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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Marius Delphus" data-source="post: 1141674" data-attributes="member: 447">Not to mention it would be a breach of the implicit contract between the DM and the players. You know, apart from the (unfortunate) name-calling and diatribes, this thread has had some very interesting things to say about such contracts; that they vary so from game group to game group should not be such a surprise to me, but I found myself surprised nevertheless.I suppose it stems from my always having played in game groups where the DM was the sole "authority" as regards rules and milieu. That doesn't mean I've ever been (or played with) any kind of "tyrant" or "god" DM. It's only that, as DM, I've never felt the need to consult my players on whether they or I will use anything from, say, the Complete Elves' Handbook (to dredge up a "random" 2E example <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> ). And I've only ever played with DMs who felt the same way (even if they disagreed with me regarding the Complete Elves' Handbook <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> ).I always listen to player appeals. "I wanna use this Dragon article." "I wanna use the Bladesinger kit." Et cetera. I think about it for a while, and I either grant "DM Blessing" or not. Word spreads among the players like wildfire. "Hey, Marius blessed High-Level Campaigns!" "Hey, don't even breathe the word 'Bladesinger' around Marius." Et cetera. And whatever time they spend between games on their characters gets spent accordingly (not much, by the way; it's the same with me, when I'm a player). In this regard, the rules framework, the game is run a bit like a dictatorship... but with the implicit understanding that the DM will keep things "on the level" (i.e., no Yazirians wielding Black Ray Rifles in the Caves of Chaos... unless that's the kind of game we're already running!).It sounds like other groups have a much more "cooperative" environment regarding rulebook choice... above having input into the ruleset, it sounds like the players can effectively "veto" the DM, or in a sense "vote in" a rulebook the DM hadn't really considered. (Apologies if I've misread something.) And that's cool, I guess, even if I'm not quite sure how (or how well) that'd work with the gamers I know. Actually I'd be surprised if it did something other than devolve into a hair-tearing-out mess, to be honest, but that's just my own past history talking; I can accept that it works *somewhere*, with *some* group of players. (I guess it'd be silly not to!)Every group has some kind of implicit contract. You know what I'm talking about. The players expect/trust the DM to do certain things, the DM expects/trusts the players to do certain things, and any behavior outside the circumscribed boundaries gets "called out." "We all agreed *that* prestige class was off-limits" is operationally the same as "The DM said *that* prestige class was off-limits," after all. Just a different way of getting at group consensus. Seems to me the framework in which any particular game's ruleset is chosen rarely even comes up in discussion... but if "official D&D" is the minimum requirement any particular addition must meet to be considered for group adoption, then that actually makes a certain amount of sense. Personally, I can't see "official D&D" being both the only necessary and only sufficient requirement (the thought gives me shivers *cough* Complete Elves' Handbook! *cough*), but it's not my group, now is it....Just some random notes from some random guy in some random corner....</blockquote>

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