The only mentioning of cheating that I've made is in my statements that it appears to me that the feature being asked for is intended to stop cheating (both the real cheating of reading an adventure you are going to play through, and the not-cheating-but-often-viewed-as-cheating-because-of-the-"this is DM only info because it's not in a book that says 'player' on the cover"-mentality of happening to know details about the game found in books like the Dungeon Master's Guide or Monster Manual), which isn't going to work because cheaters will cheat, so it shouldn't be the only acceptable solution for people that are insisting they are only worried about honest players unintentionally learning things.
Look, it's this paragraph that sums it up. The feature being requested has nothing to do with preventing cheating and it has nothing to do with some DM-only mentality thing that you keep bring up.
The feature is for literally these purposes:
The ability to restrict the type of source material that players can draw from for a campaign. Many groups run content allowing only specific source materials to be used, even though they own it. Further, certain groups only want certain things from the source material, like specific spells or feats. Being able to set that up in the campaign so that players can easily see only the stuff allowed for the campaign is very helpful.
Avoiding spoilers for content for both the adventure module that is being run and other adventure modules that the group may own. I may own SKT and you may own CoS. I may be running SKT now and you'll be running CoS after our current campaign. I, as both a DM and player don't want to see stuff from CoS popping up because I've added you to my campaign: I don't want any spoilers and I don't want other adventure modules cluttering up my planning sessions.
Let me try to describe my solution again as you're not understanding it.
I have my account, owensd. I also have my characters on my account, let's say Sam and Frodo. Sam is in SKT and Frodo is in CoS. When I'm playing SKT, I want to come to D&D Beyond and select Sam as my active character. As long as Sam is active, I only want to see the content that is available for the SKT campaign.
However, I can change to owensd or to Frodo and get a different set of filters. When I'm not using a player in a campaign, I should be able to see all of the content that is shared. So from the example above, I would still see SKT and CoS data when I performed a search. I'd see it because it was from my master account and I have two characters that are involved in campaigns that are sharing content.
Like others have alluded to and even mentioned directly, there are two different things here:
Sharing source material with your D&D group. This is specifically lokibryce's scenario. His group wants to share the cost and so they either chip in money and on person buys it or each buys one of the books to limit the cost that is required to purchase missing material when the inevitable happens of a group member needing to part ways.
Filtering content seen by players in an active campaign.
The feature I'm proposing above allows both of these to exist. Everyone shares everything and you can search if from your master account if you'd like. Second, I can have a set of filters applied to an active "character profile" so when I'm searching for potential upgrades or leveling my character, I see only the content the DM says is fair game for this campaign.
The other minor thing is that I should also be able to dictate which books I'm willing to share with others. However, I'm not terribly concerned with this specific implementation, but I could see how others might only want to share the content the group was willing to chip in for.
I would like to see the ability to share only the content I deem relevant to my specific campaign. Maybe the Genasi don't exist in my world as a playable race, or at all, but Lizardmen do. Basically, the ability to "black out" individual player options from sources other than the PHB until I feel like it is relevant and am willing to allow it.
Look, it's this paragraph that sums it up. The feature being requested has nothing to do with preventing cheating and it has nothing to do with some DM-only mentality thing that you keep bring up.
Apparently it doesn't sum it up well enough, since you are still thinking I'm saying something that is very different from what I am saying. I'll take things the other way around to see if that helps clarify where I am coming from.
If preventing your players from cheating is not the issue, why does the sharing control have to be something other than the players own choice to avoid reading things they don't want to know?
To that question, the only answers given that didn't completely misrepresent what I'm getting at boiled down to 'I want to stop people from reading my book, not stop them from reading the book at all'. To which I responded with my thoughts; That seems to be creating a distinction without a difference.
As for this having nothing to do with a DM-only mentality, if you are saying that the particular folks asking for the option to not share all their purchased content so far in this thread aren't folks that adhere to the mentality, then I'll say I think you are probably correct. But I will then also point out that this forum didn't used to have a "Dungeon Masters Only" sub-forum until after people started asking for a place for all the conversations that players aren't "supposed" to be able to participate in to go on - and while there are some adventure-content discussion going on, which players would naturally avoid because they don't want spoilers for anything they'll potentially be playing, there are tons of conversations about things like what kind of stuff to do at the table to make the game more fun which players really should weigh in on to help DMs get a view of things from the other side of the screen.
