D&D 5E Deal Breakers - Or woah, that is just too much

[JonnyP71]

Do yourself a favor and throw some Manowar on in the background.

I cant listen to Holy War, Black wind Fire and Steel or Dark Avenger without wanting to play a Vengance Paladin.

Still no.

I mostly play a Necromancer and get myself in the mood by listening to dark 80s Goth music or industrial metal while driving to the game... but during the game, silence - just voices, the rustling of sheets, the clicking of dice.

Occasionally I'll watch game videos online (youtube etc) - if they have background music I stop watching immediately. It just doesn't add to the experience, at all, it distracts from it.

 

[kalil]

Straight up bestiality of the not-fade-to-black variety was a deal breaker for me in a generally weird campaign last year. In general "adult themes" are a big red warning light that the DM just wants to be creepy.

 

[Shasarak]

Agreed. One of the things I liked about the 3e Realms (and also Eberron) was that they did actually try to set it up with a different planar arrangement. They've since rowed back from that, going so far as to have Elminster repudiate the "great tree" (or whatever it was - it's been a while), but it was good while it lasted.

Ah huh, infinite planes all the same. Right.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Regarding "planar arrangement", and risking further derailing the thread, I've always thought of each varying planar arrangement found throughout various D&D supplements and settings, such as the Great Wheel, the world tree, or the cosmology of Eberron, as being not actually separate sets of planes exclusive of each other and arranged as indicated by images provided. I've thought of them as being visual representation of the local commonly accepted representation, but with no actual objective truth to any of them - i.e. the great wheel counts the outer planes as being more distant, represented by being along the outer rim of the chosen pictorial reference chart, not because there is some greater physical distance between those places and the material plane, but because their properties are more different from those of the prime material and less predictable in their variation.

My opinion being that there is really only one set of (an infinite number of) planes of existence, but different settings have different views of those planes and different methods for trying to understand their relationships and interactions. Perhaps that is just me, or perhaps not given that 5th edition's "multi-verse" appears to be in-line with this idea.

 

[innerdude]

I'm guessing that you have found yourself with quite a number of adversarial DMs and DMs afraid of the players "ruining their story." Bad experiences like that are hard to shake off - not that I had DMs which did those particular things with planehopping, but I have had DMs that were more concerned with having things their way than with letting, let alone helping, anyone have fun at their table, and it has been a very deliberate process not to hold those DMs' mistakes against any other DMs.

Actually I've never had an adversarial GM before. It's quite literally just a case of pure personal preference and dislike.

Even in the 3.x era, when I played exclusively D&D from 2001 to 2008, it never once appealed to me. All of that "Great Wheel" cosmology, descriptions of the planes, etc. never once seemed interesting or relevant to the type of game I would want to run or participate in.

To each one's own, and all that though.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Actually I've never had an adversarial GM before. It's quite literally just a case of pure personal preference and dislike.

It seems odd to me that your personal dislike would be phrased as if you were expecting the DM to use something as a tool against you as a player without having had a DM having used something else against you at some prior point - most folks that haven't had a DM be an adversary tend to assume that whatever the DM is wanting to do is coming from a "trying to give us a fun time" place rather than the "trying to find an excuse to be a jerk" place.

I mean, yeah, to each their own with liking the planes or not - I just thought assuming a DM will be adversary to the players was a thing only people that had adversarial DMs did.

Even in the 3.x era, when I played exclusively D&D from 2001 to 2008, it never once appealed to me. All of that "Great Wheel" cosmology, descriptions of the planes, etc. never once seemed interesting or relevant to the type of game I would want to run or participate in.

To each one's own, and all that though. [/QUOTE]

 

[MechaPilot]

Straight up bestiality of the not-fade-to-black variety was a deal breaker for me in a generally weird campaign last year.

I have to admit that's a strange thing to include without a fade-to-black (I think for most groups that include any type of sexuality, fade-to-black is a common practice).

In general "adult themes" are a big red warning light that the DM just wants to be creepy.

Possibly. Although, I wouldn't say that's a given. I think it's simply that not every DM who wants to include adult themes does a good job of it. Sometimes they don't let the players know what they can expect before hand. Sometimes they take things too far and aren't sensitive to when the players are becoming uncomfortable. And so on.

 

[delericho]

Ah huh, infinite planes all the same. Right.

Yes, well... baby steps.

 

[Flamestrike]

Straight up bestiality of the not-fade-to-black variety was a deal breaker for me in a generally weird campaign last year. In general "adult themes" are a big red warning light that the DM just wants to be creepy.

One of my first gaming experiences was a Rolemaster campaign that kicked off in '88. I met someone in my local FLGS and he invited me in. This was my first session with this group. Turns out it was a Rolemaster campaign.

The Warlock rolled 'Animal friend' on the backgound chart, and generated 'horses'. In the mind of the player in question (an odd one at best) this become very.. dark. It led to a series of episodes where he would sneak out to the stables with a stool and... I'll leave the rest blank.

I can assure you that that particular player (and that group) certainly didnt fade to black either. There was no topic too dark for this group.

Oddly, the same player was an avowed Satanist, and would greet you (if you tried to wake him before midday) by hurling a large heavy knife at you as hard as he could. He was also a pyromaniac (NEVER ask him for a lighter, and always use them away from your face - he 'tinkered' with them so they all produced flames at least a foot high and with the intensity of the sun).

And yes, I meant 'player'. The guy was seriously unhinged. A great guy though, but a total whackjob.

On my third session, I woke up sticky taped to some childrens play equipment across the road. If you fell asleep during the session this would happen (eyebrows were also not safe, and you were lucky to just be drawn on).

Bear in mind I was 14 at the time and they were all 18ish.

Oddly, this turned out to be the best roleplaying group I ever played with. We played together every weekend for 5 years. All nighters on Friday, and all weekend long. All my best RP stories come from this group.

Go figure.

 

[Azurewraith]

One of my first gaming experiences was a Rolemaster campaign that kicked off in '88. I met someone in my local FLGS and he invited me in. This was my first session with this group. Turns out it was a Rolemaster campaign.

The Warlock rolled 'Animal friend' on the backgound chart, and generated 'horses'. In the mind of the player in question (an odd one at best) this become very.. dark. It led to a series of episodes where he would sneak out to the stables with a stool and... I'll leave the rest blank.

I can assure you that that particular player (and that group) certainly didnt fade to black either. There was no topic too dark for this group.

Oddly, the same player was an avowed Satanist, and would greet you (if you tried to wake him before midday) by hurling a large heavy knife at you as hard as he could. He was also a pyromaniac (NEVER ask him for a lighter, and always use them away from your face - he 'tinkered' with them so they all produced flames at least a foot high and with the intensity of the sun).

And yes, I meant 'player'. The guy was seriously unhinged. A great guy though, but a total whackjob.

On my third session, I woke up sticky taped to some childrens play equipment across the road. If you fell asleep during the session this would happen (eyebrows were also not safe, and you were lucky to just be drawn on).

Bear in mind I was 14 at the time and they were all 18ish.

Oddly, this turned out to be the best roleplaying group I ever played with. We played together every weekend for 5 years. All nighters on Friday, and all weekend long. All my best RP stories come from this group.

Go figure.

Why do I feel like you told this story to your therapist.