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

[Thomas Shey]

Not all early GMs were that way.

An awful lot were, and it snowballed because other GM's picked it up from them. And the basic encouragement came right out of Wisconsin.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Eh. I don't see that as a problem per se. It will certainly create a difficult situation the the characters, but if the players are to have agency, then it also means they can make "bad choices."

There's two problems with that.

1. "They" aren't making bad choices. A solitary one of them is making a bad choice and pulling everyone else along with the consequences, usually a character they were expected to work with primarily of PC Glow.

2. Even if they all are, its entirely possible that the campaign effectively ends right there, right now, which may not have been what they expected, nor what the GM wanted, unless he goes through a bunch of justification backflips to make it happen. GMs don't necessarily set up campaigns with the assumption the whole player group will abruptly lose their minds.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Why assume any player new to your table is in any way new to the game, or new to fantasy?

Why assume otherwise? Its not like new players don't still feed into the hobby, and the ones that do may well have expectations based on the game itself, or urban fantasy or any number of things.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The GM is here, and Crawford isn't. I rather feel that the GM does trump him.

Not if the players agree with him. But that's apparently not a factor.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Don't think I'm guilty of that one, y'r honour.

You'll notice I wasn't sure, but I kind of thought your--completist--approach made you possibly the person I was remembering.

 

[Thomas Shey]

As both player and DM I love that sort of thing!

See my comments above on the topic.

 

[Dire Bare]

There are a ton of ongoing shows set on Earth, where the setting remains Earth and there are no added vampires etc. Having a fixed setting doesn't prevent you from telling stories.

Strange reply, considering we are talking about a fantasy game.

Sure, if CSI suddenly started a vampires take over Chicago story arc, it would seem strange. Although, stranger things have happened in TV and movie land.

I'm not really sure what your point is. Are there tons of movies and TV shows set in the "real world"? Well, yeah. So?

Again . . . if you are a DM who puts your own world-building ahead of player collaboration, that's fine if it works for you and your gaming group. But increasingly, that seems very unfun to many of us.

 

[Dire Bare]

The setting changes and expands, but it rarely changes what already happened.

Heh. The word "retcon" exists for a reason.

But yes, as shows expand and develop, they usually try to not overwrite the "history" of the setting and story.

But, as with @Crimson Longinus, I'm not sure I get your point.

If in my D&D world, I don't currently have a place for dragonborn, and one of my new players REALLY wants to play a dragonborn . . . me finding a way to include that into my setting isn't changing the history of my world, or overwriting history. It is expanding and adding new elements, with likely some reverse timeline additions.

Perhaps, in discussion with the player, we decide there is an island chain far to the south that remains mostly uncontacted by the powers of the "Known World". This island is ruled by dragons who are served by dragonborn. The PC has escaped from this land, and managed to travel to the "Known World" by means mundane or magical.

This dragon-ruled island chain didn't exist in my campaign until I had a need for it, to accommodate one of my players. Did I change the history of my world? Did I change "what already happened"?

Whatever.

If you and your gaming group are happy with a more restrictive approach, that's fine as long as y'all are having fun. I prefer the more collaborative approach. I'm having way more fun that I did when I was a kid and every DM's world (in our little corner of D&D fandom in the 80s) was considered sacrosanct and inviolable. I have some old school friends who still play like that . . . and while I love them . . . I don't want to play D&D with them anymore.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I can't imagine seeing the entirety of my world-building for my setting; the two million words written, the two decades of lore not only from me but as a result of previous groups creating new places and concepts, the research and consideration I put into it... as lesser or 'inconsistent' because one player asked to be a gnome.

Nor can I image thinking what I wrote on the page for a book to be more important than helping my friends fulfil a fantasy and have fun.

I never have to add any gnomes into the world; never have to play gnomes myself, never have to acknowledge that they're a gnome even. And the next campaign in the setting where no one wants to play a gnome, there are no gnomes again.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Just because you can't perfectly simulate choice (or lack thereof) the way it works in the real world is not a good reason IMO to abandon the attempt. It's a spectrum, just like I've said many times before.

It's not a matter of not being able to get an exact match. It's a matter of the choice--what the character is biologically and what skills they practice--being one that is not and cannot ever be diegetic. Nobody gets to be a disembodied spirit with an encyclopedic manual of possible persons they could elect to be. We are thrust into this life without our consent and forewarning.

There simply is not any mapping between character creation and real life. There can't be.

And I don't understand what you mean by the toolbox telling you that wrenches and screwdrivers are required. Can you un-metaphor that please?

The books (for 5.0) straight-up explicitly say that humans/elves/etc. are present in effectively all settings, meaning they are instructing DMs they aren't allowed to not use those tools. That's not something a "toolbox" should ever do--period.