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

Aldarc said:

Do you have a better one then?

Click to expand...

Yes. Abuses of DM power. Railroading. Killing off PCs when you get irritated. Being an asshat. Those are examples of being a bad DM. Simply doing something someone else dislikes isn't being a bad DM. Going back to the example I gave up thread where I left a game after the first session because they played silly the entire time. That didn't make the DM a bad one, or the players bad players. It simply made their style of play one that I didn't like, so I left.

I think the large majority of players will have no objection to their deity or patron having an impact on play. Most players, after all, enjoy the lime light! Players usually pick classes they are interested in, unless they are pure power gamers, but that's a different discussion. If you have a player who obviously doesn't want their character's obligations to come up in play, odds are they are the quiet player who shows up, rolls their dice, and enjoys an evening with friends. From a GM's perspective, one less ego to worry about!

Another thought. What if a player is in a traditionally run dungeon crawl, and has chosen to play the cleric because no one else wanted the role? Should this player have to put up with obligations and role playing deity moments that they don't care about?

I agree with Hussar. Why is this so contentious? Feels like a lot of mole hills are getting turned into mountains.
I can't believe that GMs struggling with a lack of class fluff at the table is a serious issue.

Lanefan said:

There seems to be a trend in the posts here, and it boils down to this:

Wherever there's a benefits-drawbacks trade-off, foreground the benefits and background the drawbacks.

Sorry, but that ain't how life works. Benefits and drawbacks go hand in hand, largely because the drawbacks are often there to either temper the benefits or make the choice to take them more difficult; and to take the benefits while in effect ignoring or backgrounding the drawbacks is, in a way, just another definition of cheating.

You want the benefits of having a tiger as your animal companion and co-warrior? Fine, but you'd better be ready to deal with the drawbacks that'll come if you ever try to take it into town.

You want the mechanical benefits of playing a Dragonborn (or Tiefling, or Drow...) instead of an Elf? Fine, but you'd better be ready to deal with the role-playing drawbacks of playing what is, in the eyes of most civilized inhabitants of the game world, a monster.

You want the benefits of playing a Paladin instead of a Fighter? Fine, but you'd better be ready to follow your Oath (or alignment, in earlier editions), make the required donations and to be faced with some very hard choices now and then; with said choices sometimes really p-ing off the rest of your party.

In short, if you can't handle the drawbacks don't try for the benefits.

Click to expand...

The problem is, when you really get down to it, the NPCs need the PCs much more then the PCs need the NPCs.

Sure your "civilised" inhabitants of the game world can get all high and mighty about treating my Warforged PC as a monster and on the other hand who is going to save them from the real monster of the week?

Or in other words are we going to make use of that prep you did this week or are we going to play Fantasy racists cause I dont really mind where the XP comes from.

I am not really a fan of back-grounding as a formal mechanic - mostly because I think it reinforces playing a character concept rather than a character. I also think it encourages individual creativity over vigorous collaboration. I am not a fan of these walled off gardens we have the tendency to create in this hobby where we decide how exactly everyone else at the table is allowed to engage with the things we bring to the table. I do not really understand this preoccupation with who owns a thing or who has what rights over a thing. That stuff can all be worked out if we have functional creative relationships where we honor and value what everyone is bringing to the table.

All that being said there is a certain undercurrent of suspicion towards players who decide to provide feedback on GMing methodology, the content of the fiction or who care how a game is run that I am noticing here and have seen in real life a couple of times. The idea that taking an active interest in the game beyond casually consuming the GM's content is somehow problematic or entitled behavior is something that I cannot get behind.

Here's what matters most to me: When the GM stares across that table towards the other players what does he see? Does he see obstacles to realizing his vision? An audience in need of entertainment? players of a game? creative peers? For me to enjoy the game he or she should see creative peers and players of a game with the balance of these two depending on the game. I am not here to be entertained or see your story line through. I want to actively contribute, engage the fiction and mechanics, and be valued and trusted as much as anyone else at the table no matter what seat I happen to be sitting in at the moment.

Shasarak said:

The problem is, when you really get down to it, the NPCs need the PCs much more then the PCs need the NPCs.

Sure your "civilised" inhabitants of the game world can get all high and mighty about treating my Warforged PC as a monster and on the other hand who is going to save them from the real monster of the week?

