I did a rare blog post awhile ago with my personal rules as a player

Quote1) I do not hoard my wow-bangs. If I die with a sheet full of magical items or spells, then I played in vain. I am not here to advance a character, I am here to make fun memories with people I enjoy spending time with. Regular battles of attrition are slightly more interesting uses of my time than a 3rd grade math pop quiz.

2) Getting somewhere depends on rudimentary time management. Pixel-bitching for 45 minutes on something that isn't going to change the curve is wasting not only your time but everyone else's. I know there are one-way doors in the game, but most of the time you can come back with better information if it seems like you're missing something, rather than OCD on not-immediately obvious Q or A.

3) I surprise the DM - I do not find the margins and color inside of them. I find the weak points not considered and blow up the best-laid plans of my adversaries like the dudes walking away with their backs to the explosion. I am not concerned about dramatic tension; I am looking to dominate, bypass, confound, and neutralize. Moments of sheer panic will happen regardless but my goal is to have none.

4) Help other players have big moments - I know I'm a strong personality who will end up in a caller-like role whether consciously or unconsciously. So if leading a party, be a leader-servant. When other players are all looking at each other unsure of what to do, break the silence. When other players have an idea, help them make it happen. When you see a way for them to shine that they don't - put them in that position and try your damnedest to make everyone the party's X factor from time to time. When you all get together over beers afterwards, no one wants to hear stories about one person's character.

5) Spend your damn money - buy information, rumors, contacts, hidey-holes, strongholds (name-level or not), small armies of mercs, church support, adoration from the masses, and anything and everything else that gives your DM a lever to move your world. Whenever I look at a player's character sheet - presuming they have all of the basic game necessities met (training, maintenance, whatever) - and there's some ridiculous amount of gold scratched on there I feel like I'm sitting with a middle-manager only capable of following someone else's plan. Help them see the possibilities.

6) Have a short, medium, and long term goals that have zero to do with whatever the DM is cooking up - tying in with the above, adventure seeds are great - I'm always hunting for this stuff. But surely you know something you want to do that's intrinsic to yourself. Are you a fighter that wants a magic sword? Don't pine for it, drop out-of-game hints, or anything else. Start hunting for it; make it known within the world what you seek (at least to those who might point you in that direction). If you're a thief - make contacts way before you're thinking of setting up a guild in a few levels. Look for one ripe for takeover. Cleric? Where doth the church need extending its reach? Etc.

7) Contribute to the game world - make custom spells, items, and prayers. If you're a fighter, don't just found a stronghold - find a good natural harbor and start a new city.

Pay attention - be ready to roll. Don't be the guy saying "huh" every time. Speak up. Move things along. Write down stuff.

9) Be versatile - every time I see a player whine because they had a specific idea for a character in mind and must have that or their time isn't fun, I get flashbacks to every high-maintenance girl I've ever stupidly dated anyway. The warning signs are always there early, and they always come true.

10) There is no arc - embrace setbacks. This is not a novel. At this point there's nothing more boring than saving the world except a nice steady progress from week to week where my character consistently waxes in power. I don't invest in the bond market, and I'm not looking to play D&D to meter my progress through the level names. You're not really winning at D&D if you never lose. Gamble. Take big risks with the equivalent of monopoly money. If you're a character-driven roleplayer, seek the admiration that comes from a populace that sees your character rise from the ashes to become even better than before the tumble. Laughing off real adversity is the role most D&D characters should be playing, not the guy who always hits their scratch off ticket for $1 more than it cost.

Quote from: EOTB;1114449I did a rare blog post awhile ago with my personal rules as a player

These are great! Several light bulbs went off in my head reading them.

Quote from: EOTB;11144491) I do not hoard my wow-bangs. If I die with a sheet full of magical items or spells, then I played in vain. I am not here to advance a character, I am here to make fun memories with people I enjoy spending time with. Regular battles of attrition are slightly more interesting uses of my time than a 3rd grade math pop quiz.

I am a terrible item hoarder, always saving for a rainy day... encounter. This is a really good point.

Quote from: EOTB;11144494) Help other players have big moments - I know I'm a strong personality who will end up in a caller-like role whether consciously or unconsciously. So if leading a party, be a leader-servant. ...

Now that I've read this and think about it, the best parties I've ever been in have had a leader-servant, every time. That's a great model.

Quote from: EOTB;11144495) Spend your damn money - buy information, rumors, contacts, hidey-holes, strongholds (name-level or not), small armies of mercs, church support, adoration from the masses, and anything and everything else that gives your DM a lever to move your world.

