Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 5392778" data-attributes="member: 58197">I don't think DMs are under any obligation to incorporate everything from the Player's Handbook (which I assume is what you mean by "the standard list") when building a campaign world. The deal I offer my players is this: I will build a world, populate it, prepare adventures in it. If you want to play in it--within the constraints I have built into it--you are welcome to do so. If not, I will step down and someone else can run a game.As a player, if I find I'm not happy with my character concept, I can usually swap characters without much trouble. As DM, however, I'm locked into my chosen setting. If I find I'm not happy with it in a way that can't be solved by superficial retcons, my only option is to kill the whole campaign.I have learned over the years that it does not pay to be overly accommodating when world-building. If a player wants to be an X and I say, "No Xs in my world," the player will usually make something else and be fine with it. If I agree to work Xs in even though I don't really want them, they will be a permanent fixture in the setting and I will find them increasingly irritating every time I have to deal with them.To be sure, I am picky about things like theme, atmosphere, and verisimilitude. Not all DMs feel the same way. For many folks, the "kitchen sink" approach works perfectly well, and more power to them. But if I am expected to incorporate every wacky thing the players feel like playing, or work in the same standard list of Tolkien rejects game after game, I'm just not gonna DM; world-crafting is where much if not most of my DM fun comes from.Well, anybody can ask to play anything. I take much the same approach, except that I may well respond to this request with, "No, you can't play a Carebear. Not even if the rest of the group is 100% cool with it."If you object to my excising races from the Player's Handbook, you don't want to know the amount of stuff I cut from the monster books. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

Verification