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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Oofta" data-source="post: 9416346" data-attributes="member: 6801845">We had posters who literally stated that the only reason a GM didn't allow players to contribute to world building outside of their PC's sphere of influence was doing it because they wanted to protect their "precious world".  Not only is that insulting, but the same broad sentiment has been repeatedly stated that the only reason people don't have shared world building is basically because they've only ever played D&D and don't know how great shared world building is.  It's BS.D&D isn't designed as a narrative game such as PbtA games.  The default is, to quote the DMG  "The DM creates a world for the other players to explore, and also creates and runs adventures that drive the story. ...  You’re the DM, and you are in charge of the game."  That doesn't mean you can't do whatever makes sense for you and your group, if you want players to design their own region, describe the towns their visiting, create the NPCs or adventures go for it!  It's your game, follow your bliss.Thing is, I simply disagree.  I, and my players, like the separation of <s>church and state </s>DM and player, the designer of the world and the player being solely responsible for the PC.  There is no one true way and I get tired of people tIn response to "quite frequently character needs and wants are paper thin and pretty meaningless."Then you've been playing with different people with different goals than I have. I'll take a PC I ran recently.  He certainly had a tragic backstory and his personality was affected by it.  His wife and child had been killed by (skipping in-game lore) bandits who had been hunted down by authorities.  He felt guilt because he hadn't been there to protect them and anger that he had not had his vengeance.  So he became a vengeance paladin.But needs? Wants? Eh.  He wanted to hunt down others that would do harm to innocents and see that justice was done.  But that to me is pretty thin motivation, it didn't really tie into any specific goals or desires.  There was no one to hunt down, they were already dead.  He wanted to help where he could to stop anyone else from suffering like he did, but so what?I also had no need or desire for personal growth.  If during the campaign if his attitude changed, great, if it didn't it didn't matter to me one bit.  But I had a lot of fun with the PC even though outside of my character background story (verified with my DM) I never contributed once to world building outside of what my PC did or said.</blockquote>

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