So it is a real thing, this DM-only mentality, and it is really a pain in the general gamer populace's backside, even if they haven't yet seen past doing as they've been told to do (i.e. stay out of the DM only area if you aren't a DM) to what might be better than the current state of things (i.e. DMs that go looking for ways to up the enjoyment of their games getting the perspective of what players enjoy from players, rather than just what DMs do that they hope their players like but have probably never actually asked because how to DM better is a "DM only" conversation).
If preventing your players from cheating is not the issue, why does the sharing control have to be something other than the players own choice to avoid reading things they don't want to know?
I've answered this so many times already. Did you read what I wrote above? If you don't get it from that and understand, there's little else I can add.
As for this having nothing to do with a DM-only mentality, if you are saying that the particular folks asking for the option to not share all their purchased content so far in this thread aren't folks that adhere to the mentality, then I'll say I think you are probably correct. But I will then also point out that this forum didn't used to have a "Dungeon Masters Only" sub-forum until after people started asking for a place for all the conversations that players aren't "supposed" to be able to participate in to go on - and while there are some adventure-content discussion going on, which players would naturally avoid because they don't want spoilers for anything they'll potentially be playing, there are tons of conversations about things like what kind of stuff to do at the table to make the game more fun which players really should weigh in on to help DMs get a view of things from the other side of the screen.
So it is a real thing, this DM-only mentality, and it is really a pain in the general gamer populace's backside, even if they haven't yet seen past doing as they've been told to do (i.e. stay out of the DM only area if you aren't a DM) to what might be better than the current state of things (i.e. DMs that go looking for ways to up the enjoyment of their games getting the perspective of what players enjoy from players, rather than just what DMs do that they hope their players like but have probably never actually asked because how to DM better is a "DM only" conversation).
Why are there bug feedback forums? Why are there class specific forums? If I play a bard, does that mean that I can't read and participate in the fighter forums? No, of course not! The DM's forum is no different; it's a grouping of content that will be more relevant to people running games vs people playing in games.
The rules and things to make it more fun should go in the "Rules & Mechanics" forum. The DM one is for game spoiling mechanics, quests, and to ask questions for DM related questions.
I will admit that the idea of someone being maliciously locked out from content they'd shared the cost of was something I'd never really considered, both because I'm likely going to be covering most if not all the costs, and also because the people I play with are close friends. But I can see that circumstances change and friendships can become strained, so a solution for your issues will need to be looked into, certainly. I suppose as we're considering work arounds could the cost be shared by people buying whole books each which are then shared within the campaign? Then, if things go awry, if people leave your group they can at least take what they've paid for with them?
Same here, which is why my opinion changed after reading some other viewpoints. Initially I wanted to control what others could see regardless of "ownership"-- but I see that is ridiculous now. If i purchased something and someone else had the ability to block that I'd be extremely angry. However if I didn't purchase two books, someone else should still have the option to share one with me without having to share the 2nd with me.
As far as maliciously blocking content and a group chipping in -- If you have the person in charge of the account that your group all chipped in for choosing to lock you out of content, it really isn't that far away from that person taking the account and running (i.e. kicking you all from the campaign and keeping the account). There isn't a way to prevent that -- if you pool money outside of dndbeyond and one person pays with one account -- in dndbeyond's eyes it should be seen as that one person's purchase as there is no way to prove you all shared the money coming in, a group of people can just accuse someone of "stealing" their books because of an agreement made outside of the product purchase and there's no way to prove who is right.
Now if there was a way to group purchase through the product itself, that could mitigate the above concern, but I have no ideas how the nitty-gritty details would work with something like that. (Say I chip in $10, you chip in $15, and someone else chips in the $4.99 -- who gets the product when we split up?) I do like your idea of just getting a credit for whatever you put into shared content -- but then you could potentially have a bunch of available funds that aren't applied to something if the group breaks -- what if you chipped in $10 each for 5 separate products? You have $50 put into the system, but you never actually bought any whole book, so now you have $50 invested but no content delivered. I'm sure there are answers out there, but that's out of the scope of this thread I think, and would definitely be an option worth exploring. If you chipped in for a product you would then theoretically be unable to be blocked from viewing it.
Why are there bug feedback forums? Why are there class specific forums? If I play a bard, does that mean that I can't read and participate in the fighter forums?[/quote]
The major difference there is that those forum titles do not use the language of exclusion. Those forums state the type of content they are intended for - bugs, and each of the classes - and only that type of content is meant to go there, but the type of person posting the content is not mentioned at all, let alone given an implied restriction.
