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

[Lanefan]

Pretty much, yes.
Presumably the players at Lanefan's table enjoy the hardship, like having to rebuild a spellbook that was destroyed due to an opponent's fireball.

I think 'enjoy' might be putting it a bit optimistically. Few people actually enjoy setbacks, but most accept that they will sometimes happen.

In this case, they accept as a built-in part of the game the idea that the in-game reality is now and then likely to cause bad things and setbacks to happen during the course of adventuring, and when such things do occur their PCs pick themselves up and get on with it.

 

[Lanefan]

I've already addressed this in a very recent post.

As per the thread title, I gave three examples of when I had ditched a game because of poor GMing. One was of a game in which the culmination of three (or so?) sessions of play, which had as its sole narrative motivation collecting some MacGuffin for the PCs' patron, the patron betrayed the PCs.

[MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] suggested (or asserted? I haven't gone back upthread to check) that I was wrong to say that this game sucked, and that I should have hung around for 10 or so sessions of nothing happening except the GM playing out his own story about a treacherous patronj as part of setting up a long-term villain.

Was the actual game play of the McGuffin adventure not enjoyable in and of itself at the time during those 10 sessions? The character interactions? The interesting exploration? The grand set-piece combats? Or whatever else that adventure had to offer?

No need to throw all that fun out the window just because the adventure itself turned out in session 11 to have been all for naught. Pick yourself up and get on with the next adventure, whatever it may be.

The idea that players would sit through 10 sessions of play watching the GM - in effect - play with him-/herself is absolutely ludicrous to me.

For those 10 sessions, before you knew things would go sideways, how is the GM playing with him-herself? There's still players at the table, engaging in a game of adventure and derring-do; and even though the patron does a hell-turn in session 11 the PCs still (99.9% likely) come out ahead overall: they've got xp and treasure and knowledge they didn't have before, and are better equipped and prepared to carry on.

But anyway, for some reason some poster or other decided that all patrons are warlock's supernatural patron's and decided to assert that, when it comes to a player playing a warlock, then the GM is absolutely entitled to play the game with him-/herself and the player just has to suck it up.

I disagreed, along with soe others - the last many pages of this thread record the upshot of that.

Yeah, this whole warlock thing came form a mis-reading of 'patron' in the original example, I think.

 

[Yunru]

(and what's this '0th rule' you mention?)

Much like with robotics, any obligation of this nature has a 0th rule: The masses outweigh the few.
In this case, if going on the quest that isn't killing Orcs might allow me to kill more Orcs than I miss out on for not taking the other mission, I'm obliged to ignore the "murder Orcs" quest.

 

[5ekyu]

I think 'enjoy' might be putting it a bit optimistically. Few people actually enjoy setbacks, but most accept that they will sometimes happen.

In this case, they accept as a built-in part of the game the idea that the in-game reality is now and then likely to cause bad things and setbacks to happen during the course of adventuring, and when such things do occur their PCs pick themselves up and get on with it.

I think the key is not that they enjoy any given occurrence of a setback or a consequence of their choices biting them - but that they enjoy a game in which those consequences are expected and routinely seen and dealty with in-game - not by some meta-game external mechanic or consequence-eraser. My group has played with "choice-consequence in-game" style play and with more meta-gamey style games and have found we like the former playstyle over the latter.

We also like that those kinds of consequences make certain traits have more tangible day-to-day outcomes and trade-offs matter.

A conjurer might not get the portent dice the diviner gets and that may suck - but they sure might find Minor Conjuration of a copy of their spellbook to be a very useful alternative in a game where spellbooks can not be meta-gamed to safety.

 

[5ekyu]

Was the actual game play of the McGuffin adventure not enjoyable in and of itself at the time during those 10 sessions? The character interactions? The interesting exploration? The grand set-piece combats? Or whatever else that adventure had to offer?

No need to throw all that fun out the window just because the adventure itself turned out in session 11 to have been all for naught. Pick yourself up and get on with the next adventure, whatever it may be.

For those 10 sessions, before you knew things would go sideways, how is the GM playing with him-herself? There's still players at the table, engaging in a game of adventure and derring-do; and even though the patron does a hell-turn in session 11 the PCs still (99.9% likely) come out ahead overall: they've got xp and treasure and knowledge they didn't have before, and are better equipped and prepared to carry on.

