D&D General The Tyranny of Rarity

[EzekielRaiden]

Doesn't that model rather destroy the player-side wonder of exploring the setting in-game, when the players already know what's out there because out-of-game they helped put it there?

In my experience, no, not at all. Because even if the players "put it there," they don't know every detail about it, nor how it will affect them, nor what role in the story it will play or affect upon the story it will have.

As an example, I asked my players to tell me about organizations they're aware of. The party Bard introduced a group of prosocial, "protect the poor" thieves and ne'er-do-wells, the Silver Thread. Their current leader is a kid said Bard grew up with, before his family made it big in the textile business. Rahim, said leader, was "someone I knew a long time ago, but haven't seen in a while." So I had carte blanche to write whatever character I really wanted.

All the other players had as much wonder as if everything had come from me. The Bard player had a special kind of trepidation--the kind that can only come from knowing a little, and being acutely aware that you only know a little. Said Bard still had to feel his way around, determine what was and wasn't acceptable, learn the ins and outs of the adult that his childhood friend had grown into.

Similar things have applied with all of the player-contributed factions, races, concepts, etc. I personally find it extremely exciting and invigorating when my players contribute things like this to the world. Not only does it mean they're invested and enthusiastic, but it means a near-guarantee of expanding the world in a way I never would have considered. There has never--not once--been a time where player contributions to this campaign have failed to make the world a richer, more interesting, more fulsome place.

 

[MGibster]

The only time I've ever restricted race in a D&D campaign was when running Curse of Strahd where I specifically limited the player's choices to what was found in the PHB. And I placed those restrictions because I preferred to keep some of the more exotic choices out of consideration of the gothic horror influenced setting. Don't get me wrong, I could have easily justified the inclusion of any of the published races from the various sourcebooks. But excluding them was my preference.

With a game like D&D, we can pretty much justify the inclusion of just about anything if we really wanted to. But it doesn't seem to me that restricting races is typically a problem in most D&D campaigns. But then it's not like I've sat down at every table so maybe is happens quite frequently. I don't really have any strong feelings about which race my players choose for their characters because it mostly seems unimportant to me. It's not like the campaign is going to be radically different because the Wizard is a tortle instead of an elf.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It is like how your typical American might know that Canada exists, and that it is cold there, and they play hockey... but they will still be able to explore the country and find lots of wonderful stuff there.

Having placed some elements does not mean they know every last detail about what they place. Nor does it restrict the GM from placing things that were not put there by players. So, when the players decide to go mess with the pirates, and they eventually find the ancient sunken temple home of their pirate lich queen... there will be much wonder, have no fear.

Exactly this. Excellent analogy, too. Anyone who's taken a World History course has a smattering of knowledge about dozens of countries, but would still learn tons of things by visiting them. Heck, even someone who's done all the purely-academic book research they possibly can on a country would still learn a lot by physically travelling through it.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Exactly this. Excellent analogy, too. Anyone who's taken a World History... <snip>

Yes, I agree it is a good point, but again it comes down to world setting IMO.

Someone with a decent education might know a good deal about the world, others might only know about the kingdom they live in and maybe a bit about their neighbors, and still others might barely know much about their own lands.

Frankly, it is a sad indicator of our country, but you'd be amazed (in a horrible way!) at how ignorant many U.S. citizens are about our neighbors, let alone our own country.

Anyway if your game is a "typical medieval setting", then there is a good chance, depending on your PC's background and proficiency selection, they really might not know a lot.

Another point is separating player knowledge (in helping build a world) versus character knowledge. Players often know creature stats, which their PC might not have anyway of knowing about (certainly the mechanics, but also any strengths or weaknesses). Yes, some creatures are "common" knowledge even if a fantasy setting, such as dragons breath weapons and were-creatures maybe. But thinks like a roper or umber hulk (common enough to players IME) might be totally unknown to the PC, and IMO players should not confuse player knowledge with character knowledge.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Just goes to show, I guess. Wonder is, to me, so very fundamental to the D&D experience. I can't even conceive of the game without exploration as the key pillar of play, with combat a distant second and thespianism an even more far-flung third. Speaking personally, basing a campaign around "interaction and quirk" sounds positively ghastly.

