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

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.
Oh, the Astromundi Cluster was my inspiration for my Spelljammer Setting. In my Opinion the Astromundi Cluster is also the only official product that makes full use of the setting premise of Spelljammer (D&D innn SPAAACCCCEEEE!). Spelljamming just to connect Forgotten Realms to Dark Sun to Ebberon is the most boring way to use the setting.
 

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Do they have a miniature giant space loxodans on their back, and a miniature giant disc on their backs, with a miniature small sun circling around it?
Now they have ... an adventure hook I left my players with two sessions ago was:
They freed a Sun Dragon who was imprisoned under Planktown to be used as a power source to magically grow the crops on that asteroid city (which is to far away from the sun to do it naturally), and after convincing the Sun Dragon not to destroy the city (the imprisonment happend 400 years ago and all conspirators who kept the impingement going died when they freed the dragon) - so, the Sun Dragon left with his Vampirate Buddy, who had a Minature Space Hamster Farm with the words "Lets pack the Space Hamsters, we need to save the world!" - now the World they are going to save will be a minature giant space tortle, whit minature giant space loxodans on their back with a minature giant disc on the back ...
And the players have to Shrink, to get into that minature giant world and suddenly the minautre giant space hamsters are godzilla sized ...
If the players ever want to follow that adventure hook ^^
 

I don't see why you assume a well thought out setting means the characters can have no impact on the world. Nor do you have to have collaborative world building to have autonomy even if that's your preference.

A homebrew world can give characters more autonomy in my experience. Nobody's going to say you can't blow up my version of The Yawning Portal because it's such an iconic location that's required for future scenarios for example.
For me, the setting is the starting point. I create the setting, and what I create is essentially Time 0 of the campaign - the moment just before play begins.

For example, the imprisoned Sun Dragon beneath Planktown. I put him there. Once the campaign starts, the players can choose to free him or leave him imprisoned, and each decision carries consequences.

If they free the dragon, Planktown might be destroyed by his rage. Even if that catastrophe is avoided, the city could face a food shortage, since the dragon was the power source that made their crops grow.

If they leave the dragon imprisoned, he might eventually die there, or other factions might attempt to rescue him.

The key idea is that setting creation happens at a frozen moment in time. Once the game begins, the world starts moving - and the players’ choices are what push it forward.
 

I don’t buy the argument that a DM is necessarily more attached and stingy about a setting if it’s homebrewed. I’ve had DMs who were huge fans of Warhammer 40K, Lovecraft, Stargate or Star Wars and were ultra restrictive because of their knowledge.

Had a game of Dark Heresy grind to a halt as the DM argued with a player about space marines and inquisitor chain of command and why their character could not act in a certain way.

So I don’t buy that and I think that this really is about general DM mistrust (possibly due to bad prior experiences) or a preference for published campaign settings over homebrew.
 

Woah! That's a lot of steps to walk from where I'm at, not the least because I'm not especially storytelling inclined. If I had a strong interest in narrative, I would obviously be writing novels. Perhaps if there was a strong tradition for fictional travelogues or gazetteers outside of like, franchise companion material and TTRPG settings there'd be an alternative hobby emerging here.

I don't think this falls neatly into the player-driven/railroad divide you're drawing here, what you do with a setting is not constrained by what the underlying purpose/method for creating it was. What I'm pointing to is that setting curation/creation is a compelling part of...well, I wouldn't call it gameplay, but the hobby at large? That's certainly why I wanted to start DMing back in the day; trying to figure out how to craft the perfect encounter to challenge and showcase a 3 player Bard/Artificer/Rogue party wasn't the selling point of the experience.
The general impression I get from DMs who are uninterested in their players is that they have crafted some aspect of their game (story, NPCs, setting) and there primary interest is showing that off to the players rather than having the players as actually be important. If the story is paramount, it's a railroad (the PCs cannot affect the story). If it's the setting, the PCs are museum tourists (the PCs can look but not touch all the marvels the DM is showing). If it's NPCs, the PCs are groupies (there to admire and support the much cooler DM characters).

When I design things for my game, I do so with the idea "how will my players affect this?" A villain they will hate, a place they will change by their actions. A story that includes elements of their personality or history. I want my players engaged and feeling like they are doing something important for the game, not just there to be the sounding board to my own voice.
 

Speaking for myself, it's because it sounds--consistently--like your fun is in having the world be precisely the thing you want it to be and never anything else. That's what looks like a lack of interest in player autonomy.

Well, sure I want the world I run games in something that makes sense to me and I enjoy running. If I watch a TV show or read a book, I'm going to spend my time on a genre and style that I enjoy. Fortunately a lot of people enjoy the same fiction I do.

Since your fun comes first, then anyone else's after that. It's a matter of priorities, and you've made quite clear that where fun is concerned, yours comes first, because you are GM. If that's not the case, then I don't understand why you have expressed your position as you have, because...I just can't see any other way of describing it than the straightforward, "If I don't get all of the things I find fun, I won't enjoy the game, so I won't run it, and thus my fun must always come first."
Hence why I said some of the things I said before. Or, if you prefer, a pithy phrasing of what I see my own position as: "Sometimes, player fun comes first, even if it isn't what I find (most) fun. Sometimes, my fun comes first, even if it isn't what the players find (most) fun." Give and take. I don't see much (if any) give in your position--so it looks like the GM asking the players to never do anything but give.


