D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[Faolyn]

Good, clear advice can do that IMO. Rules that enforce behavior just breed resentment and make people feel constrained.

Does it really? I've never seen a GM say "Man, it sucks that this game actually has a rule that says 'create interesting situations, not plots' and then goes into detail about what that means and how to do it. And it really sucks that there's another rules that says 'give the players tough choices.' It seriously makes me not want to run this system."

IMO, if someone is actually resentful about rules like that, they're probably just being a whiny contrarian.

 

[AlViking]

Read again. I said he was badmouthing players as a set. I didn't say anything about how he was responding to my position, nor do I care other than to the degree someone misrepresents me.

I'll make my position extremely clear here just to avoid any further misunderstanding: I have no reason to think suggesting that players as a set (note this is distinct from an individual player, who can have tunnel vision, or as bad a judgement as any GM) are going to have not as good or better judgment about rules as a GM. That's why I've been focused on the player group as a group. At the very least, applying that as a generality (as compared to a specific group which could always be a set of problems) seems clearly insulting to the population of players as a whole, and I'm not going to hesitate to say so.

Basically it comes down to the fact I think as long as players as a set in a given game want to weigh in on the houserules and as a set have as much impact as the GM, there's no rational reason that shouldn't be true. All of the responses I've seen to the contrary have been from people who either seem to have negative views about players as a set, a strong sense of personal control past the reasonable, or both.

(I'll acknowledge there are some corner cases where a houserule impacts the campaign structure as a whole that complicates this, but I think that's a case where if the GM can't explain that to the players and get buy-in either their sense of what actually impacts the campaign structure is over-expansive, or the players don't have buy-in in the first place (and that's a whole different and larger magnitude problem)>

I disagree that I was badmouthing anyone and it's insulting that you think I am. I have given multiple examples of people asking for explicitly overpowered things. In my current groups, I think there is a very good chance of significant power creep - two of my players would likely want to push the envelope because they already do so just with the normal rules. One player is the type of person that wouldn't want to offend anyone by voting an idea down. So if the two people realized that if one votes yes for the other's idea and the player that doesn't want to offend anyone, I really don't know how far the house rules could be pushed.

Meanwhile as DM I have a different perspective on the rules, I don't rally have a personal stake. If the players are more powerful, I'll throw more challenging encounters. But I want to try to balance out the playing experience for everyone or you end up with the guy running 3 clerics simultaneously and thinking they were doing something the whole group would enjoy.

So yes, I think it's best if the GM makes the final call because it would lead to power creep and more unbalanced characters while also making the game less fun for me to run as GM. Meanwhile, as GM I want the entire group to have fun. Players can always make suggestions and discuss the house rules I have in place, I just reserve the right to say no.

So we're just going to have to agree to disagree.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Yes, I differentiate between house rules and homebrew. They are different things because additional species are not new, altered, or removed rules

is a species not a packet of rules? so how is a new species not classified as new rules? that's like saying 'if i add a class entirely out of existing mechanics i haven't actually made a new class'

I’m considering this an ‘all terriers are dogs but not all dogs are terriers’ situation, adding homebrew is a form of houserules

 

[Remathilis]

I can't remember ever intentionally targeting spellbooks, but if they happen to be in the blast zone then so be it.

That said, usually spellbooks are in a backpack. For things like AoE damage we give the backpack a save first, and if it makes it then everything inside is considered to have survived as well. But if the backpack fails, then everything inside is exposed and has to save for itself.

Fireproof red-dragon-skin spellbook covers are rare but really sought after. They don't, however, help much if the spellbook gets drowned or has to save vs lightning, acid, etc.

Same crap DM mentioned above. This one i wasn't there for. One of the players was saying he heard it from another player. Grain of salt.

DM had an NPC mage who wasn't supposed to die who did. That NPC had his spellbook in his lair and the PC mage grabbed it. I don't know what spell was in it (something from the Spell Compendiums) but the DM decided after the PC used it that he didn't want them to have it. So the next game he started targeting the mages spellbook. Apparently he was able to take out both the NPCs spellbook and the PCs personal book in some fire trap (he also managed to take out a bunch of collateral items like potions as well). Apparently, he never called for saves on items before that, and nobody was allowed to look at the saving throw table for items. The PC mage was able to go to the local wizards guild (similar to Dragonlance's orders except no moons) and get access to rebuild his spellbook for every spell EXCEPT the one the DM didn't want the mage to have. However, the spell was still learned and he couldn't unlearn it, so he apparently had this one spell known but could never use it.

