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

[pemerton]

that makes the definition of a bad DM, "Does something that someone else won't like.", which leaves quite literally all DMs as bad DMs. Not a very useful definition of "bad DM".

Do you have a better one then?

Yes. Abuses of DM power. Railroading.

I don't think your "definition" helps. I regard nearly every GM technique you articulate on these boards as a recipe for railroading and abuse of power. You obviously disagree.

These are evaluative judgements. You don't avoid that feature - and hence the fact that consensus is as unikely in this domain as in any other field of aesthetic judgement - by changing the terminology from "bad" to "abusive" or "preventing meaningful player choice aka railroading".

 

[Shasarak]

So one monster saves them from another monster.

They still have a monster to deal with...

Dont forget that one of those monsters has a pet Tiger following them around.

So exactly how salty is the NPC Barkeep going to get, really?

 

[pemerton]

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.

I think my views are similar but not identical. I think some parts of a character are foundational colour for that character and/or the way the character engages with the gameworld, and typically aren't put at stake in the actual play of the game. An example is in my Prince Valiant game - the premise of that system, and hence my game, is that at least some if not all of the PCs will be valiant knights. Now I'm a political and social philosopher, and one of the players is an international relations scholar, and the other three while not academics are reasonably politically and socially conscious and engaged. So of course wry comments and even jokes about mediaeval class structures and hierarchies come up; and there are even situations in the game involving Robin Hood-type bandits and rebellious peasants that reinforce this.

But there is a limit to how far this can go within the context of playing the game. The PCs may well join with the Robin Hood-types to oust or reveal the corruption of an evil noble. But it's simply beyond the scope of the game for the PCs to show that King Arthur himself is a manifesttion of an evil social order that needs to be radically transformed. In that sense, the legitimacy of individual noble virtue and legitimacy is "backgrounded".

I'll add: there are mediaeval/fantasy RPGs for which what I've just said needn't be true: Burning Wheel is an example. I'm deliberately choosing Prince Valiant as my case study in the previous paragraph. And for what it's worth, I think that D&D is far closer to Prince Valiant than Burning Wheel in this respect, and that D&D would have to be drifted very radically to be capable of raising and addressing the sorts of social and political questions that BW might be able to: both the mechanics of D&D (not only classes but also, at least, character advancement) and its fiction (not only of classes but also most of the tropes around monsters and treasures).

To give a different and maybe more banal example: in a Marvel Heroic RP game Captain America's shield, the Punisher's Battle Van, Dr Strange's connection to arcane forces and dimensions - more generally, all these character-defining aspects of colour and backstory - are largely if not totally "backgrounded".

And to put the same point in positive terms: I think nearly every RPG puts some aspects but not all aspects of a character into play. Some of this is about the individual table - which I think is how [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] is seeing it - but some of this, in my view, is also about system. Of course if one doesn't want the system to put a limit on what is, or might be, at stake then that would be a reason to avoid eg Prince Valiant and play eg Burning Wheel. Or to make what I think is the same point slightly differently, I think there is a meaningful distinction between light and heavy systems where I'm not talking about mechanical weight but thematic/emotional weight. Burning Wheel has the potential to be, and I think in play almost certainly is going to be, more demanding in these respects than either Prince Valiant or Marvel Heroic RP.

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.

This I fully agree with: both the observation that there is an "undercurrent of suspicion" with respect to "entitled" or "problem" players; and your vision for the GM-player dynamic.

I don't think I need to add anything to it.

 

[5ekyu]

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.

At the point this "backgrounding" works its way into the gameplay and the world design itself, it has gone into a place that i think many Gms would find troubling to allow as an expected acceptable practice.

its started as locking down "my family" but that includes their village and the family background now and who knows what other details - so invasion from that area which harmed the village and/or displaced the family - that is gone - even if another PC has invasion from the north as part of their story and the setting was established with "brink of war from the north" as a thematic element. of course, the other player can change their stuff and the Gm can toss all that other stuff but hey - they got lots of other options they can use and this one PC should not have to budge an inch.

Then it migrated into taking useful things but backgrounding their drawbacks - literally a bear or dino companion not getting much trouble when walking into town with you - i think they agreed maybe a few dirty looks but certainly not much more than that. guess the ranger who chose the dog because they wanted their choice to be more useful in town and not draw attention was a sucker.

Then it moved to creating, defining, scripting the reactions to etc your entire god, church and religion as a thing in the world.

The many myths and legends i grew up reading (that kids these days apparently do not get much if any of - gripe) and the DnD that i had that original Deities and Demogods with the elric and cthulu stuff in - many of those had the frictions between the gods and proxy feuds thru their "heroes" as ongoing and common themes in the fiction. The pantheons in many versions of DnD when settings were presented shaped the world.

