Never minding old farts like me who've been gaming for close to 40 years.
Play yet another human cleric? In a setting with fighting man, wizard and cleric and everyone is human? I'd rather jam a pen in my left eye. I have zero interest in that game. It sounds mind numbingly boring to me.
Being fair to the opposition: if that literally were the only premise I'm pretty sure all of us would find it boring. I sincerely doubt that would be the long and short of it, especially given the level of detail alleged by the pro-restriction folks.
That said? I think there's no less merit to the point "humans core-4-class chars are the equivalent of unflavored oatmeal" than there is to the point "non-human chars will try to coast on dull stereotypes." If I'm supposed to take the latter seriously (as numerous pro-restriction folks have said), I don't see why they get a free pass on the former--I need a reason why.
I think DM's who never play forget that while we DM's get to play all sorts of different stuff every week, the players don't. We get to be dragons and vampires and barkeeps and everything else under the sun. We get to stretch our creative legs all the time. That player has one character. That's it. And, for the DM to then say, "Well, yeah, sorry, your creative ideas just aren't good enough to play in my game" and then go ahead and play all the things that the players are forbidden from playing tends to lead to some pretty hard feelings after a while.
This though, 100%.
Yes, sure. And what makes some of us a tad annoyed, is the suggestion that when a GM has done all that work, designed a world where everything has a place and there are a cultures and/or species that are connected to the setting the players can choose from, they should just alter that creation because the player wants to play something different. Sure, they could, but the player also could respect the work the GM has put in and they to choose something that has already been designed to be part of the world. Like could we come with made up reasons for putting gnomes, halflings and tortles in Westeros? yes, we could, but doing so would change the setting to be something else than it was intended.
Again, because evidently I have to say this in every single reply to every single poster because as soon as I've said it people instantly forget it, YOU DO NOT "HAVE" TO ADD ANYTHING. I have LITERALLY only been saying that you should listen and try. Successful compromise is not guaranteed, which I've said a dozen times now.
More importantly? You're doing that thing again, where you paint the DM as this poor beleaguered victim who does SO much gruelling work, slaving away for another's enjoyment, only to be met with disrespectful, demanding, petulant, unpleasable players who will accept nothing less than absolute deference to their ironclad ultimatum. Yet NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT THAT. You INSTANTLY leap to casting aspersions, assuming that every player who even dares ask a question is inherently disrespectful and demanding. And y'know what? I called out exactly that behavior almost a hundred pages ago. ("That simple preference" = liking dragons just 'cause I think they're awesome, and wanting playable options that reflect this.)
Yet for that simple preference--one which, I should note, is a BIG reason why the second D is Dragons, so I'm hardly alone for thinking dragons are awesome and therefore gaming which includes them is awesome--I am frequently labelled as a "special snowflake," a furry, someone who "throws a fit" if I don't get my way, someone with "weird" (meaning, abnormal) preferences, someone who can't be "happy" with "traditional" options (and must, apparently, thus be difficult to please?), someone that secretly wants to undermine DM authority or pervert DM vision or whatever else. People feel free to insult me--whether or not they intend to--purely because of a thing that brings me joy and does nothing whatever to them.
Have you truly seen the same from the other side? Statements EXPLICITLY calling the opposition disrespectful, fussy, unpleasable, etc.? Because I can't recall a single poster doing anything like that. The
absolute most has been people literally straight-up quoting others using phrases like "Ultimate Authority"/"Absolute Authority," "my house my castle," etc. There is one side OPENLY using derisive terms for the other, and another side
simply quoting the words of the first, and somehow it is the first side that is about respect, while the latter is subversively corrosive to respect? No, sorry, not buying that today.
The game is not about the setting, but settings matter. This is why different setting actually exist. The same really applies whether it was a homebrew or a bought setting. Theros, Ravnica, Dark Sun, these things are not same, everything that exists in one doesn't need to exist in another. If I buy a Star Trek setting book and I want to run a Star Trek game, and if the players show up wanting to play Jedis I am not gonna let them even though I could come up with some wacky excuse why that would be possible in the fiction. It would be an indication that the players actually were not interested playing the same game than me, and then it is better to simply not play that than to create some frankensteinian hybrid that no one was happy about.
