Since even O (Original not One) D&D the very first step in character creation has been to roll the character's ability scores.
Then and only then would a player choose his or her class and race.
So what exactly are players doing if they're coming to each and every table with the expectation they can just play whatever they want?
Insisting the DM not use that system and allow them to point-buy their way into what they want?
Insisting the DM allow them to reroll until they've got what they want?
How many of you have participated in games held at conventions where you're typically given pre-rolled characters and are then required to breathe life into those characters ? I've provide pre-rolled characters for any students for whom I run D&D and you know what? They don't care. They still have the time of their lives.
As the original post says it's a shift in orientation: players now expect the game be tailor-made for them. The DM who has put in much more time and effort so those players even get to play becomes nothing more than a host.
Accommodating their friends does not magically turn the DM into a doormat. And if they are, they likely have problems a game can't solve - such as needing some assertiveness training.
As for Original D&D saying you should never show up with a character concept before you roll your stats, bollocks to that. Here's what D&D 5th Edition says:
Before you dive into step 1 below, think about the kind of adventurer you want to play. You might be a courageous fighter, a skulking rogue, a fervent cleric, or a flamboyant wizard. Or you might be more interested in an unconventional character, such as a brawny rogue who likes hand-to-hand combat, or a sharpshooter who picks off enemies from afar. Do you like fantasy fiction featuring dwarves or elves? Try building a character of one of those races. Do you want your character to be the toughest adventurer at the table? Consider the fighter class. If you don’t know where else to begin, take a look at the illustrations in any Dungeons & Dragons book to see what catches your interest.
Once you have a character in mind, follow these steps in order, making decisions that reflect the character you want. Your conception of your character might evolve with each choice you make. What’s important is that you come to the table with a character you’re excited to play.
But just because they players have the right to think of a concept, that doesn't mean the DM can't tell them no. This part comes even before that one:
Ultimately, the Dungeon Master is the authority on the campaign and its setting, even if the setting is a published world.
There - you want to ban X race or Y class in Z setting, you have express permission to do so right in the Player's Handbook.
I hope that Flamboyant Wizard is a new subclass in OneD&D and that no DM tries to limit it.
I did however say "since OD&D" as it's not alone among editions in which that's the first step.
Completely understandable why some would not like that and they much prefer building a character from a concept. I have enjoyed that method myself when given that amount of choice. I also like and even favour the challenge of role-playing what the dice give me.
And if you want to generate your character concept randomly or do stats first (and your DM is cool with that) then that's fine. My point is that (a) this forum is for the current edition of the game, and (b) the current edition lays out the steps for character creation in the order you're intended to follow them. I don't really care what older D&D editions say, there are other places on the internet dedicated to those games. The expectation built into 5e is that the player shows up at the table with a character concept (PHB pg.11), so players doing what the book explicitly tells them to do are not doing anything wrong. If a given DM wants to passive-aggressively hide behind the books because he doesn't like saying no himself, this is not the game for that.
You can also play how you want. That's the genius of the hobby. There's no reason to get carried away just because I find completely ******* ridiculous the idea that games played before tieflings and sorcerers were available options couldn't possibly have been 'better' and 'funner' than each and every game played today with all options available today always on offer. Some groups do 0-level funnel sessions to determine who or what the characters will be. Some still roll 3d6 down the line instead of skewing the numbers to get exactly what they want. You can play how you want. Telling others the way you play is 'better' and 'funner' when these are entirely subjective is just being a wanker.
It's not 'railroading' to tell a player they can't play a certain species because the game we'll be playing is set in a certain world in which that species does not exist or during a moment in time in history in the real world any more than it would be for you to tell a player of yours they can't have nuclear weapons if they found some third-party resource with such things stat-ed for the game. Railroading has a particular meaning that pertains to the campaign. Not the setting. You don't just get to change what it means so you can snidely insult others.
You can be that kid who shows up and stamps his or her feet and demands to get to play the Incredible Hulk in a game of Justice League or otherwise you're gonna go home. I'll play Justice League. And we'll have a better and funner time than you when you sit moping in your room because you didn't get to play.
ALSO: There's 'seriously debating' and then there is running to something that has nothing to do with the debate because you've run out of steam.
I t "running out of steam"; I just didn't want to bore you to death with 4 more paragraphs of droning commentary. That being said, your comment at the end there kinda asked for it.
