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

[Campbell]

For what it's worth I believe in shared ownership of setting, more in terms of taking an active interest in it and responsibility for it's content than the freedom to do whatever we want with it. The GM is mostly responsible for it in the same way that players are mostly responsibility for their characters. Obviously there's some interaction there. No one is an island. This is a game where we play together so we need the latitude to mess with each other's stuff somewhat. I am not in favor of explicitly detailing the ways we are not allowed to interact with each other's toys because that sole ownership in the sense of possession is the death of creative collaboration. I mean the interaction of this stuff is the actual fun part. Not a have to - a get to. Conflicts arise and it's up to us to work them out like adults. That's the only way to develop functional creative relationships.

Honestly, I think this obsession we have over ownership in the sense of possessions and rights is not very helpful. We should be more concerned with taking responsibility, integrity, and what we should be doing instead of what we have a right to do.

 

[pemerton]

But still doesn't change anything that was done, said or felt at any time before that knowledge was obtained. All that changes is the hindsight view of it.

This is a very narow account of the case.

I'm going to present a stark example which I hope isn't offensive:

A sleeps with B who is (as far as A knows) a stranger. A subsequently learns that B is A's sister. A thereby learns that A has committed incest. A may or may not care deeply about that - the world is full of different moral perspectives - but I think for most people there is no doubt that A did something when sleeping with B that is different from what A thought was happening.

(A movie I watched recently in which just this scenario occurs: The Curse of the Golden Flower. Another well-known historical/fantasy film where something similar happens: Excalibur, where Arthur sleeps with his sister who is pretending to be Guinevere by dint of shapechanging magic - thereby replicating the very magical trick that led to Arthur's conception.)

Learning that one committed incesst isn't just forming a hindsight view. It's learning the nature of an act that - at the time the act was committed - one completely failed to understand had taken place.

The same thing can operate in RPGing. I know, because I've experienced it in two of the three campaigns that I mentioned as bad ones, that I therefore left/helped kill off, in my first post in this thread: the GM introduces new fictional content which completely changes or even invalidates the meaning of the established fiction, and thereby wrecks the game.

One example is the McGuffin quest - as players we have our PCs go along with the patron's McGuffin quest because it's clear that this is the adventure the GM has on offer (our PCs have no deep narratiave reason to do this thing - there's a surface veneer of salary and expedience, which papers over the true reason which is that we're playing the GM's adventure). So it's a story about a group of McGuffin questers - pretty stock standard RPGing stuff. Then the GM unilaterally decides that the patron betrays us, thereby changing it into a story of a group of patsies (both PCs and players!) tricked into doing something with no good reason to do so. The meaning of what had happened is completely changed. And to tie it back to "character concept", through no choice or fault on our part - because as players we had no meaningful choice not to send our PCs on the fetch quest - our PCs have been revealed to be not the semi-competent fetch questers we had envisaged them as, but as a group of duped losers. All through GM fiat.

As I already said, the game ended at that point. Not because the GM ended it, but because a critical mass of players (not just me) were not interested in that sort of play experience, of having the meaning of characters and events unilaterally rewritten by the GM so as to invalidate - from the narrative and thematic point of view - the choices that we had made while playing.

I won't spell out the other example in so much detail, but the short version is this: when the GM decided, unilaterally, that we all travelled 100 years into the future, thereby invalidating all the interesting intra-party stuff that had been built up about our mutual connections both among ourselves and to places and events in the gameworld, and also how those and we related to a prophecy, he likewise killed the game.

we're not talking about what one might think on seeing Star Wars 4-5-6 for a second or third or seventieth time, when that meta-knowledge is already in the audience's consciousness. We're talking about the viewer's first time through, without the benefit of hindsight, as we will always be* in an RPG discussion.

A player is not a viewer. A player is a participant in the game, who is helping establish fiction, including especially fiction about his/her PC. If the GM unilaterally decides that I (as my PC) am committing incest because the NPC I'm in love with is secretly my sister; or unilaterally decides that I'm supporting a serial killer because dear dad to whom I'm remitting back some of my hard-won gold pieces is in fact a serial killer; then the GM is unilaterally changing my character concept and the meaning of my action declarations.

If someone does play the game purely as viewer rather than participant; or if their participation is confined to purely tactical or puzzle-solving aspects of play; then the response might be different. I'm not such a player.

