Is there a measure on most commonly included Optional Rules?

Question

Context

A player amidst one of the groups decided to try his hand at DM'ing for the first time. It's going relatively well despite teething trouble (primarily from a mismatch of expected ideas after forgoing a session 0 against multiple people suggesting it).

Skip forward a few sessions and level 5 where the first encounter happens where the player group outnumbers the monster group, and a pair of martials decide to try flanking, an optional rule that's used as standard in that group. This did not go down well with the DM who was ruffled at the attempt and stated rather firmly that we should not presume optional rules are in play. He said this on a table that people had been using without asking, with the DM stating that they were in fact "expected optional rules"; ASI-Feat choice, Cleaving, and Multiclassing.

This is a fair ruling; but his response got me curious.

Question

As a result of this, I became curious if there had been an official poll (or some other measure) of popularity of optional rule usage? I have no intent of using this against the DM (nor is it likely he will see anything based on this), and it is solely for my own knowledge.

In my searches I only found ones for house-rules, which I am not interested in including as that's a different kettle of fish.

Answer 1

Unfortunately, there isn't

There aren't any unofficial, or official, metrics on the optional rules that different tables use across the world.

As for your situation, I don't think that getting this information will be helpful or useful, even if it was available. While having it would be interesting, it doesn't really move the needle for a table's choices if they were to disagree.

If you don't enjoy playing with the rules your DM and table play with, and the DM is unwilling to change, then it's up to you to decide if the fun you're having (or not having) is worth your time at that table.

On data

Data is a tricky thing, there's a lot of 'data' out there. But there is a difference between good data and bad data. This is akin to the stack's theory of pearls, not sand. Bad data is the sand - there's a lot out there, and it's our job to find the good data within - the pearls.

We must be careful with what we present as good data here, because others may not be as aware - just look at the rise of misinformation around the world. Judging good and bad is hard, but it's a judgement we should set aside time to make before posting - it'll improve the experience and information for everyone that visits.

Answer 2

The poll you are looking for is irrelevant.

Let's be blunt. Your group tried to peer pressure your DM to allow this optional rule by trying to use it without asking. Maybe that wasn't your intention, but that's how it looks when I try to visualize the situation from the DM point of view.
It didn't work out.
So now you want to try to peer pressure him again, this time expanding the range of peers to "the most of the community". In my years of DMing and playing (since 3.0 came out) conversation and discussion with DM sometimes gave players what they want.

Attempts to force DM after a firm no, on the other hand, practically always ended up with this person not DMing for that group anymore. In case of first time DMs, some of them, one or two I kept contact with, never DMed again, to my knowledge.

So what should you do?

Exactly what your DM told you. Never assume that optional rule is in play unless you talked about it in advance. And, I'll add, with first time Dungeon Master it is making everyone's life easier to agree that no optional rule is in play at all.
Second best was having a DM screen extension with agreed on optional and house rules on both sides, so everyone is on the same page.

Answer 3

I'll be a bit of a contrarian; While I agree that trying to pressure a DM on which optional rules to allow, or any other ruling, is undesirable and often counterproductive, I am not enthused with the idea of a secret set of "expected optional rules".

Without explicitly knowing flanking is active, I would not expect the DM to use it against me, and as a DM, I would not expect players to try to use it. It's a bit like traps in a dungeon, except it's traps in the rules system, which is supposed to be the firm foundation upon which tales are built.

You are supposed to be having fun, and perceived traps make things less fun, for both you and your DM - you expected flanking to work and it didn't, and they didn't expect their monsters to be flanked, lessening their perceived Challenge. Don't pressure, and don't nag, and instead try to work together to make the new DM feel secure and supported in their rulings.

Answer 4

There is a Reddit survey for flanking

I do agree with the frame challenge answer, that optional rules are entirely the decision of the DM, and I am not aware of a general survey polling all the optional rules. But to satisfy at least your curiosity of how common flanking is, there is this survey which was run on Reddit (r/DnD) in December 2021, asking if people used flanking or not:

DnD 5e, flanking or no?	Votes
Yes flanking	2.2k
No flanking	930
Depends on the campaign	714
I don't know what this question means	279
I like voting	573

The amount of people who voted here is pretty impressive, at over 4,500. However, this only is a small sample of the overall player population.

The newer reports of the Roll20 user statistics do not list player numbers any more, but this report from 2017 lists about 45,000 5e players that played in the first quarter. (Overall, the site reports to have over 5 million users, and the estimated number of overall D&D players in 2017 was about 14 million).

So clearly, the number of people voting in this poll, while impressive, is only a small share of the overall player population, and the kinds of people that frequent messaging boards may be a biased section of the overall population, that is more into D&D and complicated rules extensions than the overall player. So unfortunately, the kind of insight you can gain from such a survey is likely more limited that it will appear on first sight.