Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is LIVE! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
What DM flaw has caused you to actually leave a game?
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="5ekyu" data-source="post: 7509658" data-attributes="member: 6919838"><p>At the point this "backgrounding" works its way into the gameplay and the world design itself, it has gone into a place that i think many Gms would find troubling to allow as an expected acceptable practice.</p><p></p><p>its started as locking down "my family" but that includes their village and the family background now and who knows what other details - so invasion from that area which harmed the village and/or displaced the family - that is gone - even if another PC has invasion from the north as part of their story and the setting was established with "brink of war from the north" as a thematic element. of course, the other player can change their stuff and the Gm can toss all that other stuff but hey - they got lots of other options they can use and this one PC should not have to budge an inch.</p><p></p><p>Then it migrated into taking useful things but backgrounding their drawbacks - literally a bear or dino companion not getting much trouble when walking into town with you - i think they agreed maybe a few dirty looks but certainly not much more than that. guess the ranger who chose the dog because they wanted their choice to be more useful in town and not draw attention was a sucker.</p><p></p><p>Then it moved to creating, defining, scripting the reactions to etc your entire god, church and religion as a thing in the world. </p><p></p><p>The many myths and legends i grew up reading (that kids these days apparently do not get much if any of - gripe) and the DnD that i had that original Deities and Demogods with the elric and cthulu stuff in - many of those had the frictions between the gods and proxy feuds thru their "heroes" as ongoing and common themes in the fiction. The pantheons in many versions of DnD when settings were presented shaped the world. </p><p></p><p>And of all of this - the Gm saying "no" is an unbelievable how could you say no affront?</p><p></p><p>Sorry - but i am thinking back to the RPGs i played and how many of them started with "the pc can create even a god, church and worshippers and the GM should not or cannot say no" within their ruleset or expected play and that is a precious few at most.</p><p></p><p>Like i said, i am always willing to discuss and work with players about their backgrounds, backstories and what they hope to get out of the game, but i will draw the line at explicitly allowing a general rule for backgrounding to these magnitudes. i will also generally establish a baseline "no" for taking a class that is framed around these sorts of ties to NPCs as core elements and backgrounding those.</p><p></p><p>Now as for this...</p><p></p><p>"Another thought. What if a player is in a traditionally run dungeon crawl, and has chosen to play the cleric because no one else wanted the role? Should this player have to put up with obligations and role playing deity moments that they don't care about? "</p><p></p><p>Well, IDK what iof the player chose a wizard for said dungeon crawl but did not like want the fuss over spell books? i mean who wants to have to work on protecting that book, right? in a prolonged dungeon crawl, i mean access to inks and stuff for spells and adding spells to books - that might be a hassle. Why should the wizard be forced into that - after all - the sorcerer and bard and warlocks who do not have the spellbook to contend with and its constant drain on resources and time - those classes do not have all the spell lists and the portent ability the diviner will get me? So why should the Gm *force* the wizard to deal with spellbooks if they do not want it? Can't the Gm find other ways to bore their players? oh, and by not worry about the spellbook, i dont mean disallowing the wizard to scribe extra spells into it when found - thats cool to remain in play - but the whole mess of other stuff i dont like - lets cull all that out, m'kay?</p><p></p><p>In a "traditional dungeon crawl" i will asume you are referring to a play style where there is a lot less focus on things like PC interaction, social interaction and a lot more on wandering into dangerous places, killing things and collecting loot - with the occasional "solve this" conundrum. (assumption but the term is a bit vague.) In that case, in that playstyle, practically all the characters would have "less" involvement with their backstories and all the history and social fluff. likely the merchants guild membership is not a factor - if anybody bothered to take that background at all for this known setting. In that plan for a campaign, it would be mostly *highly unusual* for folks families to suddenly be in the thick of things because that is not what the playstyle of this setting focuses on. Mostly, if your family were involved, it would likely be drawn in 8by* intentional aspects of your backstory - Lara Croft "dad is missing and we are following his old journal" style. </p><p></p><p>basically the difference is that in that environment by its pre-defined nature then *for everyone* those kinds of things get put much more into the backburner out of focus place. So, frankly, backgrounding is not needed to prevent your family from getting village invaded. (Tho the whole create your own god etc is still even there a tad step too far.) </p><p></p><p>Hoenstly, in such a game, backstories themselves typically fall into "less focus" and "less import" - in my experience. </p><p></p><p>**again - not a locked in rule and just based on what i think you meant by "traditional dungeon crawl" but left unspecified.</p><p></p><p>But move that broad lockdown rule for general use into a game with more emphasis on the social pillar, where churches and contacts etc matter more, where debts, boons, markers, factions, alliances and all that jazz plays a role - you got a much different level of impact to allowing such GM veto-proof creations.</p><p></p><p>All in all, whatever a table agrees to and plays with and enjoys is good and that should not make them bad people, dicks or all the other perjoratives being bandied about. </p><p></p><p>Similarly, its up to them, isn't it, to decide how important the pantheon of gods and how they interact plays in their campaign - not for me or you to say tracking this or that or not is "mountain-molehilling"?</p><p></p><p>if a Gm wants to play his game and his players agree to it so that one character gets his motorcycle worry-free protected to ride around in play but another character whose character is ultra-green has to see in game problems from not having a motorcycle because his "bike" was chosen to lower carbon footprint (even tho the Gm never planned on making PCs track their carbon footprint - and still wont) then thats fine too - just not a style i would prefer on either side - because of the inconsistency that the choice of vehicle created when one gets to be worry-free and the other still produces worries that are not core to the character. </p><p></p><p>Like i have said, my group's preferred playstyle is one where in-game problems are solved in-game (not the same as at table) not with meta-gamey erasers of consequences.