Reviewing The WORST D&D Advice On YouTube

Hi there! I just donated, but I wasn’t able to get the code for the Discord. There was a problem with me getting the code before the screen changed. Is there another way for me to get the code?

@@fightingfalcon777 damn thats bad luck

@@fightingfalcon777 I can track your donation, please direct message me on discord (the dnd shorts public discord). It may take a day or two for your donation to come through, but when I can confirm it, I can sort you out! Public discord link here, send me a DM! discord.gg/XZahjbx8ee

@@DnDShorts really appreciate it! Thank you, man!

I made a donation and I just wanted to personally thank you so much for supporting NAMI. As someone who has struggled with mental illness, I know how hard it is to find help sometimes. Even though I think we have a ways to go in society as far as how mental illness is regarded and treated, we have come a VERY long way. This is due in no small part to NAMI and organizations like it. They have played an integral part in raising awareness and support for those that struggle with maintaining their mental health and living happy, stable, and productive lives. IMO you have chosen a very worthy cause here and I am more than happy to support it, and I consider the chance to play a one shot with you a nice bonus! Thanks again!

Good for you

Wow, okay duke

I run a 1 v 1 discord, Monks are pretty cracked in that meta.

if you change your mind i'll let you explain dragonborn puberty

@@revandb3438 monks are basically underpowered... until they turn on the party, and then they are horrifying

Minotaurs and Centaurs: *Leaves carrying a whole ass Carriage each*

**Giff with all of that plus advantage on all Strength Checks snorts in Britishness**

**the barbarian goblin with a 20 in str taking the door on his way out**

Lomin, a half Giant half dragon laughs as he double wields his great swords and leaves.

And loxodons

You can tell it's a joke because that would mean only four of them are attractive

I'm not afraid... bring it! ;-)

I wanna know who. They are all so beautiful. ❤️

I love the fact that i can't really be sure about who you are talking

I'm guessing he means the guys????

I was literally about to come and comment, "Spicy Hot Take! 2:19 D&D dies when they don't get new customers."
Huh, seems like they die the millisecond they throw away their DMs and content creators then.

Ironic that if the people who made these problems were gatekept this would not have happened. I'm partially joking as there are more issues here. Though I will die on the hill that there is such a thing as healthy gatekeeping

no Dnd dies the moment it tries to be "inclusive" becuase then they try to change the game any way anyone who havent played for 30plus years wants i'm the kind of guy who bought everything Dnd ever put out and they have changed my beloved game to cater to woke idiots and thats why i hope they do die so we can go back to ADND where idoits like taht cant understand simple mathmatics invovled with calucatling THAC0 it was a mechanic that kept idoits from playing the game idoits like the kind of people that say having orc be evil race is racist as they supposedly represent black people somehow so now they gotta make a dnd editon to reflect teh woke idealogoy

@@firefox-op1ok i agree 1000%

@@firefox-op1ok People that think gatekeeping is bad are just people who feel bad about getting gatekept. I definitely gatekeep my games because a few bad players ruin the game for good players, and people dont have the right to use my time on a mediocre game that doesn't beat the fun of dishwashing.

Thank you! I was thinking the same thing.

It should be illegal for that many gprgeous people to get together and parade it around in front of us

hear me out but rouges make the best tank class in DnD.

What channels made an appearance? I recognized some voices but not all

This was amazing!!! All of you are epic!! Thanks for making this

I love seeing this collab and i hope there will be more of them

I'm new to DnD and would love to know who these other creators are. Maybe in the description or something?

thank YOU for being a legend! Honor to work with you!

I think this is a spicy golden cake: gatekeeping is necessary to maintain a healthy community. Some people are total Wang rods Sparta kick him in the chest out the door then slam it in their face, if their total Wang rods. I guess they can go find another group of toxic jerks and play d&d, cuz D&D is for everyone, but I don't think anyone needs to play with a jerk

@@w4iph That's not really gatekeeping, though; that's vetting & culling toxic elements.
Gatekeeping is stuff like "D&D is only for guys," "any edition other than the one I like isn't D&D," etc.

It couldn't possibly be you, because everyone knows you just wanna sit back, relax and have some fun, because D&D is for everyone

@@solosynapse The problem is that people who whine the loudest about "gatekeeping" have gone ahead and redefined the term to that so that they still have something they can whine about. (and will redefine it again if needed)

tabaxi... not trying to nitpicky just trying to help.

