D&D General Should D&D Rethink The "3-Core" Model?

[Remathilis]

From nightmare players that distorted things? Also, how long ago was that? If you have nothing from the past 10 years then it sounds like it is time to let it go

Yes, DMs are never wrong. It's just the players who don't understand their greatness...

 

[AlViking]

You gotta wonder where all those Nightmare DM stories I read in Dragon Mag came from...

Many of them probably came from where those old Penthouse letters* came from. The fertile imaginations of anonymous people. Some may have a grain of truth but are frequently exaggerated.

I have had a bad DM or three over the years. They exist. I quit going to their game. Problem solved because they couldn't force me to stay. When I couldn't find a different DM at the time, I DMed and started my own group.

Meanwhile certain people who think they're entitled to play whatever they want (apparently including 3PP and homebrew) complain that almost all their DMs are terrible. Either they are one of the unluckiest players ever or the DMs are not the problem.

*It's an old joke - the letters were always unbelievable explicit fantasies usually involving a sister in law.

 

[Desdichado]

I see way more player horror stories than DM horror stories.

 

[Vrindlevine]

I see way more player horror stories than DM horror stories.

Statistically it should be at least 4 times as many on average.

 

[Umbran]

That's me failing to be charitable a bit,

Mod note:

No. It is you being insulting.

...And doing so just after I warned someone else about being insulting. That's not terribly wise of you, as now you don't get the benefit of a warning shot.

Folks, you don't have to like other people's playstyles. But we do require a certain amount of respect be shown. If you aren't up to being respectful, take it to some other social media where they like people to treat each other badly.

 

[Dessert Nomad]

I have had a bad DM or three over the years. They exist. I quit going to their game. Problem solved because they couldn't force me to stay. When I couldn't find a different DM at the time, I DMed and started my own group.

That's the big thing. You can run into a crappy DM, but you can also just... stop playing the game. The only real horror story I've experienced was when I was 16 and put up with a really crappy group of people for months on end before discovering I could just leave and hang out with the better gamers who had already left them a while before. And I'm not sure it even qualifies as a DM horror story - while some of the people did bad stuff while DMing, most of the 'horror story' was just people generally being bad people to each other, the majority didn't even happen at the gaming table. I've run into other bad DMs, but it ends up being 'wow that was lame, I'm not going to put in the effort to be in their game again' or 'OK, I'm not playing when Joe DMs, but I'll hang out with these guys other times', which isn't exactly horror material.

 

[Doctor Futurity]

PHB, DMG, MM. That's been the corest of core books for every edition, part-edition, variant-edition, alternate-entry-point, and even most D&D spinoff games (e.g. Pathfinder) for most of D&D's history. Is it still a good idea? I can't argue definitively "no it is bad, stop right away". But more and more, I'm beginning to detect some serious daylight between what classic fans want, how contemporary fans behave, and what is realistic and feasible with modern publishing.

As always with my polls: you cannot view the results without voting; you cannot change your vote; your vote will be visible to others; and the poll will close, in this case after 9 weeks. If you really really really want, you can select as many options as you like...but some combinations won't make sense.

I'm beginning to think D&D should move to a "5-Core" model instead. Two player-facing books: Player's Handbook for levels 1-10, and a year later, Veteran's Handbook for 11-20. Two GM-facing books: Dungeon Master's Guide, three months after the PHB, and Dungeon Master's Codex, nine months after the DMG. Then the singular Monster Manual, which offers threats from level 1 to 20, is published right in the middle. Assuming we don't do simultaneous release; if so, then PHB/DMG/MM would be published immediately, DMC published six months later, and VHB six months after that. These releases are timed the way they are so that people playing at a reasonable pace would probably expect to need those books around when they're first published, at least for stable groups.

But that's just my idea. What's yours? Is D&D confined by only having three tomes to start itself? Are there other, better approaches, or has D&D already hit paydirt and changes would be downgrades? There are no right answers here. I'm just curious if others around here share my opinion that a hard limit of only 3 core books is not serving the game well anymore.

I was going to argue with you but then you actually proposed MORE books and you won me over!

 

[Lanefan]

Yeah, hard disagree. My primary goal in running a game is to have fun, so I absolutely will only run games that are fun for me to run, and there's a lot of stuff I absolutely will not stand neutrally back and let players do. While I don't generally use alignment and don't say 'no evil PCs' if I do, I'm not interested in running a game where PCs run around terrorizing the countryside by slaughtering and robbing innocent people who can't really fight back and killing or running off from whoever shows up to stop them. I'm not going to 'introduce consequences' by narrating villagers being killed and rendered destitute, then having local nobles send guards or other adventurer's after them, I'm just going to say 'this ain't the game I want to run' and bail. (More likely I'd talk about this in the ad or session 0, but I wouldn't feel any obligation to hang around if it wasn't discussed for whatever reason).

And there are a lot of possible player actions that I've seen come up in games before that I'm not willing to run or play in a game with. It's not my role to neutrally stand back if it's not something I want to experience in fiction.

I'll set the setting conceits up so as to provide the best chance of my having fun running games in it, but if they decide to run around terrorizing the commoners then so be it, that's what I'll DM (and, occasionally, have DMed in the past). Same if they want to spend the session fighting each other - I'll just act as referee and otherwise stand back (and probably be highly entertained).

Wait, I thought you leave it to the players to play their characters and that the DM's role is just to determine in-game consequences? From this, it sounds like if a player decides to play their character you call it covertly dictating the terms of play and are fine with an out of game argument. I don't see how you square the two philosophies, a player having their PC take their actions should not involve any sort of out of game argument according to the 'neutrally stand back' idea.

I think you've crossed something up somewhere.

It's not the DM's place to tell players how to play their characters.

Nor - and this is to what I was referring - is it the place of a single player to tell the others how to play their characters. If it's done in-game, though, by the covert means I described then it can be dealt with in-game should the other players so decide. If done out of game, e.g. a player declares "Nobody at this table can play an evil character* and if anyone does, I'm out", that's an argument on the spot; and IMO anyone who makes a declaration like that is the one who should be punted.

* - or whatever other character-based restriction e.g. no chaotics, no splitting the party, you all have to follow my character's lead, etc.

 

[Zardnaar]

I probably genuinely am unfriendly. My wife tells me all the time that I (and the rest of my family) are too direct and blunt in the way that we talk, and too confident in our opinions. I'm not sure that I agree that that's a problem, but if she says so, then certainly she's not the only one who thinks so.

That said, I don't claim to be the best DM in the world by a long shot, but I'm pretty good, and I've got people begging me to take over and run their campaign for me literally as we speak. I don't pretend to be inclusive; my game is relatively exclusive. If you want a good game, it's got to be run the way that I can run well, and I'm at least good enough that I think that that's worth doing. If you disagree, sure... I've got plenty of gaming going on right now, so I can afford to be picky. No skin off my back if you don't want what I'm selling, but I'm not going to go start trying to sell something else that I'm not interested in.

Heh Ive got 10 players, generally turning people away. Room for 1 for the right person.

 

[Vrindlevine]

Heh Ive got 10 players, generally turning people away. Room for 1 for the right person.

Sounds like an interesting game for sure. Did you start with less and you added more over time? If you started with 10 your very blessed to have so many good friends. Even with my close friends 5 is my limit to keep things even, well balanced and moving at a reasonable pace.