Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 6747962" data-attributes="member: 6790260">I hesitate to use the "f-word" (fun, of course!) in these conversations, because that's a huge can of worms and you'll get drilled left, right, and center, even by people who agree with you, if you use it. Instead I prefer framing it in terms of enthusiasm. If a DM pitches something to me from the outset, e.g. "I want to run a campaign with centaurs" (to give an example often used on a different forum), or "I'd like to run another game in the campaign world I used last time," then that's one thing. It's a wholly different, and IMO lamentable, thing to offer to run "a game" with no such restrictions or limitations presented up front, allowing players to get excited about stuff present in the PHB, only to turn around and say, "No, sorry, you can't do that, doesn't matter how enthusiastic you are."I think it's pretty much self-evident that anything which categorically opposes legitimate player enthusiasm--that is, enthusiasm without abusive or coercive intent--is to be avoided whenever possible, especially when new players are involved. Flat, unquestionable and unalterable "no, you can't have this thing you think is cool" is just...sad. It crushes that beautiful thing, the natural, unbidden enthusiasm a player has before they even get to the table--a thing that, in my experience, is very difficult to rebuild once lost, but which, if properly nurtured, can smooth over many other issues.Like I said: I have no problem with honestly and straightforwardly presenting a more-limited set of options prior to getting player buy-in. That's fair and honest dealing, and averts all but the "diehard fan of a thing not present" cases--and while that still sucks, it's an acceptable breakpoint. Springing this kind of stuff on someone after you've already given them the chance to get excited about stuff...just...yeah. It's so easily addressed from the beginning, that I can't really sympathize with the DM who fails to speak up and then wonders why people get upset to learn it much later on!I can't help reading this in my head as, "Bad GM! No dice! Bad!" <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":P" title="Stick out tongue    :P"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":P" /></blockquote>

Verification