D&D General DM Authority

[Thomas Shey]

I only check these forums about twice a day, and many times in this thread by the time I check them, it has moved 7 to 9 pages, about 140 to 180 posts.

I don't want to spam the thread with single responses after single response, especially since it can take me nearly two hours sometimes to work through that many posts and responses. I understand it can be easy to gloss over, that is why I started doing the break lines between different posters, to try and make it easier to chunk it out.

Yeah, honestly I often suspect my tendency to respond-as-I-go (and thus have five or six posts in a row) is at least as offputting as multiquoting. I wish I did the latter more.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Being nautically themed instead of urban would be another example. Another would be something like, I don't know, switching over to a space fantasy esper genesis game like somebody else mentioned.

The classic examples that have come up elsewhere in non-D&D contexts have been things like "We'll be playing a conventional police investigative game" (no you won't, you'll be stumbling into the supernatural right off the bat) or "we'll be playing a real world mercenaries game" (except you get kidnapped into another world early on or it turns out the game will turn into survival horror in a Predator kind of way).

 

[Oofta]

The classic examples that have come up elsewhere in non-D&D contexts have been things like "We'll be playing a conventional police investigative game" (no you won't, you'll be stumbling into the supernatural right off the bat) or "we'll be playing a real world mercenaries game" (except you get kidnapped into another world early on or it turns out the game will turn into survival horror in a Predator kind of way).

Guess I'm lucky because this has never happened to me, and I've never heard of it. It might work with the right group, but I guess I don't really see why anyone would do this.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Guess I'm lucky because this has never happened to me, and I've never heard of it. It might work with the right group, but I guess I don't really see why anyone would do this.

I don't think its very common, but people bring it up enough someone must do it once in a while. The idea is that it will make the players react more in keeping with the surprise it is in-character. No, I don't think its a good idea either, but there you are.

 

[prabe]

Guess I'm lucky because this has never happened to me, and I've never heard of it. It might work with the right group, but I guess I don't really see why anyone would do this.

I think the intent in both games is to emphasize the characters' unpreparedness for what happens, not exactly fish-out-of-water, but kinda in the ballpark. I think a GM is better off telling the players what the deal is and asking them to make characters who aren't optimally prepared for where the game is going to go (if you, for instance, want to run a game about investigators stumbling into the supernatural).

EDIT: And ninja'd by @Thomas Shey

 

[Imaculata]

"The importance of DMs sometimes retaining sole authorship"

The thing is though, you aren't demonstrating that. There was nothing wrong with what your player did, you just don't like it an find it awkward because you have to tell them no. Your players don't like it for reasons that frankly, you aren't expressing well, except that they seem to also be upset someone wrote something into your world.

I think I expressed it rather well actually.

The player did nothing wrong, and there is, from a practical standpoint, nothing stopping you and your other players from embracing his additions, except for the fact that you don't want to. Sure, you don't want to do it, and it is rooted in some instincts I respect, but there is no importance to deciding one way or the other.

I think he did. This was not something we agreed on. You don't just prepare a portion of another DM's campaign. That is rather rude. At the very least, a player should ask first.

Permission? Why did he need permission to write-up something and present it to you? And frankly, if you had liked his ideas, since you are the "sole author" then you would have implemented them whether the other players liked them or not.

I'm not sure if I would have. But yes, he needed permission. Absolutely. He didn't just prepare one or two characters. He prepared a handful of them, all with their own backstories. And he just threw it at the group at the start of a session. I don't think that's okay. It may have been well intentioned, but its still a wrong thing to do.

Sorry (not sorry), but you don't get to insert your own npc's into my campaign without asking me first.

I mean, they guy didn't just sit at the table and start telling you who these NPCs were right?

That is exactly what he did.

He probably handed you a document of names and background sketches before or after the game?

He tossed me a handful of paper at the start of a session, with extensive background stories on all the characters as well.

Maybe an e-mail sent to the whole group? This is the type of phrasing that makes it feel like you are upset, that he somehow crossed a line.

He did not send an email.

And, by horrible, I was worried that he had written characters along the lines of "a secret runaway princess deeply in love with my character." That sort of thing I can see upsetting people. But if they are perfectly fine characters, just not your characters, then what he did doesn't seem that bad.

I don't feel like the quality of his writing is the concern here. Its the act of taking over some of the DM's responsibilities, without permission from the DM or the rest of the group.

See, this is the sort of detail that clicks things into place. This isn't just a player making NPCs, this is a former DM pushing his NPCs into a new game. A game partially or fully made up of people who quit his last campaign in part because of how he pushed his NPCs, giving a repeated pattern.

They didn't quit his campaign until a few months ago. This debacles happened way before they quit his campaign. Although, an argument could be made that there was already some dissatisfaction about his campaign hanging in the air. If this motivated my players to be upset with him, I do not know for certain.

Heck, if you'd led with that I wouldn't have even bothered with most of my response, because this isn't a player getting inspired, this is another DM seeming like he is trying to muscle into your turf. Of course this is going to raise hackles, especially with a group of players who quit his game.

But I don't feel that was the reason my players were upset. They were upset, as I understand it, because they were playing my campaign, and he took it upon himself to write characters for me, without my permission. And not just a few characters, but a lot.

Sidenote: It is a lot of work to edit out so many of your replies to other posters when you put them all in one post. Especially when I'm on my phone. Could you separate your responses into individual posts?

 

[Charlaquin]

There are definitely a lot of DMs out there who are enamored with the idea of the mind-blowing plot twist and think this sort of bait-and-switch campaign premise will be a great way to make an exciting, memorable experience for their players. The problem is that the players are likely excited for the game the DM pitched, and might be disappointed that they’re suddenly running a different kind of game.

There can sometimes be value in surprising twists, but you have to be very careful with them. Good twists build on the ongoing story in unexpected but thematically appropriate ways. Bad twists alter or ignore the theme, which undermines the initial buy-in.

 

[prabe]

There are definitely a lot of DMs out there who are enamored with the idea of the mind-blowing plot twist and think this sort of bait-and-switch campaign premise will be a great way to make an exciting, memorable experience for their players. The problem is that the players are likely excited for the game the DM pitched, and might be disappointed that they’re suddenly running a different kind of game.

There can sometimes be value in surprising twists, but you have to be very careful with them. Good twists build on the ongoing story in unexpected but thematically appropriate ways. Bad twists alter or ignore the theme, which undermines the initial buy-in.

I think a good twist/reveal is one that changes how the players (and/or their characters) see something or someone, but doesn't change the overall vibe of the campaign/setting. I think it helps if the twist/reveal is an unexpected answer to a question the players/characters have been asking for a while.

I think a bad twist/reveal is the opposite: something that changes the setting or the campaign without changing anything else--or, worse, something that reveals the entire campaign heretofore to have been false or a lie.

I think you and I are very much on the same page, here; I'm just using more words.

 

[Thomas Shey]

There are definitely a lot of DMs out there who are enamored with the idea of the mind-blowing plot twist and think this sort of bait-and-switch campaign premise will be a great way to make an exciting, memorable experience for their players. The problem is that the players are likely excited for the game the DM pitched, and might be disappointed that they’re suddenly running a different kind of game.

In fact, they may be actively hostile to the game the GM is palming in while they thought they were agreeing to another.

 

[Campbell]

In my experience big reveals like that work a lot better in fiction than games because in games there is a sense that our decisions should matter. Having a massively incorrect picture of what is going on creates a visceral reaction in most players about their own agency. The Last of Us 2 played around with player expectations in some pretty severe ways and is pretty controversial for doing so.