Yep, also saving for a rainy day item shop. Yet one of my party members buying a ridiculous giant green feather was one of the most hilarious aspects of one of my recent campaigns.

Quote from: EOTB;11144497) Contribute to the game world - make custom spells, items, and prayers. If you're a fighter, don't just found a stronghold - find a good natural harbor and start a new city.

Do you negotiate this with the GM first? Session 0 type discussion, or as it comes up? Or do you just suggest things and see if it sticks?

In a dungeon don't eat or drink anything you didn't bring with you.
Be very careful tasting potions, don't chug several because you were thirsty.

Nice list, EOTB!

Quote from: EOTB;11144495) Spend your damn money

This one in particular I rarely have a problem with in my groups. My brother once designed a hulking barbarian-type, and spent all his starting wealth on... a single custom-tailored, giant/oversized, ruggedized, waterproofed, secret-compartmented... bag. :rolleyes: To carry all his booze and loot. I remember it taking him around two hours of fiddling around with the item customization rules and agonizing over choices before he finally reached something he was happy with. It literally took him longer to design than his character.

Quote from: insubordinate polyhedral;1114454These are great! Several light bulbs went off in my head reading them.

Thanks!  I'm glad you enjoyed them.

Quote from: insubordinate polyhedral;1114454Do you negotiate this with the GM first? Session 0 type discussion, or as it comes up? Or do you just suggest things and see if it sticks?

If it's a new GM/player combo, then sure, check at the beginning of the campaign if they're receptive.  Most GMs are.  Some are sticklers for only book items as they're more confident running stuff than creating their own stuff, and it's better to know your limitations than let in overpowered widgets - nothing makes a campaign less fun than the auto-win widget an inexperienced GM mistakenly allows.  So if they negotiate changes, accept them graciously.  

Quote from: Antiquation!;1114462This one in particular I rarely have a problem with in my groups. My brother once designed a hulking barbarian-type, and spent all his starting wealth on... a single custom-tailored, giant/oversized, ruggedized, waterproofed, secret-compartmented... bag. :rolleyes: To carry all his booze and loot. I remember it taking him around two hours of fiddling around with the item customization rules and agonizing over choices before he finally reached something he was happy with. It literally took him longer to design than his character.

See, when stuff happens like this it's what makes the game great!

Quote from: Shasarak;1114447Really, the guy that has a problem with every single DnD monster except now the Succubus?

I don't have a problem with every single D&D monster. I never went through the MM and noted my problem(s) with each entry. Although now that I mention it... that seems like something I should do, if only to see whether I do indeed have a problem with every monster no matter how trivial, bizarre, or tangential.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1114487I don't have a problem with every single D&D monster. I never went through the MM and noted my problem(s) with each entry. Although now that I mention it... that seems like something I should do, if only to see whether I do indeed have a problem with every monster no matter how trivial, bizarre, or tangential.

I'd like to read that; please start a thread on it.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1114445I don't have a problem, myself.

Firstly, the distinction between demons and devils is arbitrary. D&D is the only setting that does it and it doesn't do much with it. Aside from alignment on their statblocks, demons and devils are interchangeable. They don't vary noticeably in overall appearance or behavior. Warhammer's demons are way better distinguished.

Secondly, the erinyes or furies are taken from Greek myth and don't behave anything like a succubus. They're the daughters of Hades sent to torment the damned. When AD&D decided to turn them into lawful evil succubi to fulfill the autistic obsession with alignment symmetry, this did the original myth a disservice.

Finally something we can agree with! Except maybe the "I don't have a problem, myself" part, which may come off as dismissive, when other people still might. But personally I have a pet peeve with the way that D&D-isms tend to become commonly accepted as a fact of fantasy life to the point they somehow transcend actual mythology and such in favor of made up D&D conventions that don't have to set the standard for how fantasy stuff operates. Yet people treat them like they're the standard anyways.

Clerics don't have to heal or wear armor (they usually wear robes IRL). Wizards don't just destroy or do everything BUT healing. Alignment are lame and demons and devils are different names for the same thing as far as I'm concerned.

There, I became dismissive too!

Quote from: VisionStorm;1114506Clerics don't have to heal or wear armor (they usually wear robes IRL).

Have you looked at Pathfinder 2e, they have robed Clerics if you like them.

Quote from: Shasarak;1114512Have you looked at Pathfinder 2e, they have robed Clerics if you like them.

