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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 8161189" data-attributes="member: 6779196">You know how lots of players like to just come up with lots of characters? Maybe they’re between games and they have ideas for characters they want to play at some point. Maybe they have an ongoing game but they want to make a backup or three, or sixteen. Maybe they just want to theorycraft a build they think sounds like fun. Most of these characters don’t get a chance to see play, but the player makes them anyway, because it’s fun for them, and it’s a way to engage with D&D when they aren’t actively playing.A lot of DMs are the same way with homebrew and world building. I have spilled an incredible amount of digital ink on ideas for extensive race, class, and equipment overhauls that, when it comes time to actually run a game, I almost always end up deciding against using. I’ve spent incredible amounts of time thinking about and jotting down ideas for my setting, most of which I know will probably never come up in game. It’s fun for me to do, and it’s a way to engage with the game when I’m not actively DMing.I think the conflict here ultimately arises from the tension between these two tendencies. The player has all these cool and quirky characters they’ve thought up, using all these shiny rules options in all these books they’ve bought, and when they finally find a game, the DM says “We’re using the PHB+1 rule. No monks, no gnomes, and we’re using the Slow Natural Healing and Gritty Realism rules. I have a house rule that you take two levels of exhaustion every time you fail a death save, or four levels on a critical failure. Resurrection spells are banned.” On the other side of the screen, the DM has all their really amazing setting they’ve cooked up, where everything has a really well thought-out place in the setting, and here comes a player with a Grung Bloodhunter multiclassed with some rando 3rd party class saying “I want to use this material I found on the internet. I had my friend who DMs look it over and he said it seems pretty balanced.”Now, both of these are pretty extreme examples, and I suspect neither happens as much as the other fears. But it’s that fear that leads some folks to be so critical of any kind of DM authority and others to be so protective of it. People want to exercise their creativity, and will often do so in a vacuum, and then get frustrated when the thing they created clashes in a group context. That’s why it’s important for both parties to be flexible. That extends both ways. Players should be willing to work within the framework set by the DM, and discuss exceptions to that framework on a case by case basis. DMs should be willing to work with players to accommodate the fun they want to have, without being expected to cater to their every whim.</blockquote>

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