D&D General A glimpse at WoTC's current view of Rule 0

[Oofta]

I've seen enough of it that I'm quite willing to say it lead to leaning in to just that, and I've got as much a right to think its a bad habit as you do to think it isn't. I saw plenty of consequences of that early on and if I never see it again, I'll consider that quite a virtuous outcome.

Every game I've ever played the DM acted as referee. Over decades of play I've had a tiny percent of bad DMs and being referee had nothing to do with it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Every game I've ever played the DM acted as referee. Over decades of play I've had a tiny percent of bad DMs and being referee had nothing to do with it.

Different people have different experiences, news at 11.

 

[AnotherGuy]

I always saw the longevity of elves as a perk of that race in the same way they don't require as many hours of sleep and are thus resistant to the effects of a sleep spell. Allowing creatures to age the human and the elf in the same way (by age category) diminishes the longevity feature and slightly diminishes the fantastical nature of the species.

It's just more of a return to race as a skin.

My two cents.

 

[pemerton]

I was kind of surprised that the closest it came was...

View attachment 385831

This stands out:

the campaign must ultimately please all participants. It is their unique world.​

That doesn't seem wildly different from the OP:

Rule 0. Rule 0 of D&D is simple: Have fun. It’s fine if everyone agrees to change the rules as long as doing so means the game is more fun for everyone.

 

[AnotherGuy]

This stands out:

the campaign must ultimately please all participants. It is their unique world.​

The last sentence in the brackets also stands out for me.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Same here, except as far as possible the new rule isn't incorporated until after the current campaign is done, in order to avoid violating precedents already set within that campaign.

As I've been given to understand from your previous posts that your game is a long running game with a multitude of characters for the players (similar to mine), when you mean campaign - is it defined as a story arc with a specific set of characters or the entire game?
If the latter is that not an extra long wait?

I increased the number of feats and modified/balanced them for the better for the PCs - I would not wait till the end of a campaign (given how long ours are) to enact tinkering which I thought was required to better the game. It would diminish my fun at the table.

 

[dave2008]

As I've been given to understand from your previous posts that your game is a long running game with a multitude of characters for the players (similar to mine), when you mean campaign - is it defined as a story arc with a specific set of characters or the entire game?
If the latter is that not an extra long wait?

I increased the number of feats and modified/balanced them for the better for the PCs - I would not wait till the end of a campaign (given how long ours are) to enact tinkering which I thought was required to better the game. It would diminish my fun at the table.

Same. If needed, we have changed a rule mid-combat. The sooner the better IME.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Same. If needed, we have changed a rule mid-combat. The sooner the better IME.

There's a balance to strike. If the rules change constantly, or even just too often, you're not really playing a game anymore, you're in Eternal Beta Test, which suuuuuuucks as a player. If the rules are utterly inflexible and never adapt to anything ever for any reason, that too leads to problems.

Another way of saying this is that your "If needed" is doing some incredibly heavy lifting there. If that happened more than, say, once every several months (of weekly sessions), I'd get pretty annoyed as a player that the rules weren't being consistently applied. If it happened quite regularly, e.g. multiple times a month for weekly sessions, I would be looking for a chance to have a heart to heart with the DM.

Fixing a real issue as soon as possible is a good thing. Preserving consistency and reliability is also a good thing. We must balance the needs of those two things against each other. I very much doubt there is one universal midpoint, but that midpoint shouldn't be abruptly changing all the time.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Rules referee is not the same as authoritarian in the sense that you imply.

In what way?

I for one get tired of being told that we've been playing the game wrong for decades.

Haven't seen someone do that yet.

 

[dave2008]

There's a balance to strike. If the rules change constantly, or even just too often, you're not really playing a game anymore, you're in Eternal Beta Test, which suuuuuuucks as a player. If the rules are utterly inflexible and never adapt to anything ever for any reason, that too leads to problems.

Another way of saying this is that your "If needed" is doing some incredibly heavy lifting there. If that happened more than, say, once every several months (of weekly sessions), I'd get pretty annoyed as a player that the rules weren't being consistently applied. If it happened quite regularly, e.g. multiple times a month for weekly sessions, I would be looking for a chance to have a heart to heart with the DM.

Fixing a real issue as soon as possible is a good thing. Preserving consistency and reliability is also a good thing. We must balance the needs of those two things against each other. I very much doubt there is one universal midpoint, but that midpoint shouldn't be abruptly changing all the time.

I do want to clarify that I don't typically change rules unilaterally as a DM. 99% of the time we discuss as a group and determine if we want to change a rule or not. My players have buy-in before a rule is changed.

Also, these changes typically only happen in the first year or so of playing a new system. We have been pretty consistent with our 5e rules since about 2015 +/-