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

[Maxperson]

Where is the rule that every campaign setting must range over the full range of PHB descriptions at the frequemcy the PHB suggests for those descriptions? I've never encountered it.

Cool. I've never said there is one. I have said that settings alter the class as written in the PHB, and from this statement it seems that you agree with me.

Questing knights, conquering overlords, royal champions, elite foot soldiers, hardened mercenaries, and bandit kings—as fighters, they all share an unparalleled mastery with weapons and armor, and a thorough knowledge of the skills of combat. And they are well acquainted with death, both meting it out and staring it defiantly in the face.​

You appear to be committed to holding that a fighter who has, at the start of play, never killed; and/or a fighter who refuses to kill (by taking advantage of the "unconscious at zero hp" rule) is a house rule. Which is absurd.

Context is important. The listed examples are all very experienced, and you don't get to be a conquering overlord, royal champion, hardened merc, etc., without killing and defending your life.

Likewise you seem committed to holding the idea of a paladin rather than a fighter being a questing knight a house rule. Etc.

Nope! Just because questing knights can be fighters, does not mean that all questing knights are fighters. That fluff makes no claim that every questing knight is a fighter.

The cleric is not the only class with "fluff" (to use your label),

Yep! Correct on that one.

 

[Arilyn]

Table rules were set at the start of the campaign. The DM wanted to alter the rules without player unanimity. I believe that to be a big no-no.

Could be a bit frustrating, sure. Enough to leave a game and risk a friendship over? Would have to be a lot more than one rule I didn't agree with to cause me to quit, even if I assumed that we had agreed to not use that rule. Unless the rule changes mid-game became rampant and tyrannical, I'd let it be.

 

[5ekyu]

Where is the rule that every campaign setting must range over the full range of PHB descriptions at the frequemcy the PHB suggests for those descriptions? I've never encountered it.

Here's a bit of fighter text from the 5e Basic PDF (p 24; I quoted it already upthread but got no response):

Questing knights, conquering overlords, royal champions, elite foot soldiers, hardened mercenaries, and bandit kings—as fighters, they all share an unparalleled mastery with weapons and armor, and a thorough knowledge of the skills of combat. And they are well acquainted with death, both meting it out and staring it defiantly in the face.​

You appear to be committed to holding that a fighter who has, at the start of play, never killed; and/or a fighter who refuses to kill (by taking advantage of the "unconscious at zero hp" rule) is a house rule. Which is absurd.

Likewise you seem committed to holding the idea of a paladin rather than a fighter being a questing knight a house rule. Etc.

The cleric is not the only class with "fluff" (to use your label),

Flaw... "well acquainted with" and "did it myself" are not the same thing. A combat medic can be very way too much familiar with people meeting out death having seen it done many times by friends and allies without having done it themselves.

For me tho - o make no bones about it - I do not treat all class fluff the same. Why? Because all class fluf is not the same.

Specifically some class fluff brings in NPCs while other class fluff is more explicitly internal to the PC.

So, it seems clear that "powers granted by divines" involves an NPC and that gets into GM control. It seems equally obvious that "has your character killed" or "does your character like cities" does not go beyond "inside your character choices" and should stay within player control (barring in play exception.)

So, basically my goals and general play guidelines of "player makes choices of the PC" but "GM makes choices of NPC" means I treat the various bits of fluff differently.

 

[Sadras]

Table rules were set at the start of the campaign. The DM wanted to alter the rules without player unanimity. I believe that to be a big no-no.

So I imagine all the spells and racial feats would also be off the table, you know because they were not there at the start of the campaign?

 

[Hussar]

Folks, you are not going to get anywhere with this discussion with [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]. Not because anyone is being unreasonable, but, because you are fundamentally not speaking the same language. [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] sees the rulebooks through the lens of 3e where anything that is not specifically stated is verboten. The rules are prescriptive, not descriptive. Thus, all clerics must be this, all barbarians must be that, and all urchins must be something else.

