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

[Hussar]

@Hussar, I think the background idea has some merit.
At session 0 most of what comes up is - selecting a setting, cosmology, level of magic, the difficulty, playable races/classes, published material allowed, house rules, genre...etc. What hardly or never comes up (at least at my table) is what each player perhaps likes least. It would be a good way for the DM to gauge what would be most enjoyable at the table by backgrounding some of these story components

Whether I'd agree to background something as pivotal as a Warlock's patron would largely depend primarily on my knowledge of the player and his/her maturity level, length of the campaign and the overall campaign story.

Oh, yes, absolutely agree with this.

I probably wouldn't background stuff later on. Maybe I suppose. For example, the monk in my current Thule campaign has a bar. It's not meant as a major plot thing, just somewhere to hang his hat. It wouldn't bother me in the slightest if he said he wanted to Background the bar. I have no real plans for it, so, AFAIC, I give up nothing doing so. So far, it's just been a bit of a background place anyway.

 

[Aldarc]

I guess I'd better expand on what I meant by that: one DM would be the actual DM of the game, while the other would be [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] as the inventor (and thus, one assumes, the best authority) of the deity I'm trying to worship. (side effect here is that it creates an obvious inequality among players at the table, but in my case being "less equal" is voluntary as it's what I've signed up for when choosing this class and deity)

This seems unreasonably hyperbolic; you are creating an artificial crisis. This is hardly the problem you are fabricating here.

Let's consider another case that does not involve deities. I create a character with a backstory pertaining to my family clan that I have also invented. A new player joins the game or a PC dies and a player re-rolls a new character. Having heard about my character's clan or watching me play, the player thinks it would be cool if their new character also came from this same clan that I created, possibly as a sibling or cousin. It makes for a great plot hook and easy way to seed the new character into the group. I am inventor of this clan and its history, status, etc. "(and thus, one assumes, the best authority) of the [clan they are trying to roleplay]."

IMHO, this common scenario is of a similar level as the deity above. I created the groundwork of what this deity represents. I established with the DM both its cultic orthodoxy and my idiomatic heterodoxy. If a new player joins, they are not somehow beholden to two GMs, as per your hyperbolic claim, but just one. I can inform the new player of my own understanding of the deity and its cult, but this is not dissimilar to having access to a GM and other sources. The player may consult both the DM and the setting materials. Or the new player may consult the DM and other players who are well-informed about religion or setting. Are other non-cleric players not as capable of telling a St. Cuthbert cleric player, "Hey, what you're doing does not represent the tenets of St. Cuthbert accurately"?

Or let's imagine another scenario. What happens when a setting-creator plays a game as a player in their own setting in but run by GM who is not them? E.g., Keith Baker in Eberron, Ed Greenwood in Forgotten Realms, or Gary Gygax in Greyhawk, Monte Cook in Numenera? Your imagined problem scenario basically precludes them from being players because now players are faced with "two GMs" or an inequality of the players: the GM and the author. And yet this happens all the time without much of a hitch. But in contrast, the setting authorization that I made as a player was far more limited in scope: a single deity (and arguably the dwarf clan that also forms part of the backstory for another PC and me).

I would personally be flattered if another player wanted to run a cleric to the deity I created. It seems like that would be a great indication that I sold the deity well in play. Indirect proselytizing. And I would be curious about how they play it differently than me, and how our interactions would bounce off each other's.

 

[Hussar]

Never minding that [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] - do DM's really create 100% of their settings? I sure don't. I WANT my players to create stuff. You're a cleric of Cuthbert? Fantastic. You tell me what that means. You bring that up in play. You make that important in the game. You make the other players care about it. I'm just far, far too lazy to put a bunch of work into some player's background when they cannot be bothered bringing it to the table themselves.

And, as a player, I tend to play the same way. I bring that stuff to the table. I don't mind doing the legwork for my own character. It is my character after all. And, I'll try my hardest to bring it to the table and make it interesting to the other players. I wouldn't expect the DM to write all sorts of material for something just for me.

