Why is "I don't like it" not good enough?

[catsclaw227]

For me, as a DM, it boils down essentially two things, though these aren't hard lines:

1. Asking "Why?" is not arguing.

2. Repeatedly asking "Why?" or not accepting a reasonable explanation is where the problem occurs.

Personally, I don't believe that "Because I said so" is a reasonable explanation for the first "why?". It just seems to me that it isn't conducive to working with the players to help develop their PCs. And it doesn't help explain to the players - from a worldbuilding standpoint - why you said no.

"Because I said so" is a reasonable explanation for that persistant player that won't let it go. And now you have some more information about your player.

It's not like a short explanation takes any more than a few seconds. To deny a player a 5 minute conversation about your game world and your reasoning doesn't make sense* in light of the fact that you might be gaming with them for the next new months or even years.

*At a Con, 5 minutes might be too much time, but at a Con, I imagine most players are pretty accepting of a one-shot games' parameters. (Well, at least I have never seen it be a problem. Personal experience, and all that...)

 

[noretoc]

I still take issue with the position championed by shadzar and noretoc (and maybe others) that a player asking "why" something is banned is already "over the line" and being disruptive. By giving an answer that explains your reasoning, you are offering an opportunity for the player to work with you to establish the sort of characters you believe fit in a particular campaign setting. Without that explanation then the player is simply left in the position of playing "Mother May I?" with regards to anything else that might be banned.

I want to make clear this is NOT my position. Asking why is fine. Telling me that "I don't like them" is not good enough and demanding more is not fine. They are two different things.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I guess what I'm saying is that I feel that the players and GM working in concert to achieve great games is at least equal and probably superior to the players simply abiding by the GM's restrictions while never understanding why.

Yarp. Blind obedience without understanding produces drones. Drones become passive, sit on their tushies and expect to be entertained. I favor having enthusiastic, engaged players in my games that have a desire to contribute to the good time rather than merely being a consumer of it.

 

[The Shaman]

The Dm is not and never was God. This is an attitude that should have died long ago.

The referee is a player like everyone else, but the referee's toolset and role is different from that of the other players. In most traditional roleplaying games, this includes being the final arbiter, of the rules and the setting.

There's a simple logic to this: if a player takes his ball and goes home, then the game can still continue, but of the referee walks, then it's game over until or unless someone else steps up.

None of this diminishes the benefits of compromise and collaboration in running a roleplaying game, or in any other social activity, for that matter. It simply settles the question of WHO DECIDES? when the limits of compromise and collaboration are reached.

There are alternatives to the referee as final arbiter: referee-less games like Capes, rigidly structured rules systems which place tight constraints on the referee like Burning Wheel, distributed referee responsibility like Boot Hill, and so on. Players unhappy with the traditional referee role have choices which may be more to their liking.

The existence of alternatives doesn't mean that the traditional role of the referee is broken, however; the referee as final arbiter is still around for the simple reason that it works. There's a post somewhere in this thread that cites an ENWorld poll claiming a third of the gamers who voted had mostly negative experiences with referees. The flip side of that is two-thirds, a majority of the respondents, have not had mostly negative experiences with referees.

So no, the referee is not god, but the referee as final arbiter works well enough for most gamers to settle the question of WHO DECIDES?

 

[shadzar]

I still take issue with the position championed by shadzar and noretoc (and maybe others) that a player asking "why" something is banned is already "over the line" and being disruptive. By giving an answer that explains your reasoning, you are offering an opportunity for the player to work with you to establish the sort of characters you believe fit in a particular campaign setting. Without that explanation then the player is simply left in the position of playing "Mother May I?" with regards to anything else that might be banned.

By telling them "No tieflings" they also have that same opportunity.

You somehow mistake that something is removed other than the tieflings in that case.

There is no "Mother May I" with ANYTHING banned. The fact it is banned, forbidden, disallowed, is the problem you have and issue you are having.

The automatic answer is NO, that is what banning is.

