Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Levistus's_Leviathan" data-source="post: 8789265" data-attributes="member: 7023887">Why are you assuming any of that? The DM at the session 0 should decide with the players what their adventure will be. If it's a prewritten adventure, the players should make their characters based on that. If it's a homebrew adventure, the players should make their characters first and then the DM should design the adventure around that. If a player's backstory says that they're the secret child of a monarch, the DM should keep that in mind when coming up with an adventure for the party to do. If a player chooses to make an Aarakocra in this scenario, in order to properly challenge that player, the DM is going to have to alter the adventure to add more ranged/flying enemies. That's not a "Waaaah, why doesn't the campaign revolve around me", that's a "hey, can you keep in mind that this is what my character is like when making the adventure/encounters?"I actually agree with you that WotC should have designed Favored Enemy and Natural Explorer like that. But they didn't. So the issue about how to be a good DM in this scenario comes up. A failure to communicate when it could significantly affect the effectiveness of a character is being anti-player. You can challenge the players without ignoring their character decisions. And you somehow took my "don't be actively hostile with the players" as an attack on neutral DMs and the OSR.That entirely depends on if the adventure is pre-written or if the DM is making the adventure. If the adventure is pre-written, then the players should design characters around that. If the DM is making the adventure after the PCs are made, the adventure should be designed around that. And if the DM is involved in the creation of the characters, then the adventure is easier to design and the DM is able to squash any parts of the character that they feel might be unacceptable for the campaign. Again, why are you assuming a pre-written adventure? And the underwater adventure thing was exactly my point. Saying "player choices be damned, this adventure takes place in the Elemental Plane of Water" without making sure all of the PCs can breathe underwater or giving them a magic item/spell that lets them do that is bad DMing. I was using a reductio ad absurdum argument on the "the world/adventure shouldn't change based on the characters" argument that [USER=6747251]@Micah Sweet[/USER] was making. So, you're agreeing that both DMs and players should do at least the bare minimum amount of communication required to make sure things go smoothly at the table. "Screw the DM, I'm playing Ultron in Dark Sun" and "Screw the Locathah PC, this adventure will immediately send them to a desert" are both toxic and bad ways to play. I agree that the game designers failed when designing Natural Explorer/Favored Enemy. Where did I ever say that this was all on the DM? I never suggested that the DM had to be the slaves of the players. Just that they should be considerate of the player choices and design the game to be more fun for them.</blockquote>

Verification