Instead of expecting DM’s to work with players to accommodate the players’ choices, I’m of the mind that it is important for players to respect the extra lengths a DM goes to when creating the game in comparison and accommodate their DM’s choices. The reasons a DM restricts something are almost certainly more meaningful and have greater consequences than any reason I have for wanting to play any particular race, class or subclass. Even if they aren’t, who am I to ask the person putting a dozen or more extra hours into the game each week than I do to justify themselves to me? How rude. The DM busts their butt to make me a game; I’m going to accept pretty much anything that isn’t outright abusive and appreciate it.
I'm very much of the line of thought that I as DM have the final say, but I want my players to have fun. If there is a way to accommodate their desire inside of what I'm trying to accomplish I will do my darn'dest to do so, but that might mean that the Player doesn't get everything they want, or we homebrew some changes to make it work. since I run my games primarily in a homebrew setting, my main bit is making sure that the race/class whatever has a meaningful connection to the world, which isn't hard, but sometimes the request has mechanical impact and that usually means I work with them to homebrew changes to make it work better in my world rather than a full stop "you can't do this"
As a DM with ~25 years experience, and as a player, and as someone who has ignored video games since the late 1980s, I'm still trying to figure it all out. Player expectations are clearly more focused on what they want from the game than they used to be, and their focus is a very personal one, unique to their overall gaming experience (<that last bit is not new). I tend to agree that much of this friction stems from video gamers bringing computer game expectations to the table. It also seems that players, who have never donned the robes of the DM, may have difficulty in understanding the workload involved, especially if the world is home brewed.
As a live RP player, I would rather run through a game where the DM knows their world well; fewer breaks in the RP/action, as folks drag out the books to argue their point. As a player, I may ask for something "special" without even knowing that the request was out of this setting's parameters. If my proposed ideas do not mesh with this world, I'm happy to adjust or even replace that character, in order to meld with this world. That is and has always been my style, as a player.
As a DM, I have been hesitant to again throw down significant sums of money, to again begin gathering the books and guides, and to take on the additional workload of running a table game. To be blunt, I'm not sure if I want the headaches of dealing with the expectations of 4-6 individuals, who may want 4-6 different sets of allowances from my one gaming world. This potential DM may never again operate a game, because the added work, plus the headaches regarding player demands, (vs player preferences,) will almost certainly tilt the fun vs work scale over to "tedium".
Does that mean to you, the reader, that I must be a very rigid DM? Not the case at all, but a DM cannot reasonably be expected to be infinitely flexible in how their world works. The DM who attempts to do so could become quite "thin, like butter spread over too much bread".
I think the bulk of the argument that I'm seeing comes down to a difference in "When does campaign planning begin in relation to character creation?"
Many of the people arguing ON the side of limitations have the mindset of campaign planning comes first. The DM creates a world, lore, conflicts etc... then invites players to join the game. In this case, it makes TOTAL sense that they would be against players suddenly asking for species that have no place in their thoroughly planned out world. I did this in a previous campaign where I had already made the idea of Aasimar being extinct (only for them to discover the last living one near the end of the campaign) so I banned that species. I also preplanned a lot of the culture and geographic spread of other species so there were a few that just weren't included
The other side I think just approaches campaign planning differently. They would get the player's character choices BEFORE planning the world. Yeah sure, they'd OFFER the 100+ or whatever species across the books, but at the end of the day, there's only a handful of players (lets say 4 for this). This means they only need to build in 4 species (plus any extra they want). I'm CURRENTLY doing this style. I didn't want to make a bunch of lore for species no one picked, so I waited for my players to make characters, THEN worked with them to make the lore for JUST those species.
A lot of the argument I'm seeing here is people's inability to even consider the other style of campaign planning.
Person A: Why would you limit my choices? Can't you even find a way to squeeze them into your world? That's lazy. You won't even try (Not even considering the world was already planned around having JUST what it has)
Person B: Why should I have to accommodate every species? I made this world I can choose what goes in it! (Not even considering that the other side has an entirely different mind set for how to plan a setting)
I think its just a fundamental difference in opinion over: "Building the world specifically FOR my players" vs "Inviting players to MY world that I work hard on"
I think the bulk of the argument that I'm seeing comes down to a difference in "When does campaign planning begin in relation to character creation?"
Many of the people arguing ON the side of limitations have the mindset of campaign planning comes first. The DM creates a world, lore, conflicts etc... then invites players to join the game. In this case, it makes TOTAL sense that they would be against players suddenly asking for species that have no place in their thoroughly planned out world. I did this in a previous campaign where I had already made the idea of Aasimar being extinct (only for them to discover the last living one near the end of the campaign) so I banned that species. I also preplanned a lot of the culture and geographic spread of other species so there were a few that just weren't included
The other side I think just approaches campaign planning differently. They would get the player's character choices BEFORE planning the world. Yeah sure, they'd OFFER the 100+ or whatever species across the books, but at the end of the day, there's only a handful of players (lets say 4 for this). This means they only need to build in 4 species (plus any extra they want). I'm CURRENTLY doing this style. I didn't want to make a bunch of lore for species no one picked, so I waited for my players to make characters, THEN worked with them to make the lore for JUST those species.
A lot of the argument I'm seeing here is people's inability to even consider the other style of campaign planning.
Person A: Why would you limit my choices? Can't you even find a way to squeeze them into your world? That's lazy. You won't even try (Not even considering the world was already planned around having JUST what it has)
Person B: Why should I have to accommodate every species? I made this world I can choose what goes in it! (Not even considering that the other side has an entirely different mind set for how to plan a setting)
I think its just a fundamental difference in opinion over: "Building the world specifically FOR my players" vs "Inviting players to MY world that I work hard on"
Pretty much.
If anyone thinks I would spend five years building a world and changing a metric crapton about the game rules on a lark, not to mention the two years of planning out the adventures for 20 levels in a full outline that is 118 pages by itself and has all these side quests, errands, and odds and ends, without the close involvement of my players isn't paying attention, lol.
When I planned the current setting, they all wanted something ridiculously simple. So they got an immense dungeon that changes constantly, a town, and a roughly a 50 square mile spot of place floating in the void (they went to the edge of the world and saw). I planned it to their needs.
