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warboss wrote:In a world where there are dozens of official 4the edition books as well as 100's of online Dungeon/Dragon magazine articles, limiting your players to just the Essential books is indeed quite strict.

Essentials is not perfectly compatible with all other D&D4E products in terms of balance -- or, more importantly, intent. Essentials was supposed to harken back to 2E, which was not a design goal of 4E at release. The point of this mini-campaign, as Ahtman stated, was to play the feel of 2E with 4E rules -- which is desirable in the first place because of Mearls's work on Essentials.

warboss wrote:Carving out certain races from that already very limited book selection (when your players are obviously used to a wider choice) is arbitrary on top of that.

No, it is not arbitrary. There was a reason: allowing a drow PC is inconsistent with the 2E theme. Picking the 2E theme was not arbitrary, either: the point was to do something different from the main campaign that the usual DM would enjoy.

warbpss wrote:My point is that you need to cater your campaign (even a one-shot) to both your vision as DM and the players' if you want it to succeed. In a perfect world, everyone would just bow down to your whims and you would later return the favor.

There's no need for talk of catering and bowing down. Simple compromise is in order. Ahtman offered to compromise regarding the drow, for example, and was rewarded with the counter-demand that the PCs start at level 11 instead of 3. If you want to talk about whims, it's not Ahtman that deserves the criticism in this case.

warboss wrote:I've been on both sides of the coin (as a player for over 20 years and DM for half that time collectively in concurrent campaigns) so I offered my advice as your GM style is frankly coming off as very Cartman-esque.

I really don't see any basis for that analysis. To me, it's like asking "would you guys like to do an old school dungeon crawl?" and getting the reply "only if we can start as paragon uber-n00b-pwnerz!!!!1!" Actually, that's exactly the case. And, to me, the players sound a lot more Cartman-esque than the would-be DM.


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warboss wrote:In his story, he and current DM decided to switch places and the other players were just later let in on that decision and its ramifications. In pretre's story, it seems like they all talked about it and implicitly gave him the freedom to choose the ruleset.

That may very well be what happened in each case but I think you are reading your argument into the facts as they have presented them. Pretre said, for example, "I am the DM so I chose X rules." That doesn't imply agreement, voting, etc.

warboss wrote:Could a single player not agree with the groupthink and decide not to play? Sure... But when all but one player (the ex-DM) wants to run characters you're not allowing, the problematic shoe is on the other foot.

Again, note that each would-be player has a unique objection.

warboss wrote:In a world where there are dozens of official 4the edition books as well as 100's of online Dungeon/Dragon magazine articles, limiting your players to just the Essential books is indeed quite strict.

While there are a lot of 4e books, there are really only 4 Essentials books (2 player, 1 rule/dm, and Monster Vault). The idea that anything less than every splat book and every dragon article being overly restrictive is utter nonsense.

warboss wrote:Carving out certain races from that already very limited book selection (when your players are obviously used to a wider choice) is arbitrary on top of that.

It isn't arbitrary and has been explained several times. So either you don't know what arbitrary means are you aren't actually reading the thread. Either way it seems like your contribution is not going to be substantive or well thought out.

warboss wrote:There is nothing wrong morally with your choice just as there is nothing wrong with the players collectively saying they don't agree.

Morallity has nothing to do with it, at all, in any way. The fact that you think these players are agreeing collectively again shows that you may not being paying full attention.

warboss wrote:My point is that you need to cater your campaign players' if you want it to succeed.

No, you actually don't have to give in to every persons demand to succeed, and not just in D&D.

warboss wrote:In a perfect world, everyone would just bow down to your whims and you would later return the favor.

More evidence you aren't paying attention.

warboss wrote:In the real world, most players want to have some say in the type of games they play

These players have a choice and they made it. What a silly thing to say.

warboss wrote:and (to use your own wording) don't like to be treated like puppets with their characters revolving around your pruned garden world's every whim.

Characters aren't puppets and get to make their own decisions, as do their players.

warboss wrote:You don't need a democratic process to determine whether to craft your own game world but you do need one to determine if that game will ever see the light of the tabletop.

Again, no, you really don't. And if it doesn't that is ok. It is like talking to a broken record.

warboss wrote:(as a player for over 20 years and DM for half that time collectively in concurrent campaigns) so I offered my advice as your GM style is frankly coming off as very Cartman-esque.