And of all of this - the Gm saying "no" is an unbelievable how could you say no affront?

Sorry - but i am thinking back to the RPGs i played and how many of them started with "the pc can create even a god, church and worshippers and the GM should not or cannot say no" within their ruleset or expected play and that is a precious few at most.

Like i said, i am always willing to discuss and work with players about their backgrounds, backstories and what they hope to get out of the game, but i will draw the line at explicitly allowing a general rule for backgrounding to these magnitudes. i will also generally establish a baseline "no" for taking a class that is framed around these sorts of ties to NPCs as core elements and backgrounding those.

Now as for this...

"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? "

Well, IDK what iof the player chose a wizard for said dungeon crawl but did not like want the fuss over spell books? i mean who wants to have to work on protecting that book, right? in a prolonged dungeon crawl, i mean access to inks and stuff for spells and adding spells to books - that might be a hassle. Why should the wizard be forced into that - after all - the sorcerer and bard and warlocks who do not have the spellbook to contend with and its constant drain on resources and time - those classes do not have all the spell lists and the portent ability the diviner will get me? So why should the Gm *force* the wizard to deal with spellbooks if they do not want it? Can't the Gm find other ways to bore their players? oh, and by not worry about the spellbook, i dont mean disallowing the wizard to scribe extra spells into it when found - thats cool to remain in play - but the whole mess of other stuff i dont like - lets cull all that out, m'kay?

In a "traditional dungeon crawl" i will asume you are referring to a play style where there is a lot less focus on things like PC interaction, social interaction and a lot more on wandering into dangerous places, killing things and collecting loot - with the occasional "solve this" conundrum. (assumption but the term is a bit vague.) In that case, in that playstyle, practically all the characters would have "less" involvement with their backstories and all the history and social fluff. likely the merchants guild membership is not a factor - if anybody bothered to take that background at all for this known setting. In that plan for a campaign, it would be mostly *highly unusual* for folks families to suddenly be in the thick of things because that is not what the playstyle of this setting focuses on. Mostly, if your family were involved, it would likely be drawn in 8by* intentional aspects of your backstory - Lara Croft "dad is missing and we are following his old journal" style.

basically the difference is that in that environment by its pre-defined nature then *for everyone* those kinds of things get put much more into the backburner out of focus place. So, frankly, backgrounding is not needed to prevent your family from getting village invaded. (Tho the whole create your own god etc is still even there a tad step too far.)

Hoenstly, in such a game, backstories themselves typically fall into "less focus" and "less import" - in my experience.

**again - not a locked in rule and just based on what i think you meant by "traditional dungeon crawl" but left unspecified.

But move that broad lockdown rule for general use into a game with more emphasis on the social pillar, where churches and contacts etc matter more, where debts, boons, markers, factions, alliances and all that jazz plays a role - you got a much different level of impact to allowing such GM veto-proof creations.

All in all, whatever a table agrees to and plays with and enjoys is good and that should not make them bad people, dicks or all the other perjoratives being bandied about.

Similarly, its up to them, isn't it, to decide how important the pantheon of gods and how they interact plays in their campaign - not for me or you to say tracking this or that or not is "mountain-molehilling"?

if a Gm wants to play his game and his players agree to it so that one character gets his motorcycle worry-free protected to ride around in play but another character whose character is ultra-green has to see in game problems from not having a motorcycle because his "bike" was chosen to lower carbon footprint (even tho the Gm never planned on making PCs track their carbon footprint - and still wont) then thats fine too - just not a style i would prefer on either side - because of the inconsistency that the choice of vehicle created when one gets to be worry-free and the other still produces worries that are not core to the character.

Like i have said, my group's preferred playstyle is one where in-game problems are solved in-game (not the same as at table) not with meta-gamey erasers of consequences.

 

[5ekyu]

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.

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.

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.

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.

@Lanefan 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.

@Sadras 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.

on this and the following

"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"

and secondly this

"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."

While i wont bother with the "override/distort" character concept stuff - let me say this...

If i as a GM agreed that your family was noble and honest" and/or that they would be waiting with open loving arms at the end etc etc etc - whatever the level of stuff you want to add - **if i agreed to that as GM** then i would as Gm be obligated to honor that agreement and it would be an abuse of my GM trust to do so to you as a player.

However, let me be equally clear - you do not have the right to demand it be accepted. it would be an abuse of the player trust if you present this as a must be and jump to dick moves type sentiment if the Gm says no.

if either of these were presented to me i would ask a lot more detail and questions about it - to get a much better idea of how far it goes.