The new setting is also by request.
THe difference is that they get to tell me what they want, and then we do feedback session (and lots of playtesting) back and forth -- but the creation is a black box: they give ideas and what they want, I make it work together and give it a cohesion and shape it.
In that sense, it is a combination of our efforts -- but I still get the freedom to do it in my way. Every player contributed at least a dozen things to the game, and all the others had input on everyone's suggestions. When i started it we only had about 15 or so players, and are now up to 27 regular, another several in and out, across multiple sessions (family and friends, with kids coming in and grandkids and their friends, lol). All of them got something, and it is only this month that the character and world sides are finally over. Starting next month, we do three rounds of stuff about the adventures (because those are all fair game, too).
Now, if I were to post here looking for players, well, they would be SoL. THey would have to be willing to go into the world -- even though they didn't have any input, and I would be as flexible as I could be given what I have set up so far. So a lot of class and race options will be completely gone, and that isn't because I am being a blue meanie about it, it is because I have done the work, and if they want to play, cool.
but if that group, after the first three adventures, wanted to have a new setting, I would probably be willing to start from scratch again. Because that's pretty much how I roll. And they would get the same kinds of input and the same kinds of options -- only they would have to stay away from what I just finished, because I am so done with this world that I cannot even express how much of a relief it is to finally get this "final version" of the same world I have had since I was 6 out of my head entirely.
I want to do an urban fantasy next, lol.
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I think the bulk of the argument that I'm seeing comes down to a difference in "When does campaign planning begin in relation to character creation?"
Many of the people arguing ON the side of limitations have the mindset of campaign planning comes first. The DM creates a world, lore, conflicts etc... then invites players to join the game. In this case, it makes TOTAL sense that they would be against players suddenly asking for species that have no place in their thoroughly planned out world. I did this in a previous campaign where I had already made the idea of Aasimar being extinct (only for them to discover the last living one near the end of the campaign) so I banned that species. I also preplanned a lot of the culture and geographic spread of other species so there were a few that just weren't included
The other side I think just approaches campaign planning differently. They would get the player's character choices BEFORE planning the world. Yeah sure, they'd OFFER the 100+ or whatever species across the books, but at the end of the day, there's only a handful of players (lets say 4 for this). This means they only need to build in 4 species (plus any extra they want). I'm CURRENTLY doing this style. I didn't want to make a bunch of lore for species no one picked, so I waited for my players to make characters, THEN worked with them to make the lore for JUST those species.
A lot of the argument I'm seeing here is people's inability to even consider the other style of campaign planning.
Person A: Why would you limit my choices? Can't you even find a way to squeeze them into your world? That's lazy. You won't even try (Not even considering the world was already planned around having JUST what it has)
Person B: Why should I have to accommodate every species? I made this world I can choose what goes in it! (Not even considering that the other side has an entirely different mind set for how to plan a setting)
I think its just a fundamental difference in opinion over: "Building the world specifically FOR my players" vs "Inviting players to MY world that I work hard on"
No, I acknowledge that the other style exists, I just don’t see as why I should have to do it their way instead of mine. Being told I’m a “bad DM” for doing it my way is kinda 💩.
I will admit that the idea of doing chargen and only then planning/pitching a campaign shoehorned in around predetermined characters is so utterly alien and nonsensical I cannot fathom how such a method produces playable games. It goes against everything I've ever learned or experienced in how the game works, and I cannot figure out how any DM is supposed to assemble a workable game out of whatever gaggle of terrible memejokes players produce when there's no limits whatsoever on what they can do. That is DMing on the hardest possible difficulty and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.
I will admit that the idea of doing chargen and only then planning/pitching a campaign shoehorned in around predetermined characters is so utterly alien and nonsensical I cannot fathom how such a method produces playable games. It goes against everything I've ever learned or experienced in how the game works, and I cannot figure out how any DM is supposed to assemble a workable game out of whatever gaggle of terrible memejokes players produce when there's no limits whatsoever on what they can do. That is DMing on the hardest possible difficulty and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.
Just...yikes. How? How?
And yet, the turtle moves. And this horse has been pretty well run into the ground, so I think we can all lay off the riding crop with the above summation.
I think the bulk of the argument that I'm seeing comes down to a difference in "When does campaign planning begin in relation to character creation?"
Many of the people arguing ON the side of limitations have the mindset of campaign planning comes first. The DM creates a world, lore, conflicts etc... then invites players to join the game. In this case, it makes TOTAL sense that they would be against players suddenly asking for species that have no place in their thoroughly planned out world. I did this in a previous campaign where I had already made the idea of Aasimar being extinct (only for them to discover the last living one near the end of the campaign) so I banned that species. I also preplanned a lot of the culture and geographic spread of other species so there were a few that just weren't included
The other side I think just approaches campaign planning differently. They would get the player's character choices BEFORE planning the world. Yeah sure, they'd OFFER the 100+ or whatever species across the books, but at the end of the day, there's only a handful of players (lets say 4 for this). This means they only need to build in 4 species (plus any extra they want). I'm CURRENTLY doing this style. I didn't want to make a bunch of lore for species no one picked, so I waited for my players to make characters, THEN worked with them to make the lore for JUST those species.
A lot of the argument I'm seeing here is people's inability to even consider the other style of campaign planning.
Person A: Why would you limit my choices? Can't you even find a way to squeeze them into your world? That's lazy. You won't even try (Not even considering the world was already planned around having JUST what it has)
Person B: Why should I have to accommodate every species? I made this world I can choose what goes in it! (Not even considering that the other side has an entirely different mind set for how to plan a setting)
I think its just a fundamental difference in opinion over: "Building the world specifically FOR my players" vs "Inviting players to MY world that I work hard on"
So as a DM I fit somewhere between the 2. I sketch out a rough build of the world, enough that I know roughly what sessions 1- 6will look like (levels 1-3), I don’t mean planning out each session, but the breadcrumbs I will leave to take my players through that initial introduction to my world.
