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

[pemerton]

Because the mechanics of a warlock may be flat-out more powerful/flexible/useful than those of a wizard, and the relationship represents a trade-off.

What system are you talking about? In 5e a warlock is less flexible than a wizard. And at least notionally balanced, assuming 6-8 encounters in the "adventuring day" (the fewer encounters, the less powerful the warlock relative to the wizard).

There is zero reason to think that the relationship is a "trade off" for power. And even if it was - how is it a "trade off" to have the PC bossed around by the GM?

The contrast here with the classic D&D paladin is marked: the paladin has a magic item restriction - that's a power limit. And has a limit on party composition - which is a constraint on ability to play and earn XP under the Gygaxian assumptions of "character stable" play.

But a warlock doesn't become weaker or balanced because s/he is carrying out some GM-mandated fetch quest or whatever it is. S/he just ceases to be played as the player was envisaging, in favour of the GM's conception of the fictional relationship.

Let's consider a different example which doesn't bring any game book text with it: I decide that, at home in the village, my PC's dear old dad is waiting for my return at the end of my quest. (Like Samwise Gamgee's Gaffer.) If the GM decides that my dad is in fact a serial killer, that is playing an NPC in a way that brutally treads on the concept of my character.

In LotR, the GM in effect did decide that the Gaffer wasn't completely backgrounded, thus the readers learn he had a rough go of it while Sam was away.

That doesn't compare at all. A couple of lines of narration that are consistent with the player's conception of dear dad - in the D&D case, the GM having dear dad be grateful when my PC returns home - isn't remotely like the scenario I suggested, wich was the GM deciding that dear dad is actually a serial killer.

I think it's obvious how that would trample on the player's conception of his character and character's family.

Again a needlessly extreme example.

The question was, how would the GM deciding facts about a NPC affect the character concept. I provided examples. They show how this can happen. I assume that you agree with this.

More common would be that your party's current mission involves just these sorts of actions - breaking into an inn during the night and assassinating (or capturing for later painful information extraction) someone who you've been told is not innocent but you've only got your informant's maybe-not-reliable word to go by. The Lord of Battle rather frowns upon this sort of thing, so now what do you do?

How does that even become "the party's current mission"? Who is driving this railroad?

 

[5ekyu]

So you're saying, if I'm reading this right, that in your view a DM doesn't or shouldn't have the ability to choose who she invites into each game she runs?

Because yes, FLGS and drop-in situations aside, if you're coming into my house to play in my game it's only going to be because I've invited you. And I'll invite who I want to invite, thank you very much; and it probably won't be the same from one campaign to the next.

Example: last time I changed campaigns I had something like 9 players in the ending one (two interweaving groups, run on different nights of the week). A year or so later when I started the next one I invited, I think, 4 of those 9 back in (two declined at the time, then came in later as the game expanded), along with a couple of people new to our crew. My criteria for who I invited in was very simple: who among the quite-a-few potential players I could invite did I think would provide the most entertainment to the rest of the table?

In the ten years since there's certainly been some ups and downs; but that first year or so with just those four players (two returning, two new) was gonzo as hell, and probably the most sheer fun any of us have ever had with a game.

Lanefan

Yeah, believe me i know. In games i run, the number of players that makes for a good game varies with campaign.

If its a setting thats primarily team based group play, then 4-6 is what i find optimal for our 3-4 hour sessions as long as we stick to our up-front parameters of no solo stuff thats not very brief at the table.

If its more internal drama and social focus (VtM, X-Men, Serenity) that number drops to 2-3 players.

Combine that with different people liking and disliking different things and generally more players than slots, you end up with a group of adults who maintain plenty of social activities other than rpgs and rotste thru a variety of RPGs in different sub-sets for each.

You dont end up unfriending folks or seeing fits pitched because, you know, we arent children trying to survive FOMO episodes.

I get tho that not everyone has the same experiences and some folks may have issues and triggers around rejection or FOMO and such - that i certainly am not qualified to help them work out.

