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

[iserith]

Maybe so.

But as a show of hands, how many players here are comfortable with a DM that privileges a process of play that allows him to deny you fortune tests when he wants to mess with your character?

One thing that in my experience players don't like is a feeling that they were being treated unfairly. How many players have you had who would be ok in the long term with ideas like, "You don't even get a resisted check to oppose the pickpocket because you didn't say the magic words I wanted to hear?" I can't think of any.

That's a pretty uncharitable way to present that.

 

[Inchoroi]

Maybe so.

But as a show of hands, how many players here are comfortable with a DM that privileges a process of play that allows him to deny you fortune tests when he wants to mess with your character?

One thing that in my experience players don't like is a feeling that they were being treated unfairly. How many players have you had who would be ok in the long term with ideas like, "You don't even get a resisted check to oppose the pickpocket because you didn't say the magic words I wanted to hear?" I can't think of any.

With respect, I have to say I'd disagree with @iserith and his way of doing things, but probably not enough to quit a game over; it would take me a while, but I'm a fairly proactive sort of player (depending on character, however; I get very into character and if the character is dumb, well, I'm dumb, too) so I think I'd get used to it eventually.

 

[Inchoroi]

Not exactly what you're looking for, but The Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding and The Kobold Guide to Plots & Campaigns are both filled with solid advice.

I do own both of those, actually! However, its not a step by step; like most guides I've bought, its general advice that, while useful, doesn't teach you the nitty-gritty details you learn from, for example, taking apart a full campaign, like I did for one of my old games. I learned more about campaign building from converting an old PF adventure path than I ever did from reading any worldbuilding or campaign building guide. I think, perhaps, a series of Youtube videos or articles (I admit I've been tempted to write them myself and explore the topic) that starts from zero and builds from there a full campaign and world would be fun for me; not necessarily for anyone else, but fun for me.

 

[Kobold Boots]

My homebrew campaign has a huge map with many fleshed out areas. The 2 year campaign I ran there met once a month for 8 hours. At the end of the session, I asked the players what their characters were planning on doing next, where they were planning on going and I had a month to prep the next session.

So the players themselves provided the focus.

I saw my job and creating the bones of world, putting together a number big plot lines that the party might get involved with, and prep the first session that provided the mechanism for the party to meet and some plot hooks to get them started.

The campaign went in a very different direction than I anticipated when going into it and that's part of the fun.

In a future campaign, I would like to be even less focused and basically build the world as part of a session zero.

I think this is great. Good on you and I hope you still have all the notes and such.

To elaborate on my end, I had a group that came together twice a month for 8-10 hours at a go, and we mostly stuck inside a three city area for most of the year and a half it stuck together, starting with an insignificant trade town at the confluence of three rivers.

Another group had a grandly designed "save the world" plot and we only met once a week for a couple hours at a go. That game lasted about 4 years, but the "world map" that spanned five continents still only saw about 4 areas truly fleshed.

I think it's a function of knowing what you're trying to do as a DM and presenting what matters. I've found that presenting a slightly done map kills the feeling of depth that you can impart with just enough information.

 

[Kobold Boots]

I do own both of those, actually! However, its not a step by step; like most guides I've bought, its general advice that, while useful, doesn't teach you the nitty-gritty details you learn from, for example, taking apart a full campaign, like I did for one of my old games. I learned more about campaign building from converting an old PF adventure path than I ever did from reading any worldbuilding or campaign building guide. I think, perhaps, a series of Youtube videos or articles (I admit I've been tempted to write them myself and explore the topic) that starts from zero and builds from there a full campaign and world would be fun for me; not necessarily for anyone else, but fun for me.

You and I may be similar. I've felt that siren call too.

Every time I've tried it's always boiled down to five rules and once I put the guideposts in the sand I lost interest.

1. Start with the end in mind. Fully write out the world's meta plot before any player touches it so you have a baseline.
2. Decide what cultures you're going to use as a base to further accentuate your plot. Sacrifice and Honor mean different things based on what cultures you put on top of them.

3. Craft your starting adventure adjacent to but not directly in the path of the meta plot. Let the players find it. Case in point, there might be an evil necromancer in the old castle in the overgrown woods.. but your first adventure should be about the party held for the halfling mayor's impending nuptials and the fact that the bride is missing once everyone wakes up from the hangover. Put the party through the process of learning about the locals and dealing with the local kobolds run off by undead burgeoning in the area before realizing that the bride eloped with the halfling stable boy.

4. Add multiple storylines, not multiple places. Storylines are easier to figure out on the fly than cities. Add a city or region only when you absolutely need to for story reasons.

5. Campaign plot is yours and keeps the game going in the long term. Player plot is theirs and keeps the game going in the short term. Listen to your players and add things to your game map based on what they're saying even if they're completely wrong about the meta plot or adventure you're running. They'll feel invested and not know why. Most of the time players talk about the things they think are cool. When they find it they think you're brilliant. Rarely (or if you're really obtusely blunt about it) will they realize you're stealing their ideas.