1. Are you really going to claim that not merely wanting but DEMANDING to play Jedi in Star Trek is the same as asking, "Hey, can we figure out some way for me to play a half-orc in your setting?" Because...uh...yeah. Your hyperbole is a lot less effective when hyperbolic things aren't actually being mooted.
2. As others later on say: this sounds like a communication problem, which
starts on the DM's side. If literally the whole group arrives with Jedi in mind, it doesn't sound to me like the Trek-desiring DM has done their job. Who's at fault if the DM exclusively wants human core-four-class characters and gets a dragonborn warlock, a tiefling paladin, a half-elf druid, and a gnome barbarian? Sure, it COULD be the players, but
that much abject failure to respond seems like reasonably good evidence that a common factor is in play here...like the DM.
Thanks for giving an example of what people have posted on the past couple of pages never happens.
Honestly have zero idea what you're talking about. The post in question did not say anyone was engaging in badwrongfun, that the DM was foolish or mean or disrespectful, nor even that restrictions are bad. Literally all the quoted text said is (1) a snarky but pithy way of criticizing the never-ending refrain of the beleaguered-victim DM, and (2) saying, "If you run into this kind of problem where your players
universally fail to go with the concept you pitched, you as the DM may have made a mistake somewhere along the line." I would very much like to know what thing I or anyone else has said "never happens" which appears in the post in question.
If you create a new world for every campaign and want to design it by committee, great. I don't. I like it when the DM has a concrete notion of what the world is, I love the feel of discovering that world through the eyes of my PC. It's like picking up a new book or watching a movie I've never seen. Even if the movie is the millionth version of Batman if it's well made I enjoy seeing what twist or nuance has changed.
If anyone were asking for every game, or even
any particular game, to be "design[ed]...by committee," this would be a great point. But as no one
is asking for that, I'm not sure where this point comes from, but it smells suspiciously of straw. Further? I absolutely get my players actively involved in creating the world. And literally every single one of my current players (and most of my former players) have explicitly told me that exploring this world and discovering its secrets is a serious thrill and a major reason they continue playing. Involving players in building and expanding the world is not "design by committee," no matter how much you wish to disparage this style with comparisons to bad, bureaucratic design. (You
do realize that "design by committee" is usually an insult, right? A google search for the term reveals numerous articles about how to avoid it, or why it should die, and the Wikipedia article opens with calling it a "pejorative term.") Involving players in the worldbuilding and expanding emphatically does not prevent or weaken having a "concrete notion of what the world is," nor prevent discovery of that world and its contents.
Don't want to watch another Batman movie? Don't. Don't want to play in my campaign where I tell everyone that it's an established world that has history, depth and limitations on races? Find another game. Want to design by committee? Go for it. In my game I set the stage, make clear what the parameters are before a session 0. What you do on that stage is up to you and your fellow players.
And what if someone does, but would like to have a polite, positive conversation about doing something
very slightly differently? Someone who comes into that conversation not expecting guaranteed results, but rather hoping that mutual agreement can be reached while accepting the possibility that it won't. Someone looking for more of a conversation than, "Hey, could we talk about X?" "No, <just trust me on this one>/<X is dumb and I hate it>/<I'm the Absolute Authority, don't question me>/<etc.>"
Even if a DM has a comprehensive, detailed setting document, I honestly cannot understand why people still insist that
even just having a conversation about it is "disrespectful," offensive, perverting "DM vision," etc., etc. I am not exaggerating or falsely presenting this position; this is literally what people in this thread have actually, explicitly said and, when challenged, refused to back down.
If you are wanting to run Star Trek and the players come wanting to play Jedi, then I would be curious why you are trying to run Star Trek when the players clearly want to play Star Wars. Again, it seems like there is an absence of communication and a misalignment of play priorities here.
100% agreed. Hence why I say putting together a campaign is a negotiation. If the DM offers X, and
literally everyone else says they're looking for Y, there are only three options: either one party kowtows, both parties talk it out and find a solution, or no game happens. All--
literally all--I've been arguing for is that the middle option is the best choice whenever this kind of situation arises, with the other two being pretty obvious failure modes.
Why present the choice as being only between playing Star Trek or playing a "frankensteinian hybrid"? An alternative choice, which seems conspicuously absent, would then be to play Star Wars rather than throwing a fit about the players not wanting to play Star Trek and choosing not to play at all. If you don't want to play Star Wars, but the players do, then I'm not sure why you are framing this as the fault of the players. My main point is that I think that GM world-building should be done with players' own play preferences in mind rather than solely their own.