Considering you have never played in a game I've run you have no idea what what my DM style is and making uninformed statements seems to be your method at the moment. As someone else who has played for over 20 years you sound like someone who actually has never played, but has a strong opinion on how others should.

@Manchu: Not in my group. I meant I had already said 'Screw the guy in Ahtman's group that wanted to play a different system'. Basically, if it is just one guy wanting a different system and he can't convince the other players, he has to suck it up.

My whole point in this thread has been that choosing both system and how you play that system (theme, books, levels, etc) is a collaborative effort and cannot really be decided by one person alone, it has to be a group decision. My story about the Supers game was to illustrate that me trying to enforce my will would ultimately fail, so I chose to go with the group's choices.

I don't think you can or should try to force "your game" down anyone's throat. Ahtman apparently agrees since he posted exactly that on page one. So criticizing him for doing so seems a bit out-of-order.

OTOH, running a campaign is more work than running a character sheet. Some people are only willing to run certain types of campaigns no matter if anyone wants to play them or not. If I am in a group where everyone wants to play D&D but no one but me is willing to DM, then I am in a stronger bargaining position as to what kind of campaign will be available -- especially when there is no agreement among the rest of the group. And, if everyone else wants to play something that I don't want to DM, it's not incumbent upon me or Ahtman or anyone to agree. Collaborative effort does not mean that the DM has to do what the players want because there are more players than there are DMs.

Manchu wrote:I don't think you can or should try to force "your game" down anyone's throat. Ahtman apparently agrees since he posted exactly that on page one. So criticizing him for doing so seems a bit out-of-order.

OTOH, running a campaign is more work than running a character sheet. Some people are only willing to run certain types of campaigns no matter if anyone wants to play them or not. If I am in a group where everyone wants to play D&D but no one but me is willing to DM, then I am in a stronger bargaining position as to what kind of campaign will be available -- especially when there is no agreement among the rest of the group. And, if everyone else wants to play something that I don't want to DM, it's not incumbent upon me or Ahtman or anyone to agree. Collaborative effort does not mean that the DM has to do what the players want because there are more players than there are DMs.

I'm not criticizing him for shoving his game down his player's throats. It is obvious that he isn't doing that since the game isn't going to happen. I'm saying that choosing a system and a game is a collaborative effort. Neither he nor his players are really collaborating, so the game is not going to happen.

I guess I don't see how collaboration is possible in this case. Although I'm not a fan of RP-lite dungeon crawls, I see what Ahtman is doing as reasonable and what the other players are demanding as cheesy and immature. I am a huge fan of the drow and would be miffed by not getting to play them -- but obviously Ahtman would compromise and allow that. It doesn't really "break" anything regarding his motivation for running the campaign. In other words, it's a reasonable request -- and only reasonable requests really have any genuine part to play in collaboration. When you start making unreasonable requests -- like starting at paragon rather than in the heroic tier or just playing a completely different game -- collaboration is no longer an option.

Manchu wrote:I guess I don't see how collaboration is possible in this case. Although I'm not a fan of RP-lite dungeon crawls, I see what Ahtman is doing as reasonable and what the other players are demanding as cheesy and immature. I am a huge fan of the drow and would be miffed by not getting to play them -- but obviously Ahtman would compromise and allow that. It doesn't really "break" anything regarding his motivation for running the campaign. In other words, it's a reasonable request -- and only reasonable requests really have any genuine part to play in collaboration. When you start making unreasonable requests -- like starting at paragon rather than in the heroic tier or just playing a completely different game -- collaboration is no longer an option.

Agreed, I don't know where there will be collaboration. Agreed that Ahtman is being pretty reasonable in his wishes and the players are being pretty childish. Ultimately it doesn't matter though, since those are the 'tools' (HA) he has to work with.

I would probably try to get them to agree to unrestricted and heroic as a compromise. Although, given Ahtman's earlier statements, he might prefer restricted and paragon tier.

I'm sure Ahtman will just save the campaign for another time, no big deal. But as a gamer who prefers to be a PC rather than a a Dm but is often saddled with DM-duty, I really sympathize for the regular DM in this case.

Manchu wrote:But as a gamer who prefers to be a PC rather than a a Dm but is often saddled with DM-duty, I really sympathize for the regular DM in this case.