I'd say it's entirely side-grade, not upgrade, in terms of autonomy (agency, whatever one wishes to call it).

Because the huge benefit of a setting written by someone else? The GM's connection is necessarily secondhand. It's not the GM's darling, it's someone else's darling, the GM just happens to like it enough to be comfortable running it. If the GM doesn't care about potentially locking out future adventure paths (which, in my experience, that's rare--and the GM who does care will usually tell their players and work something out), the detachment can mean

The best (most direct and efficient) way for homebrew settings to avoid the "GM's darling" problem (or, if you prefer, the "World-as-GMPC" problem) very much is collaborative development. Doesn't have to be top-to-bottom collaborative either. Just enough flexibility that the GM is willing to happily accept constructive outside ideas. (Non-constructive ideas would be, for example, rude, dull, adversarial, too difficult to manage/implement, or just generally tacky or tawdry.)

I will note, "best" doesn't mean "only". I completely believe that it is possible for any GM to avoid this problem with effort. I just think it will be varying degrees of harder. Unfortunately, it's especially tough for worlds that exist over a very long period of time. The problem gets harder, not easier, as more and more facts become well-established. That's why, even when I do all the worldbuilding myself, I always consciously and intentionally leave "ʜɪᴄ ꜱᴠɴᴛ ʟᴇᴏɴᴇꜱ" (or "...ᴅʀᴀᴄᴏɴᴇꜱ", if you prefer, but only one globe has that specific phrasing) places in any world I work on/with. As long as I always leave room for doubt, for my knowledge to be incomplete, I'm always at least somewhat like the players, genuinely discovering the setting to some degree, not just revealing it.


Why can't you accept that I have different preferences than you do? That I've had many, many players over the decades who have have continued to enthusiastically play for years on end in my games? You seemingly can't comprehend that players have more autonomy in my games, more options to make world-changing decisions in-character than 90% of the games I've ever played in.

So you have to make up this laughably ridiculous strawman that has no basis in reality. There's no correlation between having a curated list of species and how well the game works for GM and player alike. I have to have a world I believe in, that speaks to me, that fuels my imagination so that I can make the game as fun for players as I know how. I can't imagine how a GM could be as effective as possible they are forced to run a game they don't themselves enjoy.

My fun does not come first. The fun of everyone at the table comes first. There is no "problem" to avoid. You just have a different preference so you have to create this myth of World-as-GMPC out of thin air to make it sound like you know better. You don't.
 

Sure. I was using the new(ish, IIRC the 700-year thing was first stated in 3e) numbers, because even with these "reduced" lifespans, it's still very significant.
Well, elf lifespan was always a moving goalpost. Elves reached maturity at 100, and lived at least 300 years, but could live to a MAX of 700 before departing to the Gray Havens, er hearing Sehanine's call. Since to reach 700 you had to max out four d100 rolls, those were the true "woman who lives to 110" stories rather than the norm. Just as most people live between 60 to 90 years, most elves live between 350 and 500, with true exceptions going over that.
(Assuming magic give lifespans equal to modern medicine).
Over time though, that nuance degraded to: "They live for around 750 years," (PHB 2024) and mature at the same rate as humans, but stop aging at adulthood. Making them more vampires with a upper cutoff than a species that ages differently. (Though it does solve the idea that elf pregnancy lasted two years and they were toddlers for a decade).
 


this framing is already wrong. It’s not that they are uninterested, it’s that they have some limits on what they allow as race / class for one reason (story / theme / setting) or another (personal dislike)

It's the same old, same old. Someone doesn't do it according to my preferences so I'm going to make up something with absolutely no justification to show how they're having bad-wrong-fun. I accept that other people run games differently and those games might not be for me. Other people can't seem to stomach that concept.
 

this framing is already wrong. It’s not that they are uninterested, it’s that they have some limits on what they allow as race / class for one reason (story / theme / setting) or another (personal dislike)
The quote I am responding to is this, with highlights that stick out to me.

Fundamentally, I don't view the world as being in service to the players; it's art I'm putting together that they view through interaction (and has the fun property of changing emergently in response to their choices). If I cared a little more about narrative (or maybe characterization), I'm sure I would be writing novels, but that isn't what I'm here to do. Player input is directionally, but not collaboratively useful; I'll tailor the work to what they're interested in as consumers, but I'm not looking for co-designers.
This tells me that the players are passive in their role in this game. The DM presents something and the player can provide a thumbs up or down, but no significant input. Even if the players all did fundamentally vote against the DMs idea, the DM is under no obligation to abide by it since the game is not for the players but him. It's HIS art, they are there to consume it.

That goes beyond if I can play a Tortle or not. That is a fundamental issue with the power dynamic so brazen it borders on offensive. I don't know if it was intended, but it reads like the players are there to glaze the DMs creation rather than the DM presenting something for the benefit of all the players.
 

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