The "DM only" forum is actually, content wise, just a second channel of the Tips & Tactics, Rules & Mechanics, and Homebrew & House Rules forums because any content posted within could be posted in one of those forums instead - but this channel implies that players are meant to keep out, and as a result (in my experience) that means the vast majority of players do keep out.
The rules and things to make it more fun should go in the "Rules & Mechanics" forum. The DM one is for game spoiling mechanics, quests, and to ask questions for DM related questions.
And yet that's not how they are being used by the general forum-going populace. So how do we fix that? Do we keep reporting any thread that shows up in the DM Only forum that could go in a different forum as being out-of-place? That might aggravate the moderators, since fitting in another forum doesn't actually mean it doesn't also fit in the DM Only forum. How do we get the people that start threads in the DM Only forum that are not spoiler-filled to start those threads elsewhere instead?
I'm genuinely asking, because I sure don't know. I already spoke out against having a DM Only sub-forum when other posters started asking for one because they could accomplish what was claimed to be desired - to mark certain threads as spoiler-filled for players - with the naming of their threads in the sub-forums that already existed at the time. But no, they insisted they wanted a DM Only forum instead of to tag individual threads as not for players based on topic, even though that goes beyond marking topics as spoilder-filled and creates an echo chamber wherein only the opinions of DMs are going to be found that perpetuates the severely flawed view that there is something wrong or abnormal about a player knowing anything about the game found outside character building options.
Remember what Gary Gygax wrote about players looking through the DMG in the preface to the AD&D 1e DMG.
"As this book is the exclusive precinct of the DM, you must view any non-DM player possessing it something less than worthy of honorable death"
Maybe attitudes have changed a little over the years. :)
Not nearly enough. But yes, it was the good ol' G-man himself that started the absolutely awful idea that only a completely clueless player is a good player. Which is weird, since he's also the one that advised DMs to bend/break the rules whenever they saw fit to do so, so it really didn't even matter to his own gaming philosophy whether the other people at the table had read the DMG or not.
Plus, seriously, come on Gary - Dave can't play at your table any more even though the pair of you made up the game together because he knows the DM-stuff too? Purely ridiculous way of thinking.
The major difference there is that those forum titles do not use the language of exclusion. Those forums state the type of content they are intended for - bugs, and each of the classes - and only that type of content is meant to go there, but the type of person posting the content is not mentioned at all, let alone given an implied restriction.
The "DM only" forum is actually, content wise, just a second channel of the Tips & Tactics, Rules & Mechanics, and Homebrew & House Rules forums because any content posted within could be posted in one of those forums instead - but this channel implies that players are meant to keep out, and as a result (in my experience) that means the vast majority of players do keep out.
They are supposed to stay out. This is where DMs can talk about their games without their players running into spoilers. I have friends that play in my games and use D&D Beyond. I'm not going to post specific questions about our ongoing campaign in some general forum.
Some players are DMs as well - they need to take extra care when treading there; such is life.
And yet that's not how they are being used by the general forum-going populace. So how do we fix that? Do we keep reporting any thread that shows up in the DM Only forum that could go in a different forum as being out-of-place? That might aggravate the moderators, since fitting in another forum doesn't actually mean it doesn't also fit in the DM Only forum. How do we get the people that start threads in the DM Only forum that are not spoiler-filled to start those threads elsewhere instead?
Looking at the threads there, it looks the DM Only forum is being used exactly as intended. Sure, there are a couple that could be moved to Rules, but the vast majority are about encounter building, stories, puzzles to use in game, etc...
I'm genuinely asking, because I sure don't know. I already spoke out against having a DM Only sub-forum when other posters started asking for one because they could accomplish what was claimed to be desired - to mark certain threads as spoiler-filled for players - with the naming of their threads in the sub-forums that already existed at the time. But no, they insisted they wanted a DM Only forum instead of to tag individual threads as not for players based on topic, even though that goes beyond marking topics as spoilder-filled and creates an echo chamber wherein only the opinions of DMs are going to be found that perpetuates the severely flawed view that there is something wrong or abnormal about a player knowing anything about the game found outside character building options.
Look, it seems you are in the vast minority for your opinion on this notion that there should be no "DM Only" content or "DM Only" areas. It seems you don't understand why we want it or simply don't care about our reasons for wanting it. Fine, that's up to you.
