D&D 5E World-Building DMs

[Uchawi]

The hardest part for any DM is making their world or setting transparent and living, while providing as much information as possible to the players for any given moment. The problem is the DM has time constraints just like anyone else, so how prepared they are depends on how much time they have.

Where I run into problems as a player is having to beg or plea to get any useful information out of the DM, or when the DM assumes how to play my character and what knowledge they may have.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Yaarel]

Does your answer depend on whether the world was created with you (or your group) as a player as the intended audience, vs whether the world was already existing or created for a general audience of players beyond your group?

Yes.

 

[ProgBard]

Conversely, I find that I need to be excited about the campaign to run a good game. If I have an idea for a campaign that excites me, and players bring in PCs that go against that idea, my
excitement fades rapidly and my game will suck. So I'm not really doing players any favours by letting them play whatever they want. If anything I find my problem is more not making expectations clear, eg proposing a 4e Conanesque swords & sorcery campaign one time I don't think I made clear
enough that I was looking mostly for mighty-thewed barbarians, cunning rogues, grim
mercenaries and such; so I mostly got Warlocks and other spellcasters who didn't fit the
theme nearly as well. In the end the most successful PCs were the ones who started as
Fighter pregens.

Well, sure. The GM is also a player; I need to make sure I'm sufficiently indulging my own obsessions and favorite themes when I run. But I do feel pretty strongly that these need to flow around the space created by the PCs - it's that old idea that the players' choices in character creation tell you the kind of stories they want to be part of.

And there are limits to how much it's reasonable to pre-cast the party. My first reaction to your sword & sorcery game is to feel like if you're not going to have fun in that setting if you're not running it for a party of Kulls and Grey Mousers and Mirt the Moneylenders, and that's not who the players are most interested in playing, it's a mismatch between DM and players; your protocols are going to be clashing too much. I've learned over the years to be a lot more lax about the kinds of stories I expect to happen even when I'm strongly invested in the elements of the setup, and that I like having players surprise me with unexpected directions. But if that's not your style, that's okay too - but as you say, it requires very clear, very specific conversations well in advance of chargen.

And, look, we all carry unspoken expectations to the table, some of which are hard to articulate until we encounter something that violates them. One player in my current game is running a dwarven cleric; this player is fairly new to the game and innocent of Realmslore and half a century of fantasy stereotypes, and he picked Mielikki as his deity. When another player remarked what an unusual choice that would be for a dwarf, he IMed me after the game to ask if he should change it. Teenage me, much more wedded to the archetypes of D&D-style fantasy, would have been a lot more bothered by the disconnect and more likely to concur. Middle-aged me said, "If you really want to. But consider that adventurers SHOULD be unusual, remarkable people. What's the more interesting choice to you?" He wound up keeping it, and it's prompted some really awesome things in his backstory and character arc, and I think the game is stronger for it.

 

[ProgBard]

This is an excellent thought to add into the mix. Is part of the objection based on specific D&D assumptions? Because that would, at least, explain why I'm guessing a lot of people would feel it's okay in a spy game, but just aren't comfortable saying it's okay in a D&D game.

I really think it is. If you were to say to your player group, I want to start a campaign in a homebrew fantasy world, and we're using Fate, I don't think you'd get as much, or the same kind of, pushback - the roll-your-own nature of that project in that sytem is going to make it a lot more likely players will ask what's included rather than make assumptions, and less likely they'll be jerks when you tell them something isn't part of the setting. With D&D specifically, you're bringing in forty years of "stuff that's part of D&D" that can be hard to jettison from the heads of your players. Not impossible, but definitely challenging.

I do think your examples of parallel scenarios are pointing to slightly different things. Your spy game has its own set of protocols and expectations (with its own spectrum of history to be specific about, because are we talking Bond or Legends? Is my criminologist profiler going to be just as out of place as a wizard, when you were hoping I'd bring a gadgeteer?), but the disconnect you're talking about is cross-genre rather than in-genre, if you take my meaning. Broadly speaking, the same is true of the Wookiee in Middle-Earth. And the absurdity of those examples only stands out because there's broadly-shared cultural knowledge about what the world of spy movies or LotR or Westeros look like; when you're just some guy with a home-grown campaign setting, I have no idea unless I've taken the time already to read your writeup (which, by the by, let's just say there are many fewer GMs who are good at articulating what their worlds look and feel like than believe they are). Savvy fantasy readers might know enough to ask some of the right questions to get them grounded ("So, is this setting more Swordspoint or Fionavar?"), but understand that's a 201-level discussion and you may need to adjust your expectations as to which of your players even have the necessary perspective for it.

 

[Phantarch]

So long as the Dwarven cleric of Mielikki doesn't have a green beard and call himself a Doodad.

Seriously, though, I do think a DM is generally better served to allow quirky oddities, but explain how such things are going to be a received in the world. A player who plays a tiefling shouldn't be surprised if their character is met with fear and prejudice most of the time, for example. (NOT that a DM should beat that player over the head with it, just have natural consequences that encourage roleplaying.)

 

[ProgBard]

Seriously, though, I do think a DM is generally better served to allow quirky oddities, but explain how such things are going to be a received in the world. A player who plays a tiefling shouldn't be surprised if their character is met with fear and prejudice most of the time, for example. (NOT that a DM should beat that player over the head with it, just have natural consequences that encourage roleplaying.)

Exactly so. And I think it's incumbent on the DM to not make those natural consequences feel like punishment for choosing a particular concept. We do in fact have a tiefling character in the group, and he does sometimes encounter fear and prejudice (like the temple cleric who told the party, "All but the devil-spawn may enter") - and when that happens, you bet I give Inspiration for it. And sometimes it's just the odd microagression, like the innkeeper who tried to offer him a meal of "something spicy, to satisfy your diabolical nature!" - but I try not to lean too hard on that sort of thing either, so it doesn't go over the line of being fun. (The player in question is a very good sport about it, and #notalltieflings has become one of our running in-jokes.)

 

[Faraer]

As a player, I'm far more likely to want to play in a coherent setting than an anything-goes campaign, and I wouldn't dream of not cooperating with it -- that would be rude and bizarre. In my experience, a high proportion of eccentric character-type choices, whether that standard is the campaign's or the published game's, are made by attention-seekers who aren't fully engaging with the shared fantasy -- they're symptoms of a deeper problem.

 

[Greg K]

So in conclusion, I am with [MENTION=67338]GMforPowergamers[/MENTION] on this one - I will play your game for a session or maybe a month or two, but if you want a serious campaign then I have to play something that interests me, not what interests you.

And you not playing is, perfectly fine with me. When I run, I state this is the setting that I am running (house rules, campaign rules, etc. are all stated up front). If you are interested in what I am offering, our styles and influences mesh (there is an interview process), and there is room, I will give you a seat on a trial basis. However, you are agreeing to play what I am offering. If you are not interested, there is no hard feelings. Different tastes and all that. However, no player is entitled to a seat simply because we both play D&D.

 

[Greg K]

One of the great and wonderful things about playing with a group of people you know, rather than designing for strangers, is that you can converse with them.

Player A wants to be a dragonborn fighter. You can ask why. They can answer. You can explain their are not dragonborn, but there is this quirky tribe of goliaths that have lizards as pets.

For myself, I would suggest a Lizard Man as they exist in my campaign.