 

[Sadras]

@pemerton

Simply put I view deities & patrons as NPCs. NPCs fall under the DM's purview.

Loss of powers/benefits is a common trope.
It may be effected poorly, it may also be done tastefully, just as in the comics.

I'm not going to get into the when/how/why or how long powers/benefits are stripped for, there are too many variables.

I will say the relationship between character and x was defined or decision points was indeed made by the player for his character when he/she went against the express wishes of his deity/patron. You seem discount that defining moment (which is not minor) and decision point, saying the DM just stripped away benefits/powers without any forewarning. I'd say the player would know full well what led his/her character to that point.

But that's exactly my point. If the player's preference that the whole god/patron thing be "backgrounded" was respected then the god/patron would be happy. But for whatever reason the GM is inserting his/her own preference to decide that the god/patron is not happy. For what reason?

If the DM agreed to it, no issue.

If the GM thinks the player is just a wrecker - which eg was the implication of @billd91's reference upthread to "murder-hoboing" - then as @Aldarc has said, that's a social problem that can be resolved by a sensible conversation among participants. It's not an aspect of game play at all.

That is fair.

That seems to imply that you are interested in identifying and respecting the player's preferences about the backstory, colour etc of his PC. That seems different from what I am being critical of (unless I'm misunderstanding your account of your game).

But this goes back to my earlier comments. What is this adding? If in fact the day never ends (as per your description of your actual practice, if I've properly understood it), then what is the point of this assertion of day's end authority?

Ok, in the instance where the patron is NOT backgrounded:
If the player comes to me with a plan/idea on their patron, I appreciate that and work with them.
If a player comes to me without much of a plan/idea on their patron, then this leaves the DM to develop this.

In both instances, the DM is the final arbiter (if only for the reason of setting consistency) and obviously the DM must not be dickish. Where that dickish line is will depend from table to table, player to player. I might take a softer approach than others perhaps that is where the fuzziness lies in my answers, HOWEVER I have had a player who has just wanted to enjoy the ride - and in that instance I provide it.

 

[Lanefan]

But, they aren't. That's been established multiple times in this thread that the trade off isn't one of power or mechanics. This isn't 1e where this sort of thing was done quite commonly (paladin oath, ranger wealth limitations, druid and monk fighting for levels, etc). And, it's been agreed, one of the few things that we're all pretty much in agreement about, that this has nothing to do with the player trying to get unfair advantages.

Although, the fact that this bugaboo keeps getting brought up as a counter argument - apparently we need these things to keep classes in check, even when we don't - tells me that there is something of a break down in communication.

Except I'm coming at it from a 1e perspective. We don't have to worry about warlocks but we do have to worry about paladins and clerics, and these things are very much a balancing mechanism.

And even if it's not, as you assert for 5e, there's still the 'convenience' factor to consider. When signing up for a class such as cleric or paladin or I suppose warlock, or an exotic race such as dragonborn or tiefling or centaur or whatever, it's fairly obvious by reading the class and-or setting write-ups that the potential is clear for some occasional setting-based inconveniences to arise during the run of play should you choose to play one of these. 5e also builds in backgrounds for all characters, though the potential displayed for later inconvenience is much less if any.

So when a player says something to the effect of "I want to play this class/race, only without the inconveniences" I'm going to ask why; and unless the answer includes some substitute suggestions for other inconveniences (which, oddly enough, it never does) my response will be rather short and to the point.

In each previous campaign I've had a player - different each time - go to great lengths trying to convince me to allow a vampire as a PC. In the first instance I knew the player's motivations were good, but as the party was still quite low level a vampire would have been completely OP; so no. In the other instance the player's motivations were rather suspect; given the nature of some of that player's other characters I could all too easily see this vampire before long using the party as its personal blood bank, so again no.

