D&D General D&D Evolutions You Like and Dislike [+]

If you're the GM and you don't like dragonborn, you don't have to include them at all unless one of your players wants to be one. I've been playing games with dragonborn as an option for 20 years, and I've only ever had one dragonborn PC, and I've never had a named NPC dragonborn.
If the player knows the DM doesn't like dragonborn to the point that they are not in game and wants to play one anyway, that says a lot about the player and not anything that's good. I'd never be like, "So you hate elves, eh? Well I want to play one so you have to include him. Muahahahaha!" I'd pull out a different race that I can have fun with, and there are plenty.
 

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There's nothing wrong with limiting the available books used for a campaign. When I was recruiting players for a 5e 2014 game a few years back, I said PHB and XGTE were available for character creation, because a) it was a tabletop game and I only have a digital copy of Tasha's Guide, and b) I think some of the Tasha subclasses unbalance the game and I didn't want to go through the effort of rebalancing all of the encounters I had already created for the campaign. I posted the character creation rules as part of the recruitment notice, so if someone had a strong preference for a Tasha's subclass or species or content from third party publishers, they could seek another game that better suits their interests.

I'll withhold comment on the issue of more specific curation, since so many of the arguments being presented here (as in the other thread) assume bad faith on the part of either the players or DM. I do tend to use a homebrew world with established cultures when I run games, but most problems can be solved with open discussion and compromise. If one of my long-term players wants to run something that's not common in my world (e.g, aasimar or goliaths, which are new to the world as of the 2024 ruleset), we can discuss how they would fit into the setting. But to be honest, if a random player came to me in response to the notice above and said they wanted to play a genasi artificer, I'd probably pick one of the players who'd bothered to read the game announcement.
 

If the player knows the DM doesn't like dragonborn to the point that they are not in game and wants to play one anyway, that says a lot about the player and not anything that's good. I'd never be like, "So you hate elves, eh? Well I want to play one so you have to include him. Muahahahaha!" I'd pull out a different race that I can have fun with, and there are plenty.
In Reddit parlance, that's an "everyone sucks here" situation. Players shouldn't actively try to be disruptive. GMs shouldn't hold on to their aesthetic preferences so tightly.
 

In Reddit parlance, that's an "everyone sucks here" situation. Players shouldn't actively try to be disruptive. GMs shouldn't hold on to their aesthetic preferences so tightly.
To me when I see "dislike" that goes above and beyond "aesthetic preference." I have aesthetic preferences. Bending the vast majority of those doesn't really have an impact on me. Something I actively dislike, though, will have a negative impact on my enjoyment.
 

To me when I see "dislike" that goes above and beyond "aesthetic preference." I have aesthetic preferences. Bending the vast majority of those doesn't really have an impact on me. Something I actively dislike, though, will have a negative impact on my enjoyment.
So don't dislike something as trivial as a race in an RPG!

The move away from viewing the rules as a pure GURPSian toolkit to build a setting, and towards presenting the game as oriented around the D&D multiverse, with individual games being local variations of that milieu, is also an evolution I like.
 

So don't dislike something as trivial as a race in an RPG!

The move away from viewing the rules as a pure GURPSian toolkit to build a setting, and towards presenting the game as oriented around the D&D multiverse, with individual games being local variations of that milieu, is also an evolution I like.
That's pretty dismissive. What is trivial to one person is major to another and vice versa. It helps to keep that in mind in discussions of subjectivity like this.
 

The move away from viewing the rules as a pure GURPSian toolkit to build a setting, and towards presenting the game as oriented around the D&D multiverse, with individual games being local variations of that milieu, is also an evolution I like.
I don’t, never liked the D&D multiverse, not Spelljammer, not Planescape. Give me one world (out of multiple, distinct, separate ones) and leave it at that.
 


To which a DM should be well within rights to reply "Great; but sorry, you'll have to find another DM 'cause there ain't no Tortles* in this campaign's setting".

* - or whatever class-species is in question.

The two bolded things are IME often said about the same thing, whatever that thing might be: DMs tend to say the first while players tend to say the second.

I'm one for tradition. I think it's one thing baseball really does right: a hypothetical record set in 1922 remains valid today as the game hasn't changed enough to render that record meaningless. The game just is what it is and keeps on keeping on just like it has since before 1900.

We don't have nearly enough of that in D&D. A character played in 1982 or 1992 or 2002 would almost universally be crushed if put in an arena against its direct 2026 species-class-level counterpart; and while surviving through 9 levels was a major accomplishment in 1982 (and took years of play to do) it's a relative triviality today and often done in just a few months.

Silvery barbs bigger offense is it slows the game down as well and basically eliminates critical hits for the DM.

I banned it after I saw it in play and had it on an order cleric. It had its usual effects then triggered the order cleric attack granting ability onto a rogue.

Buy itself its an OP spell imho and a fun suck and slows the game down.

I've only had one request to use it since. Strixhaven was t on the list of books allowed.
 
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