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

[jasper]

.... a selfish brooder who wouldn't hesitate to steal candy from a baby.


...

I only did once. And you were mad because I licked the lollypop clean before giving back to your son.

 

[nevin]

Sometimes.

Right now, I'm playing an Anything Goes campaign and having a blast. I certainly can't complain about someone's character concept when I've explicitly stated that anything is on the table. Obviously.

Again, people are presuming a lack of communication. That's never been the problem. Obviously if I'm pitching a game, it's going to be more than a couple of sentences that I jot off on a message board. Thankfully, most of the people reading this realize that this is the case and aren't getting too bogged down in minutia.

The problem that I'm talking about is AFTER session 0. After you've handed your players your "syllabus" campaign document. After you've explained the campaign is pretty specific detail, why do players, who have said, "Yup, this sounds like fun" then come back with characters that are against what the DM has said? What do they get out of it? Sure, my Knights of the Round Table example wasn't very good. What I know about the Knights of the Round table probably couldn't fill a piece of paper. But, even then, two of the three examples put forward, Merlin and Morgana AREN'T knights. Even if I was wrong on Mordred, I was still right on the other two. Yet, for some reason, there are a significant number of players who will expressly take that "special" character EVERY FREAKING TIME.

Just once, it would be nice to pitch a game and have five PC's put forward that actually were grounded in the campaign proposed.

In a knights of the round table game for instance, make them feel the pain of not being knights in that kind of society. Make it clear if they want to be the special snowflake they must prove thier knightly worth or forever relegated to the naughty word unwanted adventures that the knights dont want.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I think a lot of DMs don't really appreciate how little freedom players actually have. Their "sphere of influence" is very small compared to the DM. Coming up with your own character is one of the major attractions for a player, and I think a lot of the proposed campaign restrictions infringe too much on the player's sphere.

Whereas I think a lot of players really don't appreciate just how many millions of character backgrounds, backstories, and personality types there are in order to make virtually any character they want, while including the one ask the DM requested of them. Are players so lacking in creativity that the only thing they can come up with to make something "cool" is to do the exact opposite of what the DM asked of them?

Based on the way some people have responded here in this thread... if you as a DM wanted to make a "Knights of the Round Table"-esque styled game with everyone playing knights... you'd have a better chance of casually telling those players off-handedly "Oh, I'm thinking of doing Arthurian Legend" and see them create a Knight of the Round Table on their own just by luck... than you would if you were to actually specify to them "Please make a Knight of the Round Table". Because as soon as you said that... apparently a good number of the players here would immediately rebel against it and make anything but.

 

[Dire Bare]

First: if none of the players care to change their backgrounds for this, it is time for the DM to rethink things.

There isn't anything in the module that requires one party member have the ability to navigate a sea vessel or the vehicles (water) tool proficiency, and it is entirely reasonable that the players may each like one of the module-specific backgrounds that do not include mention of this. Or they simply like other, PHB backgrounds.

However, the DM could have quite simply told them all that someone needed one of these backgrounds from the beginning, instead of saving it like some sort of trump card for later. "Aha, you made characters before session zero, but now they are all wrong because (reason not shared until right now)."

If the DM wants this much creative control over characters, the DM should be using premades.

Backgrounds are not meant to work in this way in 5e, anyway.

Again, Hussar and I's tastes on DM restrictions differ, but asking your gaming pals to create characters together during a session 0, where you would likely share that kind of information, is what he is going for here. His players made characters that didn't fit his conception of the game, but his frustration is that they did this BEFORE he got a chance to share his vision.

 

[nevin]

Whereas I think a lot of players really don't appreciate just how many millions of character backgrounds, backstories, and personality types there are in order to make virtually any character they want, while including the one ask the DM requested of them. As players so lacking in creativity that the only thing they can come up with to make something "cool" is to do the exact opposite of what the DM asked of them?

Based on the way some people have responded here in this thread... if you as a DM wanted to make a "Knights of the Round Table"-esque styled game with everyone playing knights... you'd have a better chance of telling those players off-handedly "Oh, I'm thinking of doing Arthurian Legend" and have them create a Knight of the Round Table on their own just by luck... than you would if you were to actually specify to them "Please make a Knight of the Round Table". Because as soon as you said that... apparently a good number of the players here would immediately rebel against it and make anything but.

And those high maintenaince players are the ones you show the door too. That kind of stuff doesnt stop when the character is made.

 

[DEFCON 1]

And those high maintenaince players are the ones you show the door too.

Heh... which is exactly what some of us said at the beginning of the thread.

 

[BluejayJunior]

Whereas I think a lot of players really don't appreciate just how many millions of character backgrounds, backstories, and personality types there are in order to make virtually any character they want, while including the one ask the DM requested of them. Are players so lacking in creativity that the only thing they can come up with to make something "cool" is to do the exact opposite of what the DM asked of them?

Based on the way some people have responded here in this thread... if you as a DM wanted to make a "Knights of the Round Table"-esque styled game with everyone playing knights... you'd have a better chance of casually telling those players off-handedly "Oh, I'm thinking of doing Arthurian Legend" and see them create a Knight of the Round Table on their own just by luck... than you would if you were to actually specify to them "Please make a Knight of the Round Table". Because as soon as you said that... apparently a good number of the players here would immediately rebel against it and make anything but.

That is a gross mischaracterization of what people have said.
Most people have commented on it saying that you need to be clear what your intent of that game is when you say Knights of the Round Table. With just "Knights of the Round Table" as guidance, many people have different interpretations of what that means, because everyone's mind works differently (that's a feature of being human, not a bug). Do you mean everyone has to be a Knight? And by Knight do you mean playing a specific class (ie Fighter/Paladin) or do you mean being part of a certain social/feudal rank (can a wizard be a Knight)? Merlin is a central figure to the Knights of the Round Table, is playing a character like him allowed? By Knights of the Round Table, do you mean that the campaign takes place in Britain with King Arthur and Lancelot running around? Or is that just the theme and the campaign takes place in your homebrewed world which has a similar organization that you want the players to be a part of?
See how many questions come from just that one sentence. People are saying that just a one sentence campaign pitch may not be good enough to convey the information you think is important. It is important for players and DMs to have a conversation about what is expected in the world.

 

[Wasteland Knight]

And those high maintenaince players are the ones you show the door too. That kind of stuff doesnt stop when the character is made.

Heh... which is exactly what some of us said at the beginning of the thread.

Exactly. In the current world of VTT I see zero reason to waste any of my time as a GM on high maintenance players who can't create characters that fit a campaign and then complain about their lack of freedom. Goodbye. All you need is a few good players to have a great campaign.

 

[Wasteland Knight]

Sigh, in my last pirate game, I handed the players three treasure maps, a ship and a short (20 ish page) set of rules for naval combat and running ships in D&D. They sold the ship, ignored the treasure maps, never read the rules and then declared they didn't know what the campaign was about.



I guess I wasn't explicit enough.

Your problem is your players. Find better players. They are out there.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Treat it like a course syllabus - written down before the session starts is much better than "we talked about this, remember?"

You just do have to realize that there are a nontrivial amount of people in this hobby who consider written handouts "homework" to one degree or another, and react to them more than a little hostilely. As such there's a degree of passive avoidance of doing that which is going to be hard to work against.