Lets call this "why" question as similar to threadcrapping. There is a line drawn that something isn't allowed in both cases. The rule was set, and if you come to that then you accept the rule.

You don't go to a 9-ball tournament to play 8-ball. You try playing 9-ball in an 8-ball tournament, and you are soon going ot be screwing up.

Here is a why for you: Why would someone be going to play for the sole purpose of confrontation? If you don't accept a game with "no tieflings" then why even go there?

The players requested and being sought were ones agreeing to "no tieflings". When a player then shows up wanting to dispute that, they have already violated a part of that "social contract" and shown they have no interest in communication, because they started out by not paying attention and not following the rules set forth by the DM.

This behavior 99.998% of the time carries over to being a disruptive player.

Seriously, why would someone go to a game set up with the rule of "no tieflings" be there with an attempt to play a tiefling, or even care?

The DMs job is to make the game work. Not to let just every Tom, Dick, and Harry off the street try to tell everyone else how to play. If there are other people that agree with this rule of "no teiflings" except this one, then you already see this one person asking doesn't have views aligned with the group.

If you already knew what to expect and then went counter to that, you are only there to BE disruptive to the others.

The school example was given, someone going to heckle a comedian, etc.... These are all the same type of disruptive people. There is no reason a DM or other player should have to put up with that.

You don't have to agre with it, and the fact that you take issue with it would make me ask you this:

Would you come to mine or his games saying "no tiefligns" and them try question that?
If so, then why did you come in the first place? Just to question why tieflings aren't allowed?

The person raising the question when the ground rules were set, should never have come if they didnt agree with those rules.

 

[Rel]

Would you come to mine or his games saying "no tiefligns" and them try question that?
If so, then why did you come in the first place? Just to question why tieflings aren't allowed?

The person raising the question when the ground rules were set, should never have come if they didnt agree with those rules.

I'll try this one more time. It has nothing to do with not agreeing to any rules. It has to do with understanding for better long term mutual enjoyment.

I'll put myself in the exact situation posed here:

I'm a guy looking for a game at the local game store. I see their ad. It says, "DM looking for players for D&D campaign. No Tieflings." Not a problem I say to myself.

I show up for the game with my non-Tiefling character and ask, "Before we get started, would you please tell me why no Tieflings?" I might wonder if the GM just has no place for them in his campaign setting. I might wonder if they are in the campaign setting but not as a playable PC race. I might wonder if the GM just "doesn't like" Tieflings and never will, which is kind of important because I then know that not only are there no Tieflings allowed in this campaign but there never will be in any campaign he runs. I might wonder if the GM has a world without any Demons in it and therefore no "demon-touched" races like the Tieflings. Maybe that means there are no angels either. It could have a big impact on the cosmology. And it could be, just maybe, that I'm asking because I want to pick apart his reasoning and force my super-secret backup Tiefling character into his campaign setting.

If I ask my simple question, "So would you please tell me why no Tieflings in your campaign?" then it's possible that I'm planning to be a dick. If his response is, "No, I won't tell you." then I'm pretty confident that HE is a dick.

 

[shadzar]

I'll try this one more time. It has nothing to do with not agreeing to any rules. It has to do with understanding for better long term mutual enjoyment.

So which word do you not understand:
No?
Tieflings?



You are letting your wants to know "why" outweigh your needs, and others needs/wants to play a game with "no tieflings".

Your special needs is not something I have time for in life. There are plenty of places for that, but not in my D&D games.

If you go to a game to play, there are rules such as "no tieflings" before you go. You have zero excuse to start rocking the boat. Only go there if you accept those things. Apparently you aren't there to play D&D with "no tieflings". That means you are in the wrong place.

Even "I don't like it' is required, but given the polite chance to give you the option to get back into the game contract you signed when you showed up, which stated "no tieflings". If you are already breaking that contract, then you can leave, you don't have to stay to disrupt the game for a single minute for the other people who worked to adjusted their schedules and drove to meet in a location that DO want the thing offered as-is.

