D&D 5E As a Player, why do you play in games you haven't bought into?

[MGibster]

I'm sorry, I know you didn't mean this to be a joke, but, this hits the nail on the head so squarely that it cracked me up. Particularly the "he genuinely thought this was a reasonable character concept" part. THIS is precisely what I'm talking about. Thank you for illustrating it in such a perfect and hilarious way.

It's okay that it cracked you up because it cracks me up too. The same player a few year earlier in a Delta Green (powered by GURPS) game. This was a modern game and I instructed the players that their characters could have any weapon a law enforcement officer might reasonably be able to get a hold of legally or illegally.

Me: You stealthy move down the stairs, whose creaks and moans seem amplified by your desire to remain silent. Now that you're halfway down the stairs, the only light is spilling out from the kitchen above and you can barely make out the shelves, old furniture, and appliances scattered throughout the musky basement. Within this darkness, you observe an inky blackness flowing across the concrete floor, stopping at the base of the stairs, and coalescing into a vaguely man shaped object with unnaturally long arms ending in sharp rending claws. What do you do?

FBI Agent: I take out my bolas.

Me: You take out your what?

FBI Agent: I take out my bolas.

Me: You mean those string things with the weights on them that gauchos use?

FBI Agent: Yes.

Me: <Stares in silence for a few seconds> Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

FBI Agent: <Visibly flustered> What?

I honestly thought he was joking when he said his FBI agent was armed with bolas. I rolled with it though and told him he couldn't use bolas in the basement because there just isn't enough room to swing it effectively. I eventually decided we were not compatible when it came to gaming and eventually removed him from my games.

 

[MGibster]

Somebody forgot to tell Bilbo's player that Hobbits don't like adventures.

I think you're missing the salient point here. Bilbo's player created a character who was willing to engage with the premise of the campaign. That's the important think we should take away from this. Be like Bilbo's player.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Especially to the point where I'm supposed to either play a thing I don't like, run the game instead, or leave. No. It's a group activity, we are either all onboard or we play something else. Now, I'm blessed with excellent DMs that I trust to run a good game, so as long as I'm not uncomfortable with the proposed game, I'm not going to say no to it out of hand, but I will say things like, "Okay, I'm not super stoked about the idea of playing holy swashbucklers in a fantasy roccoco France (absurd, of course I'd be stoked about that), but perhaps if there is a culture similar to a fantasy Celtic Ireland meets Gothic Vikings that I can be a mercenary from? Or perhaps a second Church that is of the same basic faith but with a schism, and I've come at the command of my church leaders, so I'm more like a Eastern European Knight with a glaive rather than a light sword and light armor?" etc, and we would discuss the world and find ways to modify the premise or the supporting elements so that I could actually be excited about the campaign and my character. And one very valid avenue for that would be playing a character that the other character see as an outsider in terms of faith, either a Doubter or a Heathen or a Heretic, perhaps the Church needs an Alchemist on this mission, or perhaps I am involved against my will by those the knights are hunting down and must help the knights for my own survival, whatever.

We have very different expectations at our tables, both as players and as GMs. It has been explicitly said by each and every player at my table that "If you are going to be the one GMing them you can do whatever you want" and even though what a GM might want varies between the three GMs (of which I am one) the players do not feel slighted when certain expectations or limitations are placed on their character concepts.

If I announced "I am going to run a campaign focused on the relationship of the gods and the people, and because of this I want to make sure that each of your characters has a positive relationship with a particular god in some strong way" then each of my players would create a character incorporating that into their story. None of my players (nor myself as a player) would immediately start picking away at how to make a character that goes against the one request by the GM for the campaign....because not only does it invalidate the work and ideas they already have put into preparation for the campaign, its kind of the opposite of teamwork towards the group in general.

Now, if in some extreme case some player was UNABLE to accommodate the request (Lets say they were a follower of some religion that forbade them from, even in fictional character format, declaring allegiance to some other diety) then of course that is something that can be worked around and probably would change the focus of the entire campaign however there are not such off-limits issues with any of the players we have had in the past 25 years of gaming.

 

[Guest User]

Call them what you will; special snowflakes, contrarians, boundary pushers. IME there are certain behaviours like these that are giant flashing warning beacons that a player is going to have a high likelihood of sapping the fun out of a group game.

