Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="James Gasik" data-source="post: 9285120" data-attributes="member: 6877472">I see session zero happening before character creation.  Ie, the exact moment where you should be discussing how backgrounds will fit (or not) in a campaign.  You keep saying a GM cannot resolve this, and of course they can, why wouldn't they be able to?And who, exactly is being unjustly nagged?  I think anyone having the problems you describe should find a better group of people to play fun games with.  I'm sorry but I'm finding your arguments difficult to justify- D&D isn't intended to be a player vs. DM game- the PHB tells players background features do useful things. The DMG tells the DM to work with the players to make sure background features do useful things.If background features are not doing useful things, then it's not the fault of the PHB and the DMG.  It's the fault of the DM who doesn't want them to do useful things.Now someone might say "aha, but what if the DM doesn't want a background feature to do something the way a player wants?".  I guess the question is, why?  Surely the DM knew what background the player wanted to take.  Why was there no discussion about this?  Why would someone just blindly let a player enter the game as a criminal and then balk when the player wants to call upon their criminal contacts in the game?Just don't let them be criminals!  Tell everyone custom backgrounds only!  It's not that hard.</blockquote>