@@makaramuss OK LOL - at least I didn't call them Kiltathi as I ususally do.

I love that idea. My first thought with "only tabaxi ever" would have been a Wizard Curse lol, or maybe a Divine Test for a paladin (like "sure you're lawful good when people love you, but what about when you're a freaky cat-person?) So there are definitely many ways to balance between "player wants weird race" and "DM doesn't wanna figure out how the culture and ethics of these people play along with the world they literally just finished building"

@@achimsinn6189 Kilrathi*
I couldn't resist

So you were Tigger

That's a great idea! ⚡

I do think it would be nice if streamed or in general live play D&D did have a session 0 for the viewers. One that gets across all the content f the world, any changes the DM has made to the rules, explains any homebrew they're using etc. It can get really confusing when watching D&D content and you see they're doing something not by the rules and you're unsure if it's intentional or not or there's a homebrew subclass being used and it's never explained what it does.

Actually agree. I am surprised that there isn't more than 2.5

While yes that would be nice, they, like elves, live for a very long time. They have the same issue as elves, and people would ask why in the world the races with the longest lifespans get the most variation.
(Though honestly, they should have made the eladrin straight up plant people.)

It seems that 1D&D is doing away with the whole subrace thing so I doubt we'll be getting many new ones before (or possibly even after) it's released.

We need more goblin and orc subraces. If it has an average lifespan, even if that's from high fatality rates, under 50 years then they're probably being forced through a ringer of adaptation.
Tieflings have a pretty good number of subraces.

The reason for it is that Moradin made them perfect. He made them the most enduring race ever, as a result they don’t need to change. Think of Dwarves as crocodiles. They haven’t needed to change for over 95 million years because they are perfect as is.
Meanwhile elves we’re accidentally made from the blood of Correlon. A god who never had a true form and was basically an god amoeba.

Tournament or to settle inter-party conflicts. For instance, the shadow monk I tested was an aloof strategist, which would have created issues with the paladin soldier if he didn't offer to settle it in a sparing match.

My old group did this every year. We did a battle royale a few times. We also had one campaign where a lot of people were dissatisfied with their characters, so we got pulled into a dream world with new characters and we got killed by each other and our old selves

One of my funniest D&D memories was kind of PvP. I was playing Celestial Warlock, while another player was playing Fiend Warlock. We were heading towards a dragons lair. The Fiend wanted a specific magic item from the dragon's hoard, but the Celestial wanted the Fiend not to have that item.
We found the hoard, seeing the item on top of it, but the dragon managed to surprise us, and knocked the other warlock out. While we fought the dragon (and I took my while getting the other warlock back up), I sent my familiar to sneak to the hoard and pick the item.
Once the dragon was slain, we headed to the hoard, and the other warlock noticed that the item he wanted for his master was not there anymore. He had bit of a in-character tantrum, and I had to mute my mic because I had hard time not to laugh.

I love PvP in roleplaying games but I have yet to find a good way to use it in my D&D games, a tournament would work great but that's not the kind of game I run. I'll just keep pitting my friends against each other in world of darkness instead.

Possession/mind control is also always fun. give your players permission to go all out on their team and watch them enjoy the hell out of it. Probably works best in tier 2, when they aren't super squishy but don't have the really heavy stuff yet.

It is a bit of a problem for the sheer dpr boost, especially on classes like paladin who rely on hitting a lot. Also enemies very rarely actually are able to have the knowledge and ability necessary to coordinate and counter such a combo and sending two enemies doesn’t even actually counter it. Plus you can do some very nasty combos (with the Oath of the Open Sea for example)

Or send one enemy with 10ft reach and it doesn't even stop them lmao, dragons, devils and demons all come to mind with a lot of them having 10ft reach attacks, or really any large beast like a mammooth or trex.

@@crystallxix1493 remember, just send a 10ft reach enemy and the combo basically just means they get a little bit more damage in, assuming they hit

@@crystallxix1493 polearm master has all of the DPR boost in it, and it is only really a problem before Extra attack comes in (Yes it outdamages sword and shield by a mile, but that is sword and shield being underpowered). The enemies also don't know what spells the wizard has, can they stand in a line, or a circle, well, depends if the wizard has lightning bolt or fireball prepared. That a martial has 1 trick that can surprise the monsters, after spending 2 feats on it, is not a bad thing.
Even enemies who can't coordinate will still get to the polearm user some times, because he won't hit every time. Also enemies with reach 10 feet, just don't care about the sentinel part. Sure some enemies are going to have a really bad time, but that is okay, you spend 2 feats on it.

