D&D 5E (2014) Who Picks the Campaign? DMs, Players, and Choice

[overgeeked]

How does everyone feel about "stars and wishes"? I like the stars part but not the wishes part

What are "stars and wishes" in this context?

 

[Voadam]

When my brother was burnt out on DMing our online group and asked me to consider running a campaign, I looked over my big adventures that I had an interest in running at the time and came up with the following list for the group's consideration.

1 Rising Shadow in Middle Earth
2 Investigations in Pirate City
3 Completely Not-Haunted Funeral of Professor Jones
4 Starts off with Goblins
5 Plagues, Riots, More 2020 themes
6 Meteor Strike
7 Efreeti Aladdin
8 Ancient Dungeons
9 Baba Yaga and the White Witch
10 Punch Demons in the Face
11 The Mummy
12 Thundarr the Barbarian
13 Maquis in Devil-Nazi Land
14 Doctors Without Borders
15 Tatters of a Play
16 Masks Around the World
17 Dark Shadows
18 Spawn of Pulp Action
19 The Lothian Express
20 Chained Coffin in the Holler

The system was going to be 5e (even though most of the adventures would be conversions from 3.5, Pathfinder 1e, Call of Cthulhu, or Dungeon Crawl Classics) and the setting would probably be my homebrew mashup one (Middle Earth might have been used straight up if the group went with that one).

I got some questions from the group and everyone got jazzed up about Thundar the Barbarian D&D so it was Iron Gods 5e in my homebrew setting with lots of character specific input to riff off of.

 

[Umbran]

Or use a generic system and play whatever themes and genres you want.

Generic systems... aren't actually generic. They are at best semi-generic. Any finite ruleset will still be notably better at supporting some themes than others.

 

[Umbran]

Massive snippage because Snarf is wordy but at least he put the important part in italics.

Yeah. I don't think anyone's arguing with that point.

Some of us are gnawing at the implication that GM investment is tied to not asking the players opinions about stuff first.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Where do Elven Bards that do root canals rank?

Pictured-

A poor soul who encountered an Elven Bard Dentist-

 

[overgeeked]

Generic systems... aren't actually generic. They are at best semi-generic. Any finite ruleset will still be notably better at supporting some themes than others.

That's not entirely true. I'd suggest you check out a wider variety of generic systems.

 

[Ovinomancer]

That's not entirely true. I'd suggest you check out a wider variety of generic systems.

Which would you recommend? I'm curious if you have examples to pair with your assertion.

 

[Maxperson]

Pictured-

A poor soul who encountered an Elven Bard Dentist-

Missed opportunity!

 

[FrogReaver]

That's not entirely true. I'd suggest you check out a wider variety of generic systems.

This would have been a perfect time to provide an example of a truly generic system.

 

[Maxperson]

This would have been a perfect time to provide an example of a truly generic system.

Isn't GURPS supposed to be generic?