As part of this I might have a post it with “no dragon born” and a question mark and that might flesh out to a firm idea early on that there are no Dragonborn in my world. I will have no idea why, until it becomes important in game to something the players are doing all they need to know is that they don’t know what a Dragonborn is. So in that instance I would tell my players, don’t go picking Dragonborn. But I don’t see that as restricting them, as you said there are 100 species by now, on a table of 8 even there is a mass of scope. During this time lore about my world will be created in bullet point form, shifting and moving. But also input by the players.
Now in terms of the species that do live in my world, like you I take the player characters first, I let them help me shape the world by giving me bullet points, 3-6 only, about where they lived and grew up. This is folded into my world and might inspire other things, all in I aim for a 4-6 weeks turnaround between players saying yes we will play to having a session 0/session 1 (I would have had individual session 0s with every player as part of character creation).
I will admit that the idea of doing chargen and only then planning/pitching a campaign shoehorned in around predetermined characters is so utterly alien and nonsensical I cannot fathom how such a method produces playable games. It goes against everything I've ever learned or experienced in how the game works, and I cannot figure out how any DM is supposed to assemble a workable game out of whatever gaggle of terrible memejokes players produce when there's no limits whatsoever on what they can do. That is DMing on the hardest possible difficulty and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.
Just...yikes. How? How?
I did it weekly in six hour games session for over three years in the open games I talk about it.
It is truly a learning experience, lol, and these days, with far less time available, I am much, much more selective and sometimes a bit rude to folks who come in and want to be disruptive. Come to think of it, a lot like I am here, on DDB (with my massive number of points towards a ban at present).
my current sandbox environment is pretty much the only way I know of to do it unless you run a fixed set of modules -- a hyper simple world with a dungeon and a town, basically. No big stories, no special deals, just hard core go kill a bunch of things.
It is, for me, at this point, no fun.
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Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
And yet, the turtle moves. And this horse has been pretty well run into the ground, so I think we can all lay off the riding crop with the above summation.
You meme, but how do players build characters that feel like they come from the same world when the world doesn't exist? How do you tie your character's history into the world when the world has no history? If characters are spun out of nothingness into and from the Nether Void, how can players make characters that feel grounded, real, and impactful?
This is how you get a party consisting of Vaudeville Elephant, Literally Batman, Captain Trauma the Loser of Families, "It's What My Character Would Do", and Only Sane Man. Without a backdrop to build characters against, what possible cohesion and grounding can a party really have?
Putting aside that the Mists kidnapping a Vaudeville Elephant feels entirely on brand for them, I find this rigid player vs. DM dichotomy strange. We're all playing with adults right? And for most of us, those adults are friends, yes? Friends care about each others' fun on both sides of the screen. Mutual fun implies limits, but it also implies compromise.
"That concept you pitched doesn't fit the tone of game I'm going to run" is not the end of the conversation, it's the beginning. "Here's something closer to your concept that also fits with my tone, let's continue to flesh it out together" is a good way to continue that.
Yeah, I agree with PsyrenXY. The notion that there's a "DM Crisis" and it's somehow a combination of what some folks call player agency and player options at fault to be both not accurate assessment of the D&D or even broader TTRPG space.
Yes, there's a much greater tide of "new players" and arguably the "professionalization" or "masterful" expectations put on DMing hamper the learning curve for players opting to try DMing, and there may be something to the way folks these day consume experiences on demand leading to some unreasonable expectations of a DM is "supposed" to "deliver" in their game; but there are so many more ways to start playing now than in the 70s and 80s or any of the in between decades from then and now.
I've never had a problem with a DM or been told I was a problem as a DM by establishing parameters. Yes, WotC puts out a lot of character options. I don't know if the volume is all that much greater than the post AD&D eras of splat books. But the DMG makes its pretty clear the parameters of the game, including limitations for whatever reason are on the DM.
I mean, part of the OP's logic cites Unearthed Arcana (the "periodic releases of playtest material") as if those releases are some sort compulsory integration into every table. That's simply not true and thinking there's a problem with the game predicated on the notion that UA releases have a detrimental effect on any table just isn't soundly grasping how the game is played today.
On this very forum, there are folks who play disallowing options in Tasha's. Heck, I'm involved in a game right now with two of the participants on this thread where species options are limited to 4, PHB core classes only, no feats, and nothing from Tasha's. No one batted an eye at that (and we're all having a good time two years in) and I think that sort of game assembly is far more normative than folks sensing a yellow flag or whatever. There are other games that stick to the core three manuals and don't import anything else. There are games that play in a 3rd party or homebrew set up where the species and class options are no where to be found in official content. Other folks keep the negative modifiers than have been errata'd out of official sources. WotC produces a lot of content, few use all of it.
There is nothing wrong with discussing DM and tables' habits of setting parameters. I just think it's a gross overstatement to say it's at the crux of some false crisis in the game. Game tables regularly set parameters. It may be a "how you set it" rather than "what you set." Generally I wouldn't get a bad vibe from a DM who said straight up, "I'm looking a low magic, high combat and tactics game" or "yeah, I don't feel comfortable bringing in stuff outside the core, I've never read those books and I really like to play to what I know." With DMing, personality goes a long way in getting the table they want.
I'd go a little further and say not only "adults" play this way, but I never saw and don't see DM setting parameters an issue among kids either.
There's nothing wrong with a DM getting the characters his or her players have rolled up then building a setting around them. That can be a lot of fun and a challenge many a DM would be willing to accept. But that's world-building with some serious time constraints unless that DM is going to tell those players I'll get back to you in x weeks or x months compared to a DM having spent months if not even years researching and designing a fully developed setting. The DM of one game I currently play in and have been playing in for almost two years has taken Mesopotamia and other regions of the ancient Middle East and reimagined these. It is a world at the level of world-building one encounters in the best of fantasy.
There is that fundamental for-my difference in approach someone mentioned. But the first of these arises from a shift in orientation that I and others have pointed out treats D&D just like a video game. Session 0 becomes a process resembling that of choosing options from every available menu instead of one providing a campaign framework and establishing any limits that present players with the challenge of devising characters to meet them. That is mostly going to result in worlds that look and feel very familiar because they will look and feel like a MMORPG with every available species potentially populating them and those that do just being derived as is from the player's handbook or whatever new playtest or new plaything has taken the players' fancy. The second of these is why all those legacy campaign settings got developed in the first place and used to at least always look and feel unique and truly innovative in their development.
