D&D 3E/3.5 Thoughts of a 3E/4E powergamer on starting to play 5E

[thecasualoblivion]

Sure. Can you connect me with the guy you didn't like so I can get his version and post it here?

"Yeah, he pretty much got it right. He was an amazing player, and my plans were terrible, so the reason that group imploded was 100% my fault."

Will the version of the other players and the DM suffice?

 

[Guest 6801328]

Will the version of the other players and the DM suffice?

If by "the other players" you mean the troublemaker's two allies, or the two wallflowers, sure. In fact I bet the two wallflowers might have the most objective analysis.

EDIT: I'm not doubting that this guy had ridiculous plans; I've seen players for whom "so crazy it just might work" is part of the fun of a make-believe game. I'm just skeptical that it's the whole story. That everybody else at the table...not naming names here...was tolerant and supportive and did everything they could to make it an inclusive, enjoyable experience for all.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

If by "the other players" you mean the troublemaker's two allies, or the two wallflowers, sure. In fact I bet the two wallflowers might have the most objective analysis.

EDIT: I'm not doubting that this guy had ridiculous plans; I've seen players for whom "so crazy it just might work" is part of the fun of a make-believe game. I'm just skeptical that it's the whole story. That everybody else at the table...not naming names here...was tolerant and supportive and did everything they could to make it an inclusive, enjoyable experience for all.

It might have had something to do with the ages involved. Most of the table was still in high school and the problem player was older. He was older than me at the time, 25-27 I believe. He was related to one of the wallflowers and had DMed for most of the table in the past, and had introduced many of them to the hobby. I was the second oldest, I think I hadn't turned 21 yet, but I was out of school and had a job. I didn't start buying alcohol for those guys until later, so I think I was still 20. Everyone else was in the 16-18 range, except the owner/DM who was well into his 30s.

The game up until he joined was a fairly generic beer and pretzels sort of game. We mostly just fought stuff, screwed up, got chased out of towns for being jerks, and occasionally completed quests(completion was uncommon). Him introducing crazy plans and those schemes failing wasn't that big of a change for us, to be honest, other than putting us in more danger.

The wallflowers had enough pretty early on, they just weren't the sort who would do anything about it. One of them, the one who was his nephew or cousin in fact, used to tell me both in and out of game everything he was planning and keeping secret, supposedly in confidence. He never took a public stand or did anything beyond that. His two minions really didn't abandon him until the second campaign went down in flames. We basically had a party meeting, in character, with everybody present except him and decided his character was going to get us killed and we were going to slit his throat and leave him in the woods. People were really sick of it that point and we decided doing it in game would send the right message. This was after the DM, at the table, basically flat out said he wasn't going to stop me if my character killed him where he stood(In the previous game the DM said he would stop me if I tried that). Things had gotten that bad. We never really got the chance as the game just sort of evaporated, mostly because the DM was just burned out at that point.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Unthread a bit I wrote about the three components of GMing that I evaluate when I'm considering a system:

Instruction
Latitude
Overhead

What is being talked about here is latitude. An interesting thing happens with some people when it comes to D&D. There is this idea that absolute, or nearly so, latitude for the GM is orthodox or a virtue. Any constraint then becomes pejorative, cast as "player entitlement".

Interesting. I like the breakdown (though I wonder if there might be other axes to consider too?), and yeah, it covers that side of the argument nicely. Absolute latitude given to the GM is seen as almost a sacred and inalienable right, to be encouraged to the exclusion of all other factors. I, of course, fundamentally disagree, and feel that moderating the other two categories (giving good, reliable instruction and controlling overhead where possible) is well worth the occasional compromise in latitude.

Following from that is, presumably, that only a heavily GM-driven game is (a) orthodox D&D, (b) your best (only?) shot at having a good game, and (c) that No Real Scotsman GM wants their latitude challenged by system-imposed constraints (regardless of the relationship to overhead).

Yeah, I definitely see shades of this in a lot of stuff. Threads about "what would you ban" almost always show a sharp (and, as I said before, almost "gleeful"-sounding) rejection of anything newer than early 3e, for example. And this...

Overall, I think 5E is a return to the role of the DM as originally envisioned. I think the major obstacle for players will be to learn to trust their DM to interpret things fairly. And the biggest challenge for the DM is to earn that trust by actually being fair, and to use the rules to help the players do what they want, rather than using them to tell the players why they can't do it.

...seems to pretty clearly demonstrate the "No True Scotsman DM" side, which is sad because I had hoped that that was more hyperbole than fact.

