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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 7948949" data-attributes="member: 6779196">Well, yeah. And since then, the hobby has expanded, and there are now more ways that people play. As such, it became necessary to develop language do describe these different styles of play, so as to be able to effectively communicate about our home games and how we run/play them,Usually when someone describes a game with a planned endpoint as a “campaign” rather than as an “adventure” or a “module,” its because the plan spans multiple adventures. Some people call that an “adventure path,” and I do think that is a better name for such games than “campaign,” but for the most part, people use “campaign” and “adventure path” interchangeably these days. We can grumble about that being less clear than it could be, or not the way we used to use those terms, but that’s language for you. Might as well be complaining about people using the word “literally” wrong for all the good it does.Well... it can. Or it can keep going. Depends on what the players and DM want.Yeah, sure, if they want that. But sometimes the group doesn’t want that. Sometimes they want a change of pace, and decide to play a new campaign, in a different setting. Or maybe in the same setting, with entirely new characters who have no relation to the characters in the previous campaign.I think this kind of thing has become more and more common as the dominant style of D&D game has shifted from the more open, explorative style you are used to towards a more linear, narrative style. DMs design ongoing plots that their adventures weave through, and often players will make characters specifically to fit the story bring told. And when that story reaches a satisfying conclusion, they would rather start a new story with a new character made to fit it than continue aimlessly playing a character whose narrative purpose has already been fulfilled.PC Builds.I very much dislike the very notion, to be honest. I understand the desire to somehow "control" how your PC is going to turn out...but it seems to be far too...specific? I guess? A PC shouldn't, IMNSHO, be a fore-gone conclusion as to exactly what class(es) of what level(s), with what specific abilities, combined with a specific race, and having certain stat scores, and a specific listing of spells/magic items.</blockquote>I think you may be reading more into the concept of “character builds” than is intended by it most of the time. I mean, yeah, some players enjoy going into that kind of detail with it and plan out every single character advancement decision from 1st to 20th level (this was especially common in 3rd edition when doing so was often necessary to avoid accidentally ending up with a character who couldn’t meaningfully contribute to the party or deal with the kinds of challenges the party would typically face). But more often than not when people talk about “character builds” in D&D they’re taking about something much less involved than that. Sometimes someone will mention like “my PAM build,” just referring generally to the fact that they have made and/or are planning to make character advancement choices that complement the Polearm Master feat. Or they’ll talk about a “sorloc build” in reference to a character who has levels of Sorcerer and Warlock and has chosen their spells and invocations and such so as to take advantage of that combination of classes. Other times it will refer to a specific combination of features that is widely known to work well together, or to produce a particular result. It’s pretty rare that someone talks about a character build in the sense of a preplanned roadmap of every single character advancement decision they are going to make for a character (anymore).That’s a perfectly valid (and in my opinion, very fun) way to play a character. But some people prefer to do it a different way, and that’s fine too.For you. Other people have different preferences.Again, I think you’re reading more into this than is typically meant by it. With the (debatable) exception of organized play like Adventurer’s League, very few groups play 100% by the book. Every game involves DM judgment calls, most games have at least some house rules, etc. But, if you’re going to refer to the rules in the book in contrast with the way you play at your own table, it’s necessary to have the language to describe that, and “rules as written” is a pretty good term to use to refer to the former. Well, to be fair, this was an attitude that was very much fostered by the game design itself. Mike Mearls has talked in the past about how with 3e and 4e, they had a design goal of making the game as consistent as possible between different tables, and that in service of that goal, they designed the rules to try and minimize the necessity (or some might say opportunity) for the DM to use their judgment, whereas with 5e they decided to embrace the individualized nature of different games and tried to get the rules back out of the DM’s way.[/QUOTE]

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