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<blockquote data-quote="ProgBard" data-source="post: 6766853" data-attributes="member: 6803722"><p>So I find myself of two minds about this.</p><p></p><p>Because on the one hand, I love worldbuilding. I love drawing maps and naming countries and inventing histories and the whole Secondary Creation deal. It's a joy and a labor of love, and if I'm going to do it I'd rather it be mine and not just the Realms with the continents rearranged and the serial numbers filed off.</p><p></p><p>And so several times I tried to do the restrictive campaign, when I was younger and a great deal crankier about all these derivative elves and dwarves taking up space in my Vry Srs Fantasy. It never worked out the way I planned. I'd have my background and character creation notes ready and I'd show up at the table and someone would inevitably be there already with their elven druid. And I just didn't want to be That A-hole.</p><p></p><p>I've come to feel more and more that not being That A-hole was the right decision. I might someday try to do a big unique worldbuilding thing for an RPG campaign, but only for people I could trust enough, and talk it through with beforehand, to get the buy-in. And I probably wouldn't use D&D for it.</p><p></p><p>Because people come to D&D with certain expectations. They want the freedom to get excited about the possibilities the PHB has on offer. And I don't think they're wrong to want that. Unless you're all in with players who are specifically excited about some particular nonstandard campaign world, I think it's a little... much for the DM to shoot them down with "But, MAH VISHUN!" For the player who is interested in the implied D&D universe, it's fighting the protocols of the game. You can get away with doing so, but you really need to screen carefully beforehand.</p><p></p><p>And mostly I've come to realize - and this is a tough pill to swallow for someone with the kind of ego it takes to do DMing OR world-building - that the experience of the game isn't about me. And it's certainly not about my special snowflake universe that's too precious to be tainted by elves or dragonborn or whatever it is that's stuck in my craw this week. I'm a smart guy and a decent entertainer, but if I need to keep that heavy a hand on the tiller, I really ought to just shut up and write a book already.</p><p></p><p>(Which should not be confused with saying that anything a player wants goes, of course. But we're not talking here about the genuine problem players, or the Guy Who Always Plays Drizzt and suchlike. We're talking about the folks who just had in mind some perfectly main-sequence concept from the basic rulebook, who really probably don't deserve some chubby nerd with a cardboard screen telling them "Not in MY world, you don't.")</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="ProgBard, post: 6766853, member: 6803722"] So I find myself of two minds about this. Because on the one hand, I love worldbuilding. I love drawing maps and naming countries and inventing histories and the whole Secondary Creation deal. It's a joy and a labor of love, and if I'm going to do it I'd rather it be mine and not just the Realms with the continents rearranged and the serial numbers filed off. And so several times I tried to do the restrictive campaign, when I was younger and a great deal crankier about all these derivative elves and dwarves taking up space in my Vry Srs Fantasy. It never worked out the way I planned. I'd have my background and character creation notes ready and I'd show up at the table and someone would inevitably be there already with their elven druid. And I just didn't want to be That A-hole. I've come to feel more and more that not being That A-hole was the right decision. I might someday try to do a big unique worldbuilding thing for an RPG campaign, but only for people I could trust enough, and talk it through with beforehand, to get the buy-in. And I probably wouldn't use D&D for it. Because people come to D&D with certain expectations. They want the freedom to get excited about the possibilities the PHB has on offer. And I don't think they're wrong to want that. Unless you're all in with players who are specifically excited about some particular nonstandard campaign world, I think it's a little... much for the DM to shoot them down with "But, MAH VISHUN!" For the player who is interested in the implied D&D universe, it's fighting the protocols of the game. You can get away with doing so, but you really need to screen carefully beforehand. And mostly I've come to realize - and this is a tough pill to swallow for someone with the kind of ego it takes to do DMing OR world-building - that the experience of the game isn't about me. And it's certainly not about my special snowflake universe that's too precious to be tainted by elves or dragonborn or whatever it is that's stuck in my craw this week. I'm a smart guy and a decent entertainer, but if I need to keep that heavy a hand on the tiller, I really ought to just shut up and write a book already. (Which should not be confused with saying that anything a player wants goes, of course. But we're not talking here about the genuine problem players, or the Guy Who Always Plays Drizzt and suchlike. We're talking about the folks who just had in mind some perfectly main-sequence concept from the basic rulebook, who really probably don't deserve some chubby nerd with a cardboard screen telling them "Not in MY world, you don't.") [/QUOTE]
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