I suspect that's because I came up on different Fantasy novels.

My preferred fantasy is about guile heroes fast-talking and manipulating through a cool world whose rules they also manipulate to their advantage. Magic and supernatural and fantastic elements aren't so much a cool set piece as interesting parts of the world the hero makes use of and even if new locations might be cool and awe-inspiring to me as the reader, it's a place the hero knows and inhabits and swims through like a fish in the ocean. Think Lies of Locke Lamorra (though Lynch has a worse output scheule than me at this point) or Sanderson's non-doorstoppers like Elantris or Warbreaker, or my most beloved Legend of Nightfall

And that's the kind of game I like: My PC is a person who lives in the world and is navigating it instead of exploring it (if that makes sense); solving the issues that matter to them rather than having things happen to them.

I still like traditional stories with chosen ones pulled from their farmboy life to discover the larger world... I just don't like them in the way where I want to play them out over the next two years.

 

[MNblockhead]

[deleted--should have read the entire thread before posting]

 

[MNblockhead]

Eh. I know a bunch of "old school" GMs in the 80s whose campaigns were "run the official TSR adventure you just got". I expect that was common, back in the day, too, or else we wouldn't think nostalgically of those adventures as so much of the "common gaming experience" of the day.

Yep. In the 80s our "campaigns" were a mix of purchased modules and DM-made adventures only loosely connected and favored PCs being taken from one DMs game to another--and avoiding using favorite PCs in certain DMs' games

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Yes, I agree it is a good point, but again it comes down to world setting IMO.

Someone with a decent education might know a good deal about the world, others might only know about the kingdom they live in and maybe a bit about their neighbors, and still others might barely know much about their own lands.

Frankly, it is a sad indicator of our country, but you'd be amazed (in a horrible way!) at how ignorant many U.S. citizens are about our neighbors, let alone our own country.

Anyway if your game is a "typical medieval setting", then there is a good chance, depending on your PC's background and proficiency selection, they really might not know a lot.

I...don't see how that's relevant to the question at hand? Umbran and I were responding to the question, "Doesn't it ruin the player's sense of wonder if they're the ones putting things in the world?" (paraphrased) I don't see how the statistics of what would be known by the characters is in any way an influence on whether the player's sense of wonder is affected by players adding world-elements.

Another point is separating player knowledge (in helping build a world) versus character knowledge. Players often know creature stats, which their PC might not have anyway of knowing about (certainly the mechanics, but also any strengths or weaknesses). Yes, some creatures are "common" knowledge even if a fantasy setting, such as dragons breath weapons and were-creatures maybe. But thinks like a roper or umber hulk (common enough to players IME) might be totally unknown to the PC, and IMO players should not confuse player knowledge with character knowledge.

"Metagaming" is, IMO, often a boogeyman with minimal actual impact. Who cares if this PC happens to know something unusual? Or, rather, this sounds like an opportunity for a story. "Okay Druid. How DO you know that displacer beasts can be captured with a golden rope?" "Uh...well...see, although I come from a nomad tribe, sometimes even we had to go to the city...usually to get something repaired, right? Well, one time, my father the chief was haggling with a smith over how to repair something or other, and I was allowed to wander the market. I found a cage...a pretty cage, with gold wire on it. But there wasn't anything inside! There was a little black kitty next to it though, so I opened the cage to let the kitty out. But then the black kitty...actually jumped out of the cage? It was really weird, and I ran away because I didn't want my dad to get in trouble. But that was my first exposure to Weird Things from beyond the world, and it stuck with me." (Incidentally, this is a lightly-adapted actual in-character backstory element for a player who recently returned to my DW game after a hiatus.)

But I still don't strictly see how it relates to the preservation or loss of the player's sense of wonder by adding elements to the world. That is, you seem to be speaking of player foreknowledge that happens to get factored in because these are old hands who have played D&D a long time. That would seem to be entirely orthogonal to the question of adding things to the world or embellishing things already in it. Particularly given, as I said before, that a player saying something like "there's a dragonborn nation to the East" actually establishes almost nothing of the kind of knowledge you're talking about. What's that nation's status? Prosperous, or fallen on hard times? Supportive, isolationist, or expansionist? What's its reputation with other nations/cultures? What traditions or cultures does it contain or express strongly? Etc., etc. There's both a huge possibility for wonder...and very little, if any, possibility of "game-able" knowledge, little need to separate character-knowledge from player-knowledge, because the player knows nothing that a ordinary person could learn by speaking to a random caravaneer--arguably the player knows less than a random person on the street might.