Some of the best role-playing experiences I have had in my almost forty years of playing D&D started not with a character concept but 3d6 down the line and then and only then choosing what class the character would be and only conceptualizing the character and breathing life into it once play began. It's a role-playing game That shift in orientation changes the role of the DM. It makes him or her little more than a host of a world that players have demanded from him or her. And it changes the role of the player who no longer takes on the challenge of playing what the dice have given him or her and then making that his or her own. Some here have suggested any good DM could just make changes to accommodate what his or her players have in mind. But any good player can role-play what the dice or any given limits have given him or her.
Just as an observation/little thought pinging in my brain as well.
Is there a difference between having X-race/species/class/combo as your character Vs personalising your character in how you play them? It may well be more to do with the "immediacy" of character generation in video games "skins" (not the tv show) etc. I enjoy some video games, my digital interests mostly revolve around art/tinkering these days, but there is something nice - say HeroForge - in seeing that on screen - it's not really something I use anymore, but it's a fun tool to whip up a character (if that visual style fits) "quickly".
I'd say though, there's a difference there in that - I may whip up a HeroForge "character" for a campaign I've just joined and want to get the ball rolling with and as time goes on, get into "more sophisticated" artwork for it - especially as I get more into my actual character and the RP thereof. That kind of "aesthetic"/superficial customisation to me, is more "get the ball rolling", but I'm certainly happy to kick that ball round in a DM's pitch according to their game rules. If it's a Dwarf only Campaign, I'd still want my Dwarf, with my "Level One skin" on them.
Horses for courses etc. the important thing is playing TTRPG's and being a welcoming community - there's plenty of nice ways to say "no Spelljammer races" for example. The only "irl" example(s) I can think of are a couple of instances of Homebrew races/classes that have seemed (and I say "seemed" in the strongest possible terms)to be attempts to shoehorn in some perceived advantage in the short or long term in terms of character power... that may be a whole different discussion though.
But that's world-building with some serious time constraints unless that DM is going to tell those players I'll get back to you in x weeks or x months compared to a DM having spent months if not even years researching and designing a fully developed setting.
This is a complete misunderstanding of how that style of DMing works - one which I doubt few, if any, actually do. Let’s try analogy, since clearly multiple people fundamentally are mischaracterising how a flexible DM designs their world.
A flexible DM is like a car factory. They will build the car, finish the engine, put on some wheels, and the car will be ready to drive off the factory floor and onto the road, and would be 100% functional as-is. That car factory receives a special order - “hey, I want the deluxe rims and a fun paint job.” The factory needs to slap on a new coat of paint and maybe substitute out a relatively minor part, but the car is still basically the same, with some pretty minor changes.
Those mostly cosmetic changes take pretty much no time at all - even with a day between character creation and the campaign start, it isn’t that hard just to change out the metaphorical rims.
It isn’t hard and it doesn’t break the world. Now, can trolls use a permissive set of options to try to break the world? Yes. But they are trolls and are going to be trolls regardless. Options are not the problem - a DM rolling a bad insight and allowing a troll player is the problem in those cases.
I will admit that the idea of doing chargen and only then planning/pitching a campaign shoehorned in around predetermined characters is so utterly alien and nonsensical I cannot fathom how such a method produces playable games. It goes against everything I've ever learned or experienced in how the game works, and I cannot figure out how any DM is supposed to assemble a workable game out of whatever gaggle of terrible memejokes players produce when there's no limits whatsoever on what they can do. That is DMing on the hardest possible difficulty and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.
Just...yikes. How? How?
Again, you're taking everything as all or nothing. For one, players don't make a bunch of random nonsense "meme jokes" when their options aren't limited. I find it somewhat insulting that you assume not banning certain classes or species will lead to everyone in the game just making troll builds to mess with the DM.
Building a world around the characters is great, because it ensures that the choices they made and the parts of the game they value will make into the campaign and world. Players provide a framework and a base to build on top of, a stepping stone to climb to greater heights from, and a set of appreciative friends to fall forward onto if and when you fail, because you will fail sometimes when you run the game, and what matters more is that you put the effort it into tailoring things to your group to help them have a good time anyways.
Not only is this a viable and valid method, but it can work excellently. In fact, the storied DM Brennan Lee Mulligan appears to have used it to build Umora for his new campaign.
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Sorry to double-post, but I have two very different thoughts that I think each merit a post of their own. In my opinion, the Dungeon Master has every right to restrict certain classes and species. If you ever see me over on the Dungeon Masters Only forum, you will know that one of the core tenets of my beliefs is that the DM deserves to have fun too. I personally am hesitant to ban certain things in my games, because I'm worried about it messing with my players' enjoyment. That being said, it makes sense to ban certain classes, species, or spells if they aren't in your world or don't make sense for it, or if they're completely broken and would ruin the game.
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But that's world-building with some serious time constraints unless that DM is going to tell those players I'll get back to you in x weeks or x months compared to a DM having spent months if not even years researching and designing a fully developed setting.
This is a complete misunderstanding of how that style of DMing works - one which I doubt few, if any, actually do. Let’s try analogy, since clearly multiple people fundamentally are mischaracterising how a flexible DM designs their world.
A flexible DM is like a car factory. They will build the car, finish the engine, put on some wheels, and the car will be ready to drive off the factory floor and onto the road, and would be 100% functional as-is. That car factory receives a special order - “hey, I want the deluxe rims and a fun paint job.” The factory needs to slap on a new coat of paint and maybe substitute out a relatively minor part, but the car is still basically the same, with some pretty minor changes.
Those mostly cosmetic changes take pretty much no time at all - even with a day between character creation and the campaign start, it isn’t that hard just to change out the metaphorical rims.
It isn’t hard and it doesn’t break the world. Frankly, I suspect the “but it breaks the world” crowd are scapegoating species/class options because they don’t want to admit “the players that use species choices to troll were probably going to troll anyway, but I’d rather blame the mechanic than admit I rolled poorly on my insight for that player.”