Yeah, this whole warlock thing came form a mis-reading of 'patron' in the original example, I think.

perhaps but once the warlock patron got thrown in with the pro-backgrounding "sure it can" kitchen sink of what we can background away from the GM - it took on its own life.

 

[billd91]

I want to go further than [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] - a GM who even regards this as a price is a GM with a flaw that I would not want to play with.

There are all sorts of choices a player may make and actions they may have their PCs do that have a cost to them in the course of a game. Is GM to ignore all of the ones the player happens to want to ignore? Where is the line drawn? If I have a player who wants to murderhobo his way across the landscape without negative social and legal consequences, but that's not the kind of game I want to run, am I still expected to run that game for him? What if every player but him doesn't want that kind of game? That may be a somewhat more extreme example than wanting to keep a motorcycle free and pristine from any and all interference or wanting to take a huge pet dinosaur into any densely packed urban environment, but it's the same sort of topic. Where is the line drawn?

 

[5ekyu]

"But anyway, for some reason some poster or other decided that all patrons are warlock's supernatural patron's and decided to assert that, when it comes to a player playing a warlock, then the GM is absolutely entitled to play the game with him-/herself and the player just has to suck it up.'

i have not seen that claim made - tho i have seen quite a few including me that have insisted the player and the GM need to discuss and come to an agreement on the patron and particulars or else a warlock cannot be played in their games. that is hardly playing with him/herself.

 

[Yunru]

In-fiction obligations limit PC (and by extension player) freedom of choice in what gets done and are therefore, yes, a penalty.

Example: Joe-the-PC is a Cleric to a war deity whose primary goal is the elimination of Orcs and whose Clerics are expected to help with this task whenever possible or else risk repercussions. Party and PC have various options on what to do next, one of which is dealing with some Orcish raiders and another of which looks (for whatever reason) far more interesting in the eyes of both the players and the in-fiction PCs...including Joe, but his obligation to his deity sends him out after the Orcs anyway; and possibly right out of the party for a while unless they go with him.

This isn't the GM bossing the PC around*, it's the player's own intentional choice of class and deity rearing up and saying hello. Player chose that deity because it looked like good old kill-'em-all fun and he liked the idea of the combat advantages and blessings that deity gave when fighting Orcs and their kin.

* - unless you're going to say that because of this Cleric being in the party the DM is banned from having Orcs anywhere within the PCs scope of knowledge, which is right over the top.

Lan-"and this is how players can railroad themselves"-efan

There are all sorts of choices a player may make and actions they may have their PCs do that have a cost to them in the course of a game. Is GM to ignore all of the ones the player happens to want to ignore? Where is the line drawn? If I have a player who wants to murderhobo his way across the landscape without negative social and legal consequences, but that's not the kind of game I want to run, am I still expected to run that game for him? What if every player but him doesn't want that kind of game? That may be a somewhat more extreme example than wanting to keep a motorcycle free and pristine from any and all interference or wanting to take a huge pet dinosaur into any densely packed urban environment, but it's the same sort of topic. Where is the line drawn?

Somewhere in the middle? Nothing ever makes sense in extremis, because taking something to an extreme rarely makes sense.

 

[pemerton]

You're missing a step, perhaps it is tacitly implied, but I'm including it here for clarification purposes.
(ii) the DM agreed to the terms of the player

<snip>

You are right how dare I roleplay a NPC true to form.

<snip>

And yet, in 5e if a DM does not believe there is any uncertainty he has no need to call for a roll.
I feel it is unfair to blame the DM when these are the rules as per 5e, if anyone is to blame its WotC, right?

The attitude of the archbishop has nothing to do with WotC. It's the GM in your example who has decided that the archbishop cannot be influenced.

This topic was discussed (in the context of Traveller, but the principle is the same) in this thread at the end of last year. My view is very similar to the one that [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] stated in that thread:

You just want your tedious railroad rubbish to go elsewhere and you view your version of the situation as more important than anyone else's.

<snip>

Again, you're just disparaging someone else's contribution to try and get your way. This is about your desperate need for control of the fiction.

And as for evidence... there's no such thing as evidence. The boat being damaged is authored. What you're saying is that you want to author it, and you resent me authoring it, so now you want to have done it in advance and then give the players 'clues' so they can exploit it in the way you intended. Anything else and you lose control, and you can't handle it.