Facebook and MySpace are to the right for your need to socialize with random strangers, D&D is to the left. Feel free to take some D&D with you, but you can't tale it all. When you are done with your Facebook and MySpace, feel free to come back over to play some D&D when that is your focus and interest.

That was not a joke either. I have seen that very thing in stores offering games. People get randomly assigned to tables, and one is all about just jack-jawing, and a person wanted to play instead, asked to be placed at a table interested in playing and they had to shift some people around to make it happen, or just the person wanting to play was SOL. No trouble, just try to squeeze that player into a game actually playing and move the entire socializing group to another side of the store where they don't disrupt the actual games being had. And this was with pre-genned character that were being disputed!

Everyone had fun, but the group that lost a player was upset that they had lost a player. The reason being, they came for different things, like the person questioning the rule they came knowing advance about.

There are just games you go to play at you need to leave ALL of your baggage at the door.

It would REALLY tick me off, someone coming to the game taking a space form someone else potentially, wasting mine or anothers time, when they didn't agree with the game to begin with.

If you cannot have "mutual enjoyment" in a game with "no tieflings" then don't show up to it, or you might not find yourself welcome for the "long term" or even to continue the "short term".

 

[Mallus]

Your special needs is not something I have time for in life. There are plenty of places for that, but not in my D&D games.

If you go to a game to play, there are rules such as "no tieflings" before you go. You have zero excuse to start rocking the boat. Only go there if you accept those things. Apparently you aren't there to play D&D with "no tieflings". That means you are in the wrong place.

You sound stressed. Have you tried Hare Krishna?

~ edit: note that Mallus has thus indicated he wants to have no more part in this discussion - Plane Sailing, ENworld Admin ~

 

[Crazy Jerome]

The whole problem in the "no tielfling at the store game" is that the players don't know you. It could just as easily be "no pizza at the table while we play". Does that mean that you are allergic to pizza? Does it mean you hate the smell? Does it mean that you've had bad experiences with pizza-eating players, and no more will you risk it? They have no clue.

That's is what makes "why" sit right on the fuzzy edge. Because the real question at the point very well could be, "I want to really understand why this is happening because it might help me appreciate the game more." Or it might be, "No pizza, that's bizarre. I want to know why ... so that I can expand my understanding of you." Or it could be, "I want to dick with this guy for some reason, and asking the question this way gives me a way to maybe do that without getting pegged as a dick."

Note that with those last two options, we aren't talking about the game anymore. A certain amount of that is inevitable. If it doesn't happen with the banned stuff, it will happen with something else--an NPC name, a characterization, monster choices, plot choices, etc. It's natural, but it works both ways.

That's why I said I'll have a conversation about the issue, but I won't justify myself to the player. If the other guy wants to have a conversation about the game, or maybe some of the "getting to know you" stuff that informs the game, it will be evident, and the conversation will be fruitful. Otherwise, his attempt to be a dick with plausible deniability will be frustrated.

Now, I think that preceding paragraph is pretty universal. Where it becomes more personal is that my tolerance goes down in a hurry once I start detecting "entitlement issues" or other such behavior that I find exceedingly immature but depressingly common in supposed adults. If I'm feeling frisky, I might set the guy up to make a fool of himself. Or I might be tired and otherwise occupied and cut him off. "No, you aren't going to get this thing, and you aren't going to get more of a reason." Then I'll turn right around to the guy sitting next to him with a similar but more honest question, and answer it fully.

 

[Mallus]

"I don't like it" isn't good enough for me -- when I DM.

It's boring.

It's a creative challenge to work fictional elements I don't like, or at least didn't author, into the settings and campaigns I create. On the other hand, there's no challenge in simply mandating my own tastes, and in that way, 'just saying no' would rob me of an entertaining part of the game. The part where I work with another person to turn their idea of interesting into something congruent with my own.

At least this is how I see things nowadays. I had pretty much the opposite opinion during my years as a 2e DM.