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="5ekyu, post: 7509658, member: 6919838"] At the point this "backgrounding" works its way into the gameplay and the world design itself, it has gone into a place that i think many Gms would find troubling to allow as an expected acceptable practice. its started as locking down "my family" but that includes their village and the family background now and who knows what other details - so invasion from that area which harmed the village and/or displaced the family - that is gone - even if another PC has invasion from the north as part of their story and the setting was established with "brink of war from the north" as a thematic element. of course, the other player can change their stuff and the Gm can toss all that other stuff but hey - they got lots of other options they can use and this one PC should not have to budge an inch. Then it migrated into taking useful things but backgrounding their drawbacks - literally a bear or dino companion not getting much trouble when walking into town with you - i think they agreed maybe a few dirty looks but certainly not much more than that. guess the ranger who chose the dog because they wanted their choice to be more useful in town and not draw attention was a sucker. Then it moved to creating, defining, scripting the reactions to etc your entire god, church and religion as a thing in the world. The many myths and legends i grew up reading (that kids these days apparently do not get much if any of - gripe) and the DnD that i had that original Deities and Demogods with the elric and cthulu stuff in - many of those had the frictions between the gods and proxy feuds thru their "heroes" as ongoing and common themes in the fiction. The pantheons in many versions of DnD when settings were presented shaped the world. And of all of this - the Gm saying "no" is an unbelievable how could you say no affront? Sorry - but i am thinking back to the RPGs i played and how many of them started with "the pc can create even a god, church and worshippers and the GM should not or cannot say no" within their ruleset or expected play and that is a precious few at most. Like i said, i am always willing to discuss and work with players about their backgrounds, backstories and what they hope to get out of the game, but i will draw the line at explicitly allowing a general rule for backgrounding to these magnitudes. i will also generally establish a baseline "no" for taking a class that is framed around these sorts of ties to NPCs as core elements and backgrounding those. Now as for this... "Another thought. What if a player is in a traditionally run dungeon crawl, and has chosen to play the cleric because no one else wanted the role? Should this player have to put up with obligations and role playing deity moments that they don't care about? " Well, IDK what iof the player chose a wizard for said dungeon crawl but did not like want the fuss over spell books? i mean who wants to have to work on protecting that book, right? in a prolonged dungeon crawl, i mean access to inks and stuff for spells and adding spells to books - that might be a hassle. Why should the wizard be forced into that - after all - the sorcerer and bard and warlocks who do not have the spellbook to contend with and its constant drain on resources and time - those classes do not have all the spell lists and the portent ability the diviner will get me? So why should the Gm *force* the wizard to deal with spellbooks if they do not want it? Can't the Gm find other ways to bore their players? oh, and by not worry about the spellbook, i dont mean disallowing the wizard to scribe extra spells into it when found - thats cool to remain in play - but the whole mess of other stuff i dont like - lets cull all that out, m'kay? In a "traditional dungeon crawl" i will asume you are referring to a play style where there is a lot less focus on things like PC interaction, social interaction and a lot more on wandering into dangerous places, killing things and collecting loot - with the occasional "solve this" conundrum. (assumption but the term is a bit vague.) In that case, in that playstyle, practically all the characters would have "less" involvement with their backstories and all the history and social fluff. likely the merchants guild membership is not a factor - if anybody bothered to take that background at all for this known setting. In that plan for a campaign, it would be mostly *highly unusual* for folks families to suddenly be in the thick of things because that is not what the playstyle of this setting focuses on. Mostly, if your family were involved, it would likely be drawn in 8by* intentional aspects of your backstory - Lara Croft "dad is missing and we are following his old journal" style. basically the difference is that in that environment by its pre-defined nature then *for everyone* those kinds of things get put much more into the backburner out of focus place. So, frankly, backgrounding is not needed to prevent your family from getting village invaded. (Tho the whole create your own god etc is still even there a tad step too far.) Hoenstly, in such a game, backstories themselves typically fall into "less focus" and "less import" - in my experience. **again - not a locked in rule and just based on what i think you meant by "traditional dungeon crawl" but left unspecified. But move that broad lockdown rule for general use into a game with more emphasis on the social pillar, where churches and contacts etc matter more, where debts, boons, markers, factions, alliances and all that jazz plays a role - you got a much different level of impact to allowing such GM veto-proof creations. All in all, whatever a table agrees to and plays with and enjoys is good and that should not make them bad people, dicks or all the other perjoratives being bandied about. Similarly, its up to them, isn't it, to decide how important the pantheon of gods and how they interact plays in their campaign - not for me or you to say tracking this or that or not is "mountain-molehilling"? if a Gm wants to play his game and his players agree to it so that one character gets his motorcycle worry-free protected to ride around in play but another character whose character is ultra-green has to see in game problems from not having a motorcycle because his "bike" was chosen to lower carbon footprint (even tho the Gm never planned on making PCs track their carbon footprint - and still wont) then thats fine too - just not a style i would prefer on either side - because of the inconsistency that the choice of vehicle created when one gets to be worry-free and the other still produces worries that are not core to the character. Like i have said, my group's preferred playstyle is one where in-game problems are solved in-game (not the same as at table) not with meta-gamey erasers of consequences. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
What DM flaw has caused you to actually leave a game?
Top