Definitely. I would love to get a chance to play more often than I do. Oh well.

Manchu wrote:I really don't see any basis for that analysis. To me, it's like asking "would you guys like to do an old school dungeon crawl?" and getting the reply "only if we can start as paragon uber-n00b-pwnerz!!!!1!" Actually, that's exactly the case. And, to me, the players sound a lot more Cartman-esque than the would-be DM.

That's not how I'm seeing/reading it and also remember that we're only getting one very opinionated side of the story (see the title of the thread if you need evidence of the petulant nature). If I were in a traditional 4e/essentials campaign (I personally wouldn't be as I don't like 4e but that's for another thread) and my GM asked "would you guys like to do an old school dungeon crawl?", I would take that as describing the style and flavor of the actual game sessions and not such a strict set of limitations on what I could use for my character. Save or die traps, underground settings, variety of individual credible monster threats (and not minions), TPKs being very possible.. that's an old school dungeon crawl to me... not using just a few books with certain core races excluded. In all likelihood, the uber-noobpnwersz 1337 minmaxing nature of the players is likely being exaggerated and the reality is probably somewhere inbetween saint and the presented sinner. If the group think is a collective "nah" to the idea, it's not Cartman-esque as its not one man trying to impose his view on the disagreeing majority.

I've been in the type of situation Ahtman is describing where a campaign was getting a temporary reboot and I stepped in as GM (despite his incredulity on my RP cred, lol). How did I handle it? I discussed the style I specifically wanted to run (original 3rd edition 3-book content and FR setting book with no prestige classes and starting at 1st level) and then asked the players for opinions on the matter since we were running an almost unlimited source material campaign (with most of the d20 stuff out at the time as allowable). We ended up keeping the core content books only restriction but allowed non-EL-raising additional races and started at 5th level to meet various players' requests. I didn't just address a single player's issues and then call it quits. Obviously the players overall didn't share his view on the type of game they wanted to run... that doesn't make them the bad guy and something to be hated.

Well, even aside from the silly point about "hating" the players, you're really misunderstanding the problem here. As I mentioned to pretre above, I'm not sure that the situation renders the kind of compromise you're talking about possible. The situation is "let's play X" and then four different ways of saying "let's not play X." What is irritating about this situation is NOT that Ahtman refused to compromise (he was willing to compromise, in fact) but that his fellow players were being extremely demanding.

Now, maybe Ahtman has decided to completely lie about the situation to get your sympathy over the internet. It's a distinct possibility. But if I believed it were probable, I wouldn't have bothered posting a response. I kind of wonder why anyone would ... like, for instance, why are you responding? Either you take the facts that you're given and discuss them or else you don't have facts to discuss.

warboss wrote:That's not how I'm seeing/reading it and also remember that we're only getting one very opinionated side of the story (see the title of the thread if you need evidence of the petulant nature).

I didn't present any opinions though, but what happened. I came up with a short game idea, and gave their response. I suppose I gave my opinion that I was annoyed, but who wouldn't be? And if you think it is of a petulant nature, you again haven't been reading.

warboss wrote:If I were in a traditional 4e/essentials campaign (I personally wouldn't be as I don't like 4e but that's for another thread) and my GM asked "would you guys like to do an old school dungeon crawl?"

You can either have 4e, Essentials, or you can mix them at your own risk, but I don't think I would call any of them tradition, and I certainly wouldn't call the combination of them traditional.

warboss wrote:I would take that as describing the style and flavor of the actual game sessions and not such a strict set of limitations on what I could use for my character.

Again, in what world is using the core rulebook and one splatbook prohibitively restrictive? How did that become the standard for draconian measures?

warboss wrote:In all likelihood, the uber-noobpnwersz 1337 minmaxing nature of the players is likely being exaggerated and the reality is probably somewhere inbetween saint and the presented sinner.

Again, you really are out of your depth. I have told several stories on the board about this group and their powergaming and I have never exaggerated about what happens. There are some minor examples here but we have killed the BBEG in high paragon in 2 turns (not rounds mind you), and that isn't the only time something like that has occurred. If the assassin drops an enemy to 0 he can shift a square and make a melee basic, but everytime he shifts he can teleport his speed instead and then make the attack. In one turn he has killed a soldier, popped 3 minions, killed another soldier, then attacked the artillery. Then he could take a move and minor.

warboss wrote:If the group think is a collective "nah" to the idea, it's not Cartman-esque as its not one man trying to impose his view on the disagreeing majority.

