NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6401072" data-attributes="member: 42582">This is a statement of playstyle. It's not anything like a statement of "default D&D".Many D&D groups, like many other RPG groups, decide what campaign setting to play in (whether published or homegrown) collectively - often by means of GM pitch followed by player input. In the course of play, too, players can contribute to campaign backstory.The way I learned about the structure of dwarven military service in my current 4e campaign is because a player wrote it up as part of his PC backstory. The way I learned that Corellon and the Raven Queen from time-to-time had been allies was because a player told me after reading it in a Dragon article. The way I learned that there was a drow secret society - the cult of the bat - that secretly worship Corellon and seeks to overthrow Lolth and undo the sundering of the elves was because the same player wrote it up as part of his PC backstory. The way I learned that this secret society also had members among surface elves was because, when the PCs met some surface elves for the first time, the drow PC made the secret sign of the bat to see if any of the NPC elves noticed it and anwered - one did, a crafter, who therefore agreed to work the tooth the PC had recovered from a defeated dragon into a wyrmsbane dagger.As far as rules adjudication is concerned, I have a player whose PC has a feat that gives +2 to skill checks made as part of a ritual. Some things are obviously rituals - eg the rituals described in the 4e rulebooks. But what about eg an Arcana check made to close a portal as part of a skill challenge. Most of the time the player decides what counts as a ritual, and what doesn't, and hence when he gets the bonus. Occasionally he asks me for advice or a ruling. Once or twice I've unilaterally intervened with a ruling.I don't think there is anything especially atypical about these ways of playing D&D.Correct. In formal terms, it' a collective action problem.One solution to collective action problems is to appoint a dictator (see eg Hobbes's Leviathan), but it's not the only one, especially in small groups with reliable channels of communication. A dictator is also not very effective when every one of the subjects has the freedom to leave the jurisdiction!</blockquote>

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