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

[billd91]

Why not? Paladins are not alignment restricted any more. And the Oath's are so vague as to mean pretty much anything. Good grief, paladins are easy to play now. And are you saying that a cleric can't be of a god that doesn't really care what the cleric does? Or a cleric of a philosophy? I sometimes forget how liberating it is to play in Primeval Thule where clerics are essentially cultists and are in no way actually tied to their diety.

IOW, you're saying that if a player brings something to the table, and flat out tells you, "No, I don't want this" you're going to ignore him or her and do it anyway?

For the most part, yes. I’m not going to dictate what kind of PC to play, but I won’t allow a player to dictate how the campaign interacts with them. If a concept doesn’t work for you in the campaign I’m running, find another one.

 

[Maxperson]

Why not? Paladins are not alignment restricted any more. And the Oath's are so vague as to mean pretty much anything. Good grief, paladins are easy to play now. And are you saying that a cleric can't be of a god that doesn't really care what the cleric does? Or a cleric of a philosophy? I sometimes forget how liberating it is to play in Primeval Thule where clerics are essentially cultists and are in no way actually tied to their diety.

Paladins ARE alignment restricted. It's just not hard coded into the class. The oaths, while not as restrictive as prior paladin codes, are still clear enough that you can tell when one is being violated. Those oaths affect how the paladin is played to the point where if you are a paladin of devotion are are not good, you are either playing your alignment wrong, or your devotion wrong.

As for clerics of a philosophy or cults, you are still bound by that philosophy or cult belief system. You don't get to escape the class obligations by shifting away from a god. You have just shifted what your obligations are and placed them elsewhere.

IOW, you're saying that if a player brings something to the table, and flat out tells you, "No, I don't want this" you're going to ignore him or her and do it anyway?

Yes, if the player came up to me and said, "I want to play a warlock, but I don't want a pact or patron.", I would deny that.

 

[Maxperson]

Sure, but I generally prefer systems where there are checks and balances between the players and GM (e.g., Fate, Numenera 2, arguably DW). Additionally, I have found that players are often more invested in worlds when they help shape it in some way before and during play.

We're talking about D&D and warlocks, though.

There is no need for reductio ad absurdum. I would say part of the issue is that sometimes the Player can feel that the GM is impinging on their character concept or backstory through what they may regard as a "misuse" of their patron or their pre-made conception of that patron relationship thereof. In many respects, the GM is thereby encroaching on the player's understanding of their character and their creative agency. And this can quickly sour a player's experience at the table.

He did not engage that fallacy. There is no effective difference between a player wanting to ditch his class obligations to his patron, and players wanting to ditch their class obligations to their religion/god.

 

[Maxperson]

These posts seem to run together two completely distinct things - is my character bound by obligations and/or connections to someone/something else and does the GM get to decide stuff about the content of those obligations and the nature of those connections?

When I started a 4e campaign about 10 years ago I told the players that each PC had to have a loyalty to something or someone (I got three Raven Queen devotees, a feypact warlock whose patron was Corellon, a cleric of Kord committed to opposing the Bane-ites of the Black Eagle Barony, and a dwarf devoted to proving his worthiness by the standards of the dwarven hold he came from).

But it would never occur to me that I could tell those players what is required to honour the Raven Queen, or Kord, or the Black Mountain Dwarfhold. I will (and have) frame situations that push the players to answer those questions, but it's not my job to provide answers. (As it happens, each of the Raven Queen devotees has a different view about what is required to honour their mistress.)

I'm not talking about what they do to honor their god/patron. I'm talking about obligations to that god/patron. I wouldn't tell the feypact warlock that he has to go to the forest once a week and destroy some cold iron to honor Corellon, but I might have Corellon request that he give a message to the Old Man of the Woods(a druid) as the party passes through. That's not about how they honor their god/patron, but rather it's the built in obligation that the player agreed to by choosing that class coming to the forefront.

As a player in a Burning Wheel game, I play a knight of a religious order (the Knights of the Iron Tower) who is obliged to honour the precepts of his order as well as his noble family. I expect the GM to put those commitments to the test. I would quit the game if the GM tried to tell me what those commitments required. (When my PC encountered a demon, and stood against it without relenting although I had no chance to beat it, the GM was - I think - genuinely surprised. That was me deciding what my character's obligations demanded of him. The demon retreated - it had better ways to spend its limited time on this world then killing a largely irrelevant knight - and the GM determined that my character gained an infamous reputation in the hells as a demon-foe, which will influence future reactions of demons that he encounters. That's the sort of GM decision-making that I regard as completely appropriate.)

That's really cool. It's all about different playstyles, though. You and I play a different(but not as different as you think) style of game.

 

[Sadras]

People liked to blame alignment and then WotC created Warlocks.

 

[Aldarc]

We're talking about D&D and warlocks, though.

What did you say elsewhere? "Context my friend. Context." In this case, I was engaged in a discussion with S'mon about GM authority.

He did not engage that fallacy. There is no effective difference between a player wanting to ditch his class obligations to his patron, and players wanting to ditch their class obligations to their religion/god.

You're picking and choosing here with his post, as you are also leaving out this logical absurdism: "and hey maybe the whole 'i am an elf' or 'i am a half-orc' shouldn't be a thing either..." I hope you can appreciate why such rhetoric would be a fallacious argument to put forth in this discussion.

