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

[billd91]

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.

Micromanagement has been a problem, particularly with alignment, since the old days so I can certainly agree it's a peeve. But not everything is really micromanagement - and that's where a player and GM may have to come to terms. I don't consider it micromanagement to ding the PC for gross violations of their oaths or deity's ethos. For example, if a player thinks they can be a slaver while still having access to the divine powers of Cayden Cailean in Golarion or Trithereon in Greyhawk (both of whom are freedom-based CG deities), then, wow, they've got another think coming. But choosing to de-emphasize a deity's specific portfolios in order to generally do good works without grossly violating the ethos, perfectly fine.

 

[Kobold Boots]

[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.

Ok so... This is what I think, I think.

A player may choose a background, they may have a concept that's agreed to by all at the table and they start the game that way. Whether or not those boundaries stay in place or move around has everything to do with how the character takes advantage of or respects the NPC that's in play. Buying a background does not mean that the patron is a player character. The obvious outcome being that the patron is a NPC, and NPCs are controlled by the DM.

Anything less is a gross compromise of some basic definitions in use within the game. Now that's not to say some DMs don't do this as a matter of course for some things. I remember having a witch character in a Pathfinder game that had a follower two levels lower than himself. The GM allowed me to run that character myself, as a matter of administration and I had a wide range of authority over that character's motivations and such; but the understanding was that if he needed to bring free will to the character to avoid exploitation of the rules or the character, he would do so.

Does GM/DM control over backgrounds and such thwart player agency? Maybe. I know I've chosen to not DM for players who had the thought of writing their own personal epics with no regard to prepped adventure or plot. However, that's usually after I've made it pretty clear that I run partial sandbox because I don't want campaigns lasting years anymore and folks take things too far in the other direction.

If you want a patron, but you don't want the patron to have its own agenda, then you want to play a mage. If you want to play a "fey" mage, then I'd strongly suggest taking an opposing bent to the character and hunting fey and fey knowledge instead of frolicking with them.

 

[5ekyu]

Conversely, it's between you the GM and your own fan fiction pages. It should never be a problem for the player to tell the DM, "No, I don't want to deal with that, that's not what I had in mind when I made this character, please don't do that." If a DM can't keep his or her mitts off the player's characters, then I have zero interest in playing at that table.



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?

I am saying that at my table i do not allow players to bring an element into the game as their "backstory" or "class" etc that normally falls under the GM purview and then dictate whether or not that thing can be subject to the usual game provided accessibility to the Gm and other players.

If you do not want a character where the god you worship that provides you powers daily and so on plays a role in the story, is off limits, etc - do not bring one to the table tied to a god and a temple.

the idea that a lockbox out certain things their character brings into play, that they choose to bring into the game and yet lockbox it away... nope. Not at my table.

Again, drawing a line of distinction between the player-side non-character specific campaign settings for trigger subjects and topics generally agreed as not within the scope of the game.

 

[5ekyu]

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.

just to point out the part of mine you called reductio was specifically called out in responses as "why not?" for pally and for cleric... so my point is that was not absurdum but actually posited within the scope of that lockbox, just like kidnapping mistresses and such would be.


As in...

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.

 

[5ekyu]

But according to (at least some in) this thread, I'm a bad player for having abandoned some games/GMs!

If people are going to say that "all power flows from the players", yet also criticise those players who actually exercise such power . . . which bit do they really believe?

I do not believe i have told you or anyone that they were a bad player for leaving a game in this thread or any other.

I may disagree with your desires for what you want in a game and i may find it not something i like or allow at my table, but that does not mean you are bad - just not someone i could agree to game with.


So if you want to try and juxtapose my "flows from the players" with comments you sort of attribute to me that are not actually ones i say, we have nothing more to discuss.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

If you do not want a character where the god you worship that provides you powers daily and so on plays a role in the story, is off limits, etc - do not bring one to the table tied to a god and a temple.

Again, I agree with you, but there's a history of bad DMs taking this too far. There was one small sidebar in Second Edition that talked about a god denying spells to a priest who wasn't acting in good faith, with a suggestion that you might pray for spells and wind up with only Cure spells in every slot, and some DMs took that as a suggestion to second-guess everything the character did.