Common signs include; Agreeing to something, but then quickly trying to subvert the agreement one way or another. Only playing specific races or types of races (almost always exotic ones), or even better specific race/class combinations. Needing to re-skin a whole lot of stuff, to make this "awesome" concept, rather than playing what is actually in the game. Etc.

The majority of "problem players"

Just as someone asking to reskin Firebolt to cold damage, (because they want to play an Ice Wizard), is a warning sign to you of a "Problem Player"...your post is a warning sign to me of an "Eeyore Player". Just reading your post sucked me of vim and creative vigor. Being told to "play the game my way" is often times, just not fun, for someone else.

Roleplaying games are a workocracy (might not be a word): those who do the work get to call the shots.

If you allow a player to be invested in their character and in world creation, suddenly the DM is not doing 95% of the work.

An invested, self directed group is very easy to DM, for me at least. The group essentially tells you what they do, which means the heavy creative lifting of imagining a concept is done. I as the DM now just get to do the part I like: fill in the details and add some surprises.

I was running a Trail of Cthulhu game set in New York during the 1930s. My instructions were to make "regular" people who were connected to the NYPD in some fashion

Some people do not think First Responders are "regular people", they believe them, a priori, to be heroes. A 18 year old kid that is drafted, sent to war, and somehow is sent back in time, is a regular Joe...in extraordinary circumstances.

Your player, fulfilled your request...MGibster, but you didn't see it.

I nixed it with extreme prejudice and didn't feel the least bit bad about doing that. There was nothing I was willing to do to fit his character into the game he had agreed to play.

I'm not intending to insult, "start something", or engage in hostilities, but I have to ask given everything you have written in this thread... do you think this is incorrectly stated?
You wouldn't do anything for the player's character concept.
Like Meatloaf..you would do anything for love...but you wouldn't: "Do That".

In this case, you would not entertain that a normal Joe, thrust back in time,
fit your DM criteria...despite the fact the character concept roots of being an aviator, (as you described), fit in very well with what you envisioned.

A little comprise on your part as the Game Referee and the player could have played their first choice with minimal impact to the game.

It is CoC...stuff if supposed to be downright odd.

 

[MGibster]

Some people do not think First Responders are "regular people", they believe them, a priori, to be heroes. A 18 year old kid that is drafted, sent to war, and somehow is sent back in time, is a regular Joe...in extraordinary circumstances.

For the sake of brevity, I didn't go into explicit details about the discussion I had with my players because I didn't think it was necessary. But as part of defining a regular person to them, I specifically mentioned that they had no encounters with the supernatural prior to the campaign.

Your player, fulfilled your request...MGibster, but you didn't see it.

No, he didn't. I had four other players in the campaign who managed to come to the table with appropriate character concepts.

In this case, you would not entertain that a normal Joe, thrust back in time,
fit your DM criteria...despite the fact the character concept roots of being an aviator, (as you described), fit in very well with what you envisioned.

When I made it clear that the character worked but we'd have to drop the time traveling stuff the player elected to make a different character.

A little comprise on your part as the Game Referee and the player could have played their first choice with minimal impact to the game.

That was more compromise than I was willing to make.

 

[Lanefan]

Which brings me around to the basic question: If you, the player, isn't engaged by the premise of the campaign, why are you still playing in that campaign?

Any one or more of a number of reasons:

--- the other players are your friends outside of game and this is the most reliable place to see them
--- it's the only game going (that you can be a player in rather than a DM)
--- you're hoping to ride it out and that once that premise has run its course the campaign will eventually get to something more interesting
--- the character you've got is just too much fun to abandon
--- your interest in the campaign lies in actively trying to upend, twist, or change the premise
--- the same DM has run good campaigns in the past

To me, this is one of the most frustrating parts of being a DM. You pitch a concept, the concept gets okay'd by the group who agrees to play in the campaign, you do the work preparing and whatnot, and then you have a player or players who insist on doing the exact opposite thing.

One example from a few years ago, I pitched a low magic campaign where none of the PC's were casters. The first three character concepts to cross my desk were all full casters. "Oh, I'm the exception!" was the refrain.

My point is, if you agreed to play the game that the group agreed to play, isn't there some onus on the player to get with the program and not deliberately set out to sabotage the game? Am I totally wrong here? What should the DM do in these cases?

Run it as scheduled. The players will either succeed or fail in whatever they're trying; if they succeed the DM might have to adapt.

