Free Will and Story

[Hussar]

Which finally leads me to my questions: Should the DM have the ability to bring people back to life without their permission? Should the DM be allowed to give infinite power to a player as a plot device for the last hour of a campaign? Should gods be all powerful or are they limited to a few interesting tricks?

1. I'm a big believer in the "Golden Box". The DM has control over everything else in the game. Everything. The only thing in the game that I, as a player, have is my character. That's it. It's not totally unreasonable to get angry when DM's forget that and run roughshod over the player's wishes. If the player doesn't want his character to come back, that should be the end of the conversation.

2. Meh. Not something I'd do, but, it' the last half hour, not a big deal.

3. The power of the gods should depend on the campaign setting. I mean, Greek Gods were not seen as all powerful. Actually, most Gods weren't seen as all powerful. So, it's not unreasonable to have limitations no the powers of gods.

 

[Quickleaf]

Yeah, I know. I'm torn. Because he's a good story teller and his game was a lot of fun. Sometimes I'd feel like he was just asking for rolls to be polite. He'd say "Give me a...I don't know, Acrobatics check to avoid slipping. You got a 20? Umm...I guess you don't slip."

Part way through the campaign, I showed him the chart of easy, medium, and hard DCs by level on the 4e DM screen. He looked relieved, like he was tired of trying to guess what numbers should succeed.

It's a bit late, but if he runs a 4E game again print out my DM Cheat Sheet and give it to him. http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?307923-4e-DM-Cheat-Sheet

Anyhow, it sounds like a rookie GM mistake to me, and it had very little to do with edition. As you point out, there were other player issues going on throughout the campaign with at least one of the players whose PC ended up getting arbitrarily killed. Still, I put the blame squarely on the DM.

Mistake #1: Without forewarning, he invoked "rocks fall, you die" (without realizing it).

Mistake #2: Upon realizing mistake #1, he did not adjust the narrative to keep players alive.

Mistake #3: He then provided a ham-fisted way for the players to return to life. When the players resisted, rather than handling it by talking it out meta-game, he resolved it strictly in-game by allowing one player to force the resurrection.

Direct your DM to this thread maybe?

 

[innerdude]

This personally touches on one my worst pet peeves about D&D generally---that the "endgame" of an "epic" campaign inevitably has to lead to dealings with the "gods," planar travel, time-and-space-altering events, etc. That somehow if by the end of the campaign the PCs haven't created some cosmic shift in reality, it wasn't "cool" enough.

This is all purely my opinion----but frankly, gods should never have stats. Anytime someone wants to see the stats for a god in a monster manual, I think to myself "Why?" The only reason you need stats for a god is if somehow you expect that characters are going to interact with that god through the game's combat mechanics.

And call me crazy, but the whole point of a "god" is that they exist outside, or beyond the reality of the game world. In my mind, I'd never contrive a situation in which PCs can realistically "fight" a god in battle. What, really? You're going to assess a god a penalty for stepping out of his 1" threatened square? To me, this mindset is one of the worst side effects of the "PC entitlement" thing. If it exists in the game world, it HAS to have stats, dangit!

This is just a massive case of playstyle wires getting crossed, with a healthy mix of bad GM-ing ---- but when it comes down to it, it's ultimately the GM's right to break the rules. It's his or her table. If the players aren't okay with it, it's their right to participate or not, as they choose. That's the thing, NOBODY forces us to play in a group. We're there of our own volition. If the players don't like the GM breaking the rules on a whim, they either have to deal with it, or not play, or convince the GM to change. It's pretty much black and white here.

Personally, I'd never have played a campaign with "Jim" to begin with, though I do feel a sense of sympathy for his situation. It's a classic "geek fallacy" going on--"We feel bad for the guy ruining our fun, but have to keep letting him ruin our fun, because we're being uncharitable otherwise, and we can't be like those mean people that didn't accept us in high school / junior high / freshman year of college."