When you actually are trying to play your character in good faith, and the DM takes away your powers because you make one decision that they disagree with, then the natural player response is to never play a divine spellcaster again. You never have to worry about that sort of thing when you're a wizard, after all. Or maybe you'll just quit playing entirely, if nothing you do matters and the DM is going to fiat take away your powers for no reason.

Edit: And if there was a rule that a god could never take powers away from their clerics, then even though that would place an unnecessary restriction on good DMs who weren't going to abuse that ability anyway, at least the rule would serve the purpose of preventing bad DMs from ruining the game for well-intentioned players. The only thing you need to worry about, then, is players who play in bad faith, and exploit the inability of the DM to directly punish the character for their transgressions.

 

[5ekyu]

One system that I play and GM - Burning Wheel - charges PC-build resource points for relationships. These are cheaper if they are close family (and hence, everything else being equal, looming larger in the life of the PC) and cheaper if they are enemies rather than friends (and hence, everything else being equal, hostile to rather than supportive of the PC).

One thing the player is paying for when purchasing a relationship is the focus of the fiction: the GM is obliged to incorporate relationships into the game. By spending the additional points required for the PC to be a friend rather than an enemy, the player is paying (i) for the GM not to have the character oppose the PC, and (ii) for the prospect that adversity in the game (as established by the GM) will include his/her PC's commitments to friends and family being called into question.

In its details this is nothing like the system @Hussar described, but I don't find it odd that a RPG should include rules that allow a player to direct the GM as to how a certain bit of background may be used. I certainly think the suggestion that it's either open-ended for the GM to decide, or else "fan fiction", is wrong.

I have played, mostly ran, many systems where NPCs are "bought" as a part of chargen, much as 5e allows for backstory and backgrounds and classes to also provide openings for player initiated relationships.

I love them.

In many of the "build-all-stuff" systems the values can vary greatly depending on whether they are seen as a boon or a bane on the whole, how useful, how often etc. In others, they are recognized as more explicitly "scene time gains" and so there wont usually be "negative points awarded for enemies."

again, all good.

I tended to describe it (as did players to other players) like this: "In this game, we are adventurers and stuff will be ahppening to us and around us. These things are not "opening us up to stuff" because we are not gonna show up and spend the night knitting. What these do is allow us to have some choice and say in the types of things we want to see."

So, for mostly the whole of my gaiming after say the first couple years, this kind of thing has been the norm and i welcome it and encourage it at my game.

What i am objecting to is the opposite - adding stuff to the game that may include even character class elements and then declaring that as off-limits, cannot be used, etc.

At my table, my response would be "no" and if their views held after a discussion it would still be "no" and i would point them to the gazillion other character choices or backgrounds that don't necessitate BOTH adding in relationships *and* freezing them out from the world*.

Some seem to object to that.

Oh well.

But that is *not* at all the same thing, to me the opposite, as allowing players in their characters to help direct the play and the story by adding elements they want - whether there are rules involved, points involved or not.

EDIT TO ADD Many of the systems allowed things to be bought after chargen too, and some might even require it if the relationship was formalized into the gameplay. i tend to more favor the "not points, preferences and discussion" approach to the "buy your NPCs " approach but thats just me. i never saw "but i can buy it" rules as "enabling" so much as "limiting" myself - tho i have sure ran into point-buy-philes who seem convinced if you cannot put it on the sheet with points it cannot exist or matter.

 

[5ekyu]

Can he though? If I include no details of life pre-play, can I expect none to appear at the DM's whim? 'Cause it's happened a fair bit. Many DM's over the years have asserted that because my past was blank canvas they felt free to -- obliged even -- to draw on it. So now my general character background is an only child from a poor farming family whose parents were killed/farm destroyed as part of an appropriate regional disaster (not assassinated, not killed by a specific type of creature, nothing mysterious), and am seeking my fortune having nothing to go back to. Background would a great mechanic to signal how uninterested I am in that stuff.

i cannot speak for other Gms but if a player tells me they don't care about background and just want "front grounded" PC i tend to do that. Many types of players exist and the ones who just want to "my story starts here" i got no problem with. We can leave it at "some vague reference to putting the past behind him/her" and move forward **as long as** in some way they still give me enough of a handle on "who he is" to gauge whether its an appropriate character for the campaign or not. "No backstory" is not a mask for "anti-campaign choices" that would not have been allowed in if revealed.

