Quote from: jhkim on November 08, 2022, 08:58:58 PM
In my experience, I'd prefer to deal with this by selecting players. I find that if a player really wants to bring an inappropriate character who will ruin the game, then I don't want them in my game even if they're forced to take a more standard character.

What I'm curious about for anyone is - how would you say that WOTC is contributing to the problem? They're publishing new races and new classes, but D&D has always had a steady stream of those. As I see it, they're available options if the DM wants them.

1: Thats ever been a problem unfortunately. If someone intends to cause trouble no amount of rules or talking is going to prevent them finding a way to cause trouble.

2: Honestly right now there is not any real indicator other than the gradual push WOTC has been doing to slowly curtail the DM in various small ways. You cant do this, you cant do that. Players have gotten gradually more dictation over the DM. A few years back and even now there has been this little push of "always say Yes". Especially over on BGG.

Alot of this is not so much WOTCs fault as it is infiltration by the more loony bin of the storygamers. With WOTC being too stupid to notice that bad advice is bad advice.

Honestly that is WOTCs obsession for decades. They gravitate to bad advice. They listen to it far more than they ever do the good advice and even the the good advice will eventually be abolished later.

Failure is the only option. Success will not be tolerated.

Six of one, half a dozen of another.  If a player walks because I don't cave on their demands, does it really matter whether it was because they were going to be unreasonable no matter what to mess up the game or that they were simply a bad fit for the game?  Either way, they don't belong at the table. 

Sure, I guess it matters if you plan to run a lot of different things in a lot of different styles.  You might have a fit for a reasonable player in some of those.  However, I'm not out to start a gaming club, or promote "gaming" in general, let alone any of that other "gaming community" bullshit.  I'm out to run games that I enjoy running, so that the experience will be enjoyable for me--and as a related consequence, also enjoyable for my current and future players that enjoy the same thing.  I don't have a shortage of players.  Some random new person doesn't get to trump that with their preferences.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on November 09, 2022, 07:47:37 AM
Six of one, half a dozen of another.  If a player walks because I don't cave on their demands, does it really matter whether it was because they were going to be unreasonable no matter what to mess up the game or that they were simply a bad fit for the game?  Either way, they don't belong at the table. 

Sure, I guess it matters if you plan to run a lot of different things in a lot of different styles.  You might have a fit for a reasonable player in some of those.  However, I'm not out to start a gaming club, or promote "gaming" in general, let alone any of that other "gaming community" bullshit.  I'm out to run games that I enjoy running, so that the experience will be enjoyable for me--and as a related consequence, also enjoyable for my current and future players that enjoy the same thing.  I don't have a shortage of players.  Some random new person doesn't get to trump that with their preferences.

To be fair, someone out to ruin your game would just select the least controversial thing possible and then behave badly. I could easily wreck a game with a LG or CG Human Fighter (played as a mix of Stupid Good + Lawful or Chaotic Stupid) if I was really determined to.

I'd rather take someone who's character concepts are on the edge if they're interested in participating constructively in the group dynamic than someone who disrupts games while they play totally in-bounds characters.

Also, not everyone has the abundance of players you do and so if someone wants to play something atypical, as long as that's the only 'disruptive' thing about them, I'll generally try to work with them. Sometimes the result might even be better than expected.

Quote from: S'mon on November 09, 2022, 02:22:30 AM
I recruited on Roll20 for a 5e game. The expectation among the '5e public' is definitely that anything should be allowed, even though I explicitly said PHB + Xanathar's only. Often players don't know or care where stuff comes from, it appears on eg D&D Beyond and that's enough for them.

OK, fair enough. I don't see anything in the WOTC books explicitly encouraging this, but I don't see anything explicitly discouraging it either. For example, the 5E DMG has sections on tailoring your campaign, but it doesn't specifically mention disallowing certain races or classes, while it does mention creating new races and/or subclasses. That goes in line with commissioning a setting like Eberron, which was made with a requirement that it allow all core races and classes.

From a business standpoint, I suspect interoperability helps grow the player base via the network effect. i.e. The easier it is to go back and forth between different campaigns, the better it is for recruiting and retaining. Someone recruited for one game can go to another if their initial game folds. The trick is keeping that center popular among enough DMs and players.

Quote from: Omega on November 09, 2022, 02:45:20 AM
Alot of this is not so much WOTCs fault as it is infiltration by the more loony bin of the storygamers. With WOTC being too stupid to notice that bad advice is bad advice.

Honestly that is WOTCs obsession for decades. They gravitate to bad advice. They listen to it far more than they ever do the good advice and even the the good advice will eventually be abolished later.

Failure is the only option. Success will not be tolerated.

I find this strange to say. In business terms, WOTC is one of the most successful game companies ever. It went from publishing fringe RPGs like Talislanta and The Primal Order, to now being pivotal to a mainstream gaming company Hasbro - as its CEO was just promoted. Its products are often not to my tastes, but I can't see calling it a failure.

Something I keep in mind is that the vast majority of DMs and players aren't like most posters here. We're the hard-core extremes, who discuss games daily on the Internet - while most DMs are more casual.