Yeah excatly. I like having well rounded-up builds as player characters in my games, it usually means I get to throw more fun at them when it comes to combat.
Also, if you are a LE DM, (and your players know it) you always just be like; You are suddenly sucked into a natural conduit you encountered into the wild. *You are now, in, *rolls* Abyss!*

So an infinite bag of sneezing powder? That actually sounds insanely useful

Excuse me what? Jabenero? Wtf is that???

@@brandonlee747 Habanero, the original comment in the video likely assumed that because Jalapeño starts with J, Habanero did too because a lot of English speaking people make and H sound, even though the H in Habanero is silent

Sounds like exactly the kind of dumb stuff I would put in my d&d campaign lol, though imagine coating a sword with spicy, just to inflict Psychological pain as your body feels like it's on fire from each cut

Honestly, that kind of item sounds like something my current character would use and weaponize.
It reminds me of his first weapon, a club that constantly produced soot, so that the weapon (and consequently, the wielder) would never be clean. Sounds like crap, but a few adventures and levels down the road, and it was enchanted so that in addition, in battle it could produce 30' soot clouds that obscured vision and did damage as the people who stood in it breathed in the soot. Then a few more adventures and levels down the road, it had a magical crystal mounted onto it that allowed the soot clouds to be ignited, with damage comparable to a casting of Burning Hands, three times a day.
Maybe not a god-tier weapon, but definitely a versatile and fun weapon, and even at level 15, it still sees use as a primary.

unfortunately, some players want that
I have some that are *really* into cringe-comedy and I have to make sure they're in the same group instead of mixed in with the others

I typically agree with this---role play in sexual encounters can be fun, but a TTRPG is typically the wrong venue unless your group is very special indeed.
That said, depending on the campaign, the important bits can be in the pillow talk afterwards--that can be critical, especially if you're going for a fantasy James Bond type of feel, or a gritty fantasy version of Sin City or any number of other kinds of milieus. It's a great way to establish underworld contacts or to develop a reach into high society if you're dealing with a courtesan, or your character happens to be one (think a rogue based on Inara from Firefly). Sex and lust are core drives and vices, and that can be utilized in a game if care is taken on why it's being introduced and how it advances the game story. These are great contacts for PCs if handled well.

Some people are into that.

And I'm afraid that as Baldur's Gate 3 introduces more people to D&D, many are going to _expect_ it to be suggestive at a minimum, and for some they'll want to push the lewdness further.

One wonders who the 4 "not attractive' ones are :)

@@alexgruel9932 trick question. None of them are unattractive.

@@alexgruel9932 right... Like all of them are hot... So idk lmao

@@Anonymous_Individual but which are the 10s and which are the 9.9s?

@@coolgreenbug7551 another trick question. There are no 9.9s. 10s across the board.

Yea but at the same time it's not just about genetics, there was magic fuckery and gods interfering

​@@realdragon yup, that's the whole thing with the feywild and its residents. its adaptation bamfed up on magical meth. Even subspecies that don't live there anymore still came from the fey so it makes sense they'd shift to better fit their new environments quicker than more material-based species, just as it makes sense those like eladrin who still live there are far more mutable than other elves

Funny thing about that, most elves we have in 5e aren't from the feywild. that's pretty much just the eladrin

@@zoesequeira5388 eladrin are the ones who stayed and are still there, but from what I recall faerun elves ancestors all came from the feywild first

Also mutations are actually MORE likely if there's higher genetic similarity. Look at the Solomon Islands for reference in humans.

I began to realize he got other d&d channels to read the hot takes as soon as a heard Chaz (from Mann Shorts) at 2:52
Edit: it’s funny to hear Dingo swear without it being covered by the duck sound

I really liked this as well!!

@Skallagrim_ytFake

@@Sirdeathvidshis albums are also phenomenal

Dingo swearing is so ducking great!

They could also, if done in a video format rather than stream, simply edit that part out.

same for me only had 3 players and none of them wanted a healer, so my dmpc was mentor from the guild who apon request from the characters to train them until they where strong enough to pass the guild trail but ended up leaving early as another person joined so the dmpc was just a healbot that chilled in the background during fights and aloud me to help them out as they where new players to teach them mechanics of their classes.