Exactly. Where are these alleged DMs that build a campaign world completely in isolation, without any consideration for what people might find interesting or compelling? The negotiation I'm talking about implicitly starts before the pitch is even offered--because a reasonable DM thinks about the kind of games her prospective audience (whether a captive one like "my gaming group" or an open one like "people I recruited online/at the FLGS/etc.") would want to play, and then selecting from that spectrum a game
she would want to run.
Okay? A DM having a concrete notion of the world is not inherently at odds with player input in said world, particularly if that input comes early enough in the design process. I am also not suggesting that setting has to be designed entirely by committee. Only that many DMs would likely save themselves a lot of frustration about players throwing wrenches into their meticulously planned settings with requests for "oddball races" if the DM talks to the players as part of the process.
Absolutely agreed. I have a fairly clear, concrete vision for the campaign I run. As I've said before, Arabian Nights flavor; compared to a "typical" D&D campaign, more merchants and deals, desert-survival travel, uncovering lost monuments or burial grounds long-hidden in the sands, political intrigue between organizations, etc. It's also very intentionally a bright and inclusive world; I've taken real-world fairly-inclusive cultures and ideas and turned things up to 11, because I want a world that decent, reasonable folk would WANT to protect...but which IS at risk of darkness clouding it over. My players still
could choose to just up sticks and leave, maybe head into the Ten Thousand Isles of the Sapphire Sea (think Sinbad the Sailor type "you never know what you'll find" islands) or south into the Elf-Forest, but I know they won't because they
do respect my judgment, and they know I'm working to offer the most interesting and engaging game I can. Part of how they know this, part of
why they respect my judgment, is that I go out of my way to make that judgment consonant with their interests. Instead of demanding their trust, I work--extremely hard--to
earn it, every time we play. I never, ever presume that my players should JUST trust me.
It is no ones fault per se. And one option would indeed to play Star Wars, but then someone else might need to run it. So same thing with D&D, if I want to run Dark Sun but players want to just play characters that are more in home in Forgotten Realms, then miscommunication has happened and the game is not gonna work, and just letting those Forgotten Realms characters in DS via some sort of portal etc is unlikely result a satisfactory experience to anyone.
And if anyone WERE asking for that, again, you'd have a great point. But nobody is. No one is asking for "let me play my Waterdeep nobleman in Athas, or we'll riot." Instead, people are saying, "Hey, I know Shardminds don't exist in Athas, but I think they're so damn cool. Is there anything we could do to make that work? I have this idea of waking up in the desert with no memory, and being made of obsidian." That's something that can be worked with--something that can be
worked into a Dark Sun game without violating any of the premises that make it Dark Sunny.
Are people reading the word "compromise" and thinking it means "put in jeopardy" rather than "negotiate"? Is that the problem here?
And here's where we get into DM's that have curated campaigns and "badwrongfun". A DM doesn't have to justify their choices to you or anyone.
The game pitch--communicating the game to the players--
literally is justifying your choices to your players. I don't see any other possible way to view it. You're trying to get them on-board, invested, curious: you literally have to tell them WHY they should care.
I don't make decisions based on "whims", but yes, I do make decisions based on personal taste. There is no game without a DM, if the DM doesn't embrace the core concepts of the campaign I don't see how that campaign will be fun for everyone. I chat with players all the time about tone and direction, but ultimately the buck stops with me.
So, I hope you realize that that first sentence reads like a distinction without a difference unless you add some more to it. Also: why, again, do you assume that the player is automatically trying to violate "the core concepts of the campaign" by wanting to have a conversation like this? You yourself even seem to do EXACTLY what is being asked for--have a conversation, listen to what the players want, try to find a compromise if one is possible--and yet you still have this need to insist that you have absolute power, absolute authority. "There is no game without a DM"? There is no game without players, either--and most groups I've ever heard of fold if they drop below 3 players + DM.
As far as players being replaceable, what can I say? I've never had problems forming a group or keeping players once we've gotten going. Life sometimes interferes with gaming and I've never had a problem replacing those that have left. I also acknowledge that I'm not the right DM for every player and vice versa. When did it become a moral obligation for a DM to allow whatever a player wants?
It. Never. Did.