Vampires, you see, come with a few rather significant built-in inconveniences. They can't operate outdoors in the daytime, they can't cross running water (both of these severely limit the party's travel options), they have charm and level-drain abilities (radically changing the in-party dynamics to simply "don't piss off the vampire!", which I think is what the second player above was really after), and most of all they have this annoying habit of needing to feed themselves on a regular basis. Could I-as-DM background any of these? Not really...

Lan-"not sure why such a generic-to-all-systems thread got stuck in the 5e section, but whatever"-efan

 

[Lanefan]

There is zero reason to think that the relationship is a "trade off" for power. And even if it was - how is it a "trade off" to have the PC bossed around by the GM?

See above reply to Hussar regarding convenience.

The contrast here with the classic D&D paladin is marked: the paladin has a magic item restriction - that's a power limit. And has a limit on party composition - which is a constraint on ability to play and earn XP under the Gygaxian assumptions of "character stable" play.

The 1e Cleric is the better comparable here - it has to be answerable to its deity who gives it spells every day, but its presence almost never limits party composition and it doesn't have the magic item limit.

Should a Cleric who tells his deity to sod off still receive spells?

That doesn't compare at all. A couple of lines of narration that are consistent with the player's conception of dear dad - in the D&D case, the GM having dear dad be grateful when my PC returns home - isn't remotely like the scenario I suggested, wich was the GM deciding that dear dad is actually a serial killer.

No, it doesn't - I was once again simply trying to take your extreme example and bring it back to something more likely to happen - or that, in this case, did.

I think it's obvious how that would trample on the player's conception of his character and character's family.

Here's one for you: a player brings in a PC and does some vague background for him, including that he has an older sister who is also an adventurer. A while later another player brings in a PC who is that sister. Who gets to determine what the rest of the family is like? (and by the way, this is actual in my current game; with both these PCs still active)

The question was, how would the GM deciding facts about a NPC affect the character concept. I provided examples. They show how this can happen. I assume that you agree with this.

In the extreme cases you bring up that rarely if ever occur in the wild, I'd agree. I'm going after the sorts of things that are more commonly seen.

How does that even become "the party's current mission"? Who is driving this railroad?

It could have become the party's current mission in a hundred thousand different ways, by no means all of which are DM-driven.

 

[Nagol]

Let's put it more directly then.

If you know that one of your players would hate an idea, would you still pitch it?

If that's something I'd like explore and I think it'd have a strong positive response from enough players, sure! I remember one time where I wanted to run Ars Magica and I knew one of the players didn't like the requisite bookkeeping. He didn't play that campaign. He came back once we switched systems to something more to his liking a few years later. That's the only case I can specifically remember; there have probably been others over the decades where a player has dropped because of the pitch, but never mentioned the specific reason.

The only person I will completely bow to the whims of is myself. There are campaigns I don't like to run/am bad at running so I won't pitch them, mostly heavy comedy, unremitting horror, and explicit scenes are off the table. There's been a couple of times where I got talked into running long-term frantic comedy (Teenagers from Outer Space) and though the players liked it, I was drained and dreading the sessions.

 

[Sadras]

What is the "inconvenient consequences" of playing a warlock rather than a wizard? You're not getting a mechanical advantage.

Scrolling back just wanted to touch on this.
They both may have inconvenient consequences depending on the setting.

Spellbooks can be destroyed and/or stolen.
Spellfoci may break and/or be stolen.
Material components may prove expensive or in limited supply.
Arcane magic may be forbidden or restricted.
Obtaining new wizard spells may require effort or be difficult to obtain (cost, skill checks, quests)
Arcane users maybe branded - resulting in a base negative social interaction.
Patrons may be demanding.
Enemies of your Patron might hunt you down.

 

[Imaro]

I think it's obvious how that would trample on the player's conception of his character and character's family.

Emphasis mine since the second part of you assertion here was not part of your original statement (and confirms that at least in part your argument has grown to encompass the control of NPC's outside of your character)...Just curious did you ever address the question I posed below...