 

[Maxperson]

What did you say elsewhere? "Context my friend. Context." In this case, I was engaged in a discussion with S'mon about GM authority.

You're picking and choosing here with his post, as you are also leaving out this logical absurdism: "and hey maybe the whole 'i am an elf' or 'i am a half-orc' shouldn't be a thing either..." I hope you can appreciate why such rhetoric would be a fallacious argument to put forth in this discussion.

Okay. I did leave out the elf/half-orc thing.

Edit: And yes, other games definitely alter the DM/player dynamic when it comes to how to split authority and game responsibilities.

 

[cmad1977]

So what's the one true way?

Not sure. But I’m certain that some people in this thread are doing it wrong.

 

[pemerton]

Just thinking about this. I very much want it to be the player - with internal aspect on their PC - deciding "what is the right thing to do?" That's not a decision for me as GM to make. But my NPCs may well have strong views on the matter! So NPCs such as fellow knights of the order may well think the PC was right or wrong, guided by their own view of the order's precepts. The universe won't tell the PC he was right or wrong - I don't use Alignment penalties & prefer to ignore Alignment except as a stated Allegiance. I don't think I would run a game like Dogs in the Vinyard where the universe ensures that whatever moral decision the PCs make, it was the right decision, although I'm sure that particular Narrativist game is interesting to play. Likewise I don't want a player telling me "The holy military order is part of MY backstory - *I* get to decide how the other warrior-monks react to my decision!"

In Burning Wheel, the way the other monks react is going to be a consequence of downstream action resolution.

Four illustrations (there are probably other possible cases, but these are the ones I thought of; the last one involved The Lord of Battle rather than a fellow knight of the order):

* I make a Circles check for my PC, and fail: the GM decides that I meet a fellow member of my order who is angry at me because I did the wrong thing.

* I am engaged in some sort of action resolution, which expressly or implicitly puts my relationship with some other member of my order into play, and the check fails: the GM includes, as part of the narration of the consequences, that member of my order expressing disappointment with me for having done the wrong thing.

* The GM frames a situation in which I encounter a member of my order who thinks I did the wrong thing. Obviously I can try and persuade the NPC otherwise; but lets suppose I either don't try to, or I fail. Now there's a member of my order who not only thinks I did the wrong thing, but is more strongly affirmed in this view.

* I fail a Faith check, and the GM narrates as a consequence of failure that the Lord of Battle is angry at me for having done such-and-such a wrong thing. (Mechanically, the anger might be expressed in some form of penalty.) To restore my relationship with the Lord of Battle, I have to undertake appropriate penance.​

So it's part of the logic of the system that there is no single or pre-determined how the other warrior-monks react to my decision. That's something that would be established in play in the sorts of ways I've tried to describe.

 

[Aldarc]

[MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], your Corellon wanting a message delivered was an excellent one for acceptable small obligations. There is a lot of potential flavor there. It's a nice reminder for the player(s) about the patron, and that could lead to a lot of interesting plot hooks. And without knowing more about what [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] describes in this Background system, that may apply as Background.

However, I would say that the underlying problems within this warlock/patron discussion pertain to two interrelated issues: (1) PC-GM Cognitive Dissonance, and (2) Player Micromanagement.

In the case of (1), the player may have come to the table with a particular conception of who their patron is, the nature of their patron/protegé relationship, and what their patron means to them. (And they may be under the impression that the GM understands this as well.) In play, however, the GM may then dictate/impose a completely different understanding of that relationship or patron on the player. It may defy the PC's backstory. It may defy their sense of character. Not in a way, however, that challenges or grows that sense of character but in a way that contradicts or "retcons" it. If the dissonance is too great, the player may abandon their character entirely because "frak this junk; this is not what I came here to play." In a more freeform game like Fate, I could change my character aspects to something more appropriate as a result. But for a class-based game like D&D, pushing a player out of that class that they may otherwise enjoy playing can be ruinous for their experience.*

In the case of (2), many players dislike the GM micromanaging player characters through their deities/patrons/alignment/etc. So the desire to lockdown the patron as Background becomes as a means of protecting player character agency from the GM utilizing the warlock's patron as an RP tool against the player.

In both (1) and (2) the GM utilizes the warlock's patron in a manner that disrespects the player's sense of play. These effectively encroach on the player's creative agency.

* This gets into another topic that has been alluded to and implied but not yet discussed: Classes are imperfect archetypes. Often players view classes not as a set of prescriptive flavor text obligations to "play your character like this" but simply as a "line of best fit" for their character concept. I know people who would love playing clerics - as the mechanics fit their playstyle - but they hate the religious flavor text baggage. This is incidentally why I know that some players I have played with loved the unspeakable warlord. So I think that the practice of looking the other way when it comes to deities, oaths, patrons, and such stems from this problem. (Cue obligatory interjector: "That's not a problem; that's a feature!") I know from my own experience that there are players who like how the warlock comes equipped with a lot of player choice points (patron, pact, invocations, spells, etc.) and how it players but they likewise don't want the patron used against them. I'm okay with treating that "fey warlock" as a "fey sorcerer" or a "fey wizard" if that works better for that player.