Now, to be honest, I disagree with this approach. 5e is pretty clearly not prescriptive, but, for anyone who cut their teeth on 3e I can totally see where they are coming from. 3e didn't work if you started trying to extrapolate from the rules. The whole King of RAW thing is very much a 3e approach to RPG's. And 5e has enough 3e DNA in there to actually work if you approach the game this way. It's not the way I personally would approach the game, but, it does work.

Running at this wall isn't going to get you anywhere. The baselines are just too different.

And:

For you, perhaps, but a rule - any rule - that needlessly clobbers realism as hard as that one does simply has to go, and fun be damned.

Fun should never, ever be damned. Again, this is a fundamental difference in approaches to gaming. The notion that anything should trump fun at the table is something I do not agree with. Realism, AFAIC, takes a VERY back seat to fun. Which, I think, rolls around to the basic disagreements we're having in this thread. To me, Backgrounding increases fun at the table, so, it's good. For others, it's stumbling into that whole "realism" thing and is bad.

 

[Maxperson]

Folks, you are not going to get anywhere with this discussion with [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]. Not because anyone is being unreasonable, but, because you are fundamentally not speaking the same language. [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] sees the rulebooks through the lens of 3e where anything that is not specifically stated is verboten. The rules are prescriptive, not descriptive. Thus, all clerics must be this, all barbarians must be that, and all urchins must be something else.

Yes and no. Fluff is prescriptive unless it gets changed, and it's really easy to change. As DM, I'm not bound to any fluff as I can change it at will. As a player, the player is bound unless he comes to me and discusses whatever change with me. I approve the vast majority of changes. They're fluff rules and don't cause imbalance when altered, so I will alter them far more often than I will mechanical rules.

Now, to be honest, I disagree with this approach. 5e is pretty clearly not prescriptive, but, for anyone who cut their teeth on 3e I can totally see where they are coming from. 3e didn't work if you started trying to extrapolate from the rules. The whole King of RAW thing is very much a 3e approach to RPG's. And 5e has enough 3e DNA in there to actually work if you approach the game this way. It's not the way I personally would approach the game, but, it does work.

I butchered the 3e rules. People who came into the game in 3e or 4e probably didn't change the mechanics as often as I did. Coming from 1e made a big difference in how I see things.

Running at this wall isn't going to get you anywhere. The baselines are just too different.

This I agree with completely. Differing viewpoints are the reason why you will almost never change the mind of anyone here. I'm hardly unique in this. Pretty much every thread organizes into 2 or more sides based on those differing viewpoints and then the discussion goes in more circles than a carousel.

Fun should never, ever be damned. Again, this is a fundamental difference in approaches to gaming. The notion that anything should trump fun at the table is something I do not agree with. Realism, AFAIC, takes a VERY back seat to fun. Which, I think, rolls around to the basic disagreements we're having in this thread. To me, Backgrounding increases fun at the table, so, it's good. For others, it's stumbling into that whole "realism" thing and is bad.

I agree completely about fun. It should never, ever be damned. Which is why it's so important to find players with the same or similar views on the game as you have.

 

[Hussar]

Rolling this back a bit, I'm reminded of an experience I had with a new player some years ago. He came to the group and, as this was a VTT game, I didn't know the guy from a hole in the ground. No worries, I'd dealt with that before. But, he insisted that his character was Chaotic Neutral. This immediately set off alarm bells in my head and I made it very clear that we played a, to use an MMO term, Player VS Environment (as opposed to player vs player) game and the group really wasn't interested in a whole lot of interparty conflict and shenanigans. The player assured me that he had no problems working with the group, but, he really wanted to be CN.

So, I agreed with the caveat that if there were problems, we'd be having this conversation again and probably a lot less politely.

Months of play went by and the player was fine. No problems. Character fit into the group pretty much without a ripple. After a few months I turned to the player:

Me: Hey, you realize that your character isn't really Chaotic Neutral right? He doesn't do anything impulsive, he's a total team player and nothing about this character says CN.

Player: Absolutely not. I'm CN. I want to be able to do whatever I choose to do. I just choose to be a team player.

Me: Yeah. Ok. But, that's not really what CN means. Your character is pretty much definitively Lawful Good. You're kind, a team player, methodical and playing a pretty heroic character.

