvern said:

My players actively support "supremacy of the GM" in these world-building decisions because they want a curated game, because they trust my judgement, because they're not especially invested in world-building themselves and because they feel that the more invested that I am in the game, the more fun they are going to have.

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There is a difference between "supremacy" and "complete supremacy", hence why I included it. I've never denied that the GM gets final say, but I also think that the GM should be fairly willing to try and include the players in what they want to be included. If your players don't want to be included, that's fine... but that's also not what we are talking about, right? The hypothetical is about someone wanting a race that you aren't hot on.

SableWyvern said:

What the official Realms material does isn't something I use a guideline for anything in my games (in my own, current FR game, the closest thing to canon is FR5, and even that serves ultimately as no more than a source of inspiration, not a book of hard facts).

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You miss the point why I brought it up: that even the Realms can undergo change to fit in new things.

SableWyvern said:

This is something a lot people were saying earlier: "I've found my games are much better when I open things up so the players are more involved in the worldbuilding." It's great you've identified that, but the fact that it works for you doesn't mean everyone should run games like that all the time.

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This is less about worldbuilding and simply about building stories. Having a lot of lore can be useful for that, but it can also not be used at all. I was more making the comment that engagement with lore is less important than engagement with the player to create something. That isn't to say that lore can't be useful in that, but as I said it's one tool in the toolbox for it.

SableWyvern said:

I'm confident that no one is trying to talk you into wasting time making lore if that's not something you will enjoy doing. Personally, I really, really don't like retcons, and will do whatever I can to avoid them -- although, on the other hand, I also won't play in the same setting for more than 2 - 3 years and, if I do happen to return to that setting, it will generally be with a fresh sheet; nothing that occurred in previous campaigns is likely to be relevant.

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I used to be bigger into it and still do like to write lore, but I've found that a lot of lore writing is mostly for the GM's enjoyment and at a certain level it shouldn't be the end-all of what guides the table. When I was making my comment about how DMs are often greater threats to become writers of their own story, that's part of what I was talking about: you get so involved in what you are writing that you don't want to change it. And I'm not making an accusation here, I'm just stating what I've seen across years of playing and also being online.

At this point I'll write lore, plenty of it, but I find players rarely contact it in the way I expect, which is why I now bend and revise on the fly. But that's part of the fun about things for me: getting a new direction and then trying to figure out how to fit my stuff into their story.

SableWyvern said:

No one is saying it's not possible. They're saying that, in some cases, they choose not to.

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Sure, but I think some people have found the explanation being given by some to be a little light, and then people have suddenly defaulted to "Well, the GM is the absolute authority, thus they get to make the call with no arguments", which to me shifts the goalposts on what I'm trying to talk about: it's not about whether a GM can or can't, but if they should, when they should, how they should.

That people have stopped talking about those and apparently only if they can changes the tone of the debate.

SableWyvern said:

The people in this thread speaking in support of GM curation all (or at least mostly) appear to have stable groups of like-minded players and are running games where everyone is having fun. Several people have made comments about how these GMs should be afraid their players will leave, but it's quite clear there is absolutely no reason the GMs in questions should feel that way. Similarly, that there are some GMs who have run games their players don't enjoy is surely true, but that has nothing to do with the actual, real world games being run by the curating GMs in this conversation.

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You are completely missing the context in which I was commenting. I was responding to Scribe, who was talking about how certain players can want to write a book, and I was commenting that that always felt more like a GM problem, wanting to tell their own story with the players along for the ride. That wasn't meant to be a critique of anyone, and when I was responding to AIViking it was more that I was amazed that they hadn't seen it (if not experienced it).

SableWyvern said:

What I find strange is the idea that any player is so invested in playing a specific race and expects any given game to be adjusted to accommodate that need. I hope such players find groups where they can play these characters, but I genuinely can't imagine any of my players ever being so heavily invested in a concept that doesn't fit what I was envisaging when I made a game pitch.

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I mean, that cuts both ways, but I feel like y'all are really getting sensitive to that idea so I won't go further. The greater point was "Well, what is the point in not trying to accommodate them a bit?" and then it became a debate as to whether the GM has absolute power or not, which seems to miss the point to me.

SableWyvern said:

In any case, I'm not going to judge people for having those preferences, but if a player expects whatever they want to be allowed every time, they're simply not going to be a good fit for my table. I'll work with you to bring a concept to the table, either now or in a future campaign, but sometimes my answer will be, "No, that doesn't really fit this game."

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I don't think I've judged people or hinted that anyone is a bad person here. Lathander knows that I've had sharp words for people in the past, and I have not at all used them here. Critique is critique, disagreement is disagreement.

But let me say that I didn't say to always acquiesce to a player in my original post, and I even gave a situation where I myself restricted a player. I absolutely agree with your final sentence, but I think that the reasons for the hypothetical "tortle" haven't moved me. Perhaps it's because the vagueness of merely a player race is much harder to justify in my mind given how often D&D worlds are expansive and unknown even if they aren't a kitchen sink.

SableWyvern said:

Nothing @AlViking has said in this thread suggests to me that they aren't flexible or that they don't have plenty of room in their game for exceptions, the extraordinary and the odd. That doesn't mean that adding tortles to their game is an objective, unalloyed good.

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Hey, agree to disagree. It's not a judgement on them as a person or even as a DM, either, it's just my view.

Mod note:
This thread has generated 8 post reports in the past day. You folks are all being really rude to each other, and are not collectively demonstrating you can have a civil conversation.

Thread closed.[/color]