They should ALL wear robes. In every game (unless they're tribal priests or something, then they should wear medicine men clothes or whatever).

There's a name for armored holy men. They're called paladins.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1114490I'd like to read that; please start a thread on it.

I don't currently have a copy of the 5e MM since I buy PDFs due to a lack of storage space in my home. So I can't currently read the fluff in order to criticize it and illegal PDFs are unethical.

However, others have done their own reads of the 5e MM. For example:
https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/lets-read-d-d-5e-monster-manual.748101/
http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=55676

Anyway, my problems aren't with specific monsters so much as general trends in monster design. A lot of monsters have conceptual problems that render them redundant filler, there's no easy way to rescale monsters for other levels like in FantasyCraft, the monster concepts are needlessly restrictive, a lot of monsters are just plain boring/predictable, the fluff is often bizarre and contradictory in places, the terminology is sometimes deliberately obtuse, and in general the monster concepts are often far less interesting than creatures from real mythology.

For example, in mythology and medieval bestiaries the griffon was reputed to smell precious metals, cure blindness with its feathers, detect poison with its talons, lay eggs with agate shells, etc. All of that is absent from the MM depiction, where it's just a flying quadrupedal animal whose only fantastical characteristic is that its wings shouldn't fly in real life. I think I'm the only person who cares about that.

An example of an entry being self-contradictory and obtuse would be the elementals. The name is used both for the overall type and a specific family within that type, which is needlessly confusing. The entry can't decide how intelligent elementals are, alternately describing them as mindless or motivated. Enslaving elementals is never treated as any kind of moral issue, despite enslaving the living and zombies being considered abominable (and for different reasons). The entry can't decide whether elementals have bodies on their home plane or not. The entry claims all creatures of the elemental type are members of the elemental family that have been summoned and bound into that form, but the entries for all other creatures of the elemental type never mention this and in some cases it makes no sense. I never actually would have noticed that since I find elementals too boring to bother with in the first place; my elemental planes are inhabited by pokemon rather than glorified golems.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1114506Finally something we can agree with! Except maybe the "I don't have a problem, myself" part, which may come off as dismissive, when other people still might.

I'm sorry if I come across as dismissive of others. I am dismissive of D&D because I think it has lots of design problems, but I don't want to dismiss anybody's concerns out of hand.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1114506But personally I have a pet peeve with the way that D&D-isms tend to become commonly accepted as a fact of fantasy life to the point they somehow transcend actual mythology and such in favor of made up D&D conventions that don't have to set the standard for how fantasy stuff operates. Yet people treat them like they're the standard anyways.

Totally. I've been getting tons of mileage out of introducing concepts from real world mythology that were ignored by D&D.

For example, I took from Greek myth the idea that lamia are the transformed ghosts of women who died in unrequited love or great sorrow.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1114506Clerics don't have to heal or wear armor (they usually wear robes IRL).

D&D clerics seem to be partly based on the vampire hunters from Hammer Horror movies. It is pigeonholing. I'd like to see clerics with more variety, like a unarmored unarmed cleric or a cleric who casts spells from a prayerbook.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1114506Wizards don't just destroy or do everything BUT healing.

Agreed. That's why I prefer mechanics like Spheres of Power, which give the player total control over their caster's spheres of influence. Want a vivomancer? There's a whole sourcebook.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1114506Alignment are lame

Alignment made sense in Moorcock's work as the conflict chaos/order, but adding good and evil destroyed the sense behind it. That's why I like games which either jettison alignment or go back to the original chaos/order conflict.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1114506demons and devils are different names for the same thing as far as I'm concerned

With actual thought behind it the distinction might be interesting, such as the difference between Hellraiser's orderly cenobites and Warhammer's chaos daemons, but D&D utterly fails to take advantage of this. You can't distinguish demons and devils in the game by their behavior or appearance, because they behave the same and used the same random generation tables to determine their appearance. Warhammer's chaos daemons have more unified motifs than D&D's supposedly orderly devils do.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1114569I never actually would have noticed that since I find elementals too boring to bother with in the first place; my elemental planes are inhabited by pokemon rather than glorified golems.

Elementals are just so, so fucking boring. I can't remember the last time I ever thought to include one in a campaign.

I agree with your general sentiments about monster trends. Most in D&D are bland and stripped of all flavor, presented as little more than meat sacks filled with XP for PC's to beat up. Part of why I like GURPS is that the MM's it does have feature some slightly more off-the-wall stuff, presented with slightly more interesting personalities/ecology. Plus there is a wealth of fan-constructed monsters out there, and GURPS hands me the tools to create my own interesting creatures with as much detail as I want.