I feel this goes very clearly back to some posts [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] has made about the role of the players in contributing to the fiction that is the content and focus of play.

 

[Hussar]

For what it's worth I believe in shared ownership of setting, more in terms of taking an active interest in it and responsibility for it's content than the freedom to do whatever we want with it. The GM is mostly responsible for it in the same way that players are mostly responsibility for their characters. Obviously there's some interaction there. No one is an island. This is a game where we play together so we need the latitude to mess with each other's stuff somewhat. I am not in favor of explicitly detailing the ways we are not allowed to interact with each other's toys because that sole ownership in the sense of possession is the death of creative collaboration. I mean the interaction of this stuff is the actual fun part. Not a have to - a get to. Conflicts arise and it's up to us to work them out like adults. That's the only way to develop functional creative relationships.

Honestly, I think this obsession we have over ownership in the sense of possessions and rights is not very helpful. We should be more concerned with taking responsibility, integrity, and what we should be doing instead of what we have a right to do.

I largely agree with what you're saying here, but, obviously, I don't have a problem with players walling off small bits. Note, that the bits being walled off are generally not going to apply to other players in any case - it's not like Player A is going to have much, if anything, to do with Player B's animal companion or warlock patron. So, really, I don't see a huge issue with a player saying, "Hey, I like this bit, but, y'know what? Just for this game, can we take that (whatever that is) as read and not make a big deal out of it?"

I don't think that that's terribly unreasonable.

 

[pemerton]

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]."

Somwhat connected to this: In my Prince Valiant game one PC is the son of another: it wasn't planned that way, but after PC creation was done the two were nearly identical, and one was in his 40s and the other in his 20s, so it just made sense! Those two players obviously get to decide what their family, and their family relationship, is about. I as GM, and other players, of course are allowed to poke and prod - that's how our RPGing works - but don't have the final word.

In a previous RM campaign two PCs were cousins (with a possible rumour that they might be half-brothers) and a third PC ended up being adopted into the family. That family had connections to a wealthier NPC family. As GM I didn't have sole or even final authority on every aspect of this - for obvious reasons.

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.

A non-PC example: in the first session of my Classic Traveller game, after the players had generated their PCs via the mildly gruelling Traveller mechanics I randomly rolled up a starting world (what's good for the goose is good for the gander!). It was a very small world with pretty low pop and very high tech, and the rolls also showed there was a gas giant in the system - one of the players said "It's obviously a gas giant moon" and so we went with that. A player can make sci-fi sense of a bunch of numers just as well as I can!

I don't really understand the desire to sit down and consume someone else's world, but I've played enough MMOs that it seems pretty video-gamey to me. Maybe that's just what the younger generation likes.

Ouch! And touche!

 

[Maxperson]

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?

Coming up with an exception does nothing. So Eberron has specific rules that change things for clerics and I assume paladins. How does that change what I'm saying about the general state of things?

 

[Maxperson]

And, really, I think this is where most of the disagreement lies. To me, the patron is a minor class element. It doesn't really impact play and, IMO, leaving it out doesn't really change the class at all. Then again, I approach Warlocks from more a Binder perspective (never saw warlocks in 3e, although I played one in 4e where the binder DNA was more prevalent). So, to me, this is a minor class element.

Yep. It's definitely a perspective thing.

 

[Aldarc]

Coming up with an exception does nothing. So Eberron has specific rules that change things for clerics and I assume paladins. How does that change what I'm saying about the general state of things?

It doesn't. It has followed the rules for clerics in every pertinent edition : 3-5e.

 

[Maxperson]

It doesn't. It has followed the rules for clerics in every pertinent edition : 3-5e.

It does. It creates a specific exception that the gods are distant, rather than close and tangible like is standard for every edition but 4th.

 

[Aldarc]

It does. It creates a specific exception that the gods are distant, rather than close and tangible like is standard for every edition but 4th.

It does not, and you have failed to demonstrate how it is. That just makes you both wrong and foolish.

 

[Lanefan]

This is a very narow account of the case.

I'm going to present a stark example which I hope isn't offensive:

A sleeps with B who is (as far as A knows) a stranger. A subsequently learns that B is A's sister. A thereby learns that A has committed incest. A may or may not care deeply about that - the world is full of different moral perspectives - but I think for most people there is no doubt that A did something when sleeping with B that is different from what A thought was happening.

