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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 6004416" data-attributes="member: 8461">I had a bit of a disagreement with my D&D group last week. While it certainly wasn't acrimonious, it has left me slightly irked in its implication. As such, I wanted to get a broader overview from people here.Our group plays Pathfinder. There are eight of us altogether, with three of us (myself including) rotating who GMs. The rules for building characters has always been - more through default than discussion - that all of the Paizo "hardcovers" were allowed for building PCs. Third-party products and custom content were accepted or denied on a case-by-case basis.The point of disagreement came up when I disallowed the use of the new Advanced Race Guide as a GM, and asked (not mandated, just put out there as a personal request) that the players not use Ultimate Magic and Ultimate Combat.Some background here - for the last few weeks I've been talking up a third-party product called <a href="http://www.rpgnow.com/product/51255/Eclipse%3A-The-Codex-Persona-Shareware" target="_blank">Eclipse: The Codex Persona</a>, which is a d20 point-buy system, in hopes that I'd be able to use it when we rotated GMs and I was a player again. This is not the first time I've talked up a third-party product that I've wanted to use as a player, either. In fact, I've been quite "3pp"-happy when I've been on the other side of the screen.You can probably see where this is going by now...The disagreement arose when the group expressed their point of view that I was being a hypocrite for wanting to restrict their options even as I tried to persuade them to let me maximize my own (since a point-buy system is option-rich).I'll be honest: I was caught completely by surprise. I tried to explain to them that I was coming from a completely different place. To me, it wasn't about option restriction when I asked them to forego certain books...it was about supplement restriction, in that I didn't want to have to keep pouring through large sourcebook after large sourcebook.To put it another way, I like myriad options - what I don't like is the sheer amount of time and energy that needs to be spent actually reading book after book after book, trying to memorize them and integrate them with the plethora of options that are already there. Even limiting it to Paizo hardcovers only has, in the last year, become more than I can honestly pull off (mostly because of starting a new career that has left me with very little free time).The secondary point I tried to raise in my defense was that what I want to allow as a GM is different than what I want to be allowed as a player.The idea I had there was that a GM needs to take a more holistic view of the campaign - he or she needs to have at least a working idea of what the PCs items and abilities are, so he can craft or alter the campaign as necessary to keep things appropriately challenging. Hence wanting to be conservative there.Being a player, by contrast, doesn't bring that level of responsibility. While everyone should keep some thought for the group as a whole, the player is primarily concerned with what's best for his own character, and so will want to have as many options as possible. Hence wanting as much as possible to be declared permissible.What I want to know is, was I holding a double-standard, on either of these points? Namely, is it unfair to want to keep the number of books used to a small few as a GM, but that I want to use a lot as a player? Is my reasoning of "less pages to read, please" a poor one for wanting to restrict the use of new supplements while advocating a point-buy system (which I've already read and internalized)?</blockquote>

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