I'll give you another analogy: The director says our theater company will be staging a series of original plays not unlike the Henriad and that these will be the most historically accurate productions of any play staged in the centuries since the time of Shakespeare and Marlowe in which this series of plays is to be set. What makes this project most interesting is that the cast will be given the liberty to not only come up with their roles but even submit the words and actions they will perform in them. One actor passes the audition and then protests because he or she can't play an astronaut.
You don't think the DM yielding and giving the actor what he or she wants would break that world?
Do you think the director is being inflexible unless he or she allows that actor to play an astronaut in the court of the "Virgin Queen"?
Is that director a bad director unless it can be demonstrated he or she is capable of making an astronaut work in that series of plays?
Stop acting like this is all about how bad a DM someone must be when some of us simply want to play games that bring to life at our tables literary or historical sources. Or worlds of our own imagination into which we have put a lot of time and effort to make them comparable to these.
I gave earlier the example of running a game set in warring states period Japan that is something I've personally run for Japanese students of mine the aim of which was to have fun but to do so with some degree of accuracy. A player then joining that group and launching into a tirade about how bad of a DM I must be because I said no you can't play a tiefling or a sorcerer is being a wanker. That's a player I would never want at my table even if the next game I was to be running was to allow for anything and everything.
But that's world-building with some serious time constraints unless that DM is going to tell those players I'll get back to you in x weeks or x months compared to a DM having spent months if not even years researching and designing a fully developed setting.
This is a complete misunderstanding of how that style of DMing works - one which I doubt few, if any, actually do. Let’s try analogy, since clearly multiple people fundamentally are mischaracterising how a flexible DM designs their world.
A flexible DM is like a car factory. They will build the car, finish the engine, put on some wheels, and the car will be ready to drive off the factory floor and onto the road, and would be 100% functional as-is. That car factory receives a special order - “hey, I want the deluxe rims and a fun paint job.” The factory needs to slap on a new coat of paint and maybe substitute out a relatively minor part, but the car is still basically the same, with some pretty minor changes.
Those mostly cosmetic changes take pretty much no time at all - even with a day between character creation and the campaign start, it isn’t that hard just to change out the metaphorical rims.
It isn’t hard and it doesn’t break the world. Frankly, I suspect the “but it breaks the world” crowd are scapegoating species/class options because they don’t want to admit “the players that use species choices to troll were probably going to troll anyway, but I’d rather blame the mechanic than admit I rolled poorly on my insight for that player.”
I'll give you another analogy: The director says our theater company will be staging a series of original plays not unlike the Henriad and that these will be the most historically accurate productions of any play staged in the centuries since the time of Shakespeare and Marlowe in which this series of plays is to be set. What makes this project most interesting is that the cast will be given the liberty to not only come up with their roles but even submit the words and actions they will perform in them. One actor passes the audition and then protests because he or she can't play an astronaut.
You don't think the DM yielding and giving the actor what he or she wants would break that world?
Do you think the director is being inflexible unless he or she allows that actor to play an astronaut in the court of the "Virgin Queen"?
Stop acting like this is all about how bad a DM someone must be when some of us simply want to play games that bring to life at our tables literary or historical sources. Or worlds of our own imagination into which we have put a lot of time and effort to make them comparable to either.
I gave earlier the example of running a game set in warring states period Japan that is something I've personally run for Japanese students of mine the aim of which was to have fun but to do so with some degree of accuracy. A player then joining that group and launching into a tirade about how bad of a DM I must be because I said no you can't play a tiefling or a sorcerer is being a wanker. That's a player I would never want at my table even if the next game I was to be running was to allow for anything and everything.
I want to be very clear - as I have said on several posts, I think competent DMs can DM with restrictions. My experiences have been different, but I fully admit my experiences are my own and do not speak for everyone. I also have noted that I actually understand the other side—it just isn’t my cup of tea.
Otherwise, I think you clearly missed the point of my analogy - which was trying to help clear up what is very clearly a misunderstanding on your part. It was not an attack or an assertion that one is “bad DM” as you claim merely an explanation of how something you said could not compare to “months and years of planning”. Your statement was plainly wrong - you can have months and years of planning and unlimited character options, just as you can have months and years of planning a car and throw on some last minute, mostly cosmetic changes without fundamentally changing anything.
To answer your question related to your analogy, I think it was a poor choice of analogy that was non responsive to my “hey, let me help you understand something I think you are missing” post. I think you inadvertently provided evidence for my “perhaps a bad set of insight rolls prior to or surrounding session zero might be the real problem”, as your insight check led you to a defensive, tangential posture which inadvertently showed you might not understand how D&D’s collaborative, prompt-with-improve-based storytelling might differ from scripted storytelling.
Rather than dwell on that, I’ll chalk it up to a bad dice roll and wish you luck next time you toss them.
I got your point. Mine was about how just underdeveloped or video game-like the worlds people run at their tables must be if every single menu of character options is made available to players and these must be accommodated. But I'd invite you to provide us with an example of a setting of your own creation to show us how this matches even the vision of a world-builder like Tolkien, Lord Dunsany, Howard, or Leiber if you're so certain of your own abilities and want to just insult those of us who just do things differently.
I said nothing about scripted storytelling. I said those actors would come up with their own lines for that project. But you clearly don't understand that for many D&D isn't collaborative storytelling. The storytelling approach to the game is a relatively modern one compared to the one of exploration which has been with the game since the beginning. The storytellers want to be Matt Mercer and his crew. The explorers want to play in sandboxes like the best of campaign settings from days gone by or those from a DM's imagination. Perhaps ironically, I think the exploration approach makes for much better storytelling. Writing—good writing—is about the sensory landscape and the world such creates and presents to readers as much as it is about what the characters just say or do to tell the story. Good writers choose wisely to fill a world with sets and props and background characters that make sense to make the world seem as real to life as the one we live in no matter how imaginary it might be. It is comparably fan fiction to just let a player force a square into a circle.
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100 percent this.
