D&D General The Monsters Know What They're Doing ... Are Unsure on 5e24

[TwoSix]

In this case the adventure hook was literally the setting!

That sounds like a really fun campaign. I totally would have made a miniature giant space tortle for my PC.

Miniature giant space tortle is awesome.

I'm now imagining the Astromundi Cluster as a bunch of hibernating giant space tortles, hiding away in their asteroid-like shells.

 

[Maxperson]

Uh, no. Remember when folks got red-texted for blatantly inaccurately summarizing others' opinions?

I said what I said. GMs are claiming a mantle of leadership. Hell, you and others have specifically said that that means they somehow deserve respect, obedience, trust, etc., etc., simply because they lay claim to it.

Wow. You get down on me for inaccurately summarizing someone's position and then innaccurately summarize mine in the very next sentence.

I've never said DMs were deserving of respect just for being a DM. What I ACCURATELY said was...

Players should trust and respect the DM until/unless the DM shows that he doesn't deserve that trust, because if you can't trust or don't respect the DM, you have no business being in that game. Lack of trust and respect will disrupt the game if the DM hasn't shown he isn't deserving, and the game isn't worth playing in if he has shown he isn't deserving.

At no point, though, did I say DMs deserve respect simply because they are the DM.

What I said, though, was that nobody should be sacrificing their enjoyment. Everyone's enjoyment was equal. At which point you said "And that, precisely, is why GMs neither have nor should have "absolute power." Which means that absolute power is a bad thing because the situations might make everyone's fun equal, which is an accurate measure of that exchange.

Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, should be sacrificing their enjoyment of the game. Sacrifice is not the mark of a good DM. It's the mark of someone getting the short end of the stick, and is why a lot of DMs burn out and games fall apart early.

Someone who claims a leadership position has to, y'know, lead. And one of the most important aspects of leadership is that you understand that you may not get to do a bunch of the things someone with less power could easily do no problem. That you have (significantly) higher expectations placed on you--and that one of those expectations is that you would never ask of another what you would be unwilling to do yourself, first.

DMs are not claiming leadership. They are taking on one of the two roles of the game that they all play. Hell, a lot of the time a person is DM because nobody else will do it, not because they are claiming to be the leader over people.

DMs have no authority/leadership over the players.

 

[Remathilis]

Those were examples of requests from games before I came up with a curated list. You've expressed repeatedly that you reject the my preferences. I want a small number of intelligent humanoid species in my world is because I don't want a kitchen sink campaign. It has nothing to do with power grabs.

I run a very wide kitchen sink. If someone asked to play a werewolf or vampire, I would show them the shifter and dhampir species. You can accommodate without breaking the game.

 

[Belen]

We play in the Realms all the time. Drizzt and Elminster have yet to show up, and no one has remarked on it yet. Strange.

It does not mean that I do not detest FR. I read all the novels in the 90s and I cannot use that world as a setting for my games. It lacks any compelling narrative for me.

I felt the same way about Star Wars for years. I ended up setting a game 1000 years after ROTJ and that was fine. I would not play or run a SW game set during the films.

At this point, I would not even play in an FR game.

 

[Bae'zel]

The degree of collaborative worldbuilding that a group wants is about personal taste and playstyle, not "badwrongfun".

I've met people (in real life and on RPG fora) at both extremes: people who are utterly turned off of collaborative world building and want something completely unexpected and new to them vs people who want to be involved in world building every step of the way (from initial setting inception to actual gameplay throughout).

Neither playstyle is inherently "wrong". To each their own.

You can encounter jerks who sit on any part of that spectrum. Some people encounter more at one end than the other, or insist that one side inherently holds more jerks than the other.

This isn't politics, we really shouldn't be treating it that way.

 

[billd91]

Careful, you might stray into hyperbole . . .

Wait. There are posts in this thread that AREN'T hyperbole?!?

 

[Remathilis]

It does not mean that I do not detest FR. I read all the novels in the 90s and I cannot use that world as a setting for my games. It lacks any compelling narrative for me.

I felt the same way about Star Wars for years. I ended up setting a game 1000 years after ROTJ and that was fine. I would not play or run a SW game set during the films.

At this point, I would not even play in an FR game.

To be fair, that's a problem with all media-based RPGs. Why play Middle Earth when Aragorn and the Fellowship has things well in hand? Why play Adventures in Space and Time when the Doctor can just show up? Why play Dragonlance when the Heroes of the Lance get all the accolades? You either accept that the Avengers are busy every time you're superheroes go out to save the world* or you go for alternate reality.

* An issue I've seen with the MCU: when something big happens in a solo movie, people ask what all the other heroes were doing.

 

[TwoSix]

It does not mean that I do not detest FR. I read all the novels in the 90s and I cannot use that world as a setting for my games. It lacks any compelling narrative for me.

I felt the same way about Star Wars for years. I ended up setting a game 1000 years after ROTJ and that was fine. I would not play or run a SW game set during the films.

At this point, I would not even play in an FR game.

Gotta be honest, disliking Eberron and Star Wars, and hating FR to the point of not even playing in it, would be a major red flag to joining a table or inviting someone to a table.

They're just so bland and inoffensive; it's like hating Iowa. I don't have any plans concerning Iowa, but I'm certainly not chuffed at it enough to avoid it.

 

[Remathilis]

Wait. There are posts in this thread that AREN'T hyperbole?!?

People who use hyperbole to make points are literally Satan.

(That's a joke)

 

[TwoSix]

Wait. There are posts in this thread that AREN'T hyperbole?!?

Honestly, this thread has seemed pretty sober and fair-minded for the bulk of it.