<snip>

Railroading isn't the players doing what you say. Railroading is the outcomes being the ones you've chosen. And you've done nothing but try to dictate outcomes and then pretend your words are more authoritative than anyone elses, including mine and the person actually running the game. Lame doesn't even begin to describe your approach.

There's a recurring notion in this thread - whether pertaining to NPC attitudes, or players' desires for their PC flavour/backstory etc - that the GM can't enjoy the game unless s/he is deciding what the story is. That is exactly what caused me to leave/end three games as per my first post in this thread.

I think this is narrow minded.
Perhaps the setting is during the time of the Godswar or Time of Troubles (Forgotten Realms) when all manner of faithful lost their access to the divine. As I said case by case basis.

Does the player of the cleric get told in advance that his/her PC is going to lose his/her class abilities during the course of the campaign?

And yet earlier (upthread) you mentioned that the DM talk to the player out of the game on the same basis.

That was in the context of someone thinking a player is wrecking the game. But no one's offered a reason why a player playing a cleric or warlock whose god/patron is happy with what s/he does, or playing a motorcycle-riding vampire, would wreck the game.

So, just to be clear, the player who turns down the motorcycle has to deal with the consequence of not having a motorcycle

If another player did not want a free no complication motorcycle and so his character was limited by walking speed, paying for busses, taxis etc and as such even if nothing else they got to do less due to complication issues from not having a vehicle to zip around on does giving that other player the worry-free motorcycle he asked for still seem nothing to worry over?

I haven't played very much V:tM, but my impression is that it's not a game of hard-knock scrabbling for the fare for a bus! If my PC's flavour is that I get about on my bike, and yours is that you caught the bus, what difference is that making in play? Is the GM going to say to you "No, you have to sit out this encounter because the bus was late!"?

Depends. Do they take a fight outside? Then the bike and all of the other things standing around as potential collateral have been reintroduced as complications.

D&D has almost no rules for "collateral damage" to surrounding objects. I'm not sure about V:tM, but I'd be surpised if it's rules in this respect are significantly richer.

I don't get the interest in suddenly activating such things precisely because a player's PC has a bike parked outside.

Or maybe someone at the bar has has their suspicions raised by questions the PCs ask and doesn't want to be followed so they slash a tire, or is invulnerable to that too?

Whether an argument with someone at the bar puts the bike at stake would be highly contextual. How does the NPC even know which bike is the PC's? That seems pretty contextual too.

If being the motorcyle guy is your core concept, then it should account for something more than just getting from point A to point B.

Why? What's wrong with colour?

Color me confused but a core concept should be something fairly prominent for the character - not really something to be backgrounded. And that means it should be available for complications.

Why?

A fighter's default core concept, according to the 5e Basic PDF, is a master of deadly combat. Does that mean that a signficant focus of play should be whether or not the fighter loses his/her abilities (eg by being permanently maimed)? That's not been a traditional focus of D&D play. I don't see why a warlock or cleric should be different. To me, all this just smacks of GMs looking for handles to steer the players' play of their PCs.

Captain America is a shield guy, but he doesn't use it just for looking good in publicity photos.

In the Marvel Heroic RP, Captain America can't lose his shield permanently. The referee can spend a GM side resource to shut down the shield ability; the player can shut it down to gain a player-side resource. If shut down, the player can take an action to recover it; otherwise at the end of the encounter it is recovered automatically.

In the same RPG, the Punisher's Battle Van is (in mechanical terms) an ability that allows the player to step up combat or vehicle-related resources generated by spending player-side resources. The Punisher doesn't lose access to it - although in play certain adverse effects might be narrated as some temporary Battle Van-related setback.

if this were Mutants and Masterminds, there'd be a hero point in it for you because that's how complications work in that game

Likewise if it was Fate. Likewise for Captain America in MHRP, as I just explained. I don't know how recovery works in M&M, but does that system really allow Captain America's shield to be stolen so that the player just doesn't have access to it anynmore in the campaign?

If you want to be the dinosaur riding ranger as a core concept, fine. Just recognize that it's not going to give everyone a good impression and it can't go everywhere you might want to go.

There's a traditional mechanic for this in D&D - the reaction roll. On a bad roll, maybe the reason the villager's are unhappy would be the dinosaur. On a good roll, maybe the villagers have heard of this heroic dino-rider and welcome her/him!

Pick a deity with a particular portfolio and ethos, part of a cleric's core concept, and directly work against that and it'll be an issue. Pick a warlock patron, which determines your core magical powers, and directly work against its interests and, again, complications will ensue.