I'm very much of the line of thought that I as DM have the final say, but I want my players to have fun. If there is a way to accommodate their desire inside of what I'm trying to accomplish I will do my darn'dest to do so, but that might mean that the Player doesn't get everything they want, or we homebrew some changes to make it work. since I run my games primarily in a homebrew setting, my main bit is making sure that the race/class whatever has a meaningful connection to the world, which isn't hard, but sometimes the request has mechanical impact and that usually means I work with them to homebrew changes to make it work better in my world rather than a full stop "you can't do this"
As a DM with ~25 years experience, and as a player, and as someone who has ignored video games since the late 1980s, I'm still trying to figure it all out. Player expectations are clearly more focused on what they want from the game than they used to be, and their focus is a very personal one, unique to their overall gaming experience (<that last bit is not new). I tend to agree that much of this friction stems from video gamers bringing computer game expectations to the table. It also seems that players, who have never donned the robes of the DM, may have difficulty in understanding the workload involved, especially if the world is home brewed.
As a live RP player, I would rather run through a game where the DM knows their world well; fewer breaks in the RP/action, as folks drag out the books to argue their point. As a player, I may ask for something "special" without even knowing that the request was out of this setting's parameters. If my proposed ideas do not mesh with this world, I'm happy to adjust or even replace that character, in order to meld with this world. That is and has always been my style, as a player.
As a DM, I have been hesitant to again throw down significant sums of money, to again begin gathering the books and guides, and to take on the additional workload of running a table game. To be blunt, I'm not sure if I want the headaches of dealing with the expectations of 4-6 individuals, who may want 4-6 different sets of allowances from my one gaming world. This potential DM may never again operate a game, because the added work, plus the headaches regarding player demands, (vs player preferences,) will almost certainly tilt the fun vs work scale over to "tedium".
Does that mean to you, the reader, that I must be a very rigid DM? Not the case at all, but a DM cannot reasonably be expected to be infinitely flexible in how their world works. The DM who attempts to do so could become quite "thin, like butter spread over too much bread".
I think the bulk of the argument that I'm seeing comes down to a difference in "When does campaign planning begin in relation to character creation?"
Many of the people arguing ON the side of limitations have the mindset of campaign planning comes first. The DM creates a world, lore, conflicts etc... then invites players to join the game. In this case, it makes TOTAL sense that they would be against players suddenly asking for species that have no place in their thoroughly planned out world. I did this in a previous campaign where I had already made the idea of Aasimar being extinct (only for them to discover the last living one near the end of the campaign) so I banned that species. I also preplanned a lot of the culture and geographic spread of other species so there were a few that just weren't included
The other side I think just approaches campaign planning differently. They would get the player's character choices BEFORE planning the world. Yeah sure, they'd OFFER the 100+ or whatever species across the books, but at the end of the day, there's only a handful of players (lets say 4 for this). This means they only need to build in 4 species (plus any extra they want). I'm CURRENTLY doing this style. I didn't want to make a bunch of lore for species no one picked, so I waited for my players to make characters, THEN worked with them to make the lore for JUST those species.
A lot of the argument I'm seeing here is people's inability to even consider the other style of campaign planning.
Person A: Why would you limit my choices? Can't you even find a way to squeeze them into your world? That's lazy. You won't even try (Not even considering the world was already planned around having JUST what it has)
Person B: Why should I have to accommodate every species? I made this world I can choose what goes in it! (Not even considering that the other side has an entirely different mind set for how to plan a setting)
I think its just a fundamental difference in opinion over: "Building the world specifically FOR my players" vs "Inviting players to MY world that I work hard on"
Pretty much.
If anyone thinks I would spend five years building a world and changing a metric crapton about the game rules on a lark, not to mention the two years of planning out the adventures for 20 levels in a full outline that is 118 pages by itself and has all these side quests, errands, and odds and ends, without the close involvement of my players isn't paying attention, lol.
When I planned the current setting, they all wanted something ridiculously simple. So they got an immense dungeon that changes constantly, a town, and a roughly a 50 square mile spot of place floating in the void (they went to the edge of the world and saw). I planned it to their needs.
The new setting is also by request.
THe difference is that they get to tell me what they want, and then we do feedback session (and lots of playtesting) back and forth -- but the creation is a black box: they give ideas and what they want, I make it work together and give it a cohesion and shape it.
In that sense, it is a combination of our efforts -- but I still get the freedom to do it in my way. Every player contributed at least a dozen things to the game, and all the others had input on everyone's suggestions. When i started it we only had about 15 or so players, and are now up to 27 regular, another several in and out, across multiple sessions (family and friends, with kids coming in and grandkids and their friends, lol). All of them got something, and it is only this month that the character and world sides are finally over. Starting next month, we do three rounds of stuff about the adventures (because those are all fair game, too).
Now, if I were to post here looking for players, well, they would be SoL. THey would have to be willing to go into the world -- even though they didn't have any input, and I would be as flexible as I could be given what I have set up so far. So a lot of class and race options will be completely gone, and that isn't because I am being a blue meanie about it, it is because I have done the work, and if they want to play, cool.
but if that group, after the first three adventures, wanted to have a new setting, I would probably be willing to start from scratch again. Because that's pretty much how I roll. And they would get the same kinds of input and the same kinds of options -- only they would have to stay away from what I just finished, because I am so done with this world that I cannot even express how much of a relief it is to finally get this "final version" of the same world I have had since I was 6 out of my head entirely.
I want to do an urban fantasy next, lol.
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No, I acknowledge that the other style exists, I just don’t see as why I should have to do it their way instead of mine. Being told I’m a “bad DM” for doing it my way is kinda 💩.
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I will admit that the idea of doing chargen and only then planning/pitching a campaign shoehorned in around predetermined characters is so utterly alien and nonsensical I cannot fathom how such a method produces playable games. It goes against everything I've ever learned or experienced in how the game works, and I cannot figure out how any DM is supposed to assemble a workable game out of whatever gaggle of terrible memejokes players produce when there's no limits whatsoever on what they can do. That is DMing on the hardest possible difficulty and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.
Just...yikes. How? How?
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And yet, the turtle moves. And this horse has been pretty well run into the ground, so I think we can all lay off the riding crop with the above summation.
So as a DM I fit somewhere between the 2. I sketch out a rough build of the world, enough that I know roughly what sessions 1- 6will look like (levels 1-3), I don’t mean planning out each session, but the breadcrumbs I will leave to take my players through that initial introduction to my world.