That is exactly how I use it, too. I hate how dismissive he is about it. Like there could be no occasion where it would be beneficial for everyone and "if you want to play just go find others to dm for you" is easy for people to say that have time to waste trying group after group online until they find one they work in. Some of us have to make due with what we have.

@@DarkAtamis a lot of his takes come from the POV of someone that has never been unable to get a full size group together. As the once forever DM I had 2-3 friends that wanted to play all the time, and... That was it. Good to see how much the hobby has expanded

I was in a similar situation except it wasn't a one shot. It was LMoP. It worked then because I had a party of two with a third who was joining eventually (they were constantly busy so they just never got to it). It's a tightrope though because the stereotype of the op dmpc who is one shotting all the enemies because they're level 20 first session and the focal point of the game is probably why most people say don't do it. That and you slow the game up a bit, but with 2 other players it might not be noticable

I used to have only my two cousins, and I played while being the DM. They liked it, but because of one we don't play anymore. (Not his fault. He just won't play anymore) So now it is just me and my brother, and it is much easier, and more fun for both of us if I am also a character.

You mean your character, right?

*Looks at Woke WOTC which was starting to alienate players before the KleptOGL drove everyone with any sense away.*
Um... maybe consider that "new players" aren't bad... it's the new players who want to change the game fundamentally and won't stop until they do that for the entire game that ARE a problem.

Yeah casters are only really OP if the DM runs only 1-3 combat encounters per long rest. The game is balanced around 6-8 encounters per day with 2-3 short rests throughout the day. It also makes warlocks less reliant on Eldritch Blast.
It doesn’t even need to drag out the session. The adventuring day can be split across multiple sessions.

However your group made that work should be annexed into the 6E DMG.

I like to think the gatekeeping guy was just memeing

Maybe he meant gatekeeping neckbeards.
And people who say "neckbeard" actually mean the mentally disabled.

I kinda feel this way about people trying to change things to not fit established lore. Like, good and evil are actual literal cosmic forces in the setting, and they try to argue that its morally wrong for it to be that way based on real world context, then shame WotC for portraying a fantasy world as being fundamentally different in a way that makes them uncomfortable.

I think the issue here is various definitions of DMPC verses NPC in the PC group run by the DM. It is not black and white, but a spectrum. I have run such characters for over 40 years and it works well. One has to be careful to let the PCs make the major decisions, but the DMPC can give their opinion. This can be extremely helpful when the Players seem stuck on what to do or a track of thought that will lead to disaster.

Finally! Rise my conclave brethren!

No rangers are the best "species" anything else is just classism.

Nah Im monk gang

@@unnatural4 Airbender? Firebender? Or water bender? Or dirt Bender?

@@hopelane9773 Haha yes! With the power of bees on our side we are unstopabble!

When they took metamagic away from everyone but sorcerers, they made spellcasting less team oriented.

I agree the problem isn’t wizards are OP it’s wizards are self servingly OP. Especially late game how is the fighter supposed to keep up in combat when the wizard is literally altering reality and dropping proverbial nukes

I think the problem then is just that your spell casters aren't taking any team playing spells. Which could mean that your encounters are too easy from the spell casters' perspective if they can just throw fireballs the whole fight. You just need to incentivize the behavior to change somehow with how the fights happen.

Morale of the story is that unless it’s egregious to the point of removing fun, then people are more willing to put up with something being OP if it’s supportive.

I have a mixed view on that one. If the world has them already or has a reasonable way for them to be there, great! Do it. But I dislike when someone expects a GM to jimmy something into their setting that isn't already there.

My favorite character name ever was a Harengon named Claire O’Hare

It often causes issues for DMs in the roleplay sense.
Like, how do you expect real people would react to a rabbit woman named Hop? There would absolutely be jokes.
Or when someone plays a race that lore wise would be hated, but expects to be treated normally, like racism is a thing with just humans on earth, imagine how bad it would be if other species that were actually mainly evil existed.
Also if people saw a drake just out somewhere, I'd say the reasonable reaction would be to cast fireball first and ask questions later.