The first thing I would like to say is that your assumptions about people deciding to play as Hulk in unrelated campaigns are somewhat ridiculous. Problem players who insist on doing something at the expense of everyone else in the party and refuse to compromise are few and far between. Regardless of whether you ban certain classes or species in your game, there will always be ways for those who deliberately try to mess with others' fun, and there will always be character options and reflavoring that allow those people to be like Hulk, even if you've banned 99% of things in every book.
These players are few and far between, and they can make problematic builds or character concepts (a lot of this is about the concept, and banning species and classes doesn't really change the part of the game that's non-mechanical) to mess with your campaign, whether or not you've banned lots of material or almost nothing. Due to this, it seems unfair to your other players to limit their choices and creativity just to try and play whack-a-mole and root out hypothetical bad players that very few of exist.
Also, I explicitly told you that it was my experience that games like this go better, last longer, and are more enjoyable than campaigns with 3 feet high ban lists. Obviously, this is very much subjective, and certain people enjoy different things. However, it is not exactly a little known fact that humans prefer having options, choices, decisions, and some things that they can control. Due to this, it makes sense that players enjoy not having too many things banned in character creation, and that more diverse, creative, imaginative, and vibrant worlds are the ones that players will typically like better.
As a side note, railroading is not strictly confined to occurring over the course of the campaign. At least according to the top result for this search on Google. railroading is often defined as severely limiting or restricting the choices your players get to make. So yes, banning enough character creation options could be perceived as railroading. That being said, as I have stated numerous time before, I understand and support Dungeon Masters who wish to limit certain things. I just think that this authority should be exercised only to a certain extent, and that some of the reasons you are giving are the wrong ones for limiting build choices.
Those arguing against them however have spent several pages insisting it's "wrong" for a DM to restrict anything. Ever. Have said only a "bad DM" would do that. Only a "bad DM" couldn't figure out how to allow for everything.
I have only seen 1 person say something that could even remotely be misinterpreted as that. I myself have explicitly said the opposite: That there are many skilled Dungeon Masters that choose to ban certain species or class. I respect their choice, because it's their game. Not mine.
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I love restrictions being placed on my character generation.
First off I do not like the huge amount of races available to the player. I also do not like the huge amount of classes available to the player.
In my belief if a race or class is available to a player then that race and class exists in the world and the DM has to account for it in all places. There are no one offs. No one is that unique. I for one have a deep trust in the mistrust of mankind. Animosity between differing groups of people is a real thing so why would it be different in any fantasy world? How would a village back in 1650 handle some type of armed android walking into town? Would it be embraced like a long lost friend, viewed with indifference or treated with distrust? If they saw them every week they would be treated just like any other stranger, if they never saw one before they would treat it with distrust. How about a creature that looks like everything they have been told about evil demons?
Bring on restrictions. I view it as a challenge to my playing ability. Can I play a character I do not normally play? Can I create a whole new personality for that character? I have seen way to many players who think they create some new character but in the end they play them exactly the same as the last one. Inevitability some variation of human.
An Iranian mate of mine says he wants to run a game set during the Islamic Golden Age inspired by the folk tales found in One Thousand and One Nights.
The players are told this when they're asked if they'd even like to play.
The following week they gather for a session 0 and every single player is under the impression they can just make characters using the fantasy races in the player's handbook and what they say they want to play would mean a party consisting of an array of Western fantasy races that would be as anachronistic as they would be alien to the world and the DM tries to explain as diplomatically as possible how there are going to be limits to what they can have. That in the setting there are no [races] or [classes] and only [races] and [classes] but even maybe some [races] and [classes] which the DM him- or herself has designed.
That has nothing to do with a DM preempting someone being a wanker and just wanting to restrict everyone else in their options. It's a DM just setting the limits for a campaign's setting which is something that's been done for decades of the game's existence and something published campaign settings used to do with little to no complaint from those who wanted to use them.
It sucks that that happened since it definitely sounds like the DM has a passion for the subject matter. But this is one bad incident you're trying to make some universal assessment out of (similar to the OP's logic here and in other places where they seem to be claiming some sort of DM victimization by extreme exercise of player agency). Admittedly, sure just my limited experience, and other posters limited experiences, but it seems far more posters here have never seen a DM establish character option parameters and have to quit in the fashion you and the OP seem to think is rampant in the present state of D&D playing. I've limited what can go into my game for varying reasons, I've sat at tables where there were limits, I'm playing right now in game with character option limits. And I've seem players as young as 10-12 also make limits in their games. The well into the high 80 percentiles of respondents to this poll embracing character option or other limitations in game seems to reflect the experience of many of the participants in the discussion.