 

[MNblockhead]

Whew! Looked at this in the morning and didn't have time to respond. Now 15 pages of posts later not sure I have a whole lot to add. The one thing that always perplexes me when this topic is resurrected is why this tends to get so divisive.

For me, D&D is not really a single game. If I play, say, the Expanse, then nobody would have any issues sticking to the constraints inherent with that system and setting. If I'm playing D&D and am running a game set in the Forgotten Realms, well, then it makes sense for an everything-goes attitude. But if I want to run a low-fantasy, gritty, human-centered game, D&D 5e can handle this well. I don't need to buy a completely different game system to run such a game. I don't have to use everything published in every official book in every campaign.

I'm not running Adventurer's League games, I'm not running public games whatsoever. I have limited time to prep and run games. I want my prep time to be fun for me as well as running the game. Much of that fun involves working with a world I personally enjoy and a big part of the fun of running the game is to engage with players who are also interested in engaging with that world.

How restrictive are my games in terms of character options? To what degree are players engaged in the world building outside of their in-game actions? How willing am I to compromise, make exceptions, and find ways to work player preferences into a setting that would other wise preclude them? Well, it all depends.

This is what I do.

When a campaign is wrapping up, I usually have a number of options that I start discussing with the players weeks or months before the last session of the current campaign. With my main gaming group, they are only interested in D&D 5e. I'll run one-shots or mini campaigns of other systems, but I don't have time to run long campaigns for multiple systems, I like the main group I have, and I've invested lots of time and money into 5e--so 5e it is.

So I pitch a few ideas for 5e campaigns, including setting, home rules, and character-option restrictions, etc. We pretty much have to reach a consensus because I wouldn't want to lose any players over a setting decision, and those who are interested in trying a very different and more restrictive setting are generally just as happy playing something more standard.

My first campaign, which ran for about two years was a completely homebrewed setting. Without going into detail on the setting, character options were restricted to humans, dwarves, half-elves who could pass as human, half-orcs who could pass as human, and no wizards. Most of my players were found through posts to Meetup.com forums and e-mail back and forth. Nobody who ended up being players had any issues with the restrictions because if they did they would not have joined.

My second campaign was Curse of Strahd. Pretty much any published character option was allowed for that with the caveat that certain races that would be seen as monstrous would run into difficulties in terms of how Barovians would react to them.

My current campaign is Rappan Athuk, in the Lost Lands setting, which is downright gonzo. Coprophagi (roach people) are a playable race in the Lost Lands, to give you an idea. None of my players are playing one, but one player took as her character an NPC Worg that the party managed to make an ally rather than kill. The worg character then got goats legs on its hind feet because of a trap's curse and the player decided to not seek to remove that curse. Then the worg contracted lycanthropy from a were-tiger and decided not to cure that. For this campaign, I'm fine with the were-tiger-worg-with-goat's feet. Because its fun for all of us in this setting. All the custom feats and items I had to create in D&D Beyond to get that character concept to work with the DDB character sheet was less fun, however.

For my next campaign, my options will either be another Lost Lands campaign in a different region, a published WotC book (if there are any that all players haven't played), or revisiting my home brew setting at a different point in time where the party plays a group of wizards trying to bring back magic to a world where arcane magic is mostly lost, illegal, and feared.

We'll all talk about the various options and we'll all agree to whatever restrictions or lack of restrictions in whatever we choose.

It just doesn't seem that complicated to me. Maybe because I have a group of players I've been playing with since 5e came out and were find it easy to get on the same page about this stuff.

 

[Mind of tempest]

I'll try to answer the question I think you're asking, but I'm not sure still that I'm right.

This is usually someone trying to play something well beyond anything even semi-standard, and normally its not a one-off case.

why does what is standard important? if they are going to bluntly pick a disruptive option like a 40k space marine in a star game there is a problem but otherwise what is exactly the problem.