If player's want to learn how to be a DM, there are lots of places for this. One of my recommendations is picking up the ICRPG (pdf version) and/or watching Drunkens and Dragons. But this idea of yours that there should be no place where DMs can have focused and spoiler-full chats that players shouldn't accidentally stumble into is baffling to me.
There's nothing stopping people from going into those forums and reading them. If they feel put off by the "DM Only" language, they need to be taught not to be.
Look, it seems you are in the vast minority for your opinion on this notion that there should be no "DM Only" content or "DM Only" areas.[/quote]
The popularity of an opinion is not relevant to the quality of the opinion.
It seems you don't understand why we want it or simply don't care about our reasons for wanting it.
I get why people want DM-only areas. I also get that they could satisfy those same wants in other ways that don't carry as many, or as deep, of negatives as DM-only areas do.
But this idea of yours that there should be no place where DMs can have focused and spoiler-full chats that players shouldn't accidentally stumble into is baffling to me.
The idea you mention here is not an idea of mine - you have invented it, whether intentionally because it's easier for you to argue against or accidentally because you don't actually understand the idea of mine that I did share. So you are baffling yourself here. Let me try to un-baffle things for you:
I'm not saying there should be no place where DMs can have focused and spoiler-full chats that players shouldn't accidentally stumble into.
I'm saying the prevention of the accidental stumbling can be accomplished by a means that doesn't also carry with it the "if it's not in a book specifically labelled as for players, then it is DM only" implication, or any of the attitude that a DM only label gives things in practice, or result in as many conversations that players absolutely should be able to take part in hiding themselves from players' eyes by being behind a DM only label.
There's nothing stopping people from going into those forums and reading them.
Either you are wrong about that, or the DM only forum is failing to do what you have stated it is there for - it can't be both "nothing stopping people" and "players shouldn't accidentally stumble into".
If they feel put off by the "DM Only" language, they need to be taught not to be.
I'm going to use the same line of thinking you appear to have used in this sentence in another context as an attempt to show you how and why I believe your line of thinking to be deeply flawed. Note that the extremity of the context is understood by me and was chosen for illustrative potency:
[Moderator Edit]
Because if the intent of the language is not to make folks feel put off, and thus follow what the language says, why use that language instead of some other language?
While I don't believe a DM can never be a player or vice versa, when I create my groups I state up front if I'm running a published module as DM that you (a) have never run the module as a DM and (b) have not run the module as a player. I'd gladly accept a DM into my group running a published adventure if that DM hasn't run this specific module before (in fact, my current game has just that a "forever DM" as he calls himself who hasn't run the module we are playing). If I'm running a homebrewed game, I don't care if you have DM'd every module in existence from every edition ever, because you don't know my games main story line then.
I play almost exclusively online with people I never meet in person. I am up front about this, and while I have no way of ensuring that people on the other end are truthful, this is how I want to play the game. It isn't fun to me if I know that someone else has done this before. By the same token I do not read any modules that I don't plan on running in the near-immediate future because I hold myself to the same standard -- I do not want to know anything about the adventure I'm going to be in.
Knowing things such as monster stat blocks and magic items doesn't bother me in the least -- a player who has never DM'd or read a "DM book" would pick those things up after enough play anyways. But if you know what's going to happen in the story, that just isn't fun (for me).
So that being said, if I want to share the PHB with them so they can get the rules/classes/feats/spells I don't want to also be forced to share PotA info, because then I'm giving them the access to the information I told them they can't have had for my game.
Look, it seems you are in the vast minority for your opinion on this notion that there should be no "DM Only" content or "DM Only" areas.[/quote]
The popularity of an opinion is not relevant to the quality of the opinion.
No, but maybe you can try to understand it better. Your arguments and suggestions on fixes don't address any of the issues that been brought up. I'm not going to re-hash them as I've laid them out clearly multiple times. People agree with those statements, some people have different takes on them, but there is a clear consensus of those participating here that there is value here.
It seems you don't understand why we want it or simply don't care about our reasons for wanting it.
I get why people want DM-only areas. I also get that they could satisfy those same wants in other ways that don't carry as many, or as deep, of negatives as DM-only areas do.
