By the standards you've presented, literally all but
one player I've ever gamed with, out of easily a hundred, has been a bad player--and all the rest have been good players, not even average.
Nothing like that occurs in any of the games we have been discussing. Period. You keep inventing these examples which are
nothing at all like the examples I,
@pemerton, and others have given you. Why? This is simply
not something that happens or even CAN happen in these games!
See above.
Firstly: You are, again, being incredibly dismissive and hostile here. "Servant GM!"? Really? Second: Nothing you have described here happens in these games. Literally
not even one of these things.
The players
do not make demands. They describe things which interest them, or they use the rules of the game to indicate their interests. That's not a demand. It is precisely the same as when a family sits down to plan their meals for the week, and each person gives input on what kinds of food they like. "I like pasta" does not mean "ALRIGHT,
SLAVE PARENT, BETTER GIVE ME PASTA RIGHT NOW OR I RIOT." It means, "Some kind of pasta is something I'd like to see on the menu, please." There are a zillion things made with pasta though!
The player hands the GM
things they care about, and that acts as useful input for framing (which includes creating!) scenes. Generally, those "things they care about" are only a few sentences, nothing even remotely close to novel-length. A five-page backstory would be quite excessive here, unless the player was feeling deeply inspired, and even then, it shouldn't--
couldn't, in many cases--be five pages of narrowly-specific
requirements. Just...stuff they think is neat.
You keep doing this, by the way. Turning the players into the most twisted, wicked people you possibly can. Please stop doing that. It's simply erroneous. Most players are not at all like you depict them. They are not wicked. They do not treat the GM like a "servant." They do not make a novel and demand it be played. They
cooperate with others, a mutually-beneficial exchange.
If you can just...let go of the idea that most players are monsters, and instead embrace the idea that the typical player actually does wish well of others and wants everyone to have a good time, much of this will make a great deal more sense. I
swear to you, such people are quite common!
Uh...no? That's literally not at all what they said there. They said they've been continually working on this for years. It's an evolving understanding.
Not at all. I, too, have given you explicit examples of things I introduced, and things my players have introduced, and how those have twined together into something much better and more interesting than
either of us could have come up with on our own. But, since you seem to have forgotten them, I will spell them out again.
Example 1: Devils and Demons.
I told my players, I didn't really want to have too much of this stuff in the game, as I wanted to focus on Arabian Nights concepts, which tend to be more interested in djinn than demons or devils per se. However, one of my players wanted to play a tiefling, so we talked about it. I asked why he wanted that. He said, more or less, "I just think they're neat." I asked which one of his parents is a tiefling, and he said both. That--that moment right there--was what struck an idea in my head. So I asked, "Are they related to demons, or to devils?" He thought for a moment, and said, "One of each." From that,
tons of adventures and concepts have flowed, because this is a GOLDEN opportunity to challenge the character, and the player, with all sorts of things.
As a result of this, I came up with my explanation for why devils and demons are Always Evil, because many folks don't like the idea that a sapient being could just be
inherently evil. My answer? They fought in a War in Heaven that, to them, took infinitely long. Devils kept to the Divine Plan (lawful), but used their powers to coerce mortals to obey (evil). Demons broke the Divine Plan (chaotic), and enjoyed breaking things solely to fuel their rampant appetites (evil.) I created that--no player asked for it. But it flowed from having questions about the difference between them, which only mattered because the player wanted to play a tiefling--because tieflings are neat to them.
Example 2: Druids, Shaman, and Spirits
In the first attempt at this game, I had a player with a Shaman character. So we talked about the Spirit World, and what that's like. Based on advice from someone with experience on ancient (pre-Islam) Arabic beliefs, I said that Druids and Shamans were two sides of the Kahina, those who work with "living" spirits (animals, plants, locations) and "dead" spirits (ghosts, souls, archetypes) respectively. With the second attempt (which is still ongoing, 6+ years later), I had a Druid player, which meant seeing the "other side" of this idea. And that player was fascinated by the difference, yet ironclad unity, between these two traditions. So we explored that. What does it mean to be a spirit? How do Kahina do magic? Can someone be both a shaman
and a druid? That's super rare--but it seems achievable.
As a result, we have articulated many ideas about spirits in this world. "Living" spirits don't speak a true language, not words like humans and elves and such do. Instead, they "speak" in sensations, experiences, emotions. "Dead" spirits
can speak in mortal language, but don't have to if they don't want to. And just because they're associated with death and the afterlife, doesn't mean they have to be dead themselves. Sometimes, spirits straddle lines too; Mudaris, a spirit ally of the party, was originally a spirit of
sedimentary rock, but then mortals came into existence--people who "sediment" things like traditions, and written words. So Mudaris grew in power and influence, due to humanoids' beliefs and actions empowering it. Being exposed to language, being
a spirit of language in some sense, means Mudaris can speak and think like mortals do, even though it started as a "living" spirit rather than an archetype-related "dead" spirit. All of this--Mudaris as a spirit, the way different spirits work, their sub-verbal "language," etc.--all of that is stuff I invented or developed in order to frame new scenes that would interest the players.
I would never have done either of these things if I had not had players telling me the things they care about. And yet, I clearly have had freedom of action to develop what interests
me, too. There were no "demands" here. Players communicated to me things that interest them, through their class choices, their brief descriptions of their characters and where they came from, their Bonds and Alignment, etc. Through those inputs, and just things I find interesting or curious or whatever,
together we have developed something none of us could create individually.
No. A thousand times, no. See the things above. I was not the "agent" of the players when I developed the idea that Devils, Demons, and Celestials were three factions in the War in Heaven. Yet I only did those things because I knew my players thought devil- and demon-related things were interesting. Having a world where such things were reasonably confined, rather than widespread, also meant I had more ability to frame situations that would challenge assumptions and push players into situations they didn't expect.
I have put my players on the spot, and given them reason to feel pity for murderers and hope to reform assassins. Their choices shaped the outcomes. I presented them with unresolved conflicts. I have quite a bit of freedom on what kinds, and contexts, of conflict to present them--and I very, very much angle for things the players never expected, but which they say, on looking back, "Of
course it was that, what else could it have been? Why didn't I see it before!"
Then you have not understood what is said. This post is already overlong, but if you would like, I can try to give you an example, in as close to blow-by-blow format as I can, of how this actually works. Because I swear to you, this is NOT what is being described. Not even slightly.
What "hostile anti-GM rule"?
Yes. That's what I have generally understood your descriptions to refer to. You do as you like, and the players can either accept that, or leave.
Attack? What on
Earth? Where are you getting the notion that there is an
attack? How? Why? I'm genuinely completely baffled by this. That's not at
all what
@pemerton said. Not even close. I just...what???
This is like telling someone that you baked a pie and having them tell you "OH SO YOU INTEND TO ASSASSINATE SOMEONE WITH IT??" Like....that's so far from what was said I literally can't see how you connected the two together.