The thing is if you're playing an offical modual you don't really have an excuse why it can't be in there. @@shiva0

@@SirDankleberry As a GM I would allow races endemic to the setting said module was in. Depending on the setting I may allow some flubbing but probably not. And here's the thing... I don't need an excuse aside from that's not how I want to run my game.
As a player I ask questions about the game and it's setting, tone, and what the GM is looking to do and make a character based on that. I don't come in with an idea I HAVE to play and try to brow beat the GM into letting me. That's some special unique snowflake ass garbage.

Because people that say they don't are lying. You would not accept dnd to be played by nazis or the kkk.

Sure thing, like cooking meat past medium rare just ruins it an is wrong. Right? Right?

Eh. I've always found this stance to be hypocritical and a bit short-sighted. If you play or meet people at a game shop, you will probably end up interacting with most if not all regulars there. If you exclude someone from your table because you don't like them for any reason at all, that person is fairly likely to not show up at the shop again if their exclusion was a dramatic event. Or if most people at the shop think a certain way, that effectively excludes everyone they don't like in your local neighborhood from playing D&D.
To put it another way: People who are "against" gatekeeping suddenly change their tune if a guy in Klan robes or covered in human shit shows up at the game shop. "Just find another table" is a dishonest response that kicks the can down the road. You've excluded them from your table with no knowledge of whether or not that person is even capable of finding another table. Everyone gatekeeps because it is human nature; not all humans are compatible. It's silly to deny that you do it or claim that you can stop it from happening.
To put it an even simpler way: Everyone in these comments, including the video creator, is trying to gatekeep the executives at Hasbro and WotC from this hobby at the moment.

They're NOT doing it at their own tables.
They're trying to get in on all groups and into the staff of the game company itself (and ARE on the WOTC staff) to change it into Politically Correct drek.
Remember: WOTC is having financial difficulty because of things like the "race R Species" change, and other attempts at controlling people's thoughts instead of letting them just play the game.

​@@CrizzyEyesGood response. Everyone says gatekeeping is a terrible thing until the unfavorable people walk through the door.

This. All this

That's not gatekeeping, though. That is just a mismatch in what the 1 player wants vs. the group

I absolutely agree, but I feel like this is less gatekeeping and more just vetting your players.

@@WumboGuy I gatekeep my table, it's what I do

Outsiders aren't the problem. If better gatekeeping had been performed within WoTC over the past 10 years, the focus would be on the actual material rather than idiotic retcons and word substitutions. Nothing was ever stopping people from having cuddly orcs and drow who just want to be your friends, RPing as baristas in a magic school, or using the word "species" if that's the proper fit for your table. But when the weirdos took over the corporate controls, now they're forcing those, as well as every inane complaint from the twitter idiots, upon others as the new default and THAT is where the problem lies. Just waiting for someone to find the word "dungeon" to be problematic because of the historical actions of the Spanish Inquisition or perceived disparagement of the BDSM community, and suddenly they're gonna have to change the name.

Great point!

The problem with that is that elves' ToF lore isn't the original lore, which not only means all the fuckton of subraces predates it, but also that it wasn't thought out as a justification to that. Also, the Material Plane elf subraces are clearly distinct and not at all malleable. Sun elves cannot turn into moon elves, just as grey elves cannot turn into wood elves.

You made this point better than I could.
I'm surprised the Avariel (winged elves) haven't been added to 5e yet considering all the races with flight we have now, they're mentioned in a side bar in SCAG, but no actual player options.

@@drakegrandx5914 Some of that *is* mentioned in SCAG though. And OP is not saying that the subraces turn into each other, it's saying that the diversity was from before, and being in the material plane "lock" them into one form.
(you know, their whole last sentence. "So they were once NOT animals that were affected by evolution and only technically turned into animals that are affected by evolution well after they adapted to their locations via non evolutionary means.")

@@GKplus8 The point still stand that, as they were originally created, the elves subraces are not meant to be credited to the "malleability of the first elves"; so, unless you take SCAG/ToF's lore specifically into consideration, it's still vey akward to have so many elf subraces in the world in comparison to dwarves, not to talk about gnomes and kenku.

D&D started out that way, and I agree that it helps build DM skills. Plus you never have to struggle with understanding what the module writer intended, or fitting the module's weird dynamics to your table's needs.

I think a mix is best but I see where you’re coming from

Even more if you are DMing for a more experienced player than you or a player that know more about the lore of DnD than you. Making your own world avoid a lot of contradictions and problems at the table.

I did this and it's... interesting.