WHY DO YOU KEEP SEEING THIS? Everyone here is rejecting that notion. Literally everyone. Not a single person has said that it is obligatory for the DM to offer everything a player wants. Not even the most strident pro-option posters like Lovedrive (who, I should note, I
do see as taking things a bit too far) have argued this. Why do you keep bringing up this straw man when it has been repeatedly, explicitly decried by every active participant in the thread at present?
This has absolutely nothing with "better or more correctly". A DM is entitled to have fun just as much as their players.
And all--literally all--I'm saying is that players are entitled to
seek their fun, even if after seeking, they find it won't happen. Yet to even ask about it has been painted as the most offensive thing a player can do to their DM. Disrespectful, untrusting, demanding, lacking imagination, fighting against DM vision, demanding that the DM have less fun. Hell, simply by
saying "A DM is entitle to have fun just as much as their players," you are implicitly saying that a player EVEN ASKING for something not officially approved is actively trying to make the DM have less fun!
Or else they just want the player to abide by what the player agreed to abide by. When you join a game that's all human, you are violating the social contract and being an arse if you then ask for an elf. By joining you've agreed to be human.
See, that's an interesting assumption.
Where did the player agree to this? I have not seen this established anywhere in this conversation. We have been talking about people who HAVEN'T joined a game yet. People who are CONSIDERING joining a game, and are thus asking questions and working with the DM.
So: Where did this assumption that the player has ALREADY signed on, ALREADY agreed, come from?
You can have history and depth and have a large multitude of races. It has happened, a lot, so please stop putting your personal experience forward as a fact on this matter.
Completely agreed. This and other strawman arguments levied at "pro-option" posters have gotten incredibly tedious.
I honestly can't imagine restricting player choice that much in D&D. It's one thing to say no drow, kender, or tortles but it's quite another thing to say human only. I wouldn't be interested in that game either and as a player I'm human 90% of the time.
Well, people in this very thread have explicitly advocated for it. Or worse, one poster permits those other things, and then actively punishes the player until the player leaves the game or figures out that they were
supposed to choose human, the very best race like no one ever was.
For this, I think it varies by tables. Some players want to just show up, roll dice, and roleplay. They don't want to be part of the world building anymore than a reader wants to build the world of the book they are reading. They want to interact with the world. They want the ability to alter and shape it. They don't want to create it because it might spoil the mystery of exploring.
Creating the world doesn't actually spoil that mystery though, unless you somehow become privy to
all of it. I like to refer to worldbuilding as "putting pieces on the board." I permit my players to add new pieces to the board during play, with relatively mild restrictions. But just because the player knows that piece is on the board, doesn't mean they know who controls it, or what other pieces it interacts with, or whether that piece is just one among many or a solitary entity, or...etc. Even when the players can simply straight-up create setting elements, there is almost always MORE for them to discover about those elements--the parts
I bring to the table, or the ways the other players riff off of those things.
But yes, I grant that there are some players who want to be purely reactive/observing/etc. (I do not mean to imply
passive observation, by the way; I just don't know a better word for this context, so I apologize for any untoward implications, they are not intended.) Some players emphatically don't want to participate in the above ways, and that's okay. If they don't, they aren't forced to.
This could not have been said better.
Also, for those who disagree, I would ask to turn the coin. What if the DM comes up to the player and says, no you need to play this background and class? Would any player be okay with that? (I actually might because I trust most DMs.)
I really think it
could have been said better--if only by avoiding a phrase that, whether Oofta meant it or not, insulted any form of DMing that involves active player participation in the world. As for the question itself: Sure, that would upset me. Isn't that what's being offered, though? "You'll play a human core-four class and like it." I would
not automatically trust the DM. I don't automatically
distrust them either; I just need reasons to do so before I will. They're the ones
offering a game to me.
Now. Is this actually the same as the player--again, I want to stress
positively and politely--asking to have a conversation about whether something not on the table, whether it be a blacklisted thing or a not-whitelisted thing, could be made to work? Because I think there's a pretty strong distinction between "hey, I'd like to talk about how I might play a dragonborn or something like it in your game" and "no, you WILL play a sailor barbarian in this game." One wants to talk, the other wants to
demand.
There are rules to the game. And, in part, those rules imply different roles for the people at the table. The player is not meta-cognizant of the setting, nor should they be. The DM is. The player controls his character's actions within the realm of the rules and setting. The DM does not. The player gets to create their character within the rules and setting. The DM does not.