Would renaming the "Dungeon Master's Only" area to "Dungeon Master's Corner" alleviate all of your issues with the nomenclature? I've been gaming for a long time, I don't know of these "deep" and "negative DM-only" issues. Sorry if you've experienced something like that, but it's not something I've ever seen or really heard much of it. Players and GMs being jerks, but this idea of a huge negative conation to DM content, can't say that I have.
I'm not saying there should be no place where DMs can have focused and spoiler-full chats that players shouldn't accidentally stumble into.
I'm saying the prevention of the accidental stumbling can be accomplished by a means that doesn't also carry with it the "if it's not in a book specifically labelled as for players, then it is DM only" implication, or any of the attitude that a DM only label gives things in practice, or result in as many conversations that players absolutely should be able to take part in hiding themselves from players' eyes by being behind a DM only label.
So do you have a fundamental issue with the DMG being named such too? A player has no need to read it order to participate fully in D&D games.
There's nothing stopping people from going into those forums and reading them.
Either you are wrong about that, or the DM only forum is failing to do what you have stated it is there for - it can't be both "nothing stopping people" and "players shouldn't accidentally stumble into".
I don't care about stopping people from venturing into a "DM" area even if they are only a player. I've specifically stated this on multiple occasions. In addition, the solution that I've proposed doesn't stop players from going into this forum or reading "DM Content" (e.g. DMG or adventure modules).
Discuss Dungeon Mastering with your fellow DMs here!
Nothing here says, "hey nub player, you're not allowed in here so go home and wait for your almighty DM to grace you with his/her presence in your next session." If you feel it does, maybe you've had some really bad experiences with some really jerk DMs: if that's the case, I'm truly sorry - but that is absolutely not the intention of the forum.
The forum is explicitly for "discussing DMing with other DMs". As a player, if you want to go in there, fine. Be warned, you might see spoilers for your upcoming sessions if your DM is active there.
And yes, you don't accidentally go into that forum unless you are searching for a post and don't realize your result is in there. There's only so many QoL (quality of life) improvements that are feasible for preventing accidental exposure to spoilers.
If they feel put off by the "DM Only" language, they need to be taught not to be.
I'm going to use the same line of thinking you appear to have used in this sentence in another context as an attempt to show you how and why I believe your line of thinking to be deeply flawed. Note that the extremity of the context is understood by me and was chosen for illustrative potency:
If they feel put off by the [Moderator Edit] language, they need to be taught not to be.
Yeah... let's not put the systematic de-valuing of human life for centuries based on something an individual has no control over anywhere near the same plane as a forum that is called, "DM's Only".
Because if the intent of the language is not to make folks feel put off, and thus follow what the language says, why use that language instead of some other language?
Again, propose a name change to "DM's Corner" if that helps address some extremely negative conation you have with the current language, or propose another name for the forum.
Notes: Edited to remove quoted unacceptable example
This conversation has gotten a bit out of hand. Staff has heard that users want resource management and it is on their list of priorities. It's time to lock this thread and move on.
Look, it's this paragraph that sums it up. The feature being requested has nothing to do with preventing cheating and it has nothing to do with some DM-only mentality thing that you keep bring up.
The feature is for literally these purposes:
Let me try to describe my solution again as you're not understanding it.
I have my account, owensd. I also have my characters on my account, let's say Sam and Frodo. Sam is in SKT and Frodo is in CoS. When I'm playing SKT, I want to come to D&D Beyond and select Sam as my active character. As long as Sam is active, I only want to see the content that is available for the SKT campaign.
However, I can change to owensd or to Frodo and get a different set of filters. When I'm not using a player in a campaign, I should be able to see all of the content that is shared. So from the example above, I would still see SKT and CoS data when I performed a search. I'd see it because it was from my master account and I have two characters that are involved in campaigns that are sharing content.
Like others have alluded to and even mentioned directly, there are two different things here:
The feature I'm proposing above allows both of these to exist. Everyone shares everything and you can search if from your master account if you'd like. Second, I can have a set of filters applied to an active "character profile" so when I'm searching for potential upgrades or leveling my character, I see only the content the DM says is fair game for this campaign.
The other minor thing is that I should also be able to dictate which books I'm willing to share with others. However, I'm not terribly concerned with this specific implementation, but I could see how others might only want to share the content the group was willing to chip in for.
Welcome to the Grand Illusion, come on in and see what's happening, pay the price, get your ticket for the show....
Apparently it doesn't sum it up well enough, since you are still thinking I'm saying something that is very different from what I am saying. I'll take things the other way around to see if that helps clarify where I am coming from.