(A movie I watched recently in which just this scenario occurs: The Curse of the Golden Flower. Another well-known historical/fantasy film where something similar happens: Excalibur, where Arthur sleeps with his sister who is pretending to be Guinevere by dint of shapechanging magic - thereby replicating the very magical trick that led to Arthur's conception.)

Learning that one committed incesst isn't just forming a hindsight view. It's learning the nature of an act that - at the time the act was committed - one completely failed to understand had taken place.

But it is still adding knowledge later that at the time wasn't there to influence what was happening in the moment.

The same thing can operate in RPGing. I know, because I've experienced it in two of the three campaigns that I mentioned as bad ones, that I therefore left/helped kill off, in my first post in this thread: the GM introduces new fictional content which completely changes or even invalidates the meaning of the established fiction, and thereby wrecks the game.

One example is the McGuffin quest - as players we have our PCs go along with the patron's McGuffin quest because it's clear that this is the adventure the GM has on offer (our PCs have no deep narratiave reason to do this thing - there's a surface veneer of salary and expedience, which papers over the true reason which is that we're playing the GM's adventure). So it's a story about a group of McGuffin questers - pretty stock standard RPGing stuff. Then the GM unilaterally decides that the patron betrays us, thereby changing it into a story of a group of patsies (both PCs and players!) tricked into doing something with no good reason to do so. The meaning of what had happened is completely changed.

Question for you: do you happen to know whether the GM had this heel-turn planned right from the start, or was it something done on a whim?

I ask because for me if it was planned from the start then I'd very likely give the GM the benefit of the doubt on the assumption that he's got something bigger and better in mind over the long run, of which this is but some preliminary set-up.

But if it was done on a whim then I might wonder if this GM has anything in mind or whether he's (badly) making it up on the fly.

And to tie it back to "character concept", through no choice or fault on our part - because as players we had no meaningful choice not to send our PCs on the fetch quest - our PCs have been revealed to be not the semi-competent fetch questers we had envisaged them as, but as a group of duped losers. All through GM fiat.

Duped semi-competent fetch questers, however. You still successfully went out and found whatever it was, and dutifully brought it back. The sponsor's heel-turn doesn't change this.

As I already said, the game ended at that point. Not because the GM ended it, but because a critical mass of players (not just me) were not interested in that sort of play experience, of having the meaning of characters and events unilaterally rewritten by the GM so as to invalidate - from the narrative and thematic point of view - the choices that we had made while playing.

Not having been there at the table I can't speak to the personalities etc. involved, which obviously would have played a role in how this went down; but from a detached neutral viewpoint the choices were still made at the time using the knowledge you had, and nothing changes that; and to say that it's all garbage now when it wasn't garbage then strikes me as a considerable over-reaction to a simple setback in the fiction.

Same sort of thing can happen in real life: you make a choice on something (say, you buy a new car) and later learn your choice was flat-out the wrong choice (though you've had ten years of great times in this car, newly-released studies have shown that particular model of car is very likely to have some dangerous flaws). You can regret that choice once this new info comes to light, but it doesn't invalidate all of what went before - you still had great times in the car, for example - and nor, really, should it.

I won't spell out the other example in so much detail, but the short version is this: when the GM decided, unilaterally, that we all travelled 100 years into the future, thereby invalidating all the interesting intra-party stuff that had been built up about our mutual connections both among ourselves and to places and events in the gameworld, and also how those and we related to a prophecy, he likewise killed the game.

Yeah, that one doesn't make any sense to me. Blown call on the GM's part.

A player is not a viewer. A player is a participant in the game, who is helping establish fiction, including especially fiction about his/her PC. If the GM unilaterally decides that I (as my PC) am committing incest because the NPC I'm in love with is secretly my sister; or unilaterally decides that I'm supporting a serial killer because dear dad to whom I'm remitting back some of my hard-won gold pieces is in fact a serial killer; then the GM is unilaterally changing my character concept and the meaning of my action declarations.

Your 'if' and 'then' don't match.

If the GM has made such a decision, and you-as-PC don't have this information and have had no reasonable in-fiction way yet to get it, then your character concept is free and clear. Ignorance is bliss.

And even after the reveal, your character concept remains the same; as does the meaning of your action declarations at the time they were made (which is the only time they matter). The new info will shed a different light on all of it, and in your two examples likely prompt some soul-searching on the PC's part...but isn't this soul-searching just another variant on the type of challenge the likes of which a GM is supposed to put in front of a PC?