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

[Nagol]

I thought he was describing an early generation GM AI.

I was. Rolled out in 1979. Still running today with a whole lot of training applied.

 

[cmad1977]

I'm picturing this.

It was significantly less entertaining.

 

[Celebrim]

Asking for an approach is not an exercise in pixel bitching.

Asking for an approach to an obviously active task, sure. I do that to, from everything from search to diplomacy. But what is actually at contention here is not the obviously active tasks. I don't think anyone is actually asserting that it is a commonly used approach for the DM to demand search checks, and then proceed to describe to the player how they search the room, or to demand climb checks and proceed to tell the player what they climbed, or to demand bluff checks and proceed to explain to the player the lie that they just told to the NPC. I don't think that sort of thing happens often enough to even be a thing.

Rather what is at contention is the tasks that are of a long ongoing nature, which are not played out in the game moment by moment, or which are obviously passive or obviously reactive in nature. For those tasks, many of which are internal mental tasks of the character, it's not at all clear what asking for an approach actually adds to the game, and on the contrary demanding the player describe in detail long on going tasks that aren't to be played out moment to moment (or demanding that they be played out moment by moment) or demanding a player describe a stated approach to recalling a fact that the player doesn't themselves know that they don't have, or demanding an approach to describing how the character receives a revelatory insight the player doesn't know, is both pixel bitching and seems to undermine the purpose of having skills like that in the first place.

I've long held the unpopular opinion that mental skills of the PC aren't the same as the physical skills, and while it's perfectly easy to allow an unhealthy quadriplegic to play a physically adept character, it's not really wholly possible to allow a player with some mental or social challenge to play a mentally or socially adept player simply because you can't remove the mind of the player from the game universe. But this goes even further than I've been willing to go by taking the very skills intended to make non-perceptive players into perceptive ones and making them things that require player perceptiveness to even get an opportunity to work. When you say, "The DM is not even allowed to ask for a perceptive ability check but the PC must first specify what they are trying to perceive (the goal) and describe how they accomplish that goal", then you are making perceptive character skills only work for players that are themselves informed and perceptive. I don't feel that's the intention, and if it really is, I think it would come as a surprise to many 5e participants.

The rest of your statements I can agree with rather strongly as true statements, but again only if we are talking about actually active 'well behaved' tasks. I think they are nonsensical though with respect to the things actually in question. I don't need to know the true goal of a player's intent at studying an object to find something worth remarking on, and a player most certainly can't be expected to know what intent he should have in studying an object to find something worth remarking on. If he already knows what it is exactly he's looking for from some other means, at best he can just get confirmation. Sure, for a search check I'm going to need to know things like "Did you touch it?", "Are you willing to lift or move it?" and so forth, and for that sort of thing we do need propositions that take the form of an action. But just seeing something? Just trying to understand a language spoken to you? Or just trying to understand the significance of a mural you see on the wall and needing to call the right skill to use and match it to its significance? Then yes, that very much is a "Mother may I?" sort of thing.

Player: May I understand what my character sees yet?
DM: No, you may not.
Player: If I say 'Religion' may I understand then.
DM: No, you didn't say the magic word.
Player: Is Arcane the magic word?
DM: No it is not.
Player: Is Investigate the magic word?
DM: No, it isn't that either.
Player: What about 'history'?

In regard to the application of passive checks, the approach and goal of a "passive" task is likely to vary a great deal from table to table.

Agreed. I think that several different potential processes of play have been outlined here, and I agree that [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] seems to have adopted additional non-rule based processes of play to compensate for his hard-nosed insistence on the letter of the law - telegraphing to the players for example what things that they should call out that they are paying attention to. Without watching his process of play, I can't really speak to how well that would work out.

 

[Inchoroi]

This is a great item. I wouldn't quit a game over it, but I think this is a common problem for new DMs. My formula was to start out with one location in a small town, and each session introduce one or two NPCs until I had enough to have them start recurring. Soon, a campaign takes shape. A lot of people I suspect buy these 200 page books with multiple locations and think they can do it too. Maybe they can, but it is setting yourself up for a lot of work you don't need.

D&D should get back to concepts like B1 In Search Of The Unknown and do some product for new DMs, that teach you how to DM. All the books assume you just know what you're doing but that's not the case. When you buy a board game they often give examples of play, D&D is a lot more work than a board game and new DMs need help. Heck, I need help.

I'd love a book that describes how to build a campaign (long campaign, that is) and world from scratch. Making short adventures or one-shots is pretty easy, but I've always had trouble with the long game. I usually manage to bungle through somehow, but its always by the seat of my pants, which I dislike.

