The Campaign Toolbox that is D&D 3.5e

[MerricB]

I'm just wondering: how many of you are finding that the players in the group are now influencing the creation of your campaign worlds? This occurs mainly by finding new classes, prestige classes and races in the D&D supplements and saying "I want to play one of those!"

Thus, the DM adapts the world (or maybe is starting a new one) to include those elements.

It's been happening to me since the early days of 3e (thanks to the Order of the Bow Initiate and the Shadowdancer), but with 3.5e I find that my players are finding more and more interesting material in the supplements (Goliath, Soulblade, Pyrokineticist, Favoured Soul, etc.) and wanting to use it.

And, because it's not like I have my campaign world (a modified Greyhawk) utterly defined, I have room to include these new elements.

Of course, there are some elements that I don't allow in my campaign, because they're too far from the game I want to run - but it might happen that in the future I start up a game to include those elements.

So, what is happening in your campaigns?

Cheers!

 

[Crothian]

Sure, but that's been happening since the days of AD&D for us. Its just before they would invent a background that didn't quite fit in with the defined world and now they are picking a prestege class or something that doesn't. Either way I've always tried to encourage the Players to create a character they want and find a way to make it work. Most tof the time though with a little creativity it works pretty well with what is defined by just adding whatever to something. Like adding a cleric prestige class to be known to be a worshiper of such and such god.

 

[arwink]

I tend to encourage it. Most of the really interesting and fun parts of my world have come about because the PC's wanted a Prestige Class or Race, and I had to think through how they fit in.

 

[Nifft]

I certainly try to encourage it, unless it's a character concept like "half-fiend troll"... well, most of my players are good, so that's not often a problem.

-- N

 

[Li Shenron]

I think it happens all the time, even within core D&D: as soon as a player chooses to play a Monk, you suddenly have an "orient" in your world. You can still try to overwrite the class concept to make it western, but it's hard to drop the original idea which indeed was to have one of heroes coming from a far and distant culture...

Trying to look at it in a positive way... players' choices can be a help for the DM, which rarely has the energy to conceive an entire world by himself

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Not a new campaign world as such, but the desire of one of my players to play an elan (from the Expanded Psionics Handbook) made me invent a cabal of mighty psions from Northern Maztica who protect these lands and now want to take a closer look at these strange easterners. I plan to use them as a major source of plots in the future of the campaign.

Not that the player in question knows anything about this, of course - all he knows is that maybe he shouldn't have followed these strange-looking foreigners into the bowels of Waterdeep so eagerly...

 

[Hand of Evil]

Old story, it has been happen for editions, but I try not to allow players to bring the flavor of the month to the table, just because it looks good does not make it play good in every game, it is the DM job to evaluate and adjust for balance and fun but also censor for balance and fun, if we did not do that every wizard would have a vopal bunny for a familiar.

 

[Belen]

It's not an issue with my game. I only allow the three core books at the moment. If one of my players wanted to introduce a PrC, then they would need to do all the write ups surrounding the PrC. I have an "organization" template that has to be filled out with all the information I need.

My philosophy: I already have too much work to do dealing with plots, NPCs, prepping combat, and world/location building for a game. If a player really wants something, then they had better put the work into it. If not, then they can be happy with the core stuff.

Obviously, any game has to be fun for the players, but 3e requires so much work that I feel no regret in pawning off on the people who want it.