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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pming" data-source="post: 6959425" data-attributes="member: 45197">Hiya! [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]  After reading all that, I think we are actually not that far off as far as "general play style" goes. Where I think we differ isn't in experience (we have about the same), but how that decades of experience shaped our preferences for, hmmm, ..."expectation of play" with regards to how things come to be in our campaigns.I think, overall, I could quite happily play in your game. I have no qualms about using published stuff as the 'default' for adding variety to a campaign...it's just not my preferred method. I can easily see your games as being full of interesting surprises and whatnot, even if most would be from various published sources. Where we differ is that, and this is just what it seems like to me, from your perspective a "published" addition isn't any better/worse from one that comes from the players/DM. I disagree with that. I think that stuff that comes from a player/DM is almost always preferable to looking for a published book that already has that 'idea' written down.I guess it's kind of like "home cooked meals" vs. "restaurant meals". If someone has spent three and a half decades practicing and improving their cooking skills, I'd rather have that person cook me a meal than someone who may have similar experience, but be 'restricted' to particular brands of food, or amounts of spices, or some prescribed amount of foodstuff. Both meals may taste great...but I see greater value in having the 'home cooked meals' every day than having the restaurant ones. *shrug* Maybe it's got a lot to do with psychological preconceptions of "quality", who knows?At any rate, I'll be quietly slinking back into the back here and just try and watch this thread. We pretty much seem to be at the infinite-loop part of a disagreement where I can keep putting out examples, and you can keep opposing them, then I put out different ones, then you put our opposing ones, then I oppose yours, then you mine, etc. For example, what I would say for "example" of 'bad' DM advice...pretty much all of 3.x/PF/4.x/5.x advice for "Encounter Building". I think the majority of that is just bad. It's got too many variables to be useful past the absolute bare minimum ("PC's are 4th level average, CR's of monsters should be around 1 to 5"). No, I'm not going to give specifics...because there aren't any. It's pretty much the entirety of that concept of "Balanced DM Encounter Building for Adventures". I think teaching newbie DM's that if they just follow these XP budges, and those CR limits, that their game will just "work". This teaches a DM to rely on numbers and 'outside' forces, as opposed to learning by trial and error, and just gaining experience behind the DM shield. Why aren't there any "PC Building Guides" in the books? Shouldn't there be entier sections devoted to Class/Race/Feat selections to create PC's that meet 5e's CR expectations? Why not? As it is, a player is expected to just read the books, and make characters. After enough time and experience they will get a feel for what particular combos fit in with their prefered method of play, as well as what 'works' in their DM's campaign. IMHO, a DM should learn the same way; just make encounters, adventures, and all that other stuff. Eventually they will figure out what works for them and their players. But when the DMG has specific sections denoting "If you take X, add for Y, and factor in Z...your encounter/campaign will be balanced" is... bad.Too long a post now. I'll stop. No matter what...keep on playing by whatever means makes you (general you) happy! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />^_^Paul L. Ming</blockquote>

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