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

[5ekyu]

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.

Lan-"I think I'm in a minority of one on this, but for some reason I've always despised 'animal companions' for Druids and Rangers - familiars for casters are bad enough"-efan

Just like if you want heavy armor you get the problems associated with it as well as its AC. You want two handed weapons for damage, you dont use shield. You want fireball for aoe dmg, it's not the best choice inside some places.

DnD is full of cases where you make a choice, you get a mixed bag of plusses and minuses and then you do what you can.

Guess we should in some eyes have problem proof mounts, armor with no drawbacks, summoned companions that nobody reacts to and fireballs that only affect does, not friendlies or papers on desks we want...

Sounds oddly like a great many video games.

If that's someone's style that's great.

But it's not the premise dnd 5e was built on.

And it's ok for a gm to want to run a game that way without getting his decency questioned.

 

[Fleetwood C. DeVille]

Which I'm fine with. If you guys want to agree that the patron is a potato, then the patron is a potato. He might keep an eye on you, but he's doing little else.

I see what you did there.

 

[pemerton]

This assumes the player can be counted on to do this in good faith, and produce requirements that might actually constrain the character now and then and-or force difficult choices upon it...in other words, requirements that represent a drawback suitable to counterbalance the powers given, which is what the RAW intends I think.

Not everyone has such players. If everyone did, there'd be no need for so many rules.

There's just a huge gulf here that my imagination can hardly bridge. Maybe more than one.

(1) Clerics and warlocks aren't balanced against the risk that the GM will tell the player what to do. How would that balancing even work?

(2) The rules of the game aren't a break on bad faith, in D&D or other RPGs any more than in chess or backgammon. The rules are a framework for mediating the creation, over time and in the course of play, of a shared fiction.

(3) As far as "good faith" players are concerned - who plays with non-good-faith players? Do the people you play with cheat at cards too? Steal candy from babies when they get the chance? I don't get it.

(4) If players can't be relied upon to play in good faith, why would GMs be any different?

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.

The trend I see is that some people don't like railroading GMs and others don't mind it, or even advocate for it.

If a player says "I'm not interested in story XYZ involving patron/oath/whatever ABC" and the GM nevertheless tries to make the game about that, what is that other than a railroad?

How is the game better if all the players who don't like railroading play wizards, fighters and thieves instead of clerics, paladins and warlocks? What is actually achieved by insisting that the GM is free to tell the latter set of players what they have to do with their PCs?

 

[5ekyu]

We clearly have very different ideas of dick moves. I wouldn’t want to be the dick keeping my friends from playing the game they want to play. But then, we’re also willing to rotate games a season at a time so if someone’s out for the summer, it’s no big deal, fall is coming. We don’t want anyone grudgingly participating just to keep the gang together.

With us we fo other things together too, being friends not just gaming acquaints. So, we are not limited to only doing the least common denominator that everyone agrees to. None of us ever as far as I know had the thought that the others had to only ever run the games we wanted. None of us every called the others dicks or questioned the decencies when we did different things for a while.

It's a very different social relationship from what it seems is being seen by some others here.

 

[Maxperson]

On the Enterprise.

I was a bit curious about this, so, I did a bit of Wikipedia diving. Of the first three seasons of Next Generation, there are 74 episodes. Of those 74 episodes, 14 actually feature the Enterprise as anything other than just a background set - either the ship is threatened directly, taken over by aliens, or is somehow central to the plot of the episode. So, 14 out of 74 stories would be affected by Backgrounding the Enterprise. That means that 80% of the stories could be told.

Your research is highly suspect. In the next generation 7 of the first 10 episodes involve a threat to the enterprise. You expect me to believe that 7 of the first 10 episodes involve a threat to the enterprise, but only 7 out of the next 64 do the same? I loved the series and I remember it being threatened a lot. The original series was no different.