As part of this I might have a post it with “no dragon born” and a question mark and that might flesh out to a firm idea early on that there are no Dragonborn in my world. I will have no idea why, until it becomes important in game to something the players are doing all they need to know is that they don’t know what a Dragonborn is. So in that instance I would tell my players, don’t go picking Dragonborn. But I don’t see that as restricting them, as you said there are 100 species by now, on a table of 8 even there is a mass of scope. During this time lore about my world will be created in bullet point form, shifting and moving. But also input by the players.
Now in terms of the species that do live in my world, like you I take the player characters first, I let them help me shape the world by giving me bullet points, 3-6 only, about where they lived and grew up. This is folded into my world and might inspire other things, all in I aim for a 4-6 weeks turnaround between players saying yes we will play to having a session 0/session 1 (I would have had individual session 0s with every player as part of character creation).
I did it weekly in six hour games session for over three years in the open games I talk about it.
It is truly a learning experience, lol, and these days, with far less time available, I am much, much more selective and sometimes a bit rude to folks who come in and want to be disruptive. Come to think of it, a lot like I am here, on DDB (with my massive number of points towards a ban at present).
my current sandbox environment is pretty much the only way I know of to do it unless you run a fixed set of modules -- a hyper simple world with a dungeon and a town, basically. No big stories, no special deals, just hard core go kill a bunch of things.
It is, for me, at this point, no fun.
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You meme, but how do players build characters that feel like they come from the same world when the world doesn't exist? How do you tie your character's history into the world when the world has no history? If characters are spun out of nothingness into and from the Nether Void, how can players make characters that feel grounded, real, and impactful?
This is how you get a party consisting of Vaudeville Elephant, Literally Batman, Captain Trauma the Loser of Families, "It's What My Character Would Do", and Only Sane Man. Without a backdrop to build characters against, what possible cohesion and grounding can a party really have?
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Putting aside that the Mists kidnapping a Vaudeville Elephant feels entirely on brand for them, I find this rigid player vs. DM dichotomy strange. We're all playing with adults right? And for most of us, those adults are friends, yes? Friends care about each others' fun on both sides of the screen. Mutual fun implies limits, but it also implies compromise.
"That concept you pitched doesn't fit the tone of game I'm going to run" is not the end of the conversation, it's the beginning. "Here's something closer to your concept that also fits with my tone, let's continue to flesh it out together" is a good way to continue that.
Yeah, I agree with PsyrenXY. The notion that there's a "DM Crisis" and it's somehow a combination of what some folks call player agency and player options at fault to be both not accurate assessment of the D&D or even broader TTRPG space.
Yes, there's a much greater tide of "new players" and arguably the "professionalization" or "masterful" expectations put on DMing hamper the learning curve for players opting to try DMing, and there may be something to the way folks these day consume experiences on demand leading to some unreasonable expectations of a DM is "supposed" to "deliver" in their game; but there are so many more ways to start playing now than in the 70s and 80s or any of the in between decades from then and now.
I've never had a problem with a DM or been told I was a problem as a DM by establishing parameters. Yes, WotC puts out a lot of character options. I don't know if the volume is all that much greater than the post AD&D eras of splat books. But the DMG makes its pretty clear the parameters of the game, including limitations for whatever reason are on the DM.
I mean, part of the OP's logic cites Unearthed Arcana (the "periodic releases of playtest material") as if those releases are some sort compulsory integration into every table. That's simply not true and thinking there's a problem with the game predicated on the notion that UA releases have a detrimental effect on any table just isn't soundly grasping how the game is played today.
On this very forum, there are folks who play disallowing options in Tasha's. Heck, I'm involved in a game right now with two of the participants on this thread where species options are limited to 4, PHB core classes only, no feats, and nothing from Tasha's. No one batted an eye at that (and we're all having a good time two years in) and I think that sort of game assembly is far more normative than folks sensing a yellow flag or whatever. There are other games that stick to the core three manuals and don't import anything else. There are games that play in a 3rd party or homebrew set up where the species and class options are no where to be found in official content. Other folks keep the negative modifiers than have been errata'd out of official sources. WotC produces a lot of content, few use all of it.
There is nothing wrong with discussing DM and tables' habits of setting parameters. I just think it's a gross overstatement to say it's at the crux of some false crisis in the game. Game tables regularly set parameters. It may be a "how you set it" rather than "what you set." Generally I wouldn't get a bad vibe from a DM who said straight up, "I'm looking a low magic, high combat and tactics game" or "yeah, I don't feel comfortable bringing in stuff outside the core, I've never read those books and I really like to play to what I know." With DMing, personality goes a long way in getting the table they want.
I'd go a little further and say not only "adults" play this way, but I never saw and don't see DM setting parameters an issue among kids either.
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There's nothing wrong with a DM getting the characters his or her players have rolled up then building a setting around them. That can be a lot of fun and a challenge many a DM would be willing to accept. But that's world-building with some serious time constraints unless that DM is going to tell those players I'll get back to you in x weeks or x months compared to a DM having spent months if not even years researching and designing a fully developed setting. The DM of one game I currently play in and have been playing in for almost two years has taken Mesopotamia and other regions of the ancient Middle East and reimagined these. It is a world at the level of world-building one encounters in the best of fantasy.
There is that fundamental for-my difference in approach someone mentioned. But the first of these arises from a shift in orientation that I and others have pointed out treats D&D just like a video game. Session 0 becomes a process resembling that of choosing options from every available menu instead of one providing a campaign framework and establishing any limits that present players with the challenge of devising characters to meet them. That is mostly going to result in worlds that look and feel very familiar because they will look and feel like a MMORPG with every available species potentially populating them and those that do just being derived as is from the player's handbook or whatever new playtest or new plaything has taken the players' fancy. The second of these is why all those legacy campaign settings got developed in the first place and used to at least always look and feel unique and truly innovative in their development.
Some of the best role-playing experiences I have had in my almost forty years of playing D&D started not with a character concept but 3d6 down the line and then and only then choosing what class the character would be and only conceptualizing the character and breathing life into it once play began. It's a role-playing game That shift in orientation changes the role of the DM. It makes him or her little more than a host of a world that players have demanded from him or her. And it changes the role of the player who no longer takes on the challenge of playing what the dice have given him or her and then making that his or her own. Some here have suggested any good DM could just make changes to accommodate what his or her players have in mind. But any good player can role-play what the dice or any given limits have given him or her.