The last time I posted on this thread, I suggested something to the effect it's not whether you limit but how you limit. A whole _invited_ table showing up to a historical/cultural/mythological specific game not being on the same page sounds like it could just as well be a communication failure as opposed to some tide player entitlement ruining the hobby or whatever this recent take that's driven a few recent threads think is "wrong" with the state of the game. I don't know where you play, but if you scroll through the LFG/FLP part of this board, I'm pretty sure you'll see limitations in character options happen, and it looks like the folks in the set up posts seem to know what they're getting into, and those are pick up games, not tailored or specifically solicited players.
Again, sorry that game set up went bad, and I hope that DM does get to run that game with people who read the memo.
It sucks that that happened since it definitely sounds like the DM has a passion for the subject matter. But this is one bad incident you're trying to make some universal assessment out of (similar to the OP's logic here and in other places where they seem to be claiming some sort of DM victimization by extreme exercise of player agency). Admittedly, sure just my limited experience, and other posters limited experiences, but it seems far more posters here have never seen a DM establish character option parameters and have to quit in the fashion you and the OP seem to think is rampant in the present state of D&D playing. I've limited what can go into my game for varying reasons, I've sat at tables where there were limits, I'm playing right now in game with character option limits. And I've seem players as young as 10-12 also make limits in their games. The well into the high 80 percentiles of respondents to this poll embracing character option or other limitations in game seems to reflect the experience of many of the participants in the discussion.
The last time I posted on this thread, I suggested something to the effect it's not whether you limit but how you limit. A whole _invited_ table showing up to a historical/cultural/mythological specific game not being on the same page sounds like it could just as well be a communication failure as opposed to some tide player entitlement ruining the hobby or whatever this recent take that's driven a few recent threads think is "wrong" with the state of the game. I don't know where you play, but if you scroll through the LFG/FLP part of this board, I'm pretty sure you'll see limitations in character options happen, and it looks like the folks in the set up posts seem to know what they're getting into, and those are pick up games, not tailored or specifically solicited players.
Again, sorry that game set up went bad, and I hope that DM does get to run that game with people who read the memo.
I am specifically responding to those who object to the idea of class and race restrictions under any circumstances. More than a few a people in this thread have expressed that sentiment. There's no need to act like I'm saying the example I've given is some kind of universal problem. It's an example that shows why class and race restrictions make perfect sense under some circumstances. That's all. Most players who didn't want to play that game would simply decline the invitation. Most players are reasonable like that. But those who understood perfectly the DM's idea and who still got upset or angry when they were told they couldn't just populate the Islamic Golden Age with plane-walkers and time-travelers? Such wankers might be few and far between. But they demonstrate perfectly how reasonable it is for a DM to set limits.
You are aware that this whole thread exists based on the false premise in the OP that it is a universal problem. Does it happen in instances? Sure a bad table of players can happen just as a often as a table with a bad DM with arbitrary control issues (another refrain in the the recent round of grievance against D&D threads, ironically started by the same OP as this one). I mean, by all means continue sparring with the proponents of extreme player agency till your patience runs out.
If it's well developed, your buddy should put that setting up online somewhere, it sounds cool. Had a buddy once who was actually a scholar of the Nights and I don't know nearly as much as he does, but there's great stuff in there.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I hope that Flamboyant Wizard is a new subclass in OneD&D and that no DM tries to limit it.
And if you want to generate your character concept randomly or do stats first (and your DM is cool with that) then that's fine. My point is that (a) this forum is for the current edition of the game, and (b) the current edition lays out the steps for character creation in the order you're intended to follow them. I don't really care what older D&D editions say, there are other places on the internet dedicated to those games. The expectation built into 5e is that the player shows up at the table with a character concept (PHB pg.11), so players doing what the book explicitly tells them to do are not doing anything wrong. If a given DM wants to passive-aggressively hide behind the books because he doesn't like saying no himself, this is not the game for that.
You mean Illusionist? 😛
I t "running out of steam"; I just didn't want to bore you to death with 4 more paragraphs of droning commentary. That being said, your comment at the end there kinda asked for it.
The first thing I would like to say is that your assumptions about people deciding to play as Hulk in unrelated campaigns are somewhat ridiculous. Problem players who insist on doing something at the expense of everyone else in the party and refuse to compromise are few and far between. Regardless of whether you ban certain classes or species in your game, there will always be ways for those who deliberately try to mess with others' fun, and there will always be character options and reflavoring that allow those people to be like Hulk, even if you've banned 99% of things in every book.