That's a personal thing, surely? For some people it would be too far outside their comfort zone, and could end up putting them off DMing entirely

I'm surprised this doesn't have more likes.

Yep my main goal for npcs is to make the players shine either through role play or combat

I'm the person who wrote the spicy take XD I kept it vague to keep with the spicy hot take theme, but in my comment back then I explained how the DMPC is essentially just an NPC that also has an inventory and actually gets their subclass and features as opposed to just using the generic stat blocks like "archer" and such. They don't make any decisions for the party and otherwise act as an NPC. I've had to do this a few times when my table has gone down to too few players.

My DM does this since I’m the only one in that time slot.

Agreed. I think he forgot that Elves' entire thing is that they are sort of being "punished" for taking on a defined form when it wasn't what Corellon intended. If they weren't tricked they'd be a group of cool Omega shifters. Because humaniod definitely wasn't a limitation for them in the old days.

Nah, I'm cool with fewer elves. Lol

That sort of depends on the setting.
I don't mind them, though. If they don't fit in a setting they can always be removed or limited at the group's digression.

Sure, that justifies WotC making then more and more stupidly broken as time goes on. Let's give them free proficiencies that they get to choose every day. Oh, we forgot about weapon proficiencies, let's give them that choice on top of a skill proficiency of their choice that they can change on a whim. Oh hell, free misty step too because why the fuck not? Astral elves were a mistake and I'm glad elves went back to vanilla for One Dnd. Dragonborn didn't deserve that thougg

@@S.Grundy I mean they already got a ton of free weapon proficiencies anyway. And skills if we're being honest. Tiefling gets shit on as being the build a bear race, but Elves were always the king.

That sounds cool. My idea is that the Adventurers are Researchers of the Arcane and other paths so they can forge things that revive them.
Clone up a improved body, kill a monster and pay Death with it soul, unmoor yourself from life and lose abit of your soul each time you need to possess a creature or object.

My take is: The race you want to play does not exist in my world. That does not mean you can not play that race, but you are not that race. Nobody living in the game world knows what you are; there is only you and maybe your clan.

I have a friend who plays in my game, and when we started he started complaining that he had wanted to take the best character options from every book, l and that if I didn't allow every legal option from every published Official book that I was unfairly restricting players.
My outlook is that I am running a specific world. Many of the options from setting books simply aren't in my world. I don't see a problem with barring things that don't fit your world. Heck, The new Dragonlance book even shows that this outlook is OK. several of the options in the new Dragonlance states that a prerequisite for access is to be playing in a Dragonlance specific campaign.
DM should be able to state what they are allowing in their campaign. Having a specific setting is not an attempt to limit player creativity... It's the in game equivalent to running Star Trek and not allowing people to play Jedi and Wookies or making the Federation encounter and come into conflict with the Empire. While not theoretically impossible, it's certainly not the kind of request from a player that a DM has to feel obligated to comply with.

@@johnevans5782 The Wars/Trek example is the exact one I give to my players regarding establishing a sensical framework for a campaign. Also, don't bother reading the Monster Manual. I rarely use it and change whatever I use anyway.

@@johnevans5782 I completely agree with you. A tabletop RPG is supposed to be a collaborative experience. If one party, in this case your player, came in expecting to have it all their way or it would be unfair they're misunderstanding how to play the game fundamentally.
You, as the DM, set the ground rules for your campaign, that you put together through hard work and if that's not okay to the players, they're free to seek another DM. In the end, it's a little bit of give and take.

Agreed. Its Gatekeeping not guard duty. We help people come in just as much as we guide others out who don't belong. There are countless examples of things being ruined by people joining a community and demanding change that lead to the communities downfall.

@@firefox-op1ok "It's gatekeeping not guard duty" is a really good phrasing. Plus, D&D is heavily based on the principle of subsidiarity - if you don't like something in the core rules, your table can change it for your own table and no other group has to care.

I was about to point this out.
Gatekeeping as a term is highly demonized but, as with everything in life, a good little amount is always gonna be healthy for the community in order to not find ourselves playing basketball like soccer (and i'd argue that WotC made some changes to the game that somehow resemble this, but nothing major)
And fortunately at my table i can do whatever i want, so d&d doesn't need as much gatekeeping, but it still does

@@firefox-op1ok hell, just look at the sewing hobby. You'd like that's be an astoundingly safe and inoffensive hobby, yeah? Nope, it's apparently bigotted as hell and the new generation of sewers are full of people who spend more time making sewing political than they do actual sewing.