Click to expand...

So one monster saves them from another monster.

They still have a monster to deal with...

Hussar said:

Honestly I think the basic issue is a disagreement over scale. For some, any limitation on dm authority is unacceptable. For me and I think others, I just don’t see the big deal.

The dm is going to play dozens of not hundreds of npc’s. Taking one off the table just seems like such a minor thing to me. Same goes for scenario design. The dm is going to make and run dozens if not hundreds of scenarios. Telling the dm that one is off the table just seems like such a minor thing.

To be perfectly honest, it didn’t really occur to me that this would be contentious.

Click to expand...

What's minor to you is a lot to someone else, and vice versa. There's nothing wrong with playing the game your way, or my way. They're just different ways to have lots of fun with the game. The important thing is to find the game that's right for you.

Campbell said:

All that being said there is a certain undercurrent of suspicion towards players who decide to provide feedback on GMing methodology, the content of the fiction or who care how a game is run that I am noticing here and have seen in real life a couple of times. The idea that taking an active interest in the game beyond casually consuming the GM's content is somehow problematic or entitled behavior is something that I cannot get behind.

Click to expand...

I for one love when my players invest in things and work with me on ideas for the game, including changes to fluff for their PCs. I wish they would come to me more often with ideas. All I'm saying here is that without DM approval, you're stuck with the fluff that comes with the game.

Imaro said:

Let me pose a question to you Hussar... would you be ok with the DM deciding during the length of a campaign that you and your party lost a combat encounter and were captured no matter what you did in said combat? It's a single fight in a campaign and no one would die, you'd just loose no matter what your actions were and the entire party would be captured. I honestly think many players would see this as railroading and a jerk move by a DM, but it's only a single fight and there will be hundreds across the span of a camapign so why would it be a big deal to many players?

Click to expand...

Well, it wouldn't be a single fight would it?

It would be that fight, plus the next at least one encounter which would deal with the repercussions of that.

And, again, it's apples and oranges. You're talking about the DM forcing the entire group to do something they probably don't want to do. Which is going to have repercussions that last for at least one more encounter and likely more. I'm talking about putting something in the background that isn't even in play yet because this is done at character generation.

Would you be okay if the DM didn't use a beholder in the next campaign? Because, frankly, that's the equivalent.

Maxperson said:

Yes. Abuses of DM power. Railroading. Killing off PCs when you get irritated. Being an asshat. Those are examples of being a bad DM. Simply doing something someone else dislikes isn't being a bad DM. Going back to the example I gave up thread where I left a game after the first session because they played silly the entire time. That didn't make the DM a bad one, or the players bad players. It simply made their style of play one that I didn't like, so I left.

Click to expand...

Doing something someone else doesn't like doesn't necessarily make you a bad DM. That's true. Deliberately doing it to someone when you absolutely know that they don't want you to? That's a lot bigger issue, AFAIC. I mean, I loathe puzzles in RPG's. Don't mind mysteries, but, puzzles of the "Speak friend and enter" kind drive me straight up the wall.

But, I also know that lots of people do like them. So, when they come up in game, I don't complain. I just don't participate very much. No problems. I'll go and get everyone a drink or clean up the pizza boxes or whatever. No harm no foul.

OTOH, a DM who, knowing how much I loathe puzzles, decides that the next campaign is going to be nothing but Mud Sorcerer's Tomb type adventures for 20 levels is not what I consider a good DM.

Maxperson said:

What's minor to you is a lot to someone else, and vice versa. There's nothing wrong with playing the game your way, or my way. They're just different ways to have lots of fun with the game. The important thing is to find the game that's right for you.

Click to expand...

There is considerable truth here. Obviously this is a much larger issue to others than it is to me. Like I said, I didn't actually think that the notion of Backgrounding what I consider to be pretty minor stuff to be all that contentious.

Imaro said:

Are you claiming the Raven Queen was backgrounded in this example... just trying to make sure I'm clear on what this is supposed to be proving or addressing...

Click to expand...

I believe that it completely refutes the claim that has been made or implied by multiple posters in this thread that (i) if the player of a cleric or paladin or similar sort of character is allowed to establish what the demands are that allegiance to god/patron/etc makes on his/her PC, then (ii) those demands will have no consequences in play and will probably not even manifest in play such that other participants in the game can observe and engage with them.