I do know when I played with him, I didn't make item saving throws for failing a fireball, and apparently he did do it again until there was some other item that he wanted gone.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Does it really? I've never seen a GM say "Man, it sucks that this game actually has a rule that says 'create interesting situations, not plots' and then goes into detail about what that means and how to do it. And it really sucks that there's another rules that says 'give the players tough choices.' It seriously makes me not want to run this system."

IMO, if someone is actually resentful about rules like that, they're probably just being a whiny contrarian.

Well, I don't appreciate rules that demand certain specific behavior from the GM like the ones you describe (which I believe have their origin in PBtA and similar narrative-prioritized games), for my part. You also picked the least irritating rules from that category. And I don't see why that stuff can't just be advice anyway. Why mandate it?

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Modern D&D only has death as a hard-loss condition. TSR-era D&D offered a host of other options.

Level drain was a good one: a loss condition that didn't end the game (unless you lost more levels than you had, of course, but that's pretty rare). Item destruction is another such.

All RPGs have story loss. Fail to save that NPC you liked....loss. Town gets overrun by demons...loss. Didn't win the trophy in the lie eating contest....loss.

I can't imagine a game where story based loss doesn't drive the narrative vastly more than all other factors. But then again when conversation here I always feel like some sort of mad hermit with my ideas.

 

[Maxperson]

Of my current group of four, two are forever-players (I'm married to one of them!) and two are or have been DMs.

I've seen more of a mix. Most notably, I've seen a couple of people who were poor-to-awful players go on to become good-to-very-good DMs.

And if required, I'm fully capable of and willing to roll up the plot wagon...but then they're stuck with what they get, which may or may not be what they want.

Yeah. When it comes to forever players, I've seen as many proactive players who just don't want to do all the work a DM has to put in and run an entire world, as I have players who just sit there like lumps to be spoon fed.

I'm fine with players suggesting houserules as long as I retain veto rights.

I don't want to say 'incapable' as that's a bit too absolute, but IME such discussions often ended up as unresolved arguments where the DM had to make the final call anyway. We tend to be a somewhat stubborn bunch.

What I'd rather do instead is make up the new rules as a batch, run them out as a fait-accompli playtest-able system, then run a one-off mid-level adventure to see how they work. After that, we can discuss tweaks and changes etc.

I play with a close group of friends, so house rules get voted on. There are 4 of them, so the majority either way determines whether we accept it or not. I break ties. Being friends, if someone, including me, really hates a potential rule, they all just vote no.

That said, I do retain the ability to unilaterally decide rules. In the last 20 years I've had to use that ability once for sure, and I THINK maybe a second time, but I can't remember what it was. I just have a vague recollection of it happening. That once for sure was with 5th edition, so I still remember it clearly.

 

[Thomas Shey]

More common IME is where players have varying levels of opportunity to weigh in and-or the DM gives more weight to the opinions and preferences of one player than to those of another.

Which means it behooves the GM to try and even that out; its not an excuse for deciding to do it all himself.

It's not always a question of who wants a say, sometimes it's a question of who has the opportunity.

We exist in the days of Discord and email. If you want to tell me someone can game regularly but not present his opinion in downtime, that's going to be a hard sell.

 

[James Gasik]

Same crap DM mentioned above. This one i wasn't there for. One of the players was saying he heard it from another player. Grain of salt.

DM had an NPC mage who wasn't supposed to die who did. That NPC had his spellbook in his lair and the PC mage grabbed it. I don't know what spell was in it (something from the Spell Compendiums) but the DM decided after the PC used it that he didn't want them to have it. So the next game he started targeting the mages spellbook. Apparently he was able to take out both the NPCs spellbook and the PCs personal book in some fire trap (he also managed to take out a bunch of collateral items like potions as well). Apparently, he never called for saves on items before that, and nobody was allowed to look at the saving throw table for items. The PC mage was able to go to the local wizards guild (similar to Dragonlance's orders except no moons) and get access to rebuild his spellbook for every spell EXCEPT the one the DM didn't want the mage to have. However, the spell was still learned and he couldn't unlearn it, so he apparently had this one spell known but could never use it.

I do know when I played with him, I didn't make item saving throws for failing a fireball, and apparently he did do it again until there was some other item that he wanted gone.

Couldn't he have just said "hey, I think I made a mistake with that spell, go pick another one?" Jeez.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I disagree that I was badmouthing anyone and it's insulting that you think I am. I have given multiple examples of people asking for explicitly overpowered things.

You are either deliberately disregarding my distinction between individuals and groups, or blind to the distinction. In the first case I see no reason to not find your own position insulting. In the second case you're apparently incapable of actually conducting this conversation, since I made the distinction entirely clear in the post you were responding to.