Putting aside the fact that you are now not only creating backstory but dictating the future state of an NPC at the campaigns end (which just doesn't gel with the style of my group)... What about your character were you unable to do, act on, think or whatever because while you were off adventuring your PC's dear old dad was killing people? In fact how do you even know what he was doing while you were gone and why does him being a serial killer preclude him being there at home in the village when you return? This makes no sense nothing about your character would change because of this.

It's fine if you didn't but I just wanted to make sure I hadn't missed it since you keep asserting that "it's obvious" when that doesn't appear to be the case... unless like i said earlier you assume a jerk DM.

 

[Aldarc]

You're making a bunch of assumptions here, the biggest of which is that the DM has somehow changed the parameters of this deity between char-gen and now (maybe even intentionally, in order to hose the player/PC); which I agree would be bad form if thusly done.

You are mistunderstanding what construes an assumption. It's not an assumption to raise the possibility that the DM and player may not be on the same page regarding the PC's deity/patron/oath when initiating play and that this can only become obvious later into play. An actual error of assumption in this case would be assuming that the DM and player are on the same page when play begins. And my comment was directed towards this egregious assumption.

I guess that begs the question of whether the patron is an aspect of the character or an aspect of the DM's world? I would say the latter and thus wonder why the player would get to dictate that...

To answer your begged question, I would say "yes" in the sense that it's obviously both. And here we may also point out the obvious that the PC by virtue of participating in play is also an aspect of the "DM's world." Nevertheless, players often tacitly mold the DM's world. When the player establishes as part of their backstory "my character was raised by his blacksmith mother in the town of Heretown," the player has now dictated something about the "DM's world." Heretown may or may not have existed before the player created their backstory, so this too may have been created for play. The character's mother exists in Heretown, and there is a smithy there where she works. Though this may remain subject to DM approval, the player has effectively dictated an aspect of their character and the world that the DM facilitates.

IMO this isn't wanting to explore the relationship from a character-side perspective but instead, akin to wanting to play out lone theater and/or dictate a story in a cooperative game by ones self..

So they want to create and control not only their warlock but also the patron he or she made a deal with.

I hope you don't mind me cutting the rest, but given how the rest of your paragraph follows from this gross misreading or mischaracterization, then it may be best to nip this at the bud. So let us first go back to what I said, and I will do my best to clarify my position better for you. And hopefully then you can respond in a manner that better respects what was actually communicated.

They may want the pact relationship as a warlock, but not want that as a prominent narrative element, but, rather, one that informs their decision-making for the actual primary issues of the campaign. They may not want, for example, their patron popping out of the narrative bushes and dictating new terms of agreement on them, betraying them, operating in ways that the player believes mischaracterizes the patron or their relationship, etc.

I am not suggesting here that the hypothetical player here wants to engage in one-man theater. I am arguing here that the hypothetical cleric or warlock are people who want to explore engaging the world and their themes through a particular lens.

Let us take, for example, a cleric. The cleric has faith, tenents, and likely a code. The cleric can explore their faith without the deity ever once showing up into play or the DM even dangling that possibility. The idea that a deity must or should show up in order for an adherent or priest to explore their faith strikes me as offensive and non-sensical from any real life sensibilities. In many respects it is the default position of the human perspective. Gods in D&D can be real and embodied (e.g., Forgotten Realms), but this is not always the case (e.g., the Sovereign Host in Eberron). And likewise from within the worldview of many religious adherents, the supernatural elements that constitute their faith (e.g., God, gods, spirits, etc.) likewise are regarded as real. And I believe that players, in my case at least, often do prefer playing from this human perspective over against one in which the deity exists as an NPC who exists as the DM's sockpuppet and for the sake of the DM's desire to "control all the things." As a frequent cleric player, I am often completely uninterested, if not turned-off, by the DM using my character's deity as an NPC for micromanaging my character.

