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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rel" data-source="post: 1474712" data-attributes="member: 99">I want to float a metaphor and see if it brings any clarity to the discussion:Consider the participants to the game to be painters and the various races, classes, feats, skills, etc. are all colors of paint.  Some of these paints are used to create PC's and some are used to create the rest of the world.I think we're seeing two different points of view emerging.  One point of view is focused on the canvas and this point is necessarily dominant among the GM's because they have the most control over what actually goes there.  To them, the paints on the pallette represent the tools they can use to create a colorful picture of their world.  There is no need to use all of the paints and perhaps they feel that using all of the paints, in every picture, makes the pictures start to look too much the same over the long haul.  So they pick and choose what paints are the best ones to get the picture they want and then they try to sell the final picture to the players.While all of that is going on, the players have no idea what sort of masterpiece the GM is working on.  They don't know that it is full of earth tones or only pastels.  All they have in their own hands is the full pallette that holds all of the primary colors of the game.  That pallette MUST be their focus and so they toy with all the ways that the colors can be put together in interesting ways.  But when the GM reveals his masterpiece, the player is seeing only part of the color selection he is used to staring at.  "Where's the Blue, dude?"Now the GM has, at this point, spent a lot of effort putting together his masterpiece and does not want to hear, "Where's the Blue?".  He wants to hear how much the player appreciates what he has done with the colors.  How he has woven them together.  His focus has NOT been on the colors that he wasn't using in the first place.  The very idea that the player insists there should be Blue is at least failing to appreciate all the colors that WERE used and at most is flat out insulting to his art.On the other hand, if the GM knew that the player in question has a long history of LOVING Blue, then what did he expect?  Of course the player is going to miss his favorite color.  It was poor planning by the GM to assume that the player was going to buy the picture, especially if he didn't warn him ahead of time.Ok, enough of the metaphor.  Where does that leave us?What I think is that the process of campaign creation must, on some level, be colaborative between the GM and players.  It's not just common courtesy, it is a way to solve a TON of problems before they happen.  I cannot think of a time when I did not consult my group of players before putting together a campaign.  It is a negotiation process from the time I first get the urge to run the game until we roll the dice the first night (and sometimes even beyond that).  And that's fine with me.  But I'll acknowlege that one of the reasons that it is fine with me is that the group of players I've got seem happy with the idea that not every campaign must contain every color of the rainbow but instead may lean heavily toward one end of the spectrum or another.</blockquote>

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