 

[TwoSix]

Never minding that [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] - do DM's really create 100% of their settings? I sure don't. I WANT my players to create stuff. You're a cleric of Cuthbert? Fantastic. You tell me what that means. You bring that up in play. You make that important in the game. You make the other players care about it. I'm just far, far too lazy to put a bunch of work into some player's background when they cannot be bothered bringing it to the table themselves.

And, as a player, I tend to play the same way. I bring that stuff to the table. I don't mind doing the legwork for my own character. It is my character after all. And, I'll try my hardest to bring it to the table and make it interesting to the other players. I wouldn't expect the DM to write all sorts of material for something just for me.

Well, I do think a lot of the players in the loyal opposition do expect the DM to create everything, and that the sphere of influence for a player within the setting is exactly one PC wide.

Granted, I don't really understand the desire to sit down and consume someone else's world, but I've played enough MMOs that it seems pretty video-gamey to me. Maybe that's just what the younger generation likes.

 

[Maxperson]

Obviously. Backgrounding can't be done for major campaign elements. If we're playing a post apocalyptic setting a la Mad Max, then backgrounding a motorcycle couldn't be done. Sorry, I thought we had made this clear earlier.

It shouldn't be allowed for major class elements, either.

 

[Maxperson]

Never minding that [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] - do DM's really create 100% of their settings? I sure don't. I WANT my players to create stuff. You're a cleric of Cuthbert? Fantastic. You tell me what that means. You bring that up in play. You make that important in the game. You make the other players care about it. I'm just far, far too lazy to put a bunch of work into some player's background when they cannot be bothered bringing it to the table themselves.

And, as a player, I tend to play the same way. I bring that stuff to the table. I don't mind doing the legwork for my own character. It is my character after all. And, I'll try my hardest to bring it to the table and make it interesting to the other players. I wouldn't expect the DM to write all sorts of material for something just for me.

I've had players create classes, feats, prestige classes, their home towns, and more. I have to approve the stuff, but I love when they create for the game.

 

[Sadras]

I've had players create classes, feats, prestige classes, their home towns, and more. I have to approve the stuff, but I love when they create for the game.

Holy crap, I'm more comfortable players creating fluff rather than mechanics, a little conservative that way.

 

[Maxperson]

Holy crap, I'm more comfortable players creating fluff rather than mechanics, a little conservative that way.

As long as they aren't super overpowered, I think it's really cool when they come up with things for their characters. I do have to approve those things, and often we have to tweak things that are over or under powered, but they are still the player's creation. Things like towns they detail lightly and I fill in the rest. There are bazillions of small towns in most worlds that haven't been mentioned at all, let alone created and detailed.

 

[Aldarc]

Granted, I don't really understand the desire to sit down and consume someone else's world, but I've played enough MMOs that it seems pretty video-gamey to me. Maybe that's just what the younger generation likes.

Wow. Never thought of it that way. And given the prominence of "themepark MMOs," that may also explain my general disdain of "themepark worldbuilding and adventures."

It shouldn't be allowed for major class elements, either.

If we were playing Eberron, how is playing a cleric of a backgrounded Balinor different from playing a cleric of Balinor? Eberron effectively backgrounds its pantheon of deities such that the focus can be on the ground-eye view of faiths. Does this mean that Eberron is doing clerics wrong?

 

[TwoSix]

If we were playing Eberron, how is playing a cleric of a backgrounded Balinor different from playing a cleric of Balinor? Eberron effectively backgrounds its pantheon of deities such that the focus can be on the ground-eye view of faiths. Does this mean that Eberron is doing clerics wrong?

If you think Eberron does clerics wrong, you should see how Keith Baker contorts class fluff to make it fit Eberron in the articles on his website.

It's nice to see a designer be upfront in saying he views classes as mechanical entities, and that the fluff is there to be added to that mechanical skeleton.