So here's a question I'm asking due to being a bit new to the whole 5E scene:

Some system-imposed constraints for 3E and 4E were alluded to in the books, but greatly magnified by the cultures of the games among players to the point where it was that culture that restrained DMs more than the books. For 3E the books seemed to encourage playing RAW, but the overall culture of 3E players demanded it more than the books did. For 4E the books encouraged the DM to allow all player options with the mantra "Everything Is Core", but for most of the 4E community of players, a DM trying to restrict or disallow anything was met with outright hostility.

Is there anything like this for 5E? I'm not really familiar with 5E culture yet.

I dunno about you, but I never saw anything like "outright hostility" to a DM choosing to curate options in 4e. There was an expectation that any such choices would make sense by some rubric or other, sure, but that's a far cry from what you describe. Purely "arbitrary" removal of options, e.g. "I don't like dragonborn, so you can't play them for any reason" would probably not go over well, but "This is a world where dragons are feral, monstrous beings, devoid of any of the nobility, intelligence, and magic they would have in a normal D&D world--so the dragonborn never existed in the first place" sounds perfectly cromulent to me.

As for 5e, it seems to me to be exactly the inverse of what you speak of: DMs outrightly, outspokenly, and (so it seems to me) gleefully scorning player interest in anything outside the Enshrined Traditional Milieu. In reading posts here on ENWorld, there seems to be a consistent attitude of aversion to any form of thematic "novelty" (for lack of a better word). The "Exotic Races" thread was a solid demonstration of it. As I said there, "We're assuming every fantasy world is perfectly cookie-cutter, UNLESS the DM decides to go kuh-raaaaaay-zee and fly straight off the rails with...GNOMES! [...] We have the freedom to create ANY world we imagine--so of course every world we imagine is exactly the gorram same. How stultifyingly dull our hobby becomes! So much for awesome ideas like Iomandra!"

Play what you like. But 5E is the biggest tent ever.

Given the direct hostility to my own tastes, and being told, "Sorry, the stuff you like clearly failed, if you don't like it--hard cheese!"...it's very, very hard for me to consider 5e a "big tent."

I agree that "fails to overtly cater to every individual preference" doesn't prevent a thing from being "big tent." But people saying, and I quote (emphasis added):

Dragonborn and Gnomes are less important to the game than Elves and Dwarves. That is by design. Be happy that you have rules for them at all.

That? That is *not* "biggest tent ever" attitudes. That's not even "moderately large tent that can try to accommodate." That's, "I am altering the deal, pray I don’t alter it any further."

 

[Rhenny]

It might have had something to do with the ages involved. Most of the table was still in high school and the problem player was older. He was older than me at the time, 25-27 I believe. He was related to one of the wallflowers and had DMed for most of the table in the past, and had introduced many of them to the hobby. I was the second oldest, I think I hadn't turned 21 yet, but I was out of school and had a job. I didn't start buying alcohol for those guys until later, so I think I was still 20. Everyone else was in the 16-18 range, except the owner/DM who was well into his 30s.

The game up until he joined was a fairly generic beer and pretzels sort of game. We mostly just fought stuff, screwed up, got chased out of towns for being jerks, and occasionally completed quests(completion was uncommon). Him introducing crazy plans and those schemes failing wasn't that big of a change for us, to be honest, other than putting us in more danger.

The wallflowers had enough pretty early on, they just weren't the sort who would do anything about it. One of them, the one who was his nephew or cousin in fact, used to tell me both in and out of game everything he was planning and keeping secret, supposedly in confidence. He never took a public stand or did anything beyond that. His two minions really didn't abandon him until the second campaign went down in flames. We basically had a party meeting, in character, with everybody present except him and decided his character was going to get us killed and we were going to slit his throat and leave him in the woods. People were really sick of it that point and we decided doing it in game would send the right message. This was after the DM, at the table, basically flat out said he wasn't going to stop me if my character killed him where he stood(In the previous game the DM said he would stop me if I tried that). Things had gotten that bad. We never really got the chance as the game just sort of evaporated, mostly because the DM was just burned out at that point.

This reminds me of the campaign I was in when I was in high school (so long ago...1e). We were running a 2 year campaign with evil characters. Everything was going well for such a long time mostly because we were paranoid about everything. We had good creatures to deal with and evil creatures to deal with. In fact, we were more frightened of the evil creatures, which we knew wanted to manipulate and dominate us. Eventually, the party split into two factions and then we turned on each other. I don't even remember how it all ended, but we were going to college and the DM at the time had a theory that some of the players who caused most of the controversy were taking out their repressed anger on him. There is a lot of psychology involved with a group of gamers who have been together for a long time (especially when they are in their adolescent years and growing).