That’s not gatekeeping, that’s just saying no.

That's basically a form of the group patron rules in tasha's

Every 2nd edition player I see is filled with horny bard stories, so maybe you just didn’t encounter it

​@smokeydabear4525A key difference is the stereotype is "I seduce whatever is in front of me because my charisma is the only thing I've read on my sheet" and "I SUMMON BLUE EYES ABYSS DRAGON, THEN HAVE SEX WITH IT, I END MY TURN"

And what is wrong with that?! It could easily be in character. Let people just roleplay as they want. What if you want to play a sort of casanova seductor-bard? Or a warlock of succubus demon-lord, or a cleric of pleasure cult? Why the **** it shold be shunned?

@smokeydabear4525 Just find better DM and party, that comfortable with such staff and sex-positive

@@agat882 Well, I think that people who express their sexual frustration via roleplaying with their friends REALLY need to work out whatever it is that they have going on in their lives instead of focusing on games.
Also, roleplaying those types of encounters with your DM/etc is kinda weird. And this is crappy roleplaying:
player - I seduce the dragon
dm - ok roll for it
player - 20! I seduced the dragon!
dm - ok the dragon is seduced.
No DM likes to act out seduction scenes with their players. Well, maybe some DMs that have issues like to do it, but I don't know any of those.

Good point.
Strong winds can stop that but also it would be weird if there was strong winds everywhere.

@@octavianpedigree5866 It would be unfortunate if there was a bunch of enemies with a net or two waiting at the other side at some point. Not every time, but like once or twice.

Gatekeeping is a very cult-like thing. Like for anybody who considers gatekeeping to be serious community solution, it's probably more a sign that they themselves need to take a step back from their hobby and get some air.
There's probably good forms of 'gatekeeping' (like keeping pedos out or something...), but I feel like that's only true in a 'venn diagram' sort of relation. Kicking a person out from a community for an ill-fitting/dangerous mental illness/etc could be justified much better without gatekeeping's 'no true scotsman' method. I can support options that have enough in common with gatekeeping to be lazily called that, but I'll never really support gatekeeping itself.

I mean, yeah, but I also kind of get where he's coming from.
I think it's less from a standpoint of "only my way to play is correct" or some old school stuff, but rather people coming into the hobby with expectations that are wildly different from what 5he community is actually about. The comment specifically stated the community and not really the way people play. And I think he meant it more in a corporate consequences, "if you try to please everyone, you please no one" kind of way.
Which I can *partially* agree with

At a personal level, it's natural. It should be called "groupkeeping" or sumthun.

As someone who started playing during the 3.5e era where rules were a lot more explicit in what you could or couldn't do but were also written in a very complex way requiring understanding of a lot of internal terminology, I find 5e's "streamlined" approach to rules to give a lot of leeway to DMs thereby discouraging players from learning RAW.
" They're literally changing the game going forward (and the given support!) to accommodate "This game is too hard to understand (literally read one paragraph over an entire week) can we change the rules". I'd rather they base their changes on people with functioning literacy?"
The game is in fact complex, and as it becomes appealing to a wider audience it's bound to attract people who can't understand it. Here certain parts of the D&D community fall apart because it becomes that tables responsibility to ensure the person you're playing with understands the rules, or decide the player isn't worth the trouble and drop him.
If we pretend we're the company trying to sell D&D books and rules, and we notice we have a trend among consumers complaining that the merchandise is too complex, then what we do is make it simpler - we sell more shit, make more money, fatter bottom line.
In the end D&D has become a business and as such, the product will adapt to demand. AD&D or 3.5e-like rule structure will not see the light of day in a new format, and it's going to be up to each table to pick and choose which rules they use, and probably house-rule 40% of the RP related rules (keep management, logistics, servants, housing, business, etc.) or use a different system that suits them.
Shit happens man, we deal or we don't.