There is no collective, let alone a collective 'nah'.

warboss wrote:I've been in the type of situation Ahtman is describing where a campaign was getting a temporary reboot and I stepped in as GM.

But that isn't the situation at all. I swear you could not have read anything in this thread but your own posts. So much of it has nothing to do with it.

warboss wrote:doesn't make them the bad guy and something to be hated.

It is like you are having a conversation on a different subject with other people but you keep putting it in this thread.

Manchu wrote:Well, even aside from the silly point about "hating" the players, you're really misunderstanding the problem here. As I mentioned to pretre above, I'm not sure that the situation renders the kind of compromise you're talking about possible. The situation is "let's play X" and then four different ways of saying "let's no play X." What is irritating about this situation is NOT that Ahtman refused to compromise (he was willing to compromise, in fact) but that his fellow players were being extremely demanding.

Now, maybe Ahtman has decided to completely liw about the situation to get your sympathy over the internet. It's a distinct possibility. But if I believed it were probable, I wouldn't have bothered posting a response. I kind of wonder why anyone would ... like, for instance, why are you responding? Either you take the facts that you're given and discuss them or else you don't have facts to discuss.

I don't think he's lying but he's clearly very opinionated and engaging in hyperbole (unless he really truely hates his players) and thus capable of heated exaggeration about the intractability of the other players. Except for one response (the player wanting to use a different system) from his players, I don't see any of the issues raised as extremely demanding even if acquiesced and each has plenty of room for compromise. Again, we have one side of the story. All I have to go on is the text and tone of Ahtman's posts which don't paint a flattering picture of either sides' willingness to compromise. I posted here because I thought there might be a chance to save the mini-campaign from his OP; that doesn't seem to be the case with the dozen or so follow up posts.


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Ahtman wrote:

warboss wrote:I would take that as describing the style and flavor of the actual game sessions and not such a strict set of limitations on what I could use for my character.

Again, in what world is using the core rulebook and one splatbook prohibitively restrictive? How did that become the standard for draconian measures?

warboss wrote:In all likelihood, the uber-noobpnwersz 1337 minmaxing nature of the players is likely being exaggerated and the reality is probably somewhere inbetween saint and the presented sinner.

Again, you really are out of your depth. I have told several stories on the board about this group and their powergaming and I have never exaggerated about what happens.

This may come as a surprise apparently but I don't follow the tales of your adventuring group across this board and the wider internet; I base my opinions on what you post in this thread. As for the restrictive comment, 4e and essentials are billed as fully compatible by WOTC and I've seen groups using both in the same game with little additional effort. If you're using only a few books out of the collective 50+ books available for 4e/essentials and hundreds of online magazine articles and then additionally prune those books of more content, how can you say that's not restrictive? Can you run a campaign with just the ones you mentioned? Absolutely.. but by definition you're restricting them to the small percentage of books that fit the style of campaign you want. That's clearly restrictive... the draconian bit was your own text and not mine.

This question of being overly restrictive is absurd. It's kind of an all-or-nothing issue. My old DM once wanted to run a core-only mini-campaign in 3.5. This was at the height of the Complete Splat era and the Paizo mags were still happily churning out ridiculously OP rules. Our resident min/maxer chafed badly at the idea of being limited to core books. Once we convinced him to back off of the idea of playing a Githyanki ("But they're in the Psionic Handbook! That's core!"), he started whining about not being able to take this feat he had found Dragon. We were puzzled because the only issues of Dragon any of us had were a few sitting in my closet and I knew he had never looked at them or even knew that I had them. It turns out that he had combed the internet for a feat index and illegally downloaded a hundred or so issues of Dragon to sift through their broken concepts. I remember telling him that the idea of the mini-campaign was to use only core not every possible book out there. And his response?

"I don't want to use every book out there, I just want to use one feat from Dragon #XYZ!"

Yeah. And "only" one race from the Psionics Handbook. And "only" one item from Complete Mage. And "only" one substitution level from Players Handbook II. And then on to the next player, who "only" wants ...

