D&D General "I'm glad to be back playing D&D."

[Paul Farquhar]

Thank you for your sacrifice.

It was a tough job, but somebody had to do it!

 

[Micah Sweet]

If your players want 5e, it probably means they don’t want old school stuff.

Or it means they have little familiarity with anything outside WotC 5e, because it's orders of magnitude more well known than everything else. Also, people play with friends often, and sometimes friends step out of their narrow gaming boxes occasionally and try something different. Given the popularity gap, your philosophy would have nearly no one playing anything but WotC 5e. That in my opinion would be a pretty boring community, and I will fight against it any chance I get.

Case in point. My friend recently got a playtest copy of Daggerheart (the CR RPG) and wants to run it for us. Based on everything he's told us about it, and what I've learned myself, I have zero reason to expect I would enjoy this game (it's very much a storygame to my mind), but I'm going to try it out anyway, as a favor to my friend and because I might be wrong.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I mean, yes? 5e is, at its core, a neotrad game; its focus is on the performative display of character concept. Its core conceit isn’t on being overly hard, rather, it wants to give characters a stage to show off what they can do.

Yeah...I know...I know...

But I still wish WotC had just stated that focus. Anywhere, because it is quite different from a number of other games using near-identical terms and the same title that they own.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yup. The characters the players create are a reflection what they want in the game. Good GMs embrace that rather than fight against it.

Good players tell their GM they have no interest in the premise and/or tone of the game they want to run in Session 0, and don't expect the GM to just sublimate their own fun so they can have theirs.

 

[Reynard]

Good players tell their GM they have no interest in the premise and/or tone of the game they want to run in Session 0, and don't expect the GM to just sublimate their own fun so they can have theirs.

This is also true, but in the example given my guess is the players THOUGHT they were making LotR characters and not Spongebob characters because those definitions exist in someone's own head. If the GM wanted serious, traditional fantasy only characters with an elf, a dwarf, a ranger and a couple hobbits, they should have said that. Making your players guess what you mean is a fast track to disappointment.

But my point still stands: your players are telling you what they want to do by what their characters look like.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Good players tell their GM they have no interest in the premise and/or tone of the game they want to run in Session 0, and don't expect the GM to just sublimate their own fun so they can have theirs.

There is no more requirement for players to be good than DMs to be good. If everyone waited until they got good no one would do anything.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Or it means they have little familiarity with anything outside WotC 5e, because it's orders of magnitude more well known than everything else. Also, people play with friends often, and sometimes friends step out of their narrow gaming boxes occasionally and try something different. Given the popularity gap, your philosophy would have nearly no one playing anything but WotC 5e. That in my opinion would be a pretty boring community, and I will fight against it any chance I get.

Case in point. My friend recently got a playtest copy of Daggerheart (the CR RPG) and wants to run it for us. Based on everything he's told us about it, and what I've learned myself, I have zero reason to expect I would enjoy this game (it's very much a storygame to my mind), but I'm going to try it out anyway, as a favor to my friend and because I might be wrong.

Similarly, you could always roll out 2nd edition and ask who is up for it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This is also true, but in the example given my guess is the players THOUGHT they were making LotR characters and not Spongebob characters because those definitions exist in someone's own head. If the GM wanted serious, traditional fantasy only characters with an elf, a dwarf, a ranger and a couple hobbits, they should have said that. Making your players guess what you mean is a fast track to disappointment.

But my point still stands: your players are telling you what they want to do by what their characters look like.

Fair enough. What I'm saying is that what they want to do is not more important than what you want to do.

 

[Micah Sweet]

There is no more requirement for players to be good than DMs to be good. If everyone waited until they got good no one would do anything.

So what's the alternative?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Similarly, you could always roll out 2nd edition and ask who is up for it.

I need to compromise, because my wife doesn't like the TSR editions and their relatives. So I use a version of 5e that works more like how I want.