 

[Hussar]

Funnily enough Innerdude, I'd go the other way. I'd likely be very, very reticent of playing another campaign with this DM. I'd likely cut the DM some slack due to inexperience, but, this would be likely the straw before the last straw for me to bow out of the game.

I mean, the DM's had a year and a half, hundreds of hours of game play, to get a handle on the mechanics. You have to work pretty hard to NOT grasp 4e mechanics in that amount of time. It's not like the mechanics are clearly spelled out for people.

The DM here screwed up. [MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION] outlines it perfectly. That's a concise outline of exactly where the DM screwed up here and, other than inexperience, there is no excuse for this. Can the DM break the rules? Yup. Should he? Not without the table behind him. That's the whole point of a social contract in the first place. DM's who forget this quickly (and never soon enough) start seeing players drift away from their tables or outright revolt.

If players would stop putting up with this kind of crap from DM's the game would be a lot better. But, because the whole, "Well the DM has the right to do all this" sort of sentiment that pervades the hobby, players get sidelined and DM's get put on pedestals. This DM was wrong. Jim was wrong too. He could have handled it better. But, the only reason Jim is involved at all is because the DM was wrong.

------------

Now, as far as fighting gods go, I have no real problem with this. It's a pretty well established trope in genre fiction that the heroes can defeat/kill a god. It happens pretty frequently in genre fiction. So, having it in D&D isn't a problem AFAIC. 2e's solution of making Gods unkillable was a mistake IMO. I like my gods to be a bit more ... mortal. If gods are these all powerful beings, then all the mythical stories of gods coming down and partying with mortals don't really work. And I like those stories.

 

[Dwimmerlied]

I prefer mechanical consistency personally, and probably work too hard to make sure all my cinematic game moments (as DM) are mechanically sound. When playing, I like the idea that my character could conceivably do whatever anyone else does. If thats PC entitlement, fine; a derogatory label doesn't make it any less fun for me, or my gaming worse or whatever.

In fact, although its not the way I'd do things, I'd be leaning toward giving the DM a bit of a break. The fact is, that not everyone who is curious about gaming has the same level of commitment as the average ENworlder, and I don't subscribe to the elitist attitude that the DM is automatically crap, but I've read that kind of thing a lot on these boards. I'm not criticising here, just offering something to consider. Paraphrasing a comment above; if the players didnt like it, they dont have to be there. And it does sound like the OPs DM is worth dealing with to some degree because they can spin a good yarn and thats worth something.

 

[Lindeloef]

[MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION]
well said. Couldn't have said it better.

I would give you xp, but have to spread around. Can someone cover for me?

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION]
well said. Couldn't have said it better.

I would give you xp, but have to spread around. Can someone cover for me?

I covered ya

[MENTION=5143]Majoru Oakheart[/MENTION] I realize I provided criticism without solutions above, so here are how I probably would respond to those mistakes:

#1/2: Ok, this combat is starting to drag, so the 150 radiant damage is in the spirit of speeding it up, not trying to persecute you guys I swear! Several of you in the line of the blast are blinded (until the start of your next turn); it should have killed you outright but the presence of the goddess' faithful PC shields you. The goddess' faithful PC notices that this was a desperate act of a weakened goddess and if she does it again it might kill her for good. Also the uncontrolled radiance creates shooting stars which began randomly falling across the battlefield. Uh, I'm a new DM, so experienced player what should their attack bonus be and how much damage should they do?

#2/3: Ok, it's obvious I goofed and you guys don't want your characters resurrected by the goddess. I should have told you when I inflicted the auto-death damage that you'd automatically get resurrected at the end of the fight. Maybe that wouldn't make it any better for you? I don't know. How do you think we should resolve this? Let your characters stay dead? Run a scene where the rest of the party contacts you with Speak with Dead and convinces you that you are valued and should come back to the land of the living?