Imaro said:

I never said that people are in no way defined by their relationships

Click to expand...

OK, so you agree that if my character concept includes having a loving family waiting for me when I return from my quest, then that is part of who my character is, and hence the GM changing/overriding that can override/distort my character concept.

Imaro said:

since these are not real people but fictional characters... the GM deciding that your father is a serial killer doesn't preclude you from having a loving family if he's taking say something in the vein of Dexter as inspiration.

Click to expand...

Change it to a noble and loving family, or an honest and loving family, then. As per my post upthread, I had in mind a revelation that a dear dad very similar to Samwise Gamgee's Gaffer was in fact a serial killer - ie something that radically undermines the PC and player conception of the family.

Imaro said:

Anyway you didn't actually answer the question I asked. If you have no idea what your character's father has been up to until you return to the village at the end of the campaign how does it affect how you've played that character during the actual campaign?

Click to expand...

Is it part of the campaign or not? If the GM just imagines to him-/herself that my PC's father is a serial killer, that is definitely in the "playing with oneself" category. Solitary imagination is not an instance of RPGing.

So I'm assuming that this is something that the GM actually reveals in play. At which point it completely changes my character conception - eg instead of doing this stuff so that I can make the world safe for my family and return back to them (again, this is pointing to Samwise Gamgee as the paradigm) I've been completely misguided about what I was doing and achieving. And what affect did it have on my action declarations? It meant that I made them grounded in a false rather than true belief about the nature of my PC's family and my PC's relationship to them and to his/her goals and values. In the realm of fiction, there are many well-known example of this sort of revelation changing the meaning of a character's actions and the relationships those actions are connected to eg Jane Eyre (Mrs Rochester), Howard's End (Jacky). The most devastating I can think of is Graeme Greene's The Human Factor.

I know that many people play RPGs as essentially tactical or puzzle-solving exercise, and in that sort of play PC actions don't have any meaning beyond their contribution to tactics or to the resolution of a practical problem (eg choosing which NPC to ask for a favour, which wall to search for secret doors, etc). And one often sees discussions of "meaningful choice" for players framed in essentially those terms.

But I play RPGs because of my pleasure in the process and result of fiction creation. And the conception of meaning that informs my engagement with RPGs is similar to the sense used in discussing other narrative modes - so that we can say, for instance, that the meaning of Luke and Leia's budding romance in Star Wars, or of Luke's anger towards Vader after Vader kills Obi-Wan, is completely changed once it is revealed that Luke and Leia are siblings, or that Vader is Luke's father (and so not the killer of both his father and his father-figure mentor). In The Human Factor, the meaning (in the same sense) of the protagonists activities as a spy is completely transformed by the revelation at the end of the book.

And in a RPG, the meaning of my PC's actions - when framed against an understanding of dear dad waiting for me back at home - is completely transformed once it is revealed that dear dad is in fact a serial killer.

A variant of this - pertaining not to a family member but to an instigating NPC patron - was the GM flaw in the third of the three campaigns that I mentioned in my first post in this thread: betrayal by the patron completely changed the meaning of a MacGuffin quest which had no narrative logic to it except that we were fetching a MacGuffin for a patron because that was the situation the GM had presented us with. It reveals the PCs as suckers and patsies. And in the context of a RPG, it also reveals the players as the GM's patsies - the GM has lured us into the game with the promise of a mildly interesting fetch quest for a NPC, and it turns out we were sucked in and were really telling quite a different story.
[MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] upthread asks - but was the fetch quest fun to play out? Answer: not terribly, it was pretty mid-grade RPging, but tolerable because the group (including the GM) was a group of friends who had RPGed together for quite some time. But mid-grade RPGing with friends can be fine when you have (as we all then did) the time on your hands. What made it less than fine was the GM move of unilaterally changing the meaning of something that was outside player control and that no player action had ever put at stake.
[MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION] describes this as "story now" sensibility. My memory for when this happened is a bit hazy, but I want to say some time around 1993 to 1995. So something like 10 years, certainly more than 5 years, before Ron Edwards wrote his "Story Now" essay. In a group who at that time played Rolemaster almost exclusively (the game in question was a RM one). I point that out so as to make the point that objecting to this sort of GMing is not some super-radical new-fangled thing.