D&D 5E What DM flaw has caused you to actually leave a game?

pemerton said:

In any event it seems self-evident, such that it's weird you have to state it!

Presumably, thought, some posters think that the GM has a unilateral power to define "major campaign element" - that this is not something where the players might also have authority.

I can half-imagine this for some sort of club game, though even there it's not something I've ever encountered. For a social game with friends I find it almost inconceivable! Lose one hand and you're not welcome back to cards night!

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5ekyu said:

More like, you have been an a$$, the other players are fed up to various degrees and you dont get to reload your next replacement PITA, bye.

My games also come with "it's on you to keep your character in good with the party, not me and not the PC stamp on your characters forehead. So, if your character portrays one of the many tropes which leads the others to decide "let's send this guy packing" dont expect me to save you, run you solo or for you necessarily to get to "reload" some new jerk to inflict on the others."

These and others have made an amazing number of campaigns run very smoothly even when new players came in from other games where they were used to the gm keeping PC groups together even when one was being a jerk.

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Hussar said:

Actually, I don't think it's weird.

Look at the counter examples that have been tossed up. All the "whaddabout's" about backgrounding the Enterprise in a Star Trek game, backgrounding a T-rex or an Allosaurus, I'm sure there have been more.

Just to go back a second though to the idea of the DM capturing the party off screen. Let's be honest here, most groups are going to not do this. It never works as well as the DM thinks it will and it's, by and large, considered a very bad idea. It's right up there with trying to run labyrinths and DMPC's on the list of DM BAD IDEAS.

So, most groups won't do it. But, think about it for a second. Capturing the PC's is hardly a genre breaking event. It happens all the time in genre fiction. And, really, it's often quite plausible as well. But, still, we, as DM's don't do it. Because we know our players will hate it. It's a pretty good example of the sort thing that gets backgrounded for exactly the same reason - because no one at the table wants to do it. We background stuff because dealing with it isn't any fun.

It has nothing to do with powergaming or consequences or anything like that. We do it because the alternative is grinding the game through stuff that no one at the table actually wants to do.

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Hussar said:

Yeah, I agree with this. It's mostly corner case stuff though. As a general rule, it's not terribly unfair to say that capture scenarios are a bad idea.

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TwoSix said:

If you think Eberron does clerics wrong, you should see how Keith Baker contorts class fluff to make it fit Eberron in the articles on his website.

It's nice to see a designer be upfront in saying he views classes as mechanical entities, and that the fluff is there to be added to that mechanical skeleton.

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Aldarc said:

This seems unreasonably hyperbolic; you are creating an artificial crisis. This is hardly the problem you are fabricating here.

Let's consider another case that does not involve deities. I create a character with a backstory pertaining to my family clan that I have also invented. A new player joins the game or a PC dies and a player re-rolls a new character. Having heard about my character's clan or watching me play, the player thinks it would be cool if their new character also came from this same clan that I created, possibly as a sibling or cousin. It makes for a great plot hook and easy way to seed the new character into the group. I am inventor of this clan and its history, status, etc. "(and thus, one assumes, the best authority) of the [clan they are trying to roleplay]."

IMHO, this common scenario is of a similar level as the deity above. I created the groundwork of what this deity represents. I established with the DM both its cultic orthodoxy and my idiomatic heterodoxy. If a new player joins, they are not somehow beholden to two GMs, as per your hyperbolic claim, but just one. I can inform the new player of my own understanding of the deity and its cult, but this is not dissimilar to having access to a GM and other sources. The player may consult both the DM and the setting materials. Or the new player may consult the DM and other players who are well-informed about religion or setting. Are other non-cleric players not as capable of telling a St. Cuthbert cleric player, "Hey, what you're doing does not represent the tenets of St. Cuthbert accurately"?

