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

[pemerton]

I did comment on it. Here was the response. "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." It very specifically mentions that you don't get to be one of those things without killing.

Why can't a person become a royal champion without killing? Is that another rule that would have to be houseruled if someone wanted to play a D&D game where royal champions only knock opponents unconscious?

 

[Maxperson]

Why can't a person become a royal champion without killing? Is that another rule that would have to be houseruled if someone wanted to play a D&D game where royal champions only knock opponents unconscious?

Killing is literally their job when the king is challenged. And you don't get to be that experienced in the first place without killing. Kings don't place 1st level putzes or people who have never killed in the role of champion.

 

[Hussar]

Killing is literally their job when the king is challenged. And you don't get to be that experienced in the first place without killing. Kings don't place 1st level putzes or people who have never killed in the role of champion.

Sure they do. Dueling doesn't mean to the death all the time, and, in more civilized places, usually didn't. Being the king's champion didn't mean that you were a mass murderer.

 

[Oofta]

Sorry but how much God is involved in his cleric activity is very much different than alignment. If a divine is devoted to bring anti-undead but one of his clerics still getting sprlls etc is walking around with his train of undead followers, that creates an entirely different aspect to the world, not just a difference in his player's head. That's different from a character and a player just doing stuff.

And again, you isolate it down to one player, but there usually are others at the table. There are others who also have to consider the world.

As I have stated, in my games, my players enjoy having a consistent world where they can expect things to run along a set of normal predictable patterns *plus* a good deal of the fantastic. It's not "realism" we prefer but consistency and integrity from the setting. The more we played in systems eith gimmick meta-eraser mechanics the less enjoyment we had. So, for us, the unreasonableness of the trex not getting serious issues in town or only being able to steal some bikes but not others for no reason beyond GM fiat and one village skipped over but another razed to avoid messing up...

Those are not things I would ask the other players to sacrifice or be happy with seeing them getting less fun out of our games just to accommodate one player who prefers the game to be run differently - and so if someone says my game is not for them, that's great cuz I do not try and make my game please everybody.

I agree. The player controls the PC and their actions. Period. Everything else is under the control of the DM. I always encourage my players to help flesh out different aspects of my world but I always let them know that their description are based on the perspective of their PC. It's incredibly rare when there's a dramatic reveal that someone or something is not what you thought (otherwise it wouldn't be dramatic) but it can happen.

 

[Nagol]

Sorry but how much God is involved in his cleric activity is very much different than alignment. If a divine is devoted to bring anti-undead but one of his clerics still getting sprlls etc is walking around with his train of undead followers, that creates an entirely different aspect to the world, not just a difference in his player's head. That's different from a character and a player just doing stuff.

And again, you isolate it down to one player, but there usually are others at the table. There are others who also have to consider the world.

As I have stated, in my games, my players enjoy having a consistent world where they can expect things to run along a set of normal predictable patterns *plus* a good deal of the fantastic. It's not "realism" we prefer but consistency and integrity from the setting. The more we played in systems eith gimmick meta-eraser mechanics the less enjoyment we had. So, for us, the unreasonableness of the trex not getting serious issues in town or only being able to steal some bikes but not others for no reason beyond GM fiat and one village skipped over but another razed to avoid messing up...

Those are not things I would ask the other players to sacrifice or be happy with seeing them getting less fun out of our games just to accommodate one player who prefers the game to be run differently - and so if someone says my game is not for them, that's great cuz I do not try and make my game please everybody.

In your cleric example, the player is forcing the situation into the foreground. Backgrounding is more a "I won't ask; you won't tell" situation. Both sides agree that the a particular thing is just going to bump along in a satisfactory way without spending table time at it. If the player breaks the agreement then the GM needs to respond.

There is no loss of consistency from backgrounding any element just as there is no gain in consistency from forcibly including elements a game implicitly backgrounds -- such as daily ablutions and use of the toilet.

If you as a DM feel that you are just going to make the player jump through (almost) the same hoops every time the druid and T-Rex go to town but the town will relent and allow the obviously well-behaved, trained, and possibly magically controlled animal in, you might as well Background that hoop-jumping. The player asking for the Background is essentially asking "This thing is boring. I know what is required to move forward. You know I know that. Can we skip the time sink or do you want to watch me continually do this rather boring thing each and every time it comes up?"

 

[pemerton]

Killing is literally their job when the king is challenged. And you don't get to be that experienced in the first place without killing. Kings don't place 1st level putzes or people who have never killed in the role of champion.

Where did you learn all this? Are you seriously asserting that any deviation in a 5e game from your vision of how royal champions work is a house rule? Absolutely ridiculous!

 

[Maxperson]

Sure they do. Dueling doesn't mean to the death all the time, and, in more civilized places, usually didn't. Being the king's champion didn't mean that you were a mass murderer.

We're talking D&D and not the real world.

 

[Maxperson]

Where did you learn all this? Are you seriously asserting that any deviation in a 5e game from your vision of how royal champions work is a house rule? Absolutely ridiculous!

You get experience in D&D by killing things. It's in the rules, so I learned it..............in the rules. Without killing and being intimately familiar with killing and people trying to kill them. And before you go on about how NPCs in 5e don't need stats and levels, a champion who has to fight does. They need everything a PC needs for combat, since a PC may end up fighting him.

 

[Nagol]

Killing is literally their job when the king is challenged. And you don't get to be that experienced in the first place without killing. Kings don't place 1st level putzes or people who have never killed in the role of champion.

Galahad would beg to differ.

 

[SD Houston]

Railroading and constantly non-consistent 'house rules' are obviously a big no-no for me, as are the DM confusing the party's PC's for NPC's, and I usually won't stick around long, but if anything has made me walk out faster on a game, it's the DM having no luster in his dialogue. I don't want a monotone DM with no enthusiasm, who sounds like a bored schoolkid being forced to read a chapter from the textbook in class. I want to be engaged! The DM doesn't have to be a voice actor, or be wildly enigmatic like Matt Mercer, but come on, we're playing a roleplaying game in an imaginary world. Make it come to life! Oh, and restrictive miniatures war game mentality. No, no, no!