Are you really saying there are no blacksheep in your family?
Are you really saying none of your family has any hidden secrets?
Are you really saying your village has never been and never will be invaded?
Are you really saying there is zero chance that your family can be conned into something not so very noble whuile you are gone?
Are you really saying they wont be getting sick and ill enough that you need to help them or that they wont die of natural causes or accidents - or get serious hurt?

etc etc etc...

If it came down to that you were esentially wanting to add Village of the Pleasantville black-and-white Cleacers-on-main-street perfection into the full technicolor 70s grindhouse setting - i would likely say no - not yes - because it does not mesh with the campaign theme and tone - and if your character was built as "someone out of pleasantville" then doubly so.

The other question i would almost certainly ask is "Your character is part of your family so... you are planning on playing your character to that same noble and honest standard, right? After all, they are all noble and honest and loving and incorruptible and un-connable and they will be welcoming you home at the end so that *must mean* your character will be living up to that standard, right? They never break character or cross the line - so your character wont either, right?"

not that either "yes" or "no" from you on those is automatically "ok" or "not ok" but it has to be considered when looking at the family dynamic you are building to try to get inserted into my world.

i mean, its not like you would think "hey, my horse or motorcycle cannot be stolen in game" and then enter the game and decide in play "but i can sure go steal that other guys horse and motorcycle when it suits me.", right? Who would not be Ok with being told "others in the game can make the exact same choices you did to limit how others can interact with their stuff". right?

Summary - if the Gm agrees with the player on points going forward, they should feel and be obligated to honor that agreement. But the Gm should be allowed to get as much detail as they wish before agreeing *and* to not agree. the player expressing his desire for this to be the case is not sufficient to make it so. Obviously that agreement can be either case-by-case or more formalized rules.

In my current campaign, i offered early on the "you can invent a world/race" to my scif players in a traveller/space opera with certain restrictions and a promise to try and work it in understanding it may need tweaking. They are now on the cusp of encountering some of those. But it was done *by agreement* not by *insistence.*

Meanwhile - on another note - in discussions over supper today my players loved the warlock patron pitch i had for one Anya Dowd - Warlock - whose patron or patron emissary was a shifting white rabbit/rabbit-girl named Harley (not a typo of Harvey - Harley) who referred to her/its own boss as "Puddin'" and where 8one* of the ongoing requests and favors was "do not eat rabbits, do not kill rabbits and helps rabbits when you can "while we d not want to upset the balance of nature, we do want you to help out by putting your thumb on the scale in favor of rabbits when you can." Almost immediately one of my players chimed in with "hey that doesnt eat rabbits thing, that could get - noticed, right? Especially if Harley and Puddin' have more than one patron?" I nodded affirmative of course. i love my players - especially when they peg all the embedded cultural refs










.

 

[Aldarc]

The players right to background world elements outside of their character (which has been what the main jist of the argument for quite a few pages now) so that the DM can't touch them isn't cooperating it's forbidding the DM from touching something other than your character in the world. In what way is that cooperation unless by cooperation you mean a situation where on party is dictating the terms to another.

This backgrounding process is done in conjunction with the DM. It's negotiating the social contract of in-game play.

If I am playing a warlock and only want to explore my character's relationship with said patron in a manner where I decide what the patron is thinking, what the patron does, what the patron believes, where the patron ends up at the end of the campaign and so on... It's a one man show (story). The rest of the group may get to be spectators if I eat up enough time roleplaying with myself (which in and of itself can cause other issues to arise) but they, including the DM, are no longer part of that story in any meaningful way.

If I communicated this in my direct discussions with you, then you would potentially have a point here. But as I did not in my description and examples, your entire "one man theater" schtick comes across as a grossly inaccurate farce.

It's not about trusting your word. I trust that you believe what you are saying to be true but I also know that human perception and memories are inherently flawed. On top of that if you didn't ask the other players what they thought or felt about the roleplaying and impact of your character's faith how would you know what they really thought about it and to go a little deeper, if you all are friends would they tell you the truth if they didn't care for it or found it forgettable. So it's more that without multiple perspectives and input from the people who were there I take it as exactly what it is a single perspective from a player who probably has some bias since it's his character and roleplaying we are scrutinizing.

This presumption does not strike me as a healthy or conducive to work from when discussing these matters on a message board, especially given how scarcely any of us have character witnesses to validate the experiences we recount on a regular basis and it is selectively applied as standard.

Okay so give 3 examples of how it would have affected your characters actions, thoughts or anything else in the game... should be easy if there are so many you don't know where to begin.

The most preeminent point I would make here is that our relations are a major component in how we define ourselves. And some character concepts deal with those human relations.

As to the rest of your statement if it's more nuanced than "jerk DM's" quit framing the general discussion in that way and instead frame it around the nuanced reasons you want to discuss.

