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

[KYRON45]

So what is the point of players, then? I mean, why does the GM just not write some more setting bible if they have such little interest in the players and their play of their PCs?

The point of the players is to interact with each other and the setting. A character isn't special until they do something special. When the DM sets up the premise for the campaign the players should buy into that premise and not go out of their way to circumvent the DM.

The first thing i do when i make a new PC is ask...what can this person contribute to both the party and the proposed campaign premise. I don't immediately find a way to tell the DM thanks for running the campaign but my idea is better.

 

[Emerikol]

How do you get a person to obey when they refuse to obey, solely by shouting at them "My game my rules!"?

Well there are bad players you just have to boot out of the game. I'm not saying all bad players can be handled. Some can be though. While bad in other ways they still accept rule 0.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

They are not the coach for the opposing team. I go to great lengths to make sure I play the NPCs fairly. I let the dice fall where they fall. But I have nothing invested in the NPCs the way the players are invested in their characters.

So...you choose which opponents are on the field. You decide what those opponents do. Those opponents are actively gunning for victory.

But you aren't the coach, while the players somehow are? Why do you get a pass for "striving to be a neutral arbiter"? You say you aren't invested, but the beings you're running are. That's the whole point.

The example was simply that people don't do what is in their best interest long term. They often do the short term thing and it goes bad in the long term. How many people dying of type 2 diabetes perhaps regret their decisions years before? In the moment their decisions seemed good. That cake tastes great. In the long run it was bad.

I really think using analogies like this is hurting your argument more than it is helping.

 

[Emerikol]

So...you choose which opponents are on the field. You decide what those opponents do. Those opponents are actively gunning for victory.

But you aren't the coach, while the players somehow are? Why do you get a pass for "striving to be a neutral arbiter"? You say you aren't invested, but the beings you're running are. That's the whole point.

You assume an adversarial stance between the DM and the players that I don't. Yes when I step into the monster I try to play it according to ITS persona. When I adjudicate though I am not doing so as the monster. I am again the DM.

I really think using analogies like this is hurting your argument more than it is helping.

I think you just choose to misread and be obtuse instead of engaging the argument. Both examples illustrated the point and when you asked for clarification I gave it. Now the point should be clear. Players will not always choose what is best in the long term.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

The fact that you are using such an outlandish example IS why it is a strawman. You are quite clearly equating "I would like to play a race present in the PHB" with "I would like to play something that explicitly doesn't exist in this system at all." How is it possible you can be using this example and not see how that would indicate an equivalence between "a dragonborn played in a D&D game" and "a wookiee jedi played in Star Trek"?

There is a vast difference between these two examples, and pretending that they're the same IS the very strawman I'm talking about. It presupposes that the players are actively trying to be bad, actively pursuing something so radically unfit that no one could possibly see it as reasonable. That is simply not the case with, as said, an option listed in the PHB. It's not even like we're talking about an official but obscure choice, like a Plasmoid Artificer or the like. We're talking about content as core as content can be. To pretend there is any similarity between "an elf on explicitly elfless Artra" and a dragonborn in any random D&D campaign is, as stated, to conflate the two in a hostile way.

No, it is literally the same thing. Artra is my D&D world, and it doesn't have any PHB species besides humans. (Well, it has orcs, which are in the new PHB, but they aren't in the one we use and that was current when the setting was created.) It is same than someone's custom world without dragonborn, or playing in Middle-Earth using D&D rules, thus excluding a lot of options (I know there is a bespoke Middle-Earth version, which would be a better fit, but some people might want to use the rules they have at hand.)

So if you think my examples are outlandish strawmen, then provide what you think isn't? Because it is possible that we do not actually disagree on this that much, given that you actually seem to think the limitations I've used as an example are fine.

 

[CreamCloud0]

I really think using analogies like this is hurting your argument more than it is helping.

just take the analogy as it was intended, we all know 'optimising the fun out a game' is something that people can and will often do, as well as other similar practices, short term gratification, long term negative.

 

[Oofta]

If I sign up to play Star Trek, there are no Wookies but I would expect Vulcans. If sign up to play LotR/MERP, there are no Dragonborn but I would expect Dwarves. If I sign up to play D&D, I would expect Elves and Dragonborn, both of which are right there in the rulebook.

Now maybe Artra is sufficiently compelling, despite its lack of Elves, that I can get on board. But speaking at least for myself, I wouldn't have the sort of independent interest in an Artra game that I might have in a Star Trek or LotR/MERP game.

Why couldn't there be Wookies in Star Trek? After all there are unexplored regions of space, wormholes, different dimensions. Why are you so limited in your imagination that you can't imagine an alternate universe where Wookies exist?

Is it because Wookies don't fit the theme and style of the game you want to play when you're playing a Star Trek game?

Like @Emerikol, when I have an opening in my games I include a page or two of restrictions, expectations and an intro to give them a general idea of the type of campaigns I run. But one thing I'm clear on is that I've always been clear on is what species I allow. Which, honestly? If you can't compromise and use one of the half dozen or so races I allow then perhaps you won't be willing to compromise in other ways with the other players.

In an FR game a while back I thought it would be fun to play Puss In Boots style PC complete with bad accent named Antonio. Of course playing a Tabaxi made the most sense so that's what I did. But if the campaign didn't have anthropomorphic cat people? I would have just chosen a different species or come up with a different concept. My vision of an individual character is not more important than the vision of the DM has for their world or the style the DM and other players have decided to play. For me, the PC is the character idea du jour, for the DM? The DM has likely spent hour upon hour building a campaign world. If they're like me, they've spent thousands of hours over years running games in that world. Compared to that? My PC doesn't have to be furry.

 

[FrozenNorth]

So you are the person who insists playing a wookiee jedi in a Star Trek game then?

Only if you’re the guy that insists that all jedi have to be human in a Star Wars game.

 

[AnotherGuy]

The first thing i do when i make a new PC is ask...what can this person contribute to both the party and the proposed campaign premise. I don't immediately find a way to tell the DM thanks for running the campaign but my idea is better.

The laugh was for the bolded section.
I too tend to attempt ways to contribute to the unfolding story by selecting options that make it easy for the DM to realise the campaign premise and accentuate the setting. I keep wondering if this is a common trend for DMs like myself (long campaigners, generally forever DMs, old-schoolers).
I dunno.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Well there are bad players you just have to boot out of the game. I'm not saying all bad players can be handled. Some can be though. While bad in other ways they still accept rule 0.

Okay. I'm not saying all bad DMs can be handled. Some can be though. While bad in other ways, they can still accept rules, procedures, etc. that contribute to better DMing.

This is what I mean by the can't-have-it-both-ways argument. Your admission that there are different kinds of bad-ness, and that some kinds are in fact amenable to rules while others aren't, is precisely what makes better-made rules and procedures useful in dealing with some DMs and not others. If our standard is that a rule/procedure/etc. must be able to deal with all possible bad DM behavior no matter what, then sure, no rule can do that. But the exact same argument applies in the other direction too: no rule, not even Rule Zero, can do that. Yet if we soften the standard to rules/procedures/etc. that can address the majority of issues, or the most common types of issues, or whatever--again, it swings both ways.