1. Encounter at Farpoint: Q threats the ship and all of humanity. (counting this as 1 episode since it's 1 story, but technically it's 2)
2. The Naked Now: A disease threatens the ship with destruction.
3. Code of Honor: Ship not threatened or taken over.
4. The Last Outpost: Ship loses power and is threatened at the outpost.
5. Where No One Has Gone Before: Ship goes to the afterlife and is threatened by the spirits and strange happenings.
6. Lonely Among Us: Ship is taken over by the energy creature.
7. Justice: The alien light invades the ship, disables Data and threatens them.
8. The Battle: The Enterprise is involved with a battle against the Stargazer. It's not threatened or taken over, but it's more than backstory.
9. Hide and Q: No threat to the Enterprise.
10. Haven: No threat to the Enterprise.

 

[Kobold Boots]

Here's the thing, the warlock flavor text establishes that the player has input as to how that relationship will play out:
This right here implies that the player is establishing their expectations for play with the DM. That is not the DM dictating the terms of the pact and the patron to the player. That is most definitely space that suggests the possibility of "backgrounding" the pact. It seems like there would be a massive breach of the social contract if the DM reneged on that agreement of having it in the background.

That is language that manages the expectation that the player is not solely responsible for how the pact works. Whether it's interpreted your way or mine is largely dependent on the table and the people involved. In my games, the patron is important as it's the source of all the player's power. If the patron is benevolent then it may not impact the player much so long as the actions of the player align with the patron's needs. If the patron is evil, then you can expect the patron to be directly involved in how their power is used.

However, in my opinion, the wording suggests nothing other than the need to manage expectations to avoid arguments.

Thanks,
KB

 

[pemerton]

Companions have widely divergent strengths and traits. Some are big, some are small, some are great at fighting, some are not Vut they are not conjured spirits but actual animals and do they come the basic realities associated with the choice.

If the player chooses a trex or other big honking dinosaur it does not get to follow them into normal sized corridors if they go underground which is a DIRECT CONSEQUENCE of the ***choices*** the PC made.

What system are you talking about?

In 4e the animal companions clearly are intended to be balanced. Likewise in 3.5, as best I can tell - tougher animal companions can't be got until higher levels.

Even AD&D and 3E (original version) put a level cap on Animal Companion, based on HD, which in AD&D at least is a pretty good proxy for toughness even if not a perfect one.

If I'm playing a ranger in a predominantly urban campaign it seems like I'm already sucking a bit. A GM who insists that all the townsfolk try and kill my bear, or won't talk to me because they're scared of my bear, or whatever, is just making me suck more! What happened to all the people who are intrigued by this guy with a tame bear? The real world is full of those sorts of people, so why not the gameworld?

Background as its been described doesn't have anything to do with spotlight time or negation of drawbacks. It's about not using an element as a driver for play. The player is signaling "I'm including something that might look like a plot hook. Please don't use it; I don't want to bother with this. It exists because I thought it appropriate, but exploring it is not interesting to me." So the PC might have a spouse and child "somewhere" (like Winger in Glen Cook's Garrett series), but the player doesn't want them to appear, whether threatened, in need, or angry at abandonment.

Right.

I don't use this "Background" system - I've never encountered it as a formal device until [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] mentioned it in this thread. As I've been discussing with [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION], there is some stuff that is implicitly not to be understood as up for grabs as subject matter of play; but at my table this is all established through informal cues, not via a formal device.

But the idea that if the GM can't put pressure on the player of the warlock by having the patron boss the PC around then the player is getting a free ride is absolutely bizarre to me! Do those who think this not have any other ways they can imagine putting pressure on a warlock PC? What do they do when their players decide to play sorcerers instead?

If you guys want to agree that the patron is a potato

And this is an instance of exactly what I mean. Is it really not possible for someone to play a warlock in your game without you treating that as an invitation to take radical control of that PC's story focus/direction? And as an invitation for the PC to be hosed in some fashion by a GM-controlled patron?

I mean, suppose the PCs meet at a tavern and get given quest X. Why can't the player decide My patron has sent me a vision that I should pursue X? Now the PC is serving the patron's will, but the player is not being told by the GM what his/he PC has to do.

