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

[TwoSix]

Thinking developing a campaign setting based on an interesting idea you have is a waste of time sounds like a YOU problem, not a general issue that applies to everyone.

Since I have never done it (or at least, not in several decades), it can't be my problem, right?

And the thinking of it also doesn't cause me any problems either; diagnosing the weaknesses in the approaches of others just makes my own play stronger.

So don't worry about me, Bill; I'm in a great place.

 

[dave2008]

. There is a very good reason why the very famous saying that a good compromise leave everyone unhappy exists.

Except I don't believe the DM would be unhappy with this solution. They don't want dragonborn. IMO, they don't really care about the character's culture and mechanics - they care that it doesn't look like a dragon person. From my perspective the DM didn't compromise at all.

 

[Belen]

Would you like to know my deep secret?

I don't actually like dragonborn. I have never had a dragonborn PC, and I virtually never use them when I'm GMing.

Do you know impact that dislike has on my games when I GM, and a player wants to play a dragonborn? 0.0%.

If your game has enough room to allow for some customization, than it has enough room to allow for a customization that matters to a particular PC.

I hate Dragonborn. They never appear in my games outside the occasional PC. I am also not a fan of tieflings. They are never feature outside of a PC.

My next campaign will heavily feature tieflings though. My cosmology have the hell planes wrapped around the negative energy plane and the heavens around the positive.

Demons and devil largely serve destruction and want to end life. Undead are the pinnacle of destruction.

The next campaign will feature a world overrun by the dead.

The players in my group are pretty excited.

 

[Maxperson]

Would you like to know my deep secret?

I don't actually like dragonborn. I have never had a dragonborn PC, and I virtually never use them when I'm GMing.

Do you know impact that dislike has on my games when I GM, and a player wants to play a dragonborn? 0.0%.

If your game has enough room to allow for some customization, than it has enough room to allow for a customization that matters to a particular PC.

I let you in on a secret as well. I'm actually a very flexible DM to the point where in 3e I had a standing rule that any race that was ECL +1 or lower was okay without talking to me first, and without the experience point penalty those races incurred. Anything +2 or higher had to get my approval because of the potential to be disruptive, but with very, very few denials if they were +2 or even +3. Anything more than that was basically a hard no unless the campaign revolved around being more powerful.

I had two warforged PCs in 3e Forgotten Realms, despite them not being a race outside of Eberron.

Dragonborn are the only race in 5e that don't exist as a PC race, because I changed them to be significantly more powerful than the other PC races and it wouldn't be fair for a player to have one as a PC.

 

[TwoSix]

I hate Dragonborn. They never appear in my games outside the occasional PC. I am also not a fan of tieflings. They are never feature outside of a PC.

My next campaign will heavily feature tieflings though. My cosmology have the hell planes wrapped around the negative energy plane and the heavens around the positive.

Demons and devil largely serve destruction and want to end life. Undead are the pinnacle of destruction.

The next campaign will feature a world overrun by the dead.

The players in my group are pretty excited.

That sounds like a fun concept, and based on the abstract, I would be on board with joining that game. "Undead apocalypse" is a great frame for a D&D game.

 

[tetrasodium]

I tend to ignore that use case because I would never join a game that has a 10+ year old setting that also has a ton of built-in restrictions.

I have one DM that uses the same setting for all his games, but it's just a generic D&D type setting with a few custom gods that he uses for NPCs; he has no setting detail that impacts our character creation or concepts at all.

I, personally, am on my 4th Eberron game (stretching back to 3.5), all nominally in the "same setting". But other than occasionally having something that happened in a previous game impact a scene framing, the fact that I'm using the "same setting" is completely opaque to the players, since only a few players have been in more than one game.

Eberron campaign setting was published in 2004. I think that's a little over twice that ten year mark at this point. Ravenloft forgotten realms karatura and others are much older then years. However your complaint is also why every edition has eberron starting in 998yk explicitly by design. More sets are added and gms maintain things they previously desired to fill in, but it's still 998yk.

 

[TwoSix]

I let you in on a secret as well. I'm actually a very flexible DM to the point where in 3e I had a standing rule that any race that was ECL +1 or lower was okay without talking to me first, and without the experience point penalty those races incurred. Anything +2 or higher had to get my approval because of the potential to be disruptive, but with very, very few denials if they were +2 or even +3. Anything more than that was basically a hard no unless the campaign revolved around being more powerful.

I had two warforged PCs in 3e Forgotten Realms, despite them not being a race outside of Eberron.

Dragonborn are the only race in 5e that don't exist as a PC race, because I changed them to be significantly more powerful than the other PC races and it wouldn't be fair for a player to have one as a PC.

Lol. It is pretty crazy how you got like 95% of the way to being a flexible DM, but had to make a hard swerve at the last second because the call of the viking hat was simply too powerful.

 

[AlViking]

Man, you really have no idea how to run a game with minimal prep, do you? It's amazing how you simply assume that everything is random and unconnected.

I do a lot of improv and do relatively little prep per session. It all works and makes sense, connects to the world because I've laid a foundation. That doesn't mean I dump lore on my players.

 

[Maxperson]

I disagree, that is a capitulation by the player, not a compromise. The premise was I want to play a turtle person. Something that doesn't look like a turtle person doesn't qualify.

I want to be clear, I am not advocating these narrow perspectives. I was responding to a claim that simply wanting* to play a turtle person is a valid. Which I agree with. However, it is as equally valid as a DM not wanting to have turtle people in the setting. If the only reason for something is that you want it, then there is no real compromise between those opposing wants. Either someone gets what they want or they don't.

*The OP I responded to said the player was guided my their muse or something similar.

I disagree and here's why. The entire point of a compromise is to move off of your position towards the other side.

Here a player wanted a turtle person including visuals. That can't fully happen for reasons, so the DM offers the compromise of being the turtle person in all but visual. Now the player has the option to accept that compromise and move off of his position to having a turtle person, but that turtle person doesn't look like a turtle. If accepted, both parties have moved off of their positions towards the other side and met somewhere in the middle, in this case almost all the way to the player's side of things.

It's not capitulation to move towards the other side part way. That's by definition compromise. Capitulation is giving in 100% to the other party.

 

[TwoSix]

Eberron campaign setting was published in 2004. I think that's a little over twice that ten year mark at this point. Ravenloft forgotten realms karatura and others are much older then years. However your complaint is also why every edition has eberron starting in 998yk explicitly by design. More sets are added and gms maintain things they previously desired to fill in, but it's still 998yk.

Age only matter for homebrew. There's a mountain of difference between a shared IP (like a WotC published setting) and the GM's passion project of hundreds of pages of Google Docs.