If preventing your players from cheating is not the issue, why does the sharing control have to be something other than the players own choice to avoid reading things they don't want to know?
To that question, the only answers given that didn't completely misrepresent what I'm getting at boiled down to 'I want to stop people from reading my book, not stop them from reading the book at all'. To which I responded with my thoughts; That seems to be creating a distinction without a difference.
As for this having nothing to do with a DM-only mentality, if you are saying that the particular folks asking for the option to not share all their purchased content so far in this thread aren't folks that adhere to the mentality, then I'll say I think you are probably correct. But I will then also point out that this forum didn't used to have a "Dungeon Masters Only" sub-forum until after people started asking for a place for all the conversations that players aren't "supposed" to be able to participate in to go on - and while there are some adventure-content discussion going on, which players would naturally avoid because they don't want spoilers for anything they'll potentially be playing, there are tons of conversations about things like what kind of stuff to do at the table to make the game more fun which players really should weigh in on to help DMs get a view of things from the other side of the screen.
So it is a real thing, this DM-only mentality, and it is really a pain in the general gamer populace's backside, even if they haven't yet seen past doing as they've been told to do (i.e. stay out of the DM only area if you aren't a DM) to what might be better than the current state of things (i.e. DMs that go looking for ways to up the enjoyment of their games getting the perspective of what players enjoy from players, rather than just what DMs do that they hope their players like but have probably never actually asked because how to DM better is a "DM only" conversation).
I've answered this so many times already. Did you read what I wrote above? If you don't get it from that and understand, there's little else I can add.
How do you get a one-armed goblin out of a tree?
Wave!
The major difference there is that those forum titles do not use the language of exclusion. Those forums state the type of content they are intended for - bugs, and each of the classes - and only that type of content is meant to go there, but the type of person posting the content is not mentioned at all, let alone given an implied restriction.
The "DM only" forum is actually, content wise, just a second channel of the Tips & Tactics, Rules & Mechanics, and Homebrew & House Rules forums because any content posted within could be posted in one of those forums instead - but this channel implies that players are meant to keep out, and as a result (in my experience) that means the vast majority of players do keep out.
And yet that's not how they are being used by the general forum-going populace. So how do we fix that? Do we keep reporting any thread that shows up in the DM Only forum that could go in a different forum as being out-of-place? That might aggravate the moderators, since fitting in another forum doesn't actually mean it doesn't also fit in the DM Only forum. How do we get the people that start threads in the DM Only forum that are not spoiler-filled to start those threads elsewhere instead?I'm genuinely asking, because I sure don't know. I already spoke out against having a DM Only sub-forum when other posters started asking for one because they could accomplish what was claimed to be desired - to mark certain threads as spoiler-filled for players - with the naming of their threads in the sub-forums that already existed at the time. But no, they insisted they wanted a DM Only forum instead of to tag individual threads as not for players based on topic, even though that goes beyond marking topics as spoilder-filled and creates an echo chamber wherein only the opinions of DMs are going to be found that perpetuates the severely flawed view that there is something wrong or abnormal about a player knowing anything about the game found outside character building options.
Remember what Gary Gygax wrote about players looking through the DMG in the preface to the AD&D 1e DMG.
"As this book is the exclusive precinct of the DM, you must view any non-DM player possessing it something less than worthy of honorable death"
Maybe attitudes have changed a little over the years. :)
They are supposed to stay out. This is where DMs can talk about their games without their players running into spoilers. I have friends that play in my games and use D&D Beyond. I'm not going to post specific questions about our ongoing campaign in some general forum.
Some players are DMs as well - they need to take extra care when treading there; such is life.
Looking at the threads there, it looks the DM Only forum is being used exactly as intended. Sure, there are a couple that could be moved to Rules, but the vast majority are about encounter building, stories, puzzles to use in game, etc...
The popularity of an opinion is not relevant to the quality of the opinion.
I get why people want DM-only areas. I also get that they could satisfy those same wants in other ways that don't carry as many, or as deep, of negatives as DM-only areas do.
The idea you mention here is not an idea of mine - you have invented it, whether intentionally because it's easier for you to argue against or accidentally because you don't actually understand the idea of mine that I did share. So you are baffling yourself here. Let me try to un-baffle things for you:I'm not saying there should be no place where DMs can have focused and spoiler-full chats that players shouldn't accidentally stumble into.
