Cleric of Gruumsh in a party with an Elf

[Oofta]

We each bring our conceptions on that topic to D&D. Yours are fine, for your table. Others may have very different starting points. Ed Greenwood, for example, wrote some stories in which gods change, and a mortal may well remember the days back before Kelemvor seized the portfolio of death from Cyric in the Year of the Banner (1368 DR).

Which is true, and I fully support. I also fully accept and understand that I may not be the DM for everyone. I don't allow evil characters, I view orcs as monsters not as human's with bad dental work, Gruumsh is evil, etc.

If it wasn't clear, what I was objecting to was the holier than thou attitude and that how I run my games is somehow wrong because I view Gruumsh as an evil god who who should not provide power to someone who is not fully supporting the way of the orc. Apparently all DMs everywhere should let the players dictate what the gods are and how they'll react to someone not fully supporting their chosen people.

you are putting your own needs above your players and quite frankly that's a great way to LOSE those players when they realize you are unbending and unable to compromise and thus probably won't be a fun DM to play with because of some lame "My way or the highway" attitude.

So obviously I'm just not a fun DM to play with because I have decided on a cosmology where evil gods are, well, evil. I'll have to tell my players that sometime, that they've mistakenly let me DM for years. They'll be quite disappointed.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Which is true, and I fully support. I also fully accept and understand that I may not be the DM for everyone. I don't allow evil characters, I view orcs as monsters not as human's with bad dental work, Gruumsh is evil, etc.

If it wasn't clear, what I was objecting to was the holier than thou attitude and that how I run my games is somehow wrong because I view Gruumsh as an evil god who who should not provide power to someone who is not fully supporting the way of the orc. Apparently all DMs everywhere should let the players dictate what the gods are and how they'll react to someone not fully supporting their chosen people.



So obviously I'm just not a fun DM to play with because I have decided on a cosmology where evil gods are, well, evil. I'll have to tell my players that sometime, that they've mistakenly let me DM for years. They'll be quite disappointed.

I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with you running your game that way. Especially since it sounds like your players are all on board with it.

But in this thread, people were offering advice on someone else’s game. And their advice is just as valid as yours. I don’t think anyone’s saying your game is wrong so much as they’re saying it’s okay for a DM to do things differently than you.

 

[Oofta]

I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with you running your game that way. Especially since it sounds like your players are all on board with it.

But in this thread, people were offering advice on someone else’s game. And their advice is just as valid as yours. I don’t think anyone’s saying your game is wrong so much as they’re saying it’s okay for a DM to do things differently than you.

And I'm just objecting to being told that i or anyone else is a bad DM if they say "no" now and then if a character concept doesn't make sense for the campaign.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Which is true, and I fully support. I also fully accept and understand that I may not be the DM for everyone. I don't allow evil characters, I view orcs as monsters not as human's with bad dental work, Gruumsh is evil, etc.

If it wasn't clear, what I was objecting to was the holier than thou attitude and that how I run my games is somehow wrong because I view Gruumsh as an evil god who who should not provide power to someone who is not fully supporting the way of the orc. Apparently all DMs everywhere should let the players dictate what the gods are and how they'll react to someone not fully supporting their chosen people.

I don't give a rat's ass what you do at your table, you can rule things however you want. But I will say that any attempt by you or anyone else to state categorically that "Gruumsh is X!" for the game in general is entirely missing the point. Gruumsh CAN be X. It can also be Y. Or Z. And if a DM ALLOWS a player to play it as Z but then wants to screw the player over after the fact for that decision, then they're being a jerk.

Now, you think Gruumsh is X and there's no bending on that. Fine. Do whatever you want. And if you find players that go along with that, then great. But if you had a player coming into your game and saying "Hey can I play Gruumsh as Y?" and you said "Okay" but then changed your mind later and tried to find ways to punish the player on your own whim without actually working with the player you initially agreed to... then yeah, I'd call you out on that. But you AREN'T doing that, so I'm not actually talking about you.

So obviously I'm just not a fun DM to play with because I have decided on a cosmology where evil gods are, well, evil. I'll have to tell my players that sometime, that they've mistakenly let me DM for years. They'll be quite disappointed.

If you have players who buy in to your game, then great. Doesn't bother or matter to me a bit. Good on your for finding players who go along with your setting. But just because you found that doesn't mean it's going to work for everybody, and if someone comes here onto the boards asking us a question about their siutation... YOUR solution isn't the end all and be all, and quite possibly won't work for anyone else. And there's no harm or foul in pointing that out.

