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Yea, that probably does color my view. Once the game has actually started, I'm not really touching the world anymore outside gameplay. Maybe make a change then to say if it's happening "away from the table", then we can call it worldbuilding. But there's a bright shiny line that divides...

And that's fine, but yea, I don't agree with your definition either. Making up a new site for the PCs to encounter isn't what I would classify as "worldbuilding". That's just gameplay. There needs to be a specific term for the defining of the campaign frame prior to start of play/Session...

Honestly, tortle is probably one of the worst examples, precisely because it has mechanics that have such a strong diegetic visual associated with it. It's a lot easier to reskin something like a triton or a hobgoblin, for examples of races that deviate from the "norm". If the ask is "I want...

Just don't ask where the centaur came from. Some things are better left unanswered. Seriously, though, that's a fantastic concept.

I'm a fan of actual compromise, not..... that.

OK.... If my GM told me I couldn't be a tortle, but I could be a human in a turtle suit, and was actually serious about it, then that's a "run away from the table" moment for me.

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...

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...

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.

The idea I like is "xenophobic against races that the players didn't pick with their characters." :)

I actually agree with the bulk of your post, but I wanted to point this out as a classic example of "Hey, as a GM, maybe I should come up with ideas that don't make it actively harder for the players to make characters." The "xenophobic culture" is a super-common trope, but really is kind of...

Agreed, although I'm moved away over time from prioritizing "novel concept" to "novel system". There are a bunch of new systems I want to play, but I run them as they're presented out of the book, with very little modification. That's true. My groups are fairly fixed, so I try to match up...

But psychologically, it sounds like you're saying you would prefer a "one word, one meaning" mindset.

Because the GM should not be having fun saying "No, you can't do X." "Fun" really has nothing to do with this topic. It's about the validity of maintaining a certain aesthetic for your setting, weighed against the cost of denying another player an option they feel would be relevant and...

There's a few things going on here. First, you're talking about a complete setting modification, not simply a ban list. If you set up a restricted concept for a game (like "let's all play a family of gnome wizards") and the players and GM are in alignment, that's totally fine. I don't...

I'm not generally a fan of "modules", but I really enjoyed this book as a pure exploratory sandbox. It's a bunch of themed and linked locations with a lot of discoverable backstory, but without a hint of a "storyline" for the PCs (which I dislike intensely).

That's more of a late-night thing for me, but I admit I don't know what time zone you're in.

Thank goodness, that seems like a horrible architectural fail. :)

Well, this is just a semantic difference, then. I don't consider the players' actions that shape the setting to be worldbuilding. "Worldbuilding" is specifically the actions that set up the campaign setting/frame prior to session 1, whether that be GM notes or collaborative efforts with the...

Yea, that's pretty much it. GMs who make homebrewed settings and then stay them in for years or decades are essentially making personal fantasy heartbreakers. They have a mental image of what D&D should look like, and their setting is where they get to assert the truth of that mental image...