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

[M_Natas]

Wow. Apparently I don't friend correct for Enworld! Proof @EzekielRaiden was right. If you were here to lecture about unsafe social dynamics, you failed miserably.

I just say it bluntly without sugarcoating, like other people here in the thread ...

You have a very specific friendship dynamic where everything hinges on a D&D game. That is a lot of pressure for a game.

What you are doing now is to generalise from your specific friendship/d&d dynamic that all DMs need to act as yo want or they are bad DMs, because otherwise that would kill friendships!

But that is only a danger in your very specific friendship/D&D situation.
And woe the friend who has enough of D&D and doesn't want to play that anymore and wants to play monopoly!

 

[TwoSix]

I just say it bluntly without sugarcoating, like other people here in the thread ...

You have a very specific friendship dynamic where everything hinges on a D&D game. That is a lot of pressure for a game.

What you are doing now is to generalise from your specific friendship/d&d dynamic that all DMs need to act as yo want or they are bad DMs, because otherwise that would kill friendships!

But that is only a danger in your very specific friendship/D&D situation.
And woe the friend who has enough of D&D and doesn't want to play that anymore and wants to play monopoly!

That doesn't seem that specific to me, gotta be honest.

I know a ton of people who see a good portion of their friends primarily in the context of a shared hobby or activity. If they stopped the activity, they would see their friends much less.

If I decided to give up roleplaying, I of course would see my game table friends less. That's not them excluding me, that's me choosing to exclude myself.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Most worlds are not built for a specific campaign or even for a specific group of players. Either it's a DM's homebrew or a published setting like FR or Eberron.

Which is the cause of a lot of problems. A lot of DMs are too precious about their creations, and don’t want those irritating players messing it up. Hence all the ways they try to limit player freedom.

Playgrounds are built for children to enjoy. If the designer starts designing it to amuse themselves they are doing it wrong.

 

[TwoSix]

Which is the cause of a lot of problems. A lot of DMs are too precious about their creations, and don’t want those irritating player messing it up. Hence all the ways they try to limit player freedom.

Playgrounds are built for children to enjoy. If the designer starts designing it to amuse themselves they are doing it wrong.

Yep. The majority of players just aren't that interested in exploring someone else's creation as the focus of the game.

 

[M_Natas]

That doesn't seem that specific to me, gotta be honest.

I know a ton of people who see a good portion of their friends primarily in the context of a shared hobby or activity. If they stopped the activity, they would see their friends much less.

If I decided to give up roleplaying, I of course would see my game table friends less. That's not them excluding me, that's me choosing to exclude myself.

Yeah, but now there is this rule in the hobby, proposed by some people here, that you in your specific role in that hibby are always the one who needs to compromise their vision of the hobby, so the others don't quit, that is unhealthy and toxic.

 

[Bae'zel]

Yep. The majority of players just aren't that interested in exploring someone else's creation as the focus of the game.

I'm guessing that when you state "someone else" you mean random people, not publishers right?

Plenty of popular RPGs out there with pre-created settings that seem to engage a lot of desire to explore them.

A slight counter: some people don't really care about setting: they just want to play.

We're a diverse bunch in this hobby.

Edit: it's really a spectrum. Some tables want fully collaborative settings, some pre-made. Some want to be part of the overall storytelling, others want to immerse themselves in someone else's creation.

These absolute declarations are not realistic.

 

[Maxperson]

Then why are you running Eberron, the setting that, as written in 3.5e, I could have a party made up of a Desmodu, a Dromite, a Duergar, a Domovoi and a Dracotaur, calling ourselves the D Squad?

Because the rest of Eberron is a fun and interesting premise to him.

That is rules as intended for Eberron allow everything, and no race currently in 5E has problems there outside of the Simic Hybrid, and the lore there anyway is 'you're a one off mutation' which is easy to homebrew into anything

If I'm running Eberron(Bleh!) or even the Forgotton Realms(where I run 95% of my games) and you show up with an orc, I'm going to be cool with it, though I'd let you know that in some parts of the Realms you will have issues and in others you won't. That way you can make an informed final decision.

However, let's say I want to run Eberron with only Tolkien races(for whatever reason) and I pitch the game to you saying, "I am going to be running Eberron, but only with the Tolkien races in it. Are you interested?" and you tell me yes, you have agreed to play one of the Tolkien races. If you show up to session 0 or 1 with an orc PC, you are starting off having lied to my face and selfishly decided to disrupt the game for everyone at the table. Nobody else lied and tried to play something that wasn't on the table. That sort of behavior is a huge red flag that marks you as a problem player who will likely clash with DM and player alike all throughout the campaign.

If you agree to the curation, you should stay within the curation you agreed to.

 

[TheSword]

Yep. The majority of players just aren't that interested in exploring someone else's creation as the focus of the game.

There’s a lot of wiggle room, agency and fun in deciding how to explore and what to do when they come into contact with things.

Paizo’s adventure paths were the core of the product range and at that time their unique selling point. D&D became its most successful when it started releasing campaign length adventures.

I’m not sure anyone is in the position to say what the majority likes but there are a hell of a lot of people that like exploring other peoples creations.

I’ve seen advice that when playing with strangers prepublished adventures are much easier to recruit for than homebrew adventures.

 

[TwoSix]

I'm guessing that when you state "someone else" you mean random people, not publishers right?

Plenty of popular RPGs out there with pre-created settings that seem to engage a lot of desire to explore them.

Correct. I know you seem to find it problematic that I don't regards a quality published work to be equivalent to someone's written notes, but to my mind it's a pretty obvious distinction. A published work is shared among all the participants, someone's specific homebrew is explained to the other participants. It elevates the GM's vision into a primary position of table focus, in a way I find inimical to collaboration.

 

[TwoSix]

However, let's say I want to run Eberron with only Tolkien races(for whatever reason) and I pitch the game to you saying, "I am going to be running Eberron, but only with the Tolkien races in it. Are you interested?" and you tell me yes, you have agreed to play one of the Tolkien races. If you show up to session 0 or 1 with an orc PC, you are starting off having lied to my face and selfishly decided to disrupt the game for everyone at the table. Nobody else lied and tried to play something that wasn't on the table. That sort of behavior is a huge red flag that marks you as a problem player who will likely clash with DM and player alike all throughout the campaign.

If you agree to the curation, you should stay within the curation you agreed to.

I agree that as a player, if you agree to a curated setting, you're being problematic if you later on try to renegotiate that curation.

But I still think the GM needs to examine why they are so attracted to that strict curation in the first place. From my perspective, that attraction to strict curation is a GMing weakness, not merely one playstyle choice among many.