Manchu wrote:This question of being overly restrictive is absurd. It's kind of an all-or-nothing issue. My old DM once wanted to run a core-only mini-campaign in 3.5. This was at the height of the Complete Splat era and the Paizo mags were still happily churning out ridiculously OP rules. Our resident min/maxer chafed badly at the idea of being limited to core books. Once we convinced him to back off of the idea of playing a Githyanki ("But they're in the Psionic Handbook! That's core!"), he started whining about not being able to take this feat he had found Dragon. We were puzzled because the only issues of Dragon any of us had were a few sitting in my closet and I knew he had never looked at them or even knew that I had them. It turns out that he had combed the internet for a feat index and illegally downloaded a hundred or so issues of Dragon to sift through their broken concepts. I remember telling him that the idea of the mini-campaign was to use only core not every possible book out there. And his response?

"I don't want to use every book out there, I just want to use one feat from Dragon #XYZ!"

Yeah. And "only" one race from the Psionics Handbook. And "only" one item from Complete Mage. And "only" one substitution level from Players Handbook II. And then on to the next player, who "only" wants ...

It's most definitely not an all-or-nothing issue. You can easily agree as a group to allow/disallow any combination of the following: d20 non-wotc stuff as a whole or by company or line, dungeon/dragon magazine articles, campaign specific books (like Ravenloft books in a FR campaign), expansions like psionics, additional "core" books like PHB2 or MM3, classes of books ("races of" is out but class books are in), etc. In no way does the answer to the question have to be some sort of monolithic yes or no to everything. All it takes is a little thought, effort, and possibly compromise. How do I know? I did just that during the same era you described as GM and had it done to me as a player.

I was actually talking about in this particular instance rather than in every possible situation. Sorry for not being clear. In this case, each player wants to break from the concept in every way imaginable. Race, class, and level restrictions are all being challenged -- leading up to the one guy who wants to play a completely different system, which is actually just symptomatic of the rest. The race issues could be settled easily, since it does not violate the basic principle of the concept, which is to recreate 2E feel with the Essentials product line. In a RP-lite campaign, the drow is just an elf with slightly different powers and attribute bonuses, after all. The same cannot be said of using non-Essentials classes when one of the basic parameters is "don't mix Essentials and non-Essentials." So you let one guy be the blackguard, fine. On to player 2, what does he want ... so "not all the books and articles, just this one page in the one book" becomes functionally equivalent to "all the books and articles." How so? Because, in order to determine what one little paragraph of text they want to use, allegedly rather than "all the rules," the players will in fact scour all of the books and articles

Finally, paragon tier 4E is not designed to run like a low-level, old school dungeon crawl. With the Essentials line, Mike Mearls and his staff incorporated some design direction inspired by the old school stuff but level progression was definitely not part of it. That actually makes a 2E-inspired mini-campaign a brilliant idea because what would have taken two years in the old days will take a few months or less with 4E. In all honesty, even 7th-level 4E characters may be too powerful to really generate that old school feeling of vulnerability but paragon tier characters? That's a bit silly, especially when you consider the examples of min/maxing Ahtman has described.

Furthermore, this mini-campaign was not only supposed to be mini but also on the side. I could understand being persnickety about what's restricted if we're talking about the only D&D that you're going to get to play but insisting on one way all the time until the end of time is not admirable. It's the same character fault that causes edition wars.

I think both Warboss and Ahtman have reasonable points but seem to me to be misreading one another a bit, and unnecessarily hostile over this thing.

Manchu and Pretre have both made excellent points, IMO.

Restricting a game this way makes sense to me, but given the percentage of the available material being used/excluded, I can absolutely see how some players would consider it very restrictive.

That being said, the point is an excellent one that with a temporary side game like this, the players really should be more flexible and willing to try something a bit outside their usual box. If they were committing to a long-term game, the amount of collaboration and DM flexibility might be expected to be a bit higher.

Is the OP sure that the one who wants to start at 11 wasn't just quoting spinal tap?

Well I was going to let this thread die quietly but since it got bumped anyway I will add to it.

I suppose I would be remiss if I didn't say that I am not exaggerating about the level of power gaming that some of the players do, but I realized that it made it seem as if all the players were like that, when it isn't all of them. Myself and one other are not overly concerned with min-maxing, three are as described (including the DM), and one that is somewhat in between.