 

[MNblockhead]

- Games where the scope is well beyond the DM's capacity to run. Show me a new DM with a "world map" that includes more than three locations and I'll show you a game that won't be well-focused for quite some time.

My homebrew campaign has a huge map with many fleshed out areas. The 2 year campaign I ran there met once a month for 8 hours. At the end of the session, I asked the players what their characters were planning on doing next, where they were planning on going and I had a month to prep the next session.

So the players themselves provided the focus.

I saw my job and creating the bones of world, putting together a number big plot lines that the party might get involved with, and prep the first session that provided the mechanism for the party to meet and some plot hooks to get them started.

The campaign went in a very different direction than I anticipated when going into it and that's part of the fun.

In a future campaign, I would like to be even less focused and basically build the world as part of a session zero.

 

[Celebrim]

I'm not sure how you come away with this from my post. So let me be more clear: If a player is indicating a desire to go from one place to another in the city, I'm going to ask what the character does along the way. If the player establishes that the character is doing anything that distracts from being vigilant, then he or she has no chance of noticing the pickpocket.

Well, in a strange way, I continue to be impressed. You continue to be very coherent with your process of play, following it consistently and unswervingly to its logical conclusions. I can't fault the rigor of your thinking.

But on the other hand, you've laid down an ultimatum regarding your minimum standards of play, that as best as I can guess would drive every single player I've had in 30 years of gaming from my table. Far from actually increasing player agency, the declaration that no ability check can be imposed on a player - which you originally defended on the grounds a DM that imposed one was playing the PC - is in your hands one of the broadest licenses to railroad by handwaving I've ever seen a GM issue to themselves.

 

[Ganymede81]

I quit a game after one session because the DM invited people that didn't know how to play, were not prepared to play at the first session, and were not particularly interested in learning how to play.

 

[S'mon]

Ok, I'll chime in here to play fiend's advocate: a player should not really invoke their skill proficiency as if that alone is a stated action. The player should just describe an actual action their PC is taking and the goal the PC hopes to achieve. It's up to the DM to then ask for a specific roll, if a roll is in fact required. The DM might even give the player multiple options...


Better:

Scenario 1a

GM: You see a statue of a woman holding a scythe.
Player: I'd like to carefully view the statue from where I am - I'm not stepping closer or touching it yet. Do I know who she is?
GM: Roll INT\Religion or INT\History please, DC 17.
Player: I roll an 18 for Religion.
GM: It is a statue of Kishar, the goddess of agriculture.

This would require me to have the 5e skill list memorised*.

*Too many editions of D&D, too many renamed skills, brain too old. I'm always going "Make a Bluff check... uh, Deception."

I'm pretty lenient on what skill is appropriate for a "do I know this?" check - here I'd allow Religion or History at least.

 

[Celebrim]

This had better be Harmon Quest, otherwise g'day sir, enjoy your game without me.

So, when a thief checks for traps, if the DM checks secretly on the players behalf in order to remove the metagame information of knowing what the dice roll was, then that's grounds for abandoning a game?

Similarly, if a DM secretly makes a spot check, to determine if the PC's noticed the slithering tracker upon entering a room, because the DM did not want to impart the metagame knowledge that there is something dangerous in the room and they missed it, is that also grounds for abandoning a game?

Or in other words, must this http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0003.html be a literal thing in the game world?

I certainly don't bother to use those processes consistently, but the first thing I do when running a game in pretty much any system is pass around a notepad asking players to list out their relevant passive defenses and passive perception skills - for D&D these would be their saving throws and things like spot/listen/sense motive (or perception/insight?).

 

[iserith]

Well, in a strange way, I continue to be oppressed.

Haha!

You continue to be very coherent with your process of play, following it consistently and unswervingly to its logical conclusions. I can't fault the rigor of your thinking.

I'm told that I'm a pretty consistent as a DM. Which I'm happy about because that's a trait I value.

But on the other hand, you've laid down an ultimatum regarding your minimum standards of play, that as best as I can guess would drive every single player I've had in 30 years of gaming from my table. Far from actually increasing player agency, the declaration that no ability check can be imposed on a player - which you originally defended on the grounds a DM that imposed one was playing the PC - is in your hands one of the broadest licenses to railroad by handwaving I've ever seen a GM issue to themselves.

I suppose that depends on your definition of "railroad," which I find many in the RPG community define too broadly. I provide the opportunity for the player to make a reasonably informed choice by describing the environment. The player describes what he or she wants to do. I adjudicate and narrate the result of that choice in accordance with the processes as put forth in the D&D 5e rules which does not necessitate (and in some cases disallows) an ability check, passive or otherwise. I would not consider that "railroading." The player could have chose otherwise and arrived at a different result.