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

1. I'm a big believer in the "Golden Box". The DM has control over everything else in the game. Everything. The only thing in the game that I, as a player, have is my character. That's it. It's not totally unreasonable to get angry when DM's forget that and run roughshod over the player's wishes. If the player doesn't want his character to come back, that should be the end of the conversation.

I suppose. But then again, there are a lot of things that happen to your character that you don't have control over. You can't tell the DM "Sorry, I don't want to take that 20 points of damage from that club, it's my character and I get to decide what happens to him/her."

I think, in the end, you only have control of your character's REACTION to the things that happen to them. Being brought to life might be considered a hostile effect if you don't want it, but I certainly think it's within the rights of the DM to inflict it.

Though, I suppose like most effects in a game, there should be a reasonable chance to avoid it. Maybe a roll to resist it or something.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

This is just a massive case of playstyle wires getting crossed, with a healthy mix of bad GM-ing ---- but when it comes down to it, it's ultimately the GM's right to break the rules. It's his or her table. If the players aren't okay with it, it's their right to participate or not, as they choose. That's the thing, NOBODY forces us to play in a group. We're there of our own volition. If the players don't like the GM breaking the rules on a whim, they either have to deal with it, or not play, or convince the GM to change. It's pretty much black and white here.

Yeah, I agree. I was pretty good with "Oh well, there was some complaining at the end of the game, but no big deal. We finished the game and we had fun. At least some of us did. Jim didn't like it, but I guess that's his problem."

I was good with it until Jim started going on about how our DM ruined the game and how nobody at all had fun. I tried to point out that the other 3 of us and the DM seemed to have a great time. Even the other guy who died was complaining more because he likes to complain that because he was actually angry about the situation. In the end while he was leaving, he made it sound like he still had a good time despite that. He was just a little annoyed that his GOD killed him. But he was kind of joking about it.

Jim said that there was no way anyone else was having any fun. And it didn't matter if they did. We shouldn't be having fun in a way that makes him miserable.

Personally, I'd never have played a campaign with "Jim" to begin with, though I do feel a sense of sympathy for his situation. It's a classic "geek fallacy" going on--"We feel bad for the guy ruining our fun, but have to keep letting him ruin our fun, because we're being uncharitable otherwise, and we can't be like those mean people that didn't accept us in high school / junior high / freshman year of college."

Yeah. I know it's a fallacy. However, I can't bring myself to just drop him. When I was a lot younger I did something really stupid and my entire D&D group of friends not only dropped my from their D&D group but dropped me as a friend. Jim forgave me and continued being my friend. I kind of felt I've owed him one since then.

Plus, it doesn't hurt that I moved to Australia for a year. Before I left, we had pretty much spent every weekend together doing something. When I got back I asked Jim what he'd been up to. Apparently he got an apartment that was super small and lived there. He played board games with some of our mutual friends once or twice and went to one movie. Otherwise, the rest of the time was spent in his apartment without going anywhere or doing anything.

I couldn't help but feel responsible. Without me around to bring him out of his shell and get him to be social, he did absolutely nothing.

 

[pemerton]

should never have stats. Anytime someone wants to see the stats for a god in a monster manual, I think to myself "Why?" The only reason you need stats for a god is if somehow you expect that characters are going to interact with that god through the game's combat mechanics.

And call me crazy, but the whole point of a "god" is that they exist outside, or beyond the reality of the game world. In my mind, I'd never contrive a situation in which PCs can realistically "fight" a god in battle. What, really? You're going to assess a god a penalty for stepping out of his 1" threatened square? To me, this mindset is one of the worst side effects of the "PC entitlement" thing. If it exists in the game world, it HAS to have stats, dangit!

Whereas I think it is pretty core to D&D's genre that the PCs (who are superheroes and archmages in classic D&D, and demigods and the like in 4e) can confront the gods and potentially kill them.

As far as 4e is concerned, the easiest way to avoid that sort of stuff is simply not to play at Epic tier.