That's all uncontentious. What's being discussed in this thread is who gets to decide what counts as directly working againt that ethos/interst?

The Sworn and Beholden section states that "A warlock is defined by a pact with an otherworldly being." A player backgrounding the prominence of their patron or its in-game control by the DM does not somehow erase that. The rest of the paragraph consists fundamentally flavor text suggestions meant for the player to consider the nature of the relationship. It does not even say in this section that the occasional services are determined by the DM. It's determined by their patron. "But the DM does serve as their patron!" Not necessarily. Working with the DM about the pact does not mean that the DM dictates the terms of that pact to the player. The player can easily determine the nature and frequency of those occasional services without requiring the DM to roleplay that patron as an in-game taskmaster.

"My archfey patron requires that I oppose both otherworldly abominations of nature and the opposing agendas of Queen Mab. As part of my pact, I can never wield cold iron nor can I knowingly speak falsehood. Everytime I increase in power [i.e., level up], I must prepare a new fey grove through which my patron can extend their influence in the world. And through this new arcane conduit, I shall gain my new power."

All of this could be established by the player (in cooperation with the DM) pre-play and without having the DM using the patron as an in-game sock-puppet.

100% this.

 

[pemerton]

Hmmm... I guess I lie between the extremes I'm seeing here in this thread. I don't think I'd have much problem with backgrounding something like a motorcycle... though all bets are off if the player starts abusing that agreement... i.e. I drive my motorcycle through the villains headquarters door smashing it down to get through and then leaving it there and expecting it to be "backgrounded", At that point your motorcycle has become fair game because it is being used for more than transport from point A to point B.

Quite a way upthread I contrasted actions with do or don't put the motorcycle at stake.

why pick a warlock (as opposed to a sorcerer, wizard, etc) if you aren't interested in exploring those specific thematic elements

I'm just guessing, but it's probably because of the mechanical features of the class. One consequence of having a mechanically crunchy system with a largely arbitrary overlay of flavour over those mechanics (eg there's no reason why a class with the them of a warlock couldn't be mechanically structured as a wizard, and vice versa) is that you will have players who care for the mechanics but are less excited by the flavour.

as a GM I most certainly am (and yes it would affect my enjoyment in running the game as well as the enjoyment of the other players in my particular group who would be interested in the narrative around the dynamics of the relationship

But, assuming it's not compulsory for the player to play a warlock, then it seems you could have enjoyed the game without that relationship. So what harm does it do to have the player play the mechanics of a warlock but not add any more flavour than a "man with no name" fighter?

So they want to create and control not only their warlock but also the patron he or she made a deal with. IMO this would be extremely boring for me as a DM and I would imagine likewise for the players who are not privy to a players thoughts and thus would have no idea how the patron was influencing his actions and decision making.

But what if the player wanted to play a "man with no name" fighter instead? Would you and/or your other players forbid that because it's too boring?

IMO this isn't wanting to explore the relationship from a character-side perspective but instead, akin to wanting to play out lone theater and/or dictate a story in a cooperative game by ones self..

How? How is the player (eg) declaiming, at the table, "This is what my patron wants from me - mwahahhaha!" playing lone theatre?

And if the player never says such things, so that everyone is left guessing what the PC's motivation and relationship to the patron was, well how is that any different from the relationship between the wizard and his/her mentor which never comes up in play?

Could you explain how the DM playing an NPC (because that's what a patron or deity is) can tread on the concept of the actual character? And if that is the case why doesn't it apply for any other NPC the player's characters have a connection with?

Let's consider a different example which doesn't bring any game book text with it: I decide that, at home in the village, my PC's dear old dad is waiting for my return at the end of my quest. (Like Samwise Gamgee's Gaffer.) If the GM decides that my dad is in fact a serial killer, that is playing an NPC in a way that brutally treads on the concept of my character.

Now let's go to a cleric example. If I decide to play a follower of the Lord of Battle (true example - I'm playing such a character in an active campaign) and my conception of the Lord of Battle is noble knights, honour, defend the innocent, uphold the right, blah blah blah; and if the GM decides that the Lord of Battle directs my PC to enter an inn under cover of darkness and assassinate the innocent innkeeper sleeping in her bed; then the GM is brutally treading on my character concept.

I don't think these sorts of examples are very hard to understand.