Perhaps, where the PCs are the story drivers, like at Pemerton's table, the players might be encouraged to push those drawbacks to the foreground as part of their drivers otherwise they might not have an interesting game or story to tell and it risks falling flat.

I expect my players to signal, either explicitly (in some systems or if I call for it) or implicitly, what they think is at stake for their PCs. Having done that, why would I waste everyone's time on something else?

Eg a player establishes as the "kicker" for his Veiled Alliance PC in Dark Sun As I was about to meet my contact at the arena, he suddenly collapsed in front of me, dead! Well, then, I'm going to have something happen in response to that - why would I instead suddenly have a messenger turn up letting the PC know about a robbery at home?

The "Background" technique sounds like a weaker version of this - rather than signalling what the player wants, and thereby establishing a tight focus, it signals what the player doesn't want, thereby ensuring that at least the focus won't be on that. I'm absolutely astounded that it's such a big deal for so many posters. In terms of the thread topic, I could not play in a game where the GM regards the role of the players in contributing game focus as so unimportant.

 

[pemerton]

And it's ok for a gm to want to run a game that way without getting his decency questioned.

This thread is about "flaws that have/would cause(d) you to leave a game".

I think it's on topic for someone to say that a certain GMing approach has caused him/her to leave a game, or would do so if s/he encountered it.

 

[5ekyu]

Your research is highly suspect. In the next generation 7 of the first 10 episodes involve a threat to the enterprise. You expect me to believe that 7 of the first 10 episodes involve a threat to the enterprise, but only 7 out of the next 64 do the same? I loved the series and I remember it being threatened a lot. The original series was no different.

1. Encounter at Farpoint: Q threats the ship and all of humanity. (counting this as 1 episode since it's 1 story, but technically it's 2)
2. The Naked Now: A disease threatens the ship with destruction.
3. Code of Honor: Ship not threatened or taken over.
4. The Last Outpost: Ship loses power and is threatened at the outpost.
5. Where No One Has Gone Before: Ship goes to the afterlife and is threatened by the spirits and strange happenings.
6. Lonely Among Us: Ship is taken over by the energy creature.
7. Justice: The alien light invades the ship, disables Data and threatens them.
8. The Battle: The Enterprise is involved with a battle against the Stargazer. It's not threatened or taken over, but it's more than backstory.
9. Hide and Q: No threat to the Enterprise.
10. Haven: No threat to the Enterprise.

Waiting to see how his Gilligan research proves how rare it was Gilligan ever screwed up their escape plsns.

 

[Kobold Boots]

I don't know if I'm following this.

Your (2) is (if I'm understanding) the point that the PC will be a locus of protagonism because that's how a RPG works. OK.

Then (again, if I'm understanding) you're saying that, in the fiction, this makes the PC a "favoured" warlock/worshipper. The sort who will be asked to take on a task. And all this has to be managed by the GM.

Given that (2) is a necessary consequence of turning up to play a warlock or cleric in a RPG, you're saying that it's inherent in those classes that the GM has to decide how the PC is instructed/directed by the patron.

Why?

Using your example only as an answer to why

Because you may want to play a game where a prophecy flavors the game you play; but other players may not, or the DM may not have enough bandwidth to spend the time on the prophecy to make you happy. You are not playing in a vacuum.

On a personal note:

I'm very big on player determination of the kind of character they want to play and how they want to play it. I'm also very big on having final say on all NPC and patron motivations and where the plot goes if it's directed by NPCs or patrons. The reason for that is that I have to craft a situation where all players get their moments in the sun and regardless of how awesome all the folks are at the table and how much they all want to help each other have a good time - Players who come to table with cool ideas very rarely if ever create those ideas in a group setting with all the other players and patrons are essentially gods.

If there's such a thing as Player initiated railroading, patron relationships enable it if the DM isn't careful. We all agree that no one likes DM railroading. I'd expand that statement to be that no one likes anyone at the table when they do it.

Be well
KB