In your example with the casters in a low-magic game: let 'em run. Unless the party's unusually large, having 3 casters means they've less of a front line, and melee combat - a common enough occurrence - will soon be their nemesis. They'll either learn or they won't...

If you don't want to play in the campaign, that's fantastic. I have no problems with that. There are thousands of other games out there, and, well, maybe next time around.

That's a huge and often-wrong assumption, that there's a) thousands of other games out there and-or b) that said player wants to play with anyone else.

I just cannot fathom a player who would deliberately go into a campaign, knowingly playing a character that is 100% opposite to what the group agrees to play. It's the tavern owner PC in the travel campaign. Or the evil character in the heroic group. I don't really see the difference.

I can fathom it all day long, as if my character idea or concept makes me that player then that player I will be.

Pitch a heroic game where the PCs badn together to defend the world from threats and you could end up with the D&D version of the Avengers, who - even though they were all 'heroes' - fought like cats among themselves. In D&D half of them would have died at the hands of the other half at some point.

That said, a single player usually can't make that much difference. A goodly party can usually either rein in or take out a single evil PC, for example. The DM might have a headache when half or more of the players go rogue in the same direction, as in your three-caster example above, and again my answer is to just let it run, be flexible, and see what happens.

 

[ph0rk]

At which point, why are you not offering to DM instead of me then? Or, at that point, when the DM has stated that being religious is important in the campaign, why did you agree to play?


And thus the need for the cluebat. To me, those two statements are close enough that I shouldn't have to deal with a character concept of a NON RELIGIOUS character. But, sure, communication is key. And, when, after I stated religion is important, you came back to me with your atheist character and I said, no, this doesn't fit in the campaign, what do you do?

So you think a player not understanding what you meant when you were vague is the player's fault?

Because "religion is important" does not preclude nonbeliever characters until you specifically state it does.

Though, really, how hard would it be for the arc to accommodate a nonbeliever character? This is a high fantasy system - the gods can hold a character up by their heels and literally dangle them over a flaming pit and tell the character to believe the hand holding them up exists, right?

They probably can't inspire devotion that way, but what the hell sort of arc requires a table full of characters devoted to a particular god to work?

 

[Lanefan]

I recently had the opposite, one of the players in our group stated a new campaign to give the previous long term DM a rest .
He refused to tell us anything about the campaign on the grounds that making characters to fit the setting was cheating.

I still don't really understand that one.

I do.

The DM prepares the setting ahead of time in complete neutrality of whatever the players bring into it, and then the players roll up their characters without knowledge of what the DM has planned for them. As long as the DM gave details about existing cultures, races, classes etc. in the setting to the point where you could roll up characters at all, you're good to go.

I don't see it as 'cheating' per se, but I prefer not knowing what's coming.

 

[Guest User]

That was more compromise than I was willing to make

Yes ...like Meatloaf..."You would do anything for love"...except some things.
I respect your opinion that you and the player in question had differing, and non compatible styles.

To me the original backstory is easy to accommodate. The time traveling pilot has one experience they can't explain...somehow in a middle of a battle they wound up in the past flying over NYC. The PC lands at the New York City PD airstrip. All the other PCs were at the airstrip at the time.

Now the entire group has experienced the same event, and that event serves as a relationship bond for the group...win/win..in my DMing book.

Sigh, in my last pirate game, I handed the players three treasure maps, a ship and a short (20 ish page) set of rules for naval combat and running ships in D&D. They sold the ship, ignored the treasure maps, never read the rules and then declared they didn't know what the campaign was about.



I guess I wasn't explicit enough.

Is @Retreater one of your players? Sounds like he wanted a three hour pirate cruise and got stranded on the Flying Dutchman.

Hussar, your players were certainly explicit....they had no interest in a nautical campaign.

I imagine, you wish the players had said something earlier.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

At which point, why are you not offering to DM instead of me then? Or, at that point, when the DM has stated that being religious is important in the campaign, why did you agree to play?


And thus the need for the cluebat. To me, those two statements are close enough that I shouldn't have to deal with a character concept of a NON RELIGIOUS character. But, sure, communication is key. And, when, after I stated religion is important, you came back to me with your atheist character and I said, no, this doesn't fit in the campaign, what do you do?

The two statements aren’t even related, much less close to the same.

The person who needs a clue isn’t the player, in this hypothetical.