Player: Absolutely not. I'm CN.

So, I stepped back a bit and thought about what the player was actually saying. He didn't actually care what alignment was written on the sheet. He just didn't want me to force him to do anything. He absolutely didn't want me to be able to turn to him and say, "You wouldn't really do that, it's out of character." Now, since I had and have, zero interest in forcing anything on any player, I realized that the simplest answer was to just accept what he was saying at face value and move on.

Could I have forced the alignment change? Sure. I think I would have been perfectly justified in doing so. But, that would have made the game less fun for him and wouldn't actually gain me, as DM, anything. So, I didn't. I let it go and moved on.

That's how I view these Backgrounding things. What is the DM gaining by forcing the issue with the player? The player has made it very clear that the player isn't interested in dealing with X, whatever X is. It doesn't really impact the rest of the game and it costs me nothing. Literally. It costs me nothing since now I don't have to do any work adding that element to the game. IMO, this only makes the game better. I'm not wasting my time doing something that no one at the table actually wants to do and the player doesn't have to constantly futz around dealing with it.

AFAIC, it's entirely win win.

 

[Azzy]

I, fortunately, have never had to walk out on a game because of DM bad behavior.

 

[Maxperson]

Rolling this back a bit, I'm reminded of an experience I had with a new player some years ago. He came to the group and, as this was a VTT game, I didn't know the guy from a hole in the ground. No worries, I'd dealt with that before. But, he insisted that his character was Chaotic Neutral. This immediately set off alarm bells in my head and I made it very clear that we played a, to use an MMO term, Player VS Environment (as opposed to player vs player) game and the group really wasn't interested in a whole lot of interparty conflict and shenanigans. The player assured me that he had no problems working with the group, but, he really wanted to be CN.

So, I agreed with the caveat that if there were problems, we'd be having this conversation again and probably a lot less politely.

Months of play went by and the player was fine. No problems. Character fit into the group pretty much without a ripple. After a few months I turned to the player:

Me: Hey, you realize that your character isn't really Chaotic Neutral right? He doesn't do anything impulsive, he's a total team player and nothing about this character says CN.

Player: Absolutely not. I'm CN. I want to be able to do whatever I choose to do. I just choose to be a team player.

Me: Yeah. Ok. But, that's not really what CN means. Your character is pretty much definitively Lawful Good. You're kind, a team player, methodical and playing a pretty heroic character.

Player: Absolutely not. I'm CN.

So, I stepped back a bit and thought about what the player was actually saying. He didn't actually care what alignment was written on the sheet. He just didn't want me to force him to do anything. He absolutely didn't want me to be able to turn to him and say, "You wouldn't really do that, it's out of character." Now, since I had and have, zero interest in forcing anything on any player, I realized that the simplest answer was to just accept what he was saying at face value and move on.

Could I have forced the alignment change? Sure. I think I would have been perfectly justified in doing so. But, that would have made the game less fun for him and wouldn't actually gain me, as DM, anything. So, I didn't. I let it go and moved on.

That's how I view these Backgrounding things. What is the DM gaining by forcing the issue with the player? The player has made it very clear that the player isn't interested in dealing with X, whatever X is. It doesn't really impact the rest of the game and it costs me nothing. Literally. It costs me nothing since now I don't have to do any work adding that element to the game. IMO, this only makes the game better. I'm not wasting my time doing something that no one at the table actually wants to do and the player doesn't have to constantly futz around dealing with it.

AFAIC, it's entirely win win.

My players write down alignment on their sheet because it makes them feel better I think, and so that alignment based spells in 3e could have something to trigger off of. I haven't made a big deal about alignment in years, though. I'd be happy if it didn't exist in the game except on the DM side of things. I find it to be invaluable as a quick and easy way to get a gauge on how monsters will behave.

 

[Hussar]

Heh, in other words, you've been Backgrounding a major character element for years. After all, alignment restrictions are a major element of many classes - clerics, paladins, druids, barbarians, bards, rogues, rangers in all editions other than 4th and 5th.