But what you cannot in my game do is add in or select these things to be a part of your character and then lockbox them out so that they cannot be a part of the story.

On the other hand, if a player just gave me a blank backstory but told me they were not trying to front ground the character, i would be fine with it.

As an example, one player gave me ye olde "monk with amnesia" and from the outset was "anxious to see what you do with it" and was thrilled with the outcome over the course of the campaign - starting with "Crazy Sue" rushing up and practically copulating with him on the street all the while yelling "Willie, you are alive."

There's a world of gap between "lockboxes"/inert-patrons/godless-churchless-clerics and "the gm abused my backstory" and in my experience many games (almost all the ones i have seen iirc) are played in that vast wonderful between.

 

[Kobold Boots]

I have played, mostly ran, many systems where NPCs are "bought" as a part of chargen, much as 5e allows for backstory and backgrounds and classes to also provide openings for player initiated relationships.

I love them.

In many of the "build-all-stuff" systems the values can vary greatly depending on whether they are seen as a boon or a bane on the whole, how useful, how often etc. In others, they are recognized as more explicitly "scene time gains" and so there wont usually be "negative points awarded for enemies."

again, all good.

I tended to describe it (as did players to other players) like this: "In this game, we are adventurers and stuff will be ahppening to us and around us. These things are not "opening us up to stuff" because we are not gonna show up and spend the night knitting. What these do is allow us to have some choice and say in the types of things we want to see."

So, for mostly the whole of my gaiming after say the first couple years, this kind of thing has been the norm and i welcome it and encourage it at my game.

What i am objecting to is the opposite - adding stuff to the game that may include even character class elements and then declaring that as off-limits, cannot be used, etc.

At my table, my response would be "no" and if their views held after a discussion it would still be "no" and i would point them to the gazillion other character choices or backgrounds that don't necessitate BOTH adding in relationships *and* freezing them out from the world*.

Some seem to object to that.

Oh well.

But that is *not* at all the same thing, to me the opposite, as allowing players in their characters to help direct the play and the story by adding elements they want - whether there are rules involved, points involved or not.

EDIT TO ADD Many of the systems allowed things to be bought after chargen too, and some might even require it if the relationship was formalized into the gameplay. i tend to more favor the "not points, preferences and discussion" approach to the "buy your NPCs " approach but thats just me. i never saw "but i can buy it" rules as "enabling" so much as "limiting" myself - tho i have sure ran into point-buy-philes who seem convinced if you cannot put it on the sheet with points it cannot exist or matter.

I'm with you on this because I've run a "campaign" that lasted a long time using the HERO system.

Here's the rub there because it's the granddaddy of all point buy systems.

1. You buy something that is supposed to benefit you.
2. You might get points back for something that's a detriment.
3. As you get more points through experience you can buy off detriments or add new things.
4. If the GM decides to plot device something that's a benefit into a detriment - maybe your patron becomes an enemy - you get the points back and the patron becomes an enemy. Likewise if the reverse happens. you'll be assessed a points tax until its paid off.

I may be misunderstanding you, but I don't see point buy as a guarantee or direct implication that everything you do must stay the way you intend as a player. That point 4 is actually written into the HERO rules, though it may not be in all others.

Thanks,
KB

 

[5ekyu]

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.

why?

Why is it not absurdum to decide that class elements such as patron, church. god etc can be lockboxed away or have their ability to be used by the Gm in the game etc ...

but it is absurdum to assume that choice of race and the ramifications of that are somehow absurdum to want to limit the Gms utilization of that??

For core elements you choose as a player background, class and race and it seems perfectly reasonable that if you insist a player can take elements of any of those and "lock them out" that they could also do the others. It certainly doesn't seem absurd at least.

But maybe there isn't.

please enlighten me...

if the warlock player can lockout his patron, declare thats not a part of the game/class he wants engaged which means hey, not gonna be a story about rival patrons sending harrassing forces... then why is it ABSURD for the half-orc player to lock-out the race he is playing and avoid the "we hate orcs mobs"?

I am sure there is a clear distinction between those two that led you to label one as absurdum, right?