Player's Owning the Monster Manual?

[Gez]

Given that, out of the five people in our group, we have three that are DMs for D&D (the other is GM for other games), I don't care much about players reading MMs. I, personally, still have Creature Collections 1 & 2 and the Tome of Horrors. Others have their own dirty tricks.

Even the worse metagamer would have trouble remembering all the creature we have at our disposal, since we have:
MM
MM2
MC: MoF
CC1
CC2
ToH
Psionics Handbook
Manual of the Planes
Deities & Demigods
FRCS
Magic of Faerûn
Faiths & Pantheons
Oriental Adventures
Creatures of Rokugan
Seas of Blood
Book of Vile Darkness
etc., etc.,
... And our own wicked imagination.

 

[Arnwyn]

That is fine and a commendable policy. However, as the name of the thread flatly states, this is about players "owning" copies of the MM. This is far different than a simple restriction not to bring them to the game table. Arnwyn flatly states...

Ah, so your wild and senseless rant was about my post. Heh. Needless to say, I was amused. Actually, if you look at the first post, the thread is about "access to the MM when play commences". And my response was that no, I didn't let my players touch the MM, let alone look through it. I guess I should have been more clear and added "at the table".

I can't (nor do I want to) stop my players from buying anything. They can buy what they want, of course. I can only dream of having such control over a group of people to control their entire spending habits! Full brainwashing and commanding my friends as zombies is next on my list. Then I shall change my career to politics.

This, I reiterate, I just milquetoast fascism and weak willed tyranny. To demand that players obey the game master to this degree above and beyond the game is, at best, an exercise in foolish vanity.

Easy does it, sparky. Your conclusion-jumping was laughable at best. (You apparently also don't know my campaign: 11+ years with all the same friends - so even if I did have some luck at brainwashing them, it hasn't made "the fun and joy in the game wither and dry up" as you tried to assert in your original blathering.)