Quote from: Antiquation!;1114574Elementals are just so, so fucking boring. I can't remember the last time I ever thought to include one in a campaign.

I agree with your general sentiments about monster trends. Most in D&D are bland and stripped of all flavor, presented as little more than meat sacks filled with XP for PC's to beat up. Part of why I like GURPS is that the MM's it does have feature some slightly more off-the-wall stuff, presented with slightly more interesting personalities/ecology. Plus there is a wealth of fan-constructed monsters out there, and GURPS hands me the tools to create my own interesting creatures with as much detail as I want.

Then you have Eberron where elementals are effectively replacements for IC engines and just as interesting (in the eyes of a non-mechanic). Oh well, at least they get work there...

Quote from: Antiquation!;1114574Elementals are just so, so fucking boring. I can't remember the last time I ever thought to include one in a campaign.

What I don't understand is why elementals and the elemental planes are so boring. Pokemon gets a ton of mileage out of elemental animals. Various video games like Telara, EverQuest, and WarCraft have adventures on their elemental planes. I don't understand why D&D could never do the same.

Quote from: Antiquation!;1114574I agree with your general sentiments about monster trends. Most in D&D are bland and stripped of all flavor, presented as little more than meat sacks filled with XP for PC's to beat up. Part of why I like GURPS is that the MM's it does have feature some slightly more off-the-wall stuff, presented with slightly more interesting personalities/ecology. Plus there is a wealth of fan-constructed monsters out there, and GURPS hands me the tools to create my own interesting creatures with as much detail as I want.

I wrote so many blog posts trying and probably failing to make certain monsters more interesting.

With minotaurs I posited (based on the helpful posts of many others) that they're a curse rather than a race; 5e claims this but isn't consistent. This curse causes the maturing minotaur to gradually generate a maze demiplane, with geography based on their personality and physical features (including mutations like fire breath, psychic powers, multiple heads, etc), which they steadily become unable to leave. The minotaurs that are seen wandering around raiding villages are rowdy teenagers exploiting their youthful mobility. PC minotaurs are probably searching for a way to break the curse and become human. (Bovine beastmen are not minotaurs, though there's plenty of confusion.)

With griffins I assembled a list of every griffin variety I could find. Alce, keythong, opinicus, hippogriff, liongriff, cynogriff, and more. I even included the reverse griffin. I posited the reason that dwarves often domesticate griffins despite being adapted to subterranean life is because griffins track precious metals by scent, making them invaluable to the miners.

With manticores I reiterated their traits in medieval bestiaries and listed numerous variations on the concept that I found. There's a bazillion different varieties of these sphinx-like creatures. According to the medieval bestiaries, Indians would hunt them riding elephants; young manticores would have their stings removed and be trained as choirboys due to their trumpet-like voices. I think I even wrote some random generation tables.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1114593Then you have Eberron where elementals are effectively replacements for IC engines and just as interesting (in the eyes of a non-mechanic). Oh well, at least they get work there...

In Creature Collection they introduced a monster called "forge wight" which was the same idea except instead of an engine it was a blacksmith's forge. IIRC the standard encounter backstory was that the party encountered a forge whose wight hadn't been released and now exhibited poltergeist activity out of boredom. (The entry used "wight" in the pre-D&D and neo-pagan sense of a spiritual entity, not the D&D sense as a specific type of corporeal undead monster.)

Reminds me a bit of the real world folklore in which everyone believed their hearth had a spirit and if appeased would bring good luck. This survives in neo-pagan belief as the "house-wight."

Quote from: HappyDaze;1114593Then you have Eberron where elementals are effectively replacements for IC engines and just as interesting (in the eyes of a non-mechanic). Oh well, at least they get work there...

IIRC there isn't any in-setting questioning of morality over enslaving these intelligent beings either, so that doesn't inspire any elemental-related interest in me either.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1114595What I don't understand is why elementals and the elemental planes are so boring. Pokemon gets a ton of mileage out of elemental animals. Various video games like Telara, EverQuest, and WarCraft have adventures on their elemental planes. I don't understand why D&D could never do the same.

Good point. I have always liked minotaurs being a result of curses as well; your idea for the gradual generation of mazes is cool, I like that.

The forge wight is an interesting idea. The hearth spirit concept reminds me of the character in Howl's Moving Castle.