Hiding the PHB from players - Cool or Restrictive?

[Khuxan]

Although I voted "No", I have contemplated doing this myself. I was thinking keeping the PH away from the players would encourage them to see their characters as archetypes/professions not classes - so the scout and ranger both thought of themselves as rangers, for example.

But I discarded the idea because I liked it as a DM, but as a player I would despise it.

 

[Bold or Stupid]

I voted to just give them access to the PHB.

I was once kicked out of a game for looking at a copy of the main rulebook. I kid you not, I had a brief peer over a friends shoulder (he wasn't in the group) and thus I was out of the game. I then proceeded to steel the group and run my own game in the system.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I can understand the poll. Its an idea... but i would recommend starting te game at Level 0 and let your players find out what they like and how their character interacts with NPCs, books, riddles etc. Then, when they Level up to Level 1, you present them with the Players Handbook and tell them to chose from those classes, giving them hints what to chose from your observations...

 

[Jack Colby]

I wouldn't personally do it. I think seeing the new classes and choosing what most appeals to them is part of the new edition fun, and you would be denying them that, possibly souring them on the game or on you as the DM.

However, if you explain to them what your goal is, and they all agree that it would be fun to not know about each other's powers beforehand, why not give it a shot?

 

[Ginnel]

Ok theres been a few constructive points made and some less constructive.

I think its great threads like this can be made for a DM or player to ask something they are thinking about and get thoughts and opinions they wouldn't have necessarily had themselves.

When your talking to a player you may well misunderstand their concept and they would be unhappy with what they are playing. okies fair point

Another reason I think it would be wouldn't be workable is that the characters unless they come from a backward village would have heard rumours/seen what other races could do and their general attributes (more lithe or more intelligent for example), so they would need to see the races sections before play started anyway, the classes section I think the same reason would apply, asking the players to try and maybe not look at the powers available for other classes hmm but then again that would restrict the multi classing inspirations available.

Hmm I think the middle ground view of ask for initial concept would be nice but if they look through the PHB and go wow I wanna play that, well DM's should say yes rather than no in the majority of cases.

But yeah asking the players if they are ok with any of these potenial ways of creation and talking to them first would be a definite as well.

in the end i think its a interesting idea but letting the players go through the book to get the picture for a character concept won't rid the game of the initial mystery unless they go through memorising absolutely every power, and any sense of mystery will be diluted as the party become more familiar which each other anyway (though maybe new powers every few levels would keep this alive) This thought has now led me on to a new question though how do you visualise powers working especially martial ones but thats for another thread.

 

[Black Knight Irios]

I have voted:
No players have rights too!

And if one would ask me if there are more playable races I would tell him yes, give him a short overview out of the MM.

Letting her read the MM is kinda unecessary and would ruin some nice/nasty surprises.

 

[Leatherhead]

Even in Paranoia the players have access to parts of the book, if for no other reason than to let them know how things work.

 

[Jhaelen]

After reading all of the books, I'll decide what kind of campaign I'd like to play and if and which of the MM & PHB races would work best for it.
Then I'd ask potential players if they'd be interested in playing this. Assuming they are, I'd ask them for character concepts.
Finally, I'd sit down with each of them to help them choose the appropriate class(es) and builds for the concept. I'll show them what I consider to be good matches but the final decisions are always the players'.
I'd definitely lend them the PHB if they don't want to buy it at first but would like to have a closer look before deciding anything.

And this is exactly the approach I've taken when I started my 3E campaign, which seemed to work quite well.

 

[Shabe]

Whoa, well the poll does indeed show that its a bad idea in peoples eyes.

The idea was not to withhold the PHB for anymore than 10-20 mins when first genning characters, I think what I want will happen anyway AND I will let them look through the whole players handbook.

All i'd have to do is say "Hey chaps so we starting a new 4th ED campaign, heres the PHB heres some photocopies of the race section and the overview of the classes, the setting is blah blah blah, and all the core races and classes are available to play, i'm leaning towards this being a heroic party so I'd prefer no evil characters but if you have a nice idea we'll go for a private chat and discuss how it may fit, so yeah i want to get this moving in the next hour, got any questions just ask"

As i said the players are all very experienced with 3.5ed which we've been playing 2-3 times a week for the past 7 years, so I'd be sumarising the major changes between the editions to them.

NB: Well for a first thread it wasn't too painful, I appreciate constructive critisism but posts that seem outright full of hate aren't so nice, play nice kiddies.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Well I've been reading this forum for the past few weeks now and I'm getting quite excited about 4th ED, I'm intending on running the published modules/adventures as the only other game I ran was a homebrew setting and I don't intend on putting that amount of hours into a setting again.

So to the core of my quesiton, I want 4th ED to be brand spanking new and exciting, I want players to marvel at each others powers as they see them iron tide/hunter quarry/misty step for the first time, hopefully invoking gasps of wow thats cool. I want the players not to play something because its a min maxed combination of powers that will be vastly overpowered and then add a rp reason and background to it after.

I'm intending to let my players know the races available, the classes available and also the roles of those classes, with a blurb out bits of the races and classes and then let the PHB powers and stuff be known after.

I'm throwing the question out here to test the water basically, would this sound good to you or is this a stifling of the players rights?

NB, none of the players will be buying the core rule books so it will be their first introduction to 4th ed.

For my group, the point is pretty moot. I am the youngest and least experiened player in the group (I don't know if that still matters after 8 of playing, but just in case), and everyone in my group has his campaign to DM. No way this would ever work. In the end, everyone will read all the books.

Our typical procedure for playing games where we have only one rulebook and the DM is introducing the game is for the DM to explain the character creation rules as best as possible, and give us all the information we need. We can look into the books, but since we will usually create the characters together in the first session, it's usually the DM who will keep the book and answer any questions.

There are some situations in where members of the group (sometimes the DM, often someone else) woud pregenerate characters to make a quicker start (we did this for Shadowrun 4E sessions, as character creation just takes too much time, but we all have a pretty good idea what Shadowun is all about, so it's relatively easy to create fitting characters), but if we ever adopt a game fully, you can bet that people will create their characters for them self.