 

[iserith]

I defined it pretty exactly I think in the essay you didn't read, albeit I've never attempted to move from the Aristotelian definition I offered to a more Socratic one. But, loosely speaking, railroading is a collection of processes of play that a GM can utilize to ensure a predetermined outcome to a scenario that the GM desires. A "railroad" is a game that features those processes of play so saliently, that it becomes a defining attribute of play. One particular process of play that can be used to railroad is the "handwave" which is when the GM removes the opportunity for fortune rolls from a scene that has meaningful consequence, or removes the opportunity for choice when a meaningful proposition could be made. I think you are basically accusing me of the later, while I'm accusing you of the former. I deny however that asking for an ability check actually removes a meaningful choice, and instead protects against the GM doing the former. With your process, regardless of how perceptive the PC is, unless the player is perceptive, he is blind.

D&D 5e's process has the DM deciding if a roll is necessary before one is called for which takes place after the player has described what he or she wants to do. If the task is obviously impossible, the result is failure, no roll. If it's trivially easy, the result is success, no roll. If it's somewhere in between, has an uncertain outcome, and a meaningful consequence of failure, then some kind of roll is appropriate. What's a meaningful consequence of failure exactly? It's up to the DM, as is whether the outcome of the task is uncertain.

And to be clear, I'm not actually accusing you of anything. I said I don't like DMs effectively establishing my character's actions by asking for checks before I described what I want to do. (Because there can't be an ability check without a task to resolve.) Then a bunch of people decided I was wrong about why I didn't like it. I pointed out the rules that support my position. There's really nothing more to it except a bunch of people trying to justify why they do a thing that is in my view more appropriate to a different edition of the game than the current one. You don't have to justify yourself though. I don't play in your game. You don't even run D&D 5e. This will never be an actual problem.

I find it highly unlikely given your DMing preferences that you often use the loopholes you've just opened to railroad the players anywhere. But to try to explain to you what I mean by this, the fact that you can quite easily arrange using your process of play to hook the player with something like a pickpocket, is a very powerful tool for a GM to use to achieve a desired narrative. Whenever you as a DM can arrange that the outcome doesn't depend on a dice roll quite easily, such as with your undetectable pickpocket, then you have the capacity to lay down the rails you want for your story very easily. I think it should be obvious that something like a pickpocket is a very potent hook for steering scenes in the direction you would like. Consider for example how the thief is used to steer Arthur during the tournament early in the movie 'Excalibur'.

You're right to say that I don't use them to "railroad" anyone. That would be against my principles. Consider also that perhaps this tool as it were was baked into D&D 5e by design, especially given the stated goals of play, which may sometimes call for a heavier hand than you would like to make sure everyone has a good time and that an exciting, memorable tale is told as a result of the play experience. That seems like a reasonable conclusion given what I know of the system and what I have gleaned in the last 4 years playing and running it.

You earlier complained that if a check was called for, then the character was attempting a meaningful action of some kind which carried a consequence of failure, and you'd not been allowed as a player to dictate that action. I still disagree since for pretty much all the cases in contention you can't really specify what that action is that has been imposed or the action is trivial and involuntary (thought, hearing, sight, memory), but assuming even you are right it seems to me that your process of play allows for meaningful actions which carry a consequence of failure to happen to the PC without so much as a fortune test or any meaningful input from the player. Things just happen to them, and all your telegraphing of how they might happen - even assuming your telegraphing is clear - doesn't change that. I think on the whole your method is more meaningfully impacting player agency than mine.

I don't really know what your methods are and I no longer play D&D 3e, so I really couldn't say. I don't even really want to get into it. Suffice it to say, the players have sufficient agency to act as they see fit and do so by making reasonably informed choices that don't always result in an ability check. In fact, smart play in such a system is to never try to make an ability check at all by working towards removing uncertainty from the equation and/or the meaningful consequence of failure. Nobody should trust a d20.

 

[Greenstone.Walker]

I have a situation at the moment that has made me think about leaving a game, and that is "surprise rounds".

I'm playing character class which gets some really nice abilities on the first round of combat and some other nice abilities if I act before another combatant. Surprise rounds screw with all of those.

We've also had some situations where combat starts with the monsters right next to us. Those of us with features like the polearm master feat, and all of us with missile weapons, are being screwed over a little bit. I don't know how the player with the alert feat is feeling but if I were him I'd be annoyed that taking the feat has essentially done nothing.

 

[guachi]

But as a show of hands, how many players here are comfortable with a DM that privileges a process of play that allows him to deny you fortune tests when he wants to mess with your character?

I raise my hand and say I'm not comfortable with a DM who uses the term "fortune tests" to describe anything in D&D because, as far as I'm aware, there is no game term "fortune tests" in D&D.

 

[iserith]

I have a situation at the moment that has made me think about leaving a game, and that is "surprise rounds".

I'm playing character class which gets some really nice abilities on the first round of combat and some other nice abilities if I act before another combatant. Surprise rounds screw with all of those.

We've also had some situations where combat starts with the monsters right next to us. Those of us with features like the polearm master feat, and all of us with missile weapons, are being screwed over a little bit. I don't know how the player with the alert feat is feeling but if I were him I'd be annoyed that taking the feat has essentially done nothing.

Is the DM just not running surprise correctly? There are no "surprise rounds." I've seen a ton of DMs get that wrong. Sometimes I even slip and call it that, even if I am running it correctly!

 

[Nagol]

I raise my hand and say I'm not comfortable with a DM who uses the term "fortune tests" to describe anything in D&D because, as far as I'm aware, there is no game term "fortune tests" in D&D.

There is in the art, however. A "fortune test" is any action that bases a result at least partially on random chance. Typically in RPGs that means a die roll. Contrast with fiat which is also not a term in D&D, but a commonly understood term of art.