I don't know what "meta-cognizant of the setting" means. And as far as I'm concerned, a DM writing up a world so rigidly, so unalterably, that
to even ask, "Could I play a dragonborn somehow? Is there anything we could do on that front?"
would make it shatter, IS a DM moving into the very space you say the DM isn't allowed to enter.
Hmm... I haven't seen anyone object to compromise. What I have seen is people object to something that does not fit the setting/theme that they worked hard to develop.
I'd have to dig up the quote, but no, we really did have a poster say that even asking was somehow rude--and, see above, with the explicit statements of stuff like "disrespectful" etc. I'm not being hyperbolic or taking people out of context here.
Compromise implies something on both ends, does it not.
Yes. I have literally said this. Repeatedly. Are my posts just disappearing into the ether? It can't be that people have put me on their ignore list--ENWorld makes that symmetric, if someone ignores you, you can't see their posts either.
That is compromise. I do not hear any DM in here objecting to that.
I do. I hear people openly saying that
even to ask the question is disrespectful to the work you, as DM, have done. That you don't even need to point people to a similar culture and look into other ways to hit the right buttons, and instead you are not only well within your rights to show the players the door, you SHOULD do so because such a player automatically doesn't trust you and doesn't belong in your game.
I thought it was more people asking to explain their settings and some DMs saying they shouldn't have to. I'm sorry, I only have that level of trust for people I know AND understand how they prefer to play.
This. Just this.
No. You definitely should expect an answer. I haven't seen a DM in here that wouldn't give an answer. For some, it might be vague, such as "story purposes." (I think that is what someone said earlier?) Others might give you their world guidebook and explain the map in great detail. And others fall in between. But, yes, they should give you an answer.
And I have seen people who are, whether implicitly or explicitly, saying they not only
don't need to give an answer beyond "I just hate those things" or "trust me," but who are actively empowered to treat such a question as a reason to exclude a prospective player from the game.
I was thinking about how I do one offs - anything goes. It gives players a chance to explore different combinations and just have fun with no commitment. Kind of like a one night stand. Then, contrasting that to a campaign, where the DM has put a lot more hours up front (for some), and the players have to make a long term commitments. Kind of like a long term relationship. I guess one has more rules in order to be sustaining.
Sure. Self-restraint and the wisdom to apply it correctly are the fundamental building blocks of maturity. But even a long-term relationship
needs to have
some openness and flexibility, lest every little bump on the road or change in either person will break it. This is especially true in the first flower of that relationship! You
have to do the work of really drilling down and knowing what people want, and finding ways to achieve contentment for both parties. If, in the process of doing that work, you learn that there simply is no such way? Then the relationship needs to end, sooner rather than later.
It's not evil, but it's plausible that even an honest answer might be a veil drawn over "because I don't want them." Or, really complicated.
There is a difference between even "I don't want X because that would imply Y" and what some posters have openly stated, such as "I think X is dumb/ugly/boring/stereotypical, so I won't let you do it."
It's possible that most or all of my reasons would come out in a conversation, if I got what felt like an honest response to "Why do you want to play one?" I don't mind explaining, and I don't mind listening.
Then you would have done your due diligence, and it is incumbent on the player to do theirs.
It wasn't confusing, though.
Again, compromise doesn't have to mean giving the player the race he wants. No dragonborn will ever grace my game. However, I will work with the player to find/create something else just as fun or more fun to play.
1. Don't really think you get to tell your audience unilaterally "my point wasn't confusing." I certainly was confused too.
2. If that is what you do, WHY IN GOD'S NAME ARE WE ARGUING? I have literally said this exact thing over and over and over and over, and you keep disputing it only to then say it yourself, as though you were the one finally speaking reason to an unreasonable person. If this was truly your position all along, why didn't you just AGREE with me 50 pages ago? Why is it
so goddamn important that your players bow before your "Ultimate Authority" if your actual position is "I'll work to find things players will like, even if it doesn't always work out"?! For God's sake man, are you
trying to be infuriating?
I would, like you, be very reluctant to play in a campaign where the GM was being so ... insistent about so much about the PCs. I have, however, played a character who was an amnesiac, and trusted the GM to write the backstory--that is, however a very different dynamic.
I, too, have done such a thing. And it was very fun. Campaign-defining fun, even! God, I miss that game.
For what that's worth.