These players are few and far between, and they can make problematic builds or character concepts (a lot of this is about the concept, and banning species and classes doesn't really change the part of the game that's non-mechanical) to mess with your campaign, whether or not you've banned lots of material or almost nothing. Due to this, it seems unfair to your other players to limit their choices and creativity just to try and play whack-a-mole and root out hypothetical bad players that very few of exist.
Also, I explicitly told you that it was my experience that games like this go better, last longer, and are more enjoyable than campaigns with 3 feet high ban lists. Obviously, this is very much subjective, and certain people enjoy different things. However, it is not exactly a little known fact that humans prefer having options, choices, decisions, and some things that they can control. Due to this, it makes sense that players enjoy not having too many things banned in character creation, and that more diverse, creative, imaginative, and vibrant worlds are the ones that players will typically like better.
As a side note, railroading is not strictly confined to occurring over the course of the campaign. At least according to the top result for this search on Google. railroading is often defined as severely limiting or restricting the choices your players get to make. So yes, banning enough character creation options could be perceived as railroading. That being said, as I have stated numerous time before, I understand and support Dungeon Masters who wish to limit certain things. I just think that this authority should be exercised only to a certain extent, and that some of the reasons you are giving are the wrong ones for limiting build choices.
I have only seen 1 person say something that could even remotely be misinterpreted as that. I myself have explicitly said the opposite: That there are many skilled Dungeon Masters that choose to ban certain species or class. I respect their choice, because it's their game. Not mine.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.I love restrictions being placed on my character generation.
First off I do not like the huge amount of races available to the player.
I also do not like the huge amount of classes available to the player.
In my belief if a race or class is available to a player then that race and class exists in the world and the DM has to account for it in all places. There are no one offs. No one is that unique.
I for one have a deep trust in the mistrust of mankind. Animosity between differing groups of people is a real thing so why would it be different in any fantasy world?
How would a village back in 1650 handle some type of armed android walking into town? Would it be embraced like a long lost friend, viewed with indifference or treated with distrust? If they saw them every week they would be treated just like any other stranger, if they never saw one before they would treat it with distrust. How about a creature that looks like everything they have been told about evil demons?
Bring on restrictions.
I view it as a challenge to my playing ability. Can I play a character I do not normally play? Can I create a whole new personality for that character?
I have seen way to many players who think they create some new character but in the end they play them exactly the same as the last one. Inevitability some variation of human.
It sucks that that happened since it definitely sounds like the DM has a passion for the subject matter. But this is one bad incident you're trying to make some universal assessment out of (similar to the OP's logic here and in other places where they seem to be claiming some sort of DM victimization by extreme exercise of player agency). Admittedly, sure just my limited experience, and other posters limited experiences, but it seems far more posters here have never seen a DM establish character option parameters and have to quit in the fashion you and the OP seem to think is rampant in the present state of D&D playing. I've limited what can go into my game for varying reasons, I've sat at tables where there were limits, I'm playing right now in game with character option limits. And I've seem players as young as 10-12 also make limits in their games. The well into the high 80 percentiles of respondents to this poll embracing character option or other limitations in game seems to reflect the experience of many of the participants in the discussion.
The last time I posted on this thread, I suggested something to the effect it's not whether you limit but how you limit. A whole _invited_ table showing up to a historical/cultural/mythological specific game not being on the same page sounds like it could just as well be a communication failure as opposed to some tide player entitlement ruining the hobby or whatever this recent take that's driven a few recent threads think is "wrong" with the state of the game. I don't know where you play, but if you scroll through the LFG/FLP part of this board, I'm pretty sure you'll see limitations in character options happen, and it looks like the folks in the set up posts seem to know what they're getting into, and those are pick up games, not tailored or specifically solicited players.
Again, sorry that game set up went bad, and I hope that DM does get to run that game with people who read the memo.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
You are aware that this whole thread exists based on the false premise in the OP that it is a universal problem. Does it happen in instances? Sure a bad table of players can happen just as a often as a table with a bad DM with arbitrary control issues (another refrain in the the recent round of grievance against D&D threads, ironically started by the same OP as this one). I mean, by all means continue sparring with the proponents of extreme player agency till your patience runs out.
If it's well developed, your buddy should put that setting up online somewhere, it sounds cool. Had a buddy once who was actually a scholar of the Nights and I don't know nearly as much as he does, but there's great stuff in there.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
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