I'm saying the prevention of the accidental stumbling can be accomplished by a means that doesn't also carry with it the "if it's not in a book specifically labelled as for players, then it is DM only" implication, or any of the attitude that a DM only label gives things in practice, or result in as many conversations that players absolutely should be able to take part in hiding themselves from players' eyes by being behind a DM only label.
Either you are wrong about that, or the DM only forum is failing to do what you have stated it is there for - it can't be both "nothing stopping people" and "players shouldn't accidentally stumble into".
I'm going to use the same line of thinking you appear to have used in this sentence in another context as an attempt to show you how and why I believe your line of thinking to be deeply flawed. Note that the extremity of the context is understood by me and was chosen for illustrative potency:[Moderator Edit]
Because if the intent of the language is not to make folks feel put off, and thus follow what the language says, why use that language instead of some other language?
While I don't believe a DM can never be a player or vice versa, when I create my groups I state up front if I'm running a published module as DM that you (a) have never run the module as a DM and (b) have not run the module as a player. I'd gladly accept a DM into my group running a published adventure if that DM hasn't run this specific module before (in fact, my current game has just that a "forever DM" as he calls himself who hasn't run the module we are playing). If I'm running a homebrewed game, I don't care if you have DM'd every module in existence from every edition ever, because you don't know my games main story line then.
I play almost exclusively online with people I never meet in person. I am up front about this, and while I have no way of ensuring that people on the other end are truthful, this is how I want to play the game. It isn't fun to me if I know that someone else has done this before. By the same token I do not read any modules that I don't plan on running in the near-immediate future because I hold myself to the same standard -- I do not want to know anything about the adventure I'm going to be in.
Knowing things such as monster stat blocks and magic items doesn't bother me in the least -- a player who has never DM'd or read a "DM book" would pick those things up after enough play anyways. But if you know what's going to happen in the story, that just isn't fun (for me).
So that being said, if I want to share the PHB with them so they can get the rules/classes/feats/spells I don't want to also be forced to share PotA info, because then I'm giving them the access to the information I told them they can't have had for my game.
How do you get a one-armed goblin out of a tree?
Wave!
No, but maybe you can try to understand it better. Your arguments and suggestions on fixes don't address any of the issues that been brought up. I'm not going to re-hash them as I've laid them out clearly multiple times. People agree with those statements, some people have different takes on them, but there is a clear consensus of those participating here that there is value here.
Would renaming the "Dungeon Master's Only" area to "Dungeon Master's Corner" alleviate all of your issues with the nomenclature? I've been gaming for a long time, I don't know of these "deep" and "negative DM-only" issues. Sorry if you've experienced something like that, but it's not something I've ever seen or really heard much of it. Players and GMs being jerks, but this idea of a huge negative conation to DM content, can't say that I have.
So do you have a fundamental issue with the DMG being named such too? A player has no need to read it order to participate fully in D&D games.
I don't care about stopping people from venturing into a "DM" area even if they are only a player. I've specifically stated this on multiple occasions. In addition, the solution that I've proposed doesn't stop players from going into this forum or reading "DM Content" (e.g. DMG or adventure modules).
Here's the description of the forum:
Nothing here says, "hey nub player, you're not allowed in here so go home and wait for your almighty DM to grace you with his/her presence in your next session." If you feel it does, maybe you've had some really bad experiences with some really jerk DMs: if that's the case, I'm truly sorry - but that is absolutely not the intention of the forum.
The forum is explicitly for "discussing DMing with other DMs". As a player, if you want to go in there, fine. Be warned, you might see spoilers for your upcoming sessions if your DM is active there.
And yes, you don't accidentally go into that forum unless you are searching for a post and don't realize your result is in there. There's only so many QoL (quality of life) improvements that are feasible for preventing accidental exposure to spoilers.
Yeah... let's not put the systematic de-valuing of human life for centuries based on something an individual has no control over anywhere near the same plane as a forum that is called, "DM's Only".
Did someone really seriously just compare the DM restricting rules sources from players at their particular game with racial injustice?
Wow.
You know, thinking about it more, I can see why Gary might want to hide the "Random Harlot Table" from the eyes of players... :P
(Yes, this was a real thing.)
This conversation has gotten a bit out of hand. Staff has heard that users want resource management and it is on their list of priorities. It's time to lock this thread and move on.
Thank you everyone for your input!
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