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

[5ekyu]

Nobody expects this. No one is arguing for this. Remember, it cuts both ways. While that element is backgrounded, the player has no access to it either. So, no bringing your T-Rex into town and hiding it somehow so you can use it while in town.

Again this dodge...

If you can choose between large dog and t rex - t rex more vombst but dig more town friendly - that creates an interesting choice- unless you can get rid of a lot of the problems of the t rex by meta agreements.

You act as if there is some easy fix for t rex and bears etc that can always apply but unless you have an extremely vanilla cutout copy-paste environment it will vary.

Need to cross to an island?
Need to cross a rope bridge?

How many of those get backgrounded?

 

[Hussar]

Again this dodge...

If you can choose between large dog and t rex - t rex more vombst but dig more town friendly - that creates an interesting choice- unless you can get rid of a lot of the problems of the t rex by meta agreements.

You act as if there is some easy fix for t rex and bears etc that can always apply but unless you have an extremely vanilla cutout copy-paste environment it will vary.

Need to cross to an island?
Need to cross a rope bridge?

How many of those get backgrounded?

Why would either of those be backgrounded? Neither of them involves a town. A rope bridge, obviously, would be part of adventuring, so, a companion wouldn't be backgrounded. Or, if the player did background the companion, then he would not have that companion available until he or she returned.

Note, it's not about making the T-rex town friendly. It's not. It's that instead of spending table time hiding the T-rex every time you entered town, you'd just take it as written that it is hidden and won't get into any trouble while you are away.

It's not a dodge at all. It's simply taking an element of the game that isn't particularly interesting to the player and just taking it as written. But, again, it does cut both ways. If you background something, you don't get to use it while it's backgrounded. So, a backgrounded T-Rex that gets taken into town isn't backgrounded. It's very much foregrounded and all the consequences that go with that are on the table.

See, here's the thing. It's not an interesting choice to the player. It's just not. But, it's also not a power gaming move either. A backgrounded spellbook couldn't be used on an adventure. Once it was used, it's no longer backgrounded and it's fair game. A cleric that acts obviously against the intent of backgrounding his or her class - the whole undead menagerie cleric example - is obviously acting in bad faith.

Why do you assume your players will always act in bad faith? Why do you feel the need to police your players?

 

[Lanefan]

Yes, cause why do wizards gain more arcane knowledge through killing stuff, and not, you know, actual study?

The rationale here, I think, is that pure theory can only get you so far so fast; while putting that theory into practice in the field under sometimes-extreme duress will get you further faster.

I've seen far worse rationales for why things work the way they do in the game world.

 

[Hussar]

Something that I realized some years ago is that when you place the responsibility for the success of the campaign in the hands of the players equally to the DM, the players will rise to the occasion and create a much better experience for everyone at the table. I've really made it clear over the years that I expect that the players can do whatever the heck they want, but, it's up to them to make the game as fun as possible for everyone. I'm not going to play mommy and tell them what they can and cannot do.

Funny thing is, I find that the players are far, far more strict about things that I ever would be. I've actually had to step in on more than one occasion and tell a player, no, that's perfectly fine. I don't mind if you do that when otherwise the player would stop himself from acting on some idea or other.

Trusting your DM works best when it works both ways.

 

[Lanefan]

Ultimately, in AD&D XPs are victory points. And there's no reason to extrapolate this player-side victory condition to NPCs. Gygax's DMG even allows for levelled NPCs incapable of gaining levels (eg mercenary officers - see pp 30-31). In these cases level is a measure of ability, but it is disconnected from the gameplay activity of earning XP by succeeding at the game.

This is one aspect of Gygax's rules and guidelines that I threw out pretty much the moment I saw it, back in the early 80's.

As far as I'm concerned, anybody with the requisite skills and training can earn xp - albeit very slowly in the case of many non-adventurers - and thus slowly accrete levels provided they stick at it long enough. Adventuring, with all its attendant risks and dangers, is simply the fast-track means of achieving the same ends; 1e in particular tries to bake this in with the xp-for-treasure rule, which IMO is a poor solution for every class except - in some cases - Thief. Some levelled NPCs may have earned some or all of those xp/levels through adventuring, others not so.

3e more or less codified this, but I'd make it work this way in any edition.

What happens when a non-hencman NPC in 1st ed AD&D gains an XP bonus (eg from looking through a Deck of Many Things) or suffers an XP penalty (eg from reading the wrong magical book)? The rules don't provide a straightforward answer - the GM has to extrapolate and make a ruling.

What happens if a mercenary captain loses a level to a wight? Can s/he - who is normally "capable of working upwards" in level (DMG p 31) able to regain the lost level? And if so, by what means? Again, the GM has to make a ruling.

It's questions like these that quickly led me to have xp and levels work pretty much the same for everyone, rather than having one set of rules for PCs, another for important NPCs, and a third for everyone else. It's the KISS principle in action!

