D&D General Wildly Diverse "Circus Troupe" Adventuring Parties

[Remathilis]

I wouldn’t necessarily call excluding something written for another setting an “arbitrary” line.

But then again, I’ve played at tables with DMs who disallowed core classes & races because they don’t like them and don’t want to deal with them in their game.

It does create a very arbitrary line when one thing is generic enough to be in the PHB (Knowledge domain) but shunted off to the Forgotten Realms book, and now you get a bunch of bad interactions, such as DMs calling it Realms exclusive or lumping it in with spellfire sorcery or Scion of the three rogue (which is very Realms specific) or often carte blanche banning the book because they don't want the headache of figuring out where genie magic or spellfire fits in their Eberron game.

I'm just saying it would be a lot easier for everyone if it was all designed for one setting and the DM didn't have to worry about if something "fits" in an official D&D world.

 

[Necropolitan]

It does create a very arbitrary line when one thing is generic enough to be in the PHB (Knowledge domain) but shunted off to the Forgotten Realms book, and now you get a bunch of bad interactions, such as DMs calling it Realms exclusive or lumping it in with spellfire sorcery or Scion of the three rogue (which is very Realms specific) or often carte blanche banning the book because they don't want the headache of figuring out where genie magic or spellfire fits in their Eberron game.

Has that actually happened enough that it's a real problem?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

It does create a very arbitrary line when one thing is generic enough to be in the PHB (Knowledge domain) but shunted off to the Forgotten Realms book, and now you get a bunch of bad interactions, such as DMs calling it Realms exclusive or lumping it in with spellfire sorcery or Scion of the three rogue (which is very Realms specific) or often carte blanche banning the book because they don't want the headache of figuring out where genie magic or spellfire fits in their Eberron game.

I'm just saying it would be a lot easier for everyone if it was all designed for one setting and the DM didn't have to worry about if something "fits" in an official D&D world.

That’s still not arbitrary on the DM’s side- they’re just saying “don’t use anything from this campaign setting” or “only use stuff from X,Y & Z”. I wouldn’t expect for a given DM to know and thus distinguish between things in every setting that’s generic vs hyper specific. Hell- I’m somewhat of a completist, and I know I don’t know enough to distinguish between those categories for the stuff I own…much less the stuff I’ve not bought yet (and might never).

Instead, blame WotC for putting something in a campaign-specific product as opposed to one that’s systemwide ready, or not republishing it a subsequent product. (There’s several things in 3.5Ed that got republished in multiple books.)

NOTE: Republication & “system bloat” raises its own issues. In 3.5Ed, there’s 2 different feats called Sacred Healing, and they do two very different things. And no, the subsequently released one is NOT a replacement for the older one- I actually contacted WotC. Somebody simply missed the existence of the older feat somehow.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

They just keep homebrewing their own setting just like they already do and absolutely nothing changes, because you can't somehow stop DMs from creating their own settings. For whatever my experience is worth, my estimate would be 90% of the audience

The problem being discussed here is unsolvable because it's not actually a problem.

And they're definitely not going to get mad in the slightest that their preferred setting has been kicked to the curb?

I wish I had as much faith in humanity as you do.

 

[Remathilis]

And they're definitely not going to get mad in the slightest that their preferred setting has been kicked to the curb?

I wish I had as much faith in humanity as you do.

BIrthright 2027

 

[DrJawaPhD]

Has that actually happened enough that it's a real problem?

Blanket answer applicable to this entire thread: No it has not.

 

[Hussar]

If you are homebrewing, good luck even assuming the options in the PHB are available!

Heck, never minding homebrewing, even in published settings, different tables interpret the setting totally differently. Just this week I've been told that dragonborn are incredibly rare in the Sword Coast AND they can easily be found everywhere in the Sword Coast.

No wonder players don't care about settings.

 

[Necropolitan]

No wonder players don't care about settings.

Players do care about settings.

 

[Hussar]

Players do care about settings.

Let me rephrase. Players very rarely will care as much about a setting as the DM does. At least, that's been my experience. And my experience has also been that the players couldn't give a rat's petoot about setting when creating characters. They come with fully formed characters more often than not and then expect the DM to somehow fit that character into the setting.

So, to rephrase so as to not be accused of painting with too broad of a brush: In my experience, players do not care about setting as much as the DM does and rarely spend more than a token effort trying to learn anything about the setting unless it directly impacts their play right at the time.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

D&D has opted to be a mile wide and an inch deep, and it's too late to change that. So we just have to get used to the consequences.

If you wish to use such a jaundiced description, that's your bag.

I see it as choosing to be 44 yards wide, 44 yards long, and 44 yards deep (44.147^3, if you prefer). A cube, the thing which minimizes surface area for a fixed cuboid volume. As opposed to being a foot on either side, and 440 miles tall--perfect to send you soaring to the highest heights if you fit into its single square foot of area, totally useless if you want to go anywhere else.

Which is precisely the problem with what you advocate. Other games can get away with it because they aren't trying to offer something that most people can get into.

In fact, I have the perfect analogy here. You're saying everyone should switch to Macintosh computers, or go all the way to Linux--that Windows shouldn't be used by anyone, because casual users benefit from the closed ecosystem of Apple products, and serious users benefit from the almost complete control Linux provides. Except that there really actually is benefit in Windows offering a middle point, something which has most of the complicated stuff taken care of for you but leaves open the possibility of restructuring it, up to a point. That package genuinely appeals to a variety of people, and is a significant but far from unique/determinative, reason why Windows is the dominant product in the personal computing market, even with it very slowly losing market share over time. (It's still 2/3 of the market.)

Perhaps--if the TTRPG market had been carefully engineered from the very beginning with a focused plan--such a thing could, potentially, have produced a better result. But at this point, this is like saying that base-12 or metric time would have been easier to work with and better for everyone. Yes, we could theoretically convert to a base-12 number system and fully metric time...but it would be enormously expensive in time and money both, for pretty small benefits. Same with converting to true metric time and thus changing every single fundamental constant that in any way relates to amounts of time (generally, because you're changing what "a second" means).

More or less what I'm saying is, the thing you propose could only have occurred if TTRPGs had been precision-designed from the ground up with infinite scalability and scope in mind. They weren't and almost certainly could not have been so. As a result, whatever system took the crown would have ended up in the position D&D is: having a distinct flavor of its own, but used for a wide variety of experiences.