Recently I had been playing a dwarf cleric of the forge in a campaign coming to a close. The DM has been entirely hands off with my deity. I established the fiction of the deity from scratch. I created a dwarf creator deity, loosely based on Moradin, who had male and female aspects: a male aspect of labor, crafting, and commerce (weapon: hammer) and a female aspect of agriculture, family, and brewing (weapon: sickle). I established my character concept as essentially a revolutionary pro-labor, socialist, Communist dwarven priest. Exploring my character's faith is built into the themes of the campaign and how my character with their particular religious ethos engages the adventure setting. My character and his barbarian sister (another PC) immigrated to a frontier "new world" colony across the ocean that also serves as a penal colony. My character has been engaging this setting from the perspective of their faith. How should a pro-labor and anti-slavery priest feel or respond to issues surrounding the penal colony? How might a revolutionary, heretic priest make a fresh start for his cult in this New World? What are objectives that a pro-labor priest might want to achieve to improve the conditions for working class laborers in this colony?

The idea that I am therefore somehow playing "lone theater" or that I am incapable of having other players/the DM see my decision-making process or the influence of my faith is not only downright insulting but also contradicted by actual play experiences. Just because my deity is "absent" or removed-from-play as the DM's plaything does not mean that my character and their faith exists in some sort of vacuum. It engages the world. My character's ethos and faith has been the most well-defined, grounded, and consensually understood among the group. It has made my character a moral beacon and pillar for the group. My faith has vocally informed many important decisions that my character has made. If the DM wants to explore my faith, they do not reach their hand up the deity as a sockpuppet; they establish human situations and scenarios for my character to engage. I am not running amok and abusing power without any responsibilites; those responsibilities are accumulating. And I wanted to engage those responsibilities as part of how I envision the character. I have established contacts, begun reforming prisoners, laid the groundwork for coordinating the guilds, and laying the foundations for a chapel and future temple.

This is similarly what I have in mind in my above paragraph. A player character is more than capable of exploring their religious devotion or arcane patronage without requiring the in-game intercession of the NPC or the DM's control thereof.

Could you explain how the DM playing an NPC (because that's what a patron or deity is) can tread on the concept of the actual character?

This is an incredibly broad question, and one that has been discussed before numerous times already. Given the broadness of your question, it may be more conducive for discussion for you to consider and answer why you might believe that would be the case. I am asking you to extend yourself out of your own comfort zone and preferences for a second. Scary, I know. Why might others who are not you or your group feel, think, or believe that based upon their own experiences in play? Are there circumstances that you can consider where the DM's play of a backstory-related NPC could encroach, tread, or impair a player's PC concept?

And if that is the case why doesn't it apply for any other NPC the player's characters have a connection with?

I believe that it can, and often does, apply to other NPCs the PCs have established backstory connections. We have been discussing the issue primarily in terms of the warlock and their patron (and the similar cleric/deity relation), but the issue has also been raised in terms of other backstory-pertinent NPCs that a player may want "backgrounded" for their character (e.g., family, animal companions, etc.) to varying degrees.

 

[Sadras]

So how would you paraphrase your own argumentative thrust about "hierarchical content in general"? That it can be and is often a source of narrative conflict?

Backgrounded aside, I think hierarchical content is an easy option for the DM to utilise, but not necessarily the best option. You certainly do not want to over use it. For me it very much depends on the story being developed via the campaign. And you really don't even need it to be a part of one's background/class in order to explore it. In fact, I think my games have only touched on it once as part of class/background.

That was me. But it was not, as you insist here, being done on the same basis. That's a false equivalence. Discussing these issues out-of-game is (1) how mature adults should handle most situations, and (2) it does not disrupt play (for the player and others!) by turning the game into a proxy battleground for an issue best settled between people.

That is fair. I think if the player is acting out opposite to what is understood by the majority, it would be natural for the table to call him/her out on it (at least my table would). And I agree it is best to deal with this out of play.