Which is not a weakness of AD&D - I personally would suggest that this flexibility with how levels and HD serve multiple purposes in the game counts as one of its strengths! It's one of those strengths of classic D&D that 4e then recovered and repurposed in its own way! (Compared to the emerging tendency in 2nd ed AD&D, which became much more marked in 3E, to try and treat these things as models of in-fiction causal processes.)

3e had many problems but one thing it got completely right IMO was to have PCs and NPCs largely work the same way when it came to game mechanics such as stats, xp, and so on. PC and NPC alike, they're all just residents of the game world, and I don't believe in the idea that having a "PC" stamp on your forehead should suddenly put you in a completely different category of being like Gygax or 4e would have it.

Lan-"and every PC has actually been an NPC for most of its life"-efan

 

[Nagol]

As [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is so quick to bring up when book characters are used against him, characters written for a book are very different from ones in an RPG.

But you weren't talking RPG characters specifically. You were making wide statements to justify RPG character roles and behaviour. Galahad is a character that violates not just one but all your expected tenets. He was untrained, inexperienced, not a killer and yet he was the king's champion.

 

[Nagol]

As I mention above, this is a white room scenario. While it's true that you get XP for defeating foes, it's absurd in the extreme to think that you would reach 10th or so level without killing anything.



Are you really suggesting that the king's champion came out of the womb at 10th level? If not, then he had to earn those levels somehow, and that how is via exp. That's the mechanic by which the fighter class gains levels, PC or not.

Also, in the DMG when you create an NPC using classes and levels, you can create them as you would a PC. That means that the NPC has experience points that he had to earn somewhere. You also have adventuring NPCs that are run like PCs.

Level means something and the measure used to get those levels is XP.

I've had entire groups manage to get to the teens in both 1e and 3.5 without killing a humanoid. I want to say 'nothing sentient', but have to review a lot of notes which probably no longer exist.

 

[Lanefan]

I've had entire groups manage to get to the teens in both 1e and 3.5 without killing a humanoid. I want to say 'nothing sentient', but have to review a lot of notes which probably no longer exist.

I could see how this would be quite possible by 1e RAW, e.g. a stealth group gaining all their xp for treasure and problem-solving and bypassing encounters while getting little or none for actual combat.

But 3.5? How the ...?

 

[5ekyu]

Why would either of those be backgrounded? Neither of them involves a town. A rope bridge, obviously, would be part of adventuring, so, a companion wouldn't be backgrounded. Or, if the player did background the companion, then he would not have that companion available until he or she returned.

Note, it's not about making the T-rex town friendly. It's not. It's that instead of spending table time hiding the T-rex every time you entered town, you'd just take it as written that it is hidden and won't get into any trouble while you are away.

It's not a dodge at all. It's simply taking an element of the game that isn't particularly interesting to the player and just taking it as written. But, again, it does cut both ways. If you background something, you don't get to use it while it's backgrounded. So, a backgrounded T-Rex that gets taken into town isn't backgrounded. It's very much foregrounded and all the consequences that go with that are on the table.

See, here's the thing. It's not an interesting choice to the player. It's just not. But, it's also not a power gaming move either. A backgrounded spellbook couldn't be used on an adventure. Once it was used, it's no longer backgrounded and it's fair game. A cleric that acts obviously against the intent of backgrounding his or her class - the whole undead menagerie cleric example - is obviously acting in bad faith.

Why do you assume your players will always act in bad faith? Why do you feel the need to police your players?

I dont need to police my players. My players expect to be playing the results of their choices in game, not resolving them with meta-game fixes.

My players would expect that the advantages of the t rex in combat would also mean other issues such as having to figure out how to deal with it when the story moves into towns.

Just like the wizard might prepare non-fireball spells when in a town but fireballs when more open scenery is expected.

They don't expect these issues to turn on or off scene to scene, scenery change to scenery change just cuz they made a meta-game deal.

Moreover, they would expect that a trex could be trackable, rather unique and so be attachable if the party left it alone outside town and would be rather ticked off if I told them "nah, he got to a town so that gets his t rex backgrounded, so you lost the trail."

Similarly they would not expect the backgrounding of tracking the trex defense when they got to a town.

 

[5ekyu]

Something that I realized some years ago is that when you place the responsibility for the success of the campaign in the hands of the players equally to the DM, the players will rise to the occasion and create a much better experience for everyone at the table. I've really made it clear over the years that I expect that the players can do whatever the heck they want, but, it's up to them to make the game as fun as possible for everyone. I'm not going to play mommy and tell them what they can and cannot do.

Funny thing is, I find that the players are far, far more strict about things that I ever would be. I've actually had to step in on more than one occasion and tell a player, no, that's perfectly fine. I don't mind if you do that when otherwise the player would stop himself from acting on some idea or other.

Trusting your DM works best when it works both ways.

Great observations and has nothing to do with backgrounding. It can happen whether backgrounding is done or not.