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

[Crimson Longinus]

To my mind, there's a clear distinction in playing a game based on an IP of shared familiarity and one in which the DM is the originator of the setting.

Knowledge of the IP empowers the players to make character facing decisions without the guidance of the DM.

To certain extent true, but I personally would respect the GM's creation in the same way I would respect an existing IP (or more in fact, as it was something my friend had put thought and time into,) and the fact that I already do not know everything about this world would be a feature rather than a bug to me, as then I would have the joy of genuine exploration.

And as a tangent, using "Wookiee Jedi" as an example of someone who doesn't care about consistency of setting lore is now weird since there's a canonical Wookiee Jedi.

Yes, but not in Star Trek! That was the example.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I was simply disagreeing with the statement "We were all bad DMs at one point (when we started)". An inexperienced DM isn't inherently bad, they're just inexperienced. I've played in games with brand new DMs where we all had a lot of fun. Of course they could have done better, every DM could always do better.

You seem to have a different definition of bad DM than I do.

For my part, there are three categories relevant here (that is, DMs I would not call "good DMs"):

1. Harmful DMs. These are people that are actively doing things I consider to be outright bad to and/or for their players, such as the aforementioned active un-personing of a player's character if they don't play the "correct" races, which mostly meant the core four plus a couple old familiar ones like gnomes. And, unfortunately, a significant chunk of advice for DMs in early D&D books really does advocate for stuff like this.
2. Inexperienced/Inept DMs. These are people who mean well, but through inexperience or having developed wrongheaded beliefs or some other thing, they make poor choices with significant negative consequences when sincerely trying to make good ones. The line between this category and the previous can be fuzzy, as the preceding group may feel what they are doing is actually good when it isn't, but in general this group is still possible to reach with some criticisms, while the preceding group is not.
3. Mediocre DMs. This is where I think a majority of DMs fall. Unfortunately, being a mediocre DM often means folks still make a lot of poor, harmful choices. They just aren't as committed, and the balance of their choices is middling rather than distinctly bad like the previous two.

Well-constructed rules and procedures are extremely helpful for #3 and usually helpful with #2. Even with #1, though, well-constructed rules and procedures still provide some benefit. Firstly, most outright harmful DMs still feel a need to cement their legitimacy, and thus will work to undermine effective, well-constructed rules that would get in their way in advance. This can act as an extremely effective early warning sign. Secondly, most if not all outright harmful DMs will take steps to insert greater ambiguity, confusion, deception, or deniability, especially if they can do so while avoiding accountability for the insertion. Well-constructed rules make this significantly harder by promoting clarity, transparency, and accountability.

More or less, well-made rules make for an environment that outright harmful DMs will constantly chafe against, and thus provide a subtle but powerful pressure against their participation, while supporting player ability to see, ID, and call out harmful DM behaviors. Poor rules, on the other hand, create a climate where harmful DMs thrive, and where players can be powerless to do anything about it except "voting with their feet" (which is a significantly bigger ask than many, many proponents claim it is, as they ignore the social cost of doing so.)

Inexperienced or inept DMs and mediocre are helped immensely by well-made rules, and hampered by poor ones. In some cases, poor rules may even help grow the pool of harmful DMs.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

But that banning PHB species due the setting literally was part of my examples...

And then you used examples that cross settings.

I finally think I get what the confusion is. You're mixing up two different things. D&D is not a setting, it is a rule system. It can be used to play in various settings, all of which might not contain everything that exist in the D&D rules. Just like we could play in Star Trek setting using GURPs, but then limit options to just those that are appropriate for Star Trek.

It's both.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Why is it not the same thing? Astra is @Crimson Longinus' creation, he is the creator of the campaign world. It happens to use the D&D rules for running the game but D&D does not dictate the fiction of campaign worlds. It never has, the rules just give us some default lore if we want to use it.

Thraes, my campaign world, is not Astra. Nor is it Middle Earth, Forgotten Realms, Eberron or Dark Sun. It's my own creation that has had it's history shaped in part by player decisions of decades of campaigns. A happy-go-lucky tinker gnome artificer by the name Sprocket might be a fun character for my game but they wouldn't fit in a Dark Sun campaign where gnomes don't exist.

Because there is this thing called the PHB, which is the default set of assumptions for what people can play.

 

[Emerikol]

I was simply disagreeing with the statement "We were all bad DMs at one point (when we started)". An inexperienced DM isn't inherently bad, they're just inexperienced. I've played in games with brand new DMs where we all had a lot of fun. Of course they could have done better, every DM could always do better.

You seem to have a different definition of bad DM than I do.

Yes I think we both thought bad meant evil vs bad meaning inexperienced or prone to mistakes. And I'm using evil here a little bit loosely. They are jerks or don't have the campaign's best intentions in mind.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The DM asks them to leave which effectively does box them in. Just like a player in a game with an evil DM can leave which. If the DM has no players they have no game.

And if the player says no? We're already talking about someone knowingly engaging in bad faith. There's a lot a person can do to be extremely socially disruptive and to prevent or significantly delay getting booted from a group, especially if they're knowingly engaging in bad faith.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Go for the people who are already on your side?

I mean, I try to, in the sense of embracing allies in these discussions. And I also tried to, in the sense of looking for games, as I've said in several other places. I failed.

 

[TwoSix]

I have seen very little evidence that there are "milder opinions." It seems very clear to me that there are two camps: "Shut up and obey the DM or leave and never darken my door again," and "alright, let's have a talk and figure out how we can both enjoy this."

Every time I have presented these two things, the consistent refrain is, "Yes, that first option is absolutely required," and almost always with the "and if the second thing doesn't work, what then? Huh? How do you fix that? You don't. That's why the first one is mandatory."

I mean, I'm firmly in the second camp; I leave my D&D settings very loose precisely to accommodate a wide amount of aesthetic preferences.

But, I do expect at least a little polite deference to my aesthetic values when I indicate them important enough to assert.

Having tables of rotating DMs certainly helps with these authority issues; we generally defer to the DM's vision because we've all had our turns running.

 

[Emerikol]

Because there is this thing called the PHB, which is the default set of assumptions for what people can play.

Unless the DM says otherwise. Like people keep saying, not every campaign world will have every race or class in D&D. Some will have other races and maybe another class who knows.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Because there is this thing called the PHB, which is the default set of assumptions for what people can play.

So is your argument now, that if I choose use D&D system to run a game, I am required to include everything in the PHB?