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Fudging is not your friend
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6030955" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>While I agree with your choice of game style, I think your kid's friend is mostly guilty of not knowing how to express himself. I get what the kid is saying, and at the risk of putting words in his mouth, what it boils down to is, "The game you want to play is not one that I want to play."</p><p></p><p>By having some bad thing happening and making that plot unfold, the kid feels like you are imposing on his character a certain destiny or responsibility. Essentially, he doesn't want to play the game in a world were fate has it that his character is the only one that can save the world. He'd rather the world could just save itself, and he go about his business killing things and taking their stuff without worrying about a larger plot. While it isn't railroading per se to have an event occur or not occur according to the player's choice, when you've ordained a particular PC (or group of PC's) as the only ones that can accomplish a task, then there is some sort of non-simulationist forcing going on here unless the player has specifically asked for a 'heroic destiny' in his backstory. Not everyone is happy being the child of prophesy. It's a lot of pressure and you may not want that in a fun game (for your chosen value of fun).</p><p></p><p>Likewise, it isn't cheating per se to have evil silver dragons and good red dragons*, but it is creating a world of greater ambuigity than one were all the good guys where white hats and all the bad guys where black hats. It isn't really a matter of realism, or grit, or even a favored philosophical position. It's simply a matter of you are indicating through that choice that you want your game to be about interacting with NPC's via roleplaying, and the kid is indicating that this is a bunch of confusing, advanced, adult oriented, melodramatic BS that he'd just rather keep out of his fun romping game of hack-n-slash.</p><p></p><p>The kid may not know how to explain himself, but he's entitled to his preferences.</p><p></p><p>*This is assuming you aren't guilty of pulling a Nitro on your players, where you are not upfront about the fact that all silver dragons in your world are evil and all red dragons in your world good, and all centaurs are vicious cannibals. This sort of 'gotcha' mentality by a DM may not be strictly 'cheating', but it is some sort of bad DMing to present a world which is wildly different than the player's expectations so that they lack any basis to make descisions on. In this case, you are pretty much obligated to fill the players in with any information about how the world works that their character may know.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 6030955, member: 4937"] While I agree with your choice of game style, I think your kid's friend is mostly guilty of not knowing how to express himself. I get what the kid is saying, and at the risk of putting words in his mouth, what it boils down to is, "The game you want to play is not one that I want to play." By having some bad thing happening and making that plot unfold, the kid feels like you are imposing on his character a certain destiny or responsibility. Essentially, he doesn't want to play the game in a world were fate has it that his character is the only one that can save the world. He'd rather the world could just save itself, and he go about his business killing things and taking their stuff without worrying about a larger plot. While it isn't railroading per se to have an event occur or not occur according to the player's choice, when you've ordained a particular PC (or group of PC's) as the only ones that can accomplish a task, then there is some sort of non-simulationist forcing going on here unless the player has specifically asked for a 'heroic destiny' in his backstory. Not everyone is happy being the child of prophesy. It's a lot of pressure and you may not want that in a fun game (for your chosen value of fun). Likewise, it isn't cheating per se to have evil silver dragons and good red dragons*, but it is creating a world of greater ambuigity than one were all the good guys where white hats and all the bad guys where black hats. It isn't really a matter of realism, or grit, or even a favored philosophical position. It's simply a matter of you are indicating through that choice that you want your game to be about interacting with NPC's via roleplaying, and the kid is indicating that this is a bunch of confusing, advanced, adult oriented, melodramatic BS that he'd just rather keep out of his fun romping game of hack-n-slash. The kid may not know how to explain himself, but he's entitled to his preferences. *This is assuming you aren't guilty of pulling a Nitro on your players, where you are not upfront about the fact that all silver dragons in your world are evil and all red dragons in your world good, and all centaurs are vicious cannibals. This sort of 'gotcha' mentality by a DM may not be strictly 'cheating', but it is some sort of bad DMing to present a world which is wildly different than the player's expectations so that they lack any basis to make descisions on. In this case, you are pretty much obligated to fill the players in with any information about how the world works that their character may know. [/QUOTE]
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