D&D 5E As a Player, why do you play in games you haven't bought into?

[Thomas Shey]

Fair enough. But, I wouldn't make a connection between "Your character must have faith in a deity" and "Your character is slave owner". I really don't think those are equivalent issues.

Though I'm sure there are some that would disagree, I don't generically. But I'd say how true that is very much is a question of the available deities involved. I can quite understand how some views of the FR pantheons approach that given some interpretations of the Wall of the Faithless.

 

[Thomas Shey]

My point, over and over again, has been that DMs shouldn't do that. It leads to problems. I have no sympathy for a DM who does that and then runs into problems when they start trying to recruit players to act out the DMs personal novel for them.

There are absolutely campaigns that require enough setup load that waiting around to begin work on it to get sign-off would lead to lag times of months before a lot of people could get them ready. And I don't think "the DM's personal novel" does more than play the dozens with that situation while contributing nothing to the discussion.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Well, it is a little of both. Reading the campaign book, it is pretty clear that the goal is to emulate Greek myths, where the gods favour mortal heroes that worship them, tend to be the prime quest-givers, and generally interfere in the mortal world.

The book does seem to allow for a PC that seeks to defy the gods, but to return to the premise of the thread, I can’t really see how you could create a character for a Theros campaign who was indifferent to, or didn’t believe in, the gods.

I don't know Theros well, but I know something about actual the ancient Greece, so from that point of view it seems perfectly plausible to me.

 

[Thomas Shey]

But you're making two arguments in this thread. One, that if the premise is clearly communicated and the players make characters that go against that it is problem behaviour, and secondly, that vague description like 'it's Forgotten Realms' is sufficient to communicate very specific premise like 'all characters must be religious.' Fists argument is sensible, but the second is blatant nonsense and makes your position to seem incoherent.

I'd kind of have to concur. I doubt most people who play in the Realms have a clue how nigh-universal faith is supposed to be in the setting. Its not particularly obvious unless you do a deep dive or happen to see discussion of the Wall (the only reason I know about it).

 

[MGibster]

Bored and irritated with meaningless and unnecessary restrictions? Yeah. Willing to give it a go anyway, but with hope of making the game a bit more fun for me, and not just playing a nearly pre-written role in my DM's screenplay? Yeah.

How often does this happen to you that you've reached the level of boredom and irritation?

You might guess . . . I've played in more than a few games where the DM pitched a campaign idea, and was less than clear with exactly what they meant ("Knights of the Round Table" as genre vs a "knights-only" campaign) . . . and/or placed restrictions on characters that NEVER made sense to me, even after a few sessions of play ("Why exactly are we all knights again? And my hexblade sorcerer-knight just would BREAK the story? Erm, okay . . .")

This is an excellent illustration that communication is a two way street. Hopefully in those situations you've entered into a dialogue with the DM and asked them to further clarify his or her ideas for the campaign.

I would probably never ask for a knight only campaign unless I was running Pendragon. And in that particular case, it's because the game is designed to emulate a particular subset of Arthurian tales of knights doing knightly things. (I'm aware some editions allow for characters other than knights but if I'm running it I'm all about the knights, baby.) But if you had no interest in that campaign I'd pitch another idea to the group and hope it's one you wanted to play. If you're a member of my group, it's because I like gaming with you and I value your participation.

Of course I try to pitch 2-3 different ideas for campaigns for my players to choose from. And while there are some outliers, the majority of the time they make perfectly acceptable characters.

 

[Thomas Shey]

How often does this happen to you that you've reached the level of boredom and irritation?

For some people, it doesn't take a lot of repetition. Its sort of the inverse of the "must always play the same kind of character" player I mentioned earlier in this thread.

 

[Lanefan]

My point, over and over again, has been that DMs shouldn't do that. It leads to problems. I have no sympathy for a DM who does that and then runs into problems when they start trying to recruit players to act out the DMs personal novel for them.

You're making a faulty leap there, from a DM spending a long time in setting design before recruiting players to that the campaign will be acting out a personal novel.

The alternative would be to recruit the players first and then spend a year designing the setting, by which time those players may well have found other things to do instead - or worse, have changed their minds on what they want from the game.

When I design a setting my mindset is that what I'm doing has to be robust enough to last for a good long time, as my expectation is that the campaign will - ideally - last for a great many years. And so I put a lot of work into it; I spent well over a year in setting and system design for my current campaign*, and I call it time well spent given that said campaign is now in its 12th year.

But note that I'm designing the setting, not the story. Sure I'll have a fisrt adventure in mind and some ideas after that, but if the players/PCs go in unexpected directions I know the setting is solid enough that I can sandbox it. And if they're happy playing through what I have in mind then so be it. Usually what happens over the long run is a blend of the two - sometimes they drive the bus and other times I do.

* - about halfway through that process I ran a three-session one-off for two reasons: one, to run out a few new rules ideas and see if they'd fly and two, to test-drive a couple of new players (both of whom I worked with at the time, so I could easily give them constant updates on where things were at and on a projected start time). All went well.