Or let's imagine another scenario. What happens when a setting-creator plays a game as a player in their own setting in but run by GM who is not them? E.g., Keith Baker in Eberron, Ed Greenwood in Forgotten Realms, or Gary Gygax in Greyhawk, Monte Cook in Numenera? Your imagined problem scenario basically precludes them from being players because now players are faced with "two GMs" or an inequality of the players: the GM and the author. And yet this happens all the time without much of a hitch. But in contrast, the setting authorization that I made as a player was far more limited in scope: a single deity (and arguably the dwarf clan that also forms part of the backstory for another PC and me).

I would personally be flattered if another player wanted to run a cleric to the deity I created. It seems like that would be a great indication that I sold the deity well in play. Indirect proselytizing. And I would be curious about how they play it differently than me, and how our interactions would bounce off each other's.

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Hussar said:

Never minding that [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] - do DM's really create 100% of their settings? I sure don't. I WANT my players to create stuff. You're a cleric of Cuthbert? Fantastic. You tell me what that means. You bring that up in play. You make that important in the game. You make the other players care about it. I'm just far, far too lazy to put a bunch of work into some player's background when they cannot be bothered bringing it to the table themselves.

And, as a player, I tend to play the same way. I bring that stuff to the table. I don't mind doing the legwork for my own character. It is my character after all. And, I'll try my hardest to bring it to the table and make it interesting to the other players. I wouldn't expect the DM to write all sorts of material for something just for me.

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Aldarc said:

Wow. Never thought of it that way. And given the prominence of "themepark MMOs," that may also explain my general disdain of "themepark worldbuilding and adventures."

If we were playing Eberron, how is playing a cleric of a backgrounded Balinor different from playing a cleric of Balinor? Eberron effectively backgrounds its pantheon of deities such that the focus can be on the ground-eye view of faiths. Does this mean that Eberron is doing clerics wrong?

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Imaro said:

Can I ask a serious question... if you view classes as only mechanical entities... why create fluff at all? Why not just leave them as mechanical packges? I'd argue that in changing fluff as opposed to removing it completely you're actually showing that fluff matters to the class just as much as mechanics... you just don't agree with the fluff as given. I see it no different than changing a class ability you don't like or think you can improve on.

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Keith-baker.com said:

Dragonmarked
Sorcerous Origin: Divine Soul, Storm Sorcery, Shadow Magic

Along the same lines as an aberrant mark, if you’re of the proper race and bloodline to have a dragonmark, you can say that your unusually strong connection to your dragonmark is the source of your sorcerous abilities. Essentially, it’s clear that you have the potential to develop a Siberys Dragonmark, but rather than it manifesting all at once, it is emerging over time. A halfling divine soul with healing abilities could attribute the power to the Mark of Healing; a Phiarlan or Thuranni elf could have access to shadow magic; a Lyrandar heir could be a storm sorcerer. Like the Child of Khyber, you’re entirely on the honor system to choose spells that make sense with your mark. Or, like I suggest for the Child of Khyber, you could present yourself as a minor wizard or general sorcerer who ALSO has a powerful mark—so the spells that don’t fit with your Dragonmark are tied to this secondary path. A Siberys dragonshard would be a logical spellcasting focus, but you could also have an object that incorporates a Siberys shard—a tool designed by your house to channel this sort of power.

Mad Artificer
Sorcerous Origin: Any

Like a wizard, an artificer approaches magic in a scientific manner. But what if they didn’t? What if they create magic items that should never actually work, yet somehow do? The point with this character would be to present all of their magic as coming from strange devices that they create. From a mechanical perspective, they’d have a component pouch—but that pouch would be filled with lint, shards of broken glass, and so on. Part of the concept—what differentiates this character from an actual artificer—is for their explanations of their magic to make no sense. “We just saw three doves in the sky. So if I pour the yoke of this dove egg on this magnifying lens, it will triple its ability to focus the light of the sun and create a deadly beam of heat. Simplicity itself!”

The mad artificer could follow any path, representing their “arcane field of study.” A draconic bloodline sorcerer who follows this path would “artifice” as an explanation for the benefits of the class. Their natural armor could be the result of mystical tattoos that channel a low-grade repulsion field; their dragon wings would be an Icarus-like set of artifical wings.

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