At least with AL, you won't have that kind of built up baggage. lol

 

[hawkeyefan]

Yeah, I definitely see shades of this in a lot of stuff. Threads about "what would you ban" almost always show a sharp (and, as I said before, almost "gleeful"-sounding) rejection of anything newer than early 3e, for example. And this...
...seems to pretty clearly demonstrate the "No True Scotsman DM" side, which is sad because I had hoped that that was more hyperbole than fact.

Dude, you clearly missed the point of my post. I was saying that in 5E there is no need to ban anything and the DM should earn the players trust by learning how to let them do what they want.

I don't know where you got the "no true Scotsman" vibe from what I said. I wasn't really criticizing the way anyone chooses to DM the game. I was commenting on how each edition frames the role of the DM, and how I find 5E to be more similar to 2E and earlier. If you think my take on things is incorrect, that's cool...but why not point out why and discuss it rather than snip a small section, frame it as some kind of negative judgment on anyone, and ignore the rest.

And if you're going to dismiss someone for making such broad generalizations, then you shouldn't proceed to make one yourself a few sentences later.

 

[Rhenny]

Dude, you clearly missed the point of my post. I was saying that in 5E there is no need to ban anything and the DM should earn the players trust by learning how to let them do what they want.

I don't know where you got the "no true Scotsman" vibe from what I said. I wasn't really criticizing the way anyone chooses to DM the game. I was commenting on how each edition frames the role of the DM, and how I find 5E to be more similar to 2E and earlier. If you think my take on things is incorrect, that's cool...but why not point out why and discuss it rather than snip a small section, frame it as some kind of negative judgment on anyone, and ignore the rest.

And if you're going to dismiss someone for making such broad generalizations, then you shouldn't proceed to make one yourself a few sentences later.

I agree with you hawkeyefan. With 5e, (bounded accuracy and the way the feats/powers/spells work) many of the actions that people once might have thought were op or cheesy, don't tend to stick out as much in play. I see no reason to ban anything at my table, in fact, I just picked up 5th Edition Feats by Total Party Kill (3rd party) on Fantasy Grounds, and I'm thinking about letting players use those as well. I'm not seeing any one specific element (or even some combinations) as ruining my games and I encourage players to do whatever they want and sometimes I revel in their successes.

 

[Ancalagon]

We basically had a party meeting, in character, with everybody present except him and decided his character was going to get us killed and we were going to slit his throat and leave him in the woods. People were really sick of it that point and we decided doing it in game would send the right message. This was after the DM, at the table, basically flat out said he wasn't going to stop me if my character killed him where he stood(In the previous game the DM said he would stop me if I tried that). Things had gotten that bad. We never really got the chance as the game just sort of evaporated, mostly because the DM was just burned out at that point.

Erm... as opposed to just, in game, when he came with a plan everyone else saying "that plan is terrible, no"? The more you talk about this group, the more terrible it sounds.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Erm... as opposed to just, in game, when he came with a plan everyone else saying "that plan is terrible, no"? The more you talk about this group, the more terrible it sounds.

Yeah, the part where he got to using PvP to solve differences in play style is where I started really wondering what the other side of the story is. And if the DM gave nudge-nudge-wink-wink approval to that....

I just don't want to be in a tent THAT big.

 

[Ancalagon]

There is an example of a problem that's less solvable, but it's an old one I haven't really encountered since my 2E days. Instead of looking at combat vs social, think of direct combat vs AD&D-style bizarre complex planning for indirect dealing with foes. As I've said, I haven't really seen this sort of thing at the table since my 2E days, since none of the players who started with 3E or 4E seemed inclined to try those sort of things, and the old timers I've gamed with tended to adapt to newer systems instead of doing the same old thing.

The scenario goes like this:

1. The party sees foes in the distance, who aren't aware of the party
2. Several players start discussing some bizarre, complicated plan to defeat the foes indirectly or bypass them
3. Another player decides that plan is boring or stupid, jumps up and down and yells "hey monsters, we're over here!"
4. Initiative is rolled

While I won't deny ever having been the guy in step 3, in my defense I've seen other people do it as well.

So - we've established that this occured because of a terrible table dynamic - a group that really wasn't functioning properly at all. I'm not saying it was *your* fault, but you have to agree that this group just wasn't... healthy. And I don't think this has *anything* to do with the system you were playing in, and *everything* to do with the people at the table.

What I'm getting at here is that now that we've found the root cause of the problem... is there still a point to this story? Is there another lesson than "don't let this happen"?