I would instead recommend not to selectively read in that way, as a number of other issues, such as my own play preferences have also been repeatedly raised and ignored.

 

[5ekyu]

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.



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.

"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."

count me in with you on the puzzles thing. if it came up that a Gm loved puzzles and used them a whole lot - i would not join that game if it looked like a lot of the content was going to be a type of challenge and play i so strongly disliked.

if the game seemed to be a mix - i certainly would not build a character that "liked puzzles" or whose skills were well suited for solving puzzles and my character would be standing watch or some other needed activity while the other did their puzzle thing.

But i would also expect if the Gm is going to raise one element very far up above its usual frequency and importance as a major part of the campaign - they let the players know that in the pre-game pitches. Even many of the early modules did that when they raised the bar on things like "tons of lethal traps" etc etc and that was back in the days when old farts like my players only had number one pencils - much less the so-called "modern age rpgs."

Gotta go chase someone off my MySpace page with my cane now...

 

[Sadras]

I've said that I don't see what it adds to the game for the GM to try to direct the players play of his/her PC by dictating what the god/patron wants as something different from what the player would otherwise have that be.

It is a fair question - so what could it add? Off the top of my head:
1. Provide some direction for a player whose character appears lost or without purpose (they exist);
2. To explore various roleplaying opportunities - crisis of faith, test of one's loyalty/integrity, betrayal...etc

EDIT:
Also I take issue with the word 'direct' (see below) - particularly in the second instance.

The first is the GM directing the player in the play of their PC.

The player directs their character. The DM provides opportunities for roleplaying exploration.

 

[5ekyu]

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.

but is it?

i seem to recall it being considered *by some* a dick move or lacking decency to pitch a future game which a current player wont agree to play in because of your choices as to what is in it.

So, really, aren't you more in fact setting it to the Gm to never agree to run a game ever with beholders if he accepts you into this one with your anti-beholder bias being allowed to frame the world - or that would be considered a dick move?

A motorcycle worry free in an elders vtM game might be a no problem - when i ran one - money and resources were mostly hand-waved anyway as based off "resource points" iirc.

But when that means my next game pitch for a streett level anarches or caitiff game or even a traveller grim and gritty cannot include "we will track things like vehicles and they are at risk etc" that makes me a dick GM for pitching something you do not like... that makes those kinds of "acceptances" take a]on a much bigger long term impact to what games we are allowed to play.

But then, my games are never pitched as "if you are allowed in this game, you get permanent agreement to stay in all my games going forward." hell, my games come with an explicit statement that "if your character dies, you may not be allowed to "reload" and come back in with a new character immediately if at all."

i guess you could say my game pitches and invites are more like "casual dating" or "going steady" (depends on how long they are) - not "marriage proposals." i can be a lot more open, accepting and willing to try new things for a "one night stand" than i would be for a proposal of marriage. (Sometimes regretting those but not always.)

But, if i agreed to "no beholders in this game" i would honor it. I just have to agree to it first tho.

 

[5ekyu]

It is a fair question - so what could it add? Off the top of my head:
1. Provide some direction for a player whose character appears lost or without purpose (they exist);
2. To explore various roleplaying opportunities - crisis of faith, test of one's loyalty/integrity, betrayal...etc

EDIT:
Also I take issue with the word 'direct' (see below) - particularly in the second instance.



The player directs their character. The DM provides opportunities for roleplaying exploration.

GMing?
While ther party is visiting a village and a big festival by the lake is going on the foreshadowed orcish raiders hit the town causing massive chaos and stealing the horses, all the horses they can find, including the one's in the livery stable the PC had horses at. The PCs saw horses being taken and managaged to engage some of the raiders choosing to focus on saving people and so forth - only to find out their horses were taken along with the others.
the PCs can decide to move on without horses or to accept an offer to get paid to go get back horses, people, goods or any number of other options - but each has potential upsides and downsides - just like their choice to focus on people did.

GM Directing?
All of the above plus the warlock recognizes that the markings on one of the orcs is one that his patron has told him to consider an enemy and worth derailing or investigating whenever possible. its not an order, not a mandate, not mind control but its an opportunity to gain more favor or possibly lose some favor - depending on choice?

See to me, those are much the same, in both cases the events provide options and choices and consequences either way - and the latter part doesn't "direct the player on how to play his PC" but rather adds an additional factor to consider.

Not at all unlike if one of the folks who died and had stuff stolen was a wizard and the PCs are shown his spellbook was targetted and then taken by the orcs - and so its an extra nudge to go get that book as far as the PC wizard sees it and generally bad from most perspective for the orcs to get to do whatever they intend with that spellbook.