If you are uncomfortable with violence then you're not playing dnd. Not like excessive cruelty doesn't usually warrant a wellness check.
However, if your only reason to play the game is this one specific character that explicitly makes someone uncomfortable (as a DM, ME, THAT SOMEONE IS ME, LEAVE ME OUT OF FLIRTING) then look for a table where that is not the case. People have a right to nyx things at the table,.and you don't get to dictate what is reasonable and what not, only what you're willing to comply with and what not. I only fault players who don't show respect and consideration for others. If you have a different interest than what I offer then that's fine and if I can I'll hook you up with a campaign if I know of one. But missy lemme tell you you're strayin mighty close to a lack of respect for other players. And if your tactic for justifying breaking boundaries is to pretend you have your own that were broken, then I would only wish you good luck in looking for another table because you clearly disrespect my intelligence as the DM,.and as a fellow player if you're accomodated I am leaving because clearly the dm doesn't deserve my respect.

Yeah I don’t like arguing over DMPC because it’s definition can get very blurry once you move past the most egregious example.

I legitimately hate DMPCs.

I was actually thinking of something similar... to train new DMs, an experienced one might play a Party NPC as a means to be part of the adventure, but still have some metagaming rights to help out if the new guy gets overwhelmed.
But now you got me thinking of a short arc where a PC might becone the party's guide in a familiar place, like a journey back home or "the party being curious why the barbarian's so well liked in the merchant's district".

Really it depends on the purpose of a dmpc and how you define it.
If it is apart of the party and has pc level, I would consider that a dmpc. I have that in my game though. I will give the party an npc native to the area or important to the question, and I will give it pc levels to make sure it doesn't die and isn't a dead weight. The npc is normally 1 to 3 levels lower that the rest of the party but still.

I think there is one other possible role for a sort of DM PC. You can have a plot line where the party is actively helping an NPC achieve a quest, with the NPC accompanying the party. Inevitably that turns the NPC into a sort of DM PC. Very essential, however, in that situation, to allow the PCs to drive the action in each session and to be the main characters of the story. It may be the NPC's quest - but it must be clear that without the PCs, the quest would have failed repeatedly.

The problem here is you are conflating "the hobby" with "my table". You want to have a cohesive group vision of what your game should be, but if you are all running LOTR and the new guy wants to run Harry Potter, that doesn't mean he's in the wrong hobby, it means he needs a table running Strixhaven. The hobby is big enough for both.

The people who scream about gate keeping being bad also tend to be the people who gatekeep the hardest. Keeping bad players away from your tables has been the core of forming healthy D&D groups from the start.

Very well said. Some people have critical thinking problems...

Except what you are talking about is not gatekeeping. That's controlling your table's specifications. Gatekeeping is stopping people from picking up the hobby in general or saying that because you don't like a person because they don't meet your prerequisite knowledge requirements. Gatekeeping is bad and always is bad, but the definition of what you guys are talking about isn't gatekeeping. Everyone deserves a chance to play but if they prove to be a nuisance at your table then it isn't gatekeeping to kick them out.
As for the making the community look bad, it makes it look bad to gatekeep as well. What makes it look good is to attempt to bring in people and then if they are nuisances you kick them out because of that, not before you even find out.

Buddy. The word you want is *Boundaries*. I'm taking away the word gatekeeping until you understand it.

Agreed. They are near literally anime protagonists. All normal folk are commoners and thus 10 in most stats, meanwhile your Barbarian can lift half a ton, attack multiple times in a 6 second period, run like a moving vehicle, and shrug off attacks from beings that could nuke a city.

@@LupineShadowOmega To be fair, it can be pretty simple to attack twice in six seconds if you're properly trained and experienced, otherwise, agreed.

Except when the gatekeepers ARE the toxic people.
If you're quizzing women on all the Avengers lore before you sell her a comic book, if you're feeding a teenager lies about how to properly pay Warhammer (thing that actually happened to my BF), if you're going out of your way to bully a new player in your campaign instead of just saying "Hey I don't really want any new players at my table, I have a lot on my plate RN," then you're not the kind of person that should be gatekeeping.

@@metademetra That's not really gatekeeping as much as various ways of being an asshole, although the quizzing thing (however often that _actually_ happens) sounds more like someone who is overly excitable and isn't great at communicating with people.

@@metademetra toxic gate keeps? You mean gate keeping.
"Don't like new players" you mean didn't like that new player.
'Feeding lies to someone about how to play' man... Could not like them, could be a practical joke (huge thing for decades), or could be stupid and not know. Once more gate keeping.
'Quizzing on all of something before selling' yeah. Valuing the book over a sale. It's gate keeping.
I've seen more toxic shit, by your standard, going on now than it ever was in the past.