 

[Oofta]

I don't give a rat's ass what you do at your table, you can rule things however you want. But I will say that any attempt by you or anyone else to state categorically that "Gruumsh is X!" for the game in general is entirely missing the point. Gruumsh CAN be X. It can also be Y. Or Z. And if a DM ALLOWS a player to play it as Z but then wants to screw the player over after the fact for that decision, then they're being a jerk.

Now, you think Gruumsh is X and there's no bending on that. Fine. Do whatever you want. And if you find players that go along with that, then great. But if you had a player coming into your game and saying "Hey can I play Gruumsh as Y?" and you said "Okay" but then changed your mind later and tried to find ways to punish the player on your own whim without actually working with the player you initially agreed to... then yeah, I'd call you out on that. But you AREN'T doing that, so I'm not actually talking about you.



If you have players who buy in to your game, then great. Doesn't bother or matter to me a bit. Good on your for finding players who go along with your setting. But just because you found that doesn't mean it's going to work for everybody, and if someone comes here onto the boards asking us a question about their siutation... YOUR solution isn't the end all and be all, and quite possibly won't work for anyone else. And there's no harm or foul in pointing that out.

Since you don't care, why tell people they're bad DMs if they don't follow your one true path?

The OP had a question on how to deal with an issue, I gave one answer based on my understanding of the issue. I never said that if you don't follow my advice that you should expect to lose players who don't want to put up with your dictatorial rule. In all my years of DMing (it's been a lot, with too many moves to different states and too many new groups) I think I've had exactly 1 person who quit because I was "too strict"* when I told him he could not play an evil character.

*Unless you count the guy who wanted to play a half-dragon half-vampire then I guess it would be 2.

 

[DEFCON 1]

You responded to my response to Maxperson. So it should not be surprising that my response had nothing to do with you and how you run your game.

And of course there's the irony that my "one true path" is to not have one true path.

 

[Eltab]

OP:

What do your players think of having an Elf and a Cleric of Gruumsh in the same party?
What do the two players in question think of the situation?

 

[Riley37]

Another thought is drawn from IRL: in 1945, France and Germany had a 300-year history of going after each other hammer-and-tongs once per generation. After 1945, both nations found something more important to do (rebuild after WW2) and a more threatening enemy (USSR) so they were willing to work together.

I remember a fantasy story, which first established how deeply elves and dwarves distrusted each other, and had for generations, due to an argument over magic rings; and having established that tension, then the story introduced an external threat, so horrible, so much worse than tensions between elves and dwarves, that they formed an alliance with each other, and held a Battle of Five Armies. I think it was an animated movie by Ralph Bakshi in the 1970s.

Bakshi started, but never finished, a follow-up movie, set in the following generation, in which an elf warrior and a dwarf warrior are in the same party, and become rivals, then friends. Eventually the dwarf warrior meets some elf queen, and makes such a good impression, that she grants his request for a strand of her hair - even though she had, long ago, denied a similar request from someone else. The dwarf and the elf still argue over whether caves or forests are more beautiful, but they agree to disagree.

Would that have been a better story, if Moradin gave the dwarf warrior some dreams about cutting off the elf's pointy ears?

 

[Riley37]

Would that have been a better story, if Moradin gave the dwarf warrior some dreams about cutting off the elf's pointy ears?

Actually, in a line of thought influenced by DEFCON1, there's a significant difference between 1 and 2:

(1) DM: You made camp, you all slept well, you can refresh your Long Rest ability. By the way, Gimli, you wake up from a dream about cutting off Legolas's ears and making them into a necklace. You have breakfast, and hit the road. After you travel five miles, suddenly bandits attack, everyone roll initiative.

(2) DM: You made camp, you all slept well, you can refresh your Long Rest abilities. As soon as you finish breakfast, you can hit the road, so give me a marching order. Does anyone wanna add anything before we get to that point?
READY PLAYER TWO (Gimli): Yeah. How about this: I wake up from a dream about cutting off Legolas's ears and making them into a necklace. I'm kinda disturbed by this, and I take Gandalf aside to discuss it with him, while he and I are making breakfast for everyone.

 

[pemerton]

You view a cleric of Gruumsh in a party with an elf as a shades-of-grey, I see it as a player choosing to run a divisive character that should lead to the breakdown of the party if people truly RP their characters and if I use alignments and deities as presented by the rules.

Maybe I missed it in the OP, but why is it not the player of the elf who has, in this context, made a divisive character?