Just as an observation/little thought pinging in my brain as well.
Is there a difference between having X-race/species/class/combo as your character Vs personalising your character in how you play them?
It may well be more to do with the "immediacy" of character generation in video games "skins" (not the tv show) etc. I enjoy some video games, my digital interests mostly revolve around art/tinkering these days, but there is something nice - say HeroForge - in seeing that on screen - it's not really something I use anymore, but it's a fun tool to whip up a character (if that visual style fits) "quickly".
I'd say though, there's a difference there in that - I may whip up a HeroForge "character" for a campaign I've just joined and want to get the ball rolling with and as time goes on, get into "more sophisticated" artwork for it - especially as I get more into my actual character and the RP thereof. That kind of "aesthetic"/superficial customisation to me, is more "get the ball rolling", but I'm certainly happy to kick that ball round in a DM's pitch according to their game rules. If it's a Dwarf only Campaign, I'd still want my Dwarf, with my "Level One skin" on them.
Horses for courses etc. the important thing is playing TTRPG's and being a welcoming community - there's plenty of nice ways to say "no Spelljammer races" for example. The only "irl" example(s) I can think of are a couple of instances of Homebrew races/classes that have seemed (and I say "seemed" in the strongest possible terms)to be attempts to shoehorn in some perceived advantage in the short or long term in terms of character power... that may be a whole different discussion though.
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This is a complete misunderstanding of how that style of DMing works - one which I doubt few, if any, actually do. Let’s try analogy, since clearly multiple people fundamentally are mischaracterising how a flexible DM designs their world.
A flexible DM is like a car factory. They will build the car, finish the engine, put on some wheels, and the car will be ready to drive off the factory floor and onto the road, and would be 100% functional as-is. That car factory receives a special order - “hey, I want the deluxe rims and a fun paint job.” The factory needs to slap on a new coat of paint and maybe substitute out a relatively minor part, but the car is still basically the same, with some pretty minor changes.
Those mostly cosmetic changes take pretty much no time at all - even with a day between character creation and the campaign start, it isn’t that hard just to change out the metaphorical rims.
It isn’t hard and it doesn’t break the world. Now, can trolls use a permissive set of options to try to break the world? Yes. But they are trolls and are going to be trolls regardless. Options are not the problem - a DM rolling a bad insight and allowing a troll player is the problem in those cases.
Again, you're taking everything as all or nothing. For one, players don't make a bunch of random nonsense "meme jokes" when their options aren't limited. I find it somewhat insulting that you assume not banning certain classes or species will lead to everyone in the game just making troll builds to mess with the DM.
Building a world around the characters is great, because it ensures that the choices they made and the parts of the game they value will make into the campaign and world. Players provide a framework and a base to build on top of, a stepping stone to climb to greater heights from, and a set of appreciative friends to fall forward onto if and when you fail, because you will fail sometimes when you run the game, and what matters more is that you put the effort it into tailoring things to your group to help them have a good time anyways.
Not only is this a viable and valid method, but it can work excellently. In fact, the storied DM Brennan Lee Mulligan appears to have used it to build Umora for his new campaign.
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HERE.Sorry to double-post, but I have two very different thoughts that I think each merit a post of their own. In my opinion, the Dungeon Master has every right to restrict certain classes and species. If you ever see me over on the Dungeon Masters Only forum, you will know that one of the core tenets of my beliefs is that the DM deserves to have fun too. I personally am hesitant to ban certain things in my games, because I'm worried about it messing with my players' enjoyment. That being said, it makes sense to ban certain classes, species, or spells if they aren't in your world or don't make sense for it, or if they're completely broken and would ruin the game.
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HERE.I'll give you another analogy: The director says our theater company will be staging a series of original plays not unlike the Henriad and that these will be the most historically accurate productions of any play staged in the centuries since the time of Shakespeare and Marlowe in which this series of plays is to be set. What makes this project most interesting is that the cast will be given the liberty to not only come up with their roles but even submit the words and actions they will perform in them. One actor passes the audition and then protests because he or she can't play an astronaut.
You don't think the DM yielding and giving the actor what he or she wants would break that world?
Do you think the director is being inflexible unless he or she allows that actor to play an astronaut in the court of the "Virgin Queen"?
Is that director a bad director unless it can be demonstrated he or she is capable of making an astronaut work in that series of plays?
Stop acting like this is all about how bad a DM someone must be when some of us simply want to play games that bring to life at our tables literary or historical sources. Or worlds of our own imagination into which we have put a lot of time and effort to make them comparable to these.
I gave earlier the example of running a game set in warring states period Japan that is something I've personally run for Japanese students of mine the aim of which was to have fun but to do so with some degree of accuracy. A player then joining that group and launching into a tirade about how bad of a DM I must be because I said no you can't play a tiefling or a sorcerer is being a wanker. That's a player I would never want at my table even if the next game I was to be running was to allow for anything and everything.
I got your point. Mine was about how just underdeveloped or video game-like the worlds people run at their tables must be if every single menu of character options is made available to players and these must be accommodated. But I'd invite you to provide us with an example of a setting of your own creation to show us how this matches even the vision of a world-builder like Tolkien, Lord Dunsany, Howard, or Leiber if you're so certain of your own abilities and want to just insult those of us who just do things differently.
I said nothing about scripted storytelling. I said those actors would come up with their own lines for that project. But you clearly don't understand that for many D&D isn't collaborative storytelling. The storytelling approach to the game is a relatively modern one compared to the one of exploration which has been with the game since the beginning. The storytellers want to be Matt Mercer and his crew. The explorers want to play in sandboxes like the best of campaign settings from days gone by or those from a DM's imagination. Perhaps ironically, I think the exploration approach makes for much better storytelling. Writing—good writing—is about the sensory landscape and the world such creates and presents to readers as much as it is about what the characters just say or do to tell the story. Good writers choose wisely to fill a world with sets and props and background characters that make sense to make the world seem as real to life as the one we live in no matter how imaginary it might be. It is comparably fan fiction to just let a player force a square into a circle.