If the players are all up for that, sure. If it is made clear ahead of time that major enemies that they face will be slavers, and thus that slavery will be an aspect of the campaign world that they have to deal with, and everyone is comfortable with that.

Going in they knew it'd be a Greek-based setting. Slavery was very much a thing in ancient Greece.

Never mind that one of the starting PCs then randomly rolled "Slaver" as her past profession.

 

[Older Beholder]

YES. What is with this? I recently joined a campaign where the DM told us not to talk to each other beforehand about our characters, and avoided answering when I asked what kind of campaign I should build a character for (heroes saving the world, hard-bitten mercenaries, etc.).

It's like... dude, I'm actively trying to make a character who will be on board with your plot and fit in with the other PCs. Throw me a frickin' bone.

(I made a Light cleric with a "wandering the earth" backstory, which I figured was safe. If you have to make a character with zero information about the campaign or the party, you can't go wrong with a traveling cleric. But it sure would have been nice to have a little guidance.)

To be fair to the guy running my game, he did at least say it would start in Neverwinter, after I asked if it would be F Realms or Homebrew.
That’s all I really need to make a character.

Maybe he was trying to avoid the situation the OP is talking about? Or didn’t want to give away ‘spoilers’, which is also fair.
It just felt like a lack of trust.

There‘s the opposite situation which was pretty common when I played in high school but I don’t see much these days, and that’s the ole campaign switcheroo

DM says ‘hey lets play a pirate, sea adventure type campaign’
Everyone gets onboard makes suitable characters and within the first adventure a wizard teleports the party to the deserts of Dark Sun.

This can work in some examples, Ravenloft being an obvious one.
Too often though and it gets frustrating.

 

[Hussar]

Basically all fantasy setting have gods and other supernatural naughty word, and worlds without real gods like ours still have religious festivals everywhere. To most people FR is just a mediocre generic kitchen sink fantasy setting and that's it. Most people don't even know about the Wall. And even if one knows about it, then that might spur some to make 'atheist' characters to protest against the gods allowing such a travesty.

But you're making two arguments in this thread. One, that if the premise is clearly communicated and the players make characters that go against that it is problem behaviour,

Yup, that's the premise of this thread.

and secondly, that vague description like 'it's Forgotten Realms' is sufficient to communicate very specific premise like 'all characters must be religious.'

Nope. Never stated this, never even really hinted at this, at least not in this thread. The other thread, I did kinda stray that way with the clue bat joke because, as has been noted, FR is REALLY REALLY religious. But, nope, not making that argument here and it's only folks that have insisted on dragging that argument over here from the other thread that are causing the confusion. No one else seems to have any problems following my point, whether they agree or disagree.

 

[Hussar]

Pointlessly contrarian? Nah. Pointedly contrarian perhaps.

Bored and irritated with meaningless and unnecessary restrictions? Yeah. Willing to give it a go anyway, but with hope of making the game a bit more fun for me, and not just playing a nearly pre-written role in my DM's screenplay? Yeah.

You might guess . . . I've played in more than a few games where the DM pitched a campaign idea, and was less than clear with exactly what they meant ("Knights of the Round Table" as genre vs a "knights-only" campaign) . . . and/or placed restrictions on characters that NEVER made sense to me, even after a few sessions of play ("Why exactly are we all knights again? And my hexblade sorcerer-knight just would BREAK the story? Erm, okay . . .")

And there are levels of contrariness . . .

DM: "Okay Bob, I think a priest whose connection to God grants her miraculous powers sounds cool, as does Jim's sorcerous apprentice to Merlin . . . I can even see Lisa's knight whose made a pact for warlocky power . . . but we're gonna need at least a couple of KNIGHTS in this game here, and Frank's tabaxi artificer is just a step too far for what I'm trying for here . . . .

Heh. I love that last bit. That was funny, and, yeah, that's generally what I've been pointing to.

But, then again, I don't even get the notion really. If someone said, "Let's play a "Knights of the Round Table" campaign, of course we would all be knights. It's right there in the title. I'm not going to start playing barracks room lawyer on everything the DM says so I can say, "AHA! GOTCHA! You didn't SAY that we couldn't be a hexblade sorcerer knight in this Knights of the Round Table campaign, so, I guess that means I can play it and you're being needlessly restrictive if you disagree. You should have been more specific in your campaign description!"

No thanks. I'd rather be able to trust the players at my table and know that when they say that they want to play the game I've pitched, they ACTUALLY want to play the game that I've pitched and not go out of their way to twist it simply because I didn't have a lawyer look over the contract to play.

For me, if you tell me that you are running Game X and I want to play in Game X, I will guarantee you that my character will be deeply embedded in Game X. I would never do the whole bait and switch thing as a player. It's such a douche move. If you don't want to play, don't play. That's groovy. No problems. Or, maybe I can make room for the concept, it never hurts to ask. But, the expectation that I'm going to rewrite my campaign to make room for your character so you can play against type again is a bridge too far for me anymore. I'm simply not interested in playing with players who can't get with the program anymore. It's too frustrating and just makes DMing suck too hard.