D&D 5E Do PCs at your table have script immunity?

[Nefermandias]

LOL.

This is truly ridiculous. They're not "telling you how should behave as a human being", that's an absolutely laughable reading of what anyone has been saying, let alone me. Giving people advice on how to DM effectively, and suggesting methods to resolve conflicts, work together and so on is absolutely within the remit of a book like the DMG. Suggesting it isn't is absolutely bizarre and means you object to about 98% of TT RPGs that have ever existed, or certainly existed after 1990. Which is wildly eccentric at the very least.

The novelty nonsense was on the post responding to you, which you liked, and which I also quoted. It was the very funny claim that this sort of thing is "new".

You can laugh and ridicule my position all you want, I stand my ground: Respecting people's opinion and trying to find common ground when conflict arises are very basic social skills
A gaming rulebook IS NO PLACE to teach people about that.

Now I'm going to disengage before the moderation team red texts me. Have a good day.

 

[Umbran]

I've definitely had players ignore my campaign intro blurb, then express amazement when they have to eg train to level.

Yeah, well, human nature there - don't rely on a document to get important things across on its own. Put all the important bits into Session Zero for actual discussion.

"This meeting could have been an e-mail," is a lie.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Well, it does help that "being a decent human being" correlates quite nicely with "being a better gamer", almost as if not being a giant tool helps out in all sort of social situations.

For sure. But most gaming advice doesn't go quite that far lol, it's usually really practical approaches to situations or ways of dealing with problem players or the like.

You can laugh and ridicule my position all you want, I stand my ground: Respecting people's opinion and trying to find common ground when conflict arises are very basic social skills
A gaming rulebook IS NO PLACE to teach people about that.

Not disagreeing with your decision to disengage, but I personally don't think this "no place" is a reasonable position, supported by any kind of logic. I guess we'll never know the exact reasoning.

Even if people try to respect the opinions of others and find common ground, like, innately, or because they were raised well, they don't always have great tools to do it, or to do it in a gaming situation. I've seen this in action, even. I actually learned a ton about resolving conflicts and managing a group from running RPGs, which I've used IRL for things like being foreman on a jury, running meetings at work, and so on. Some of what I learned I might eventually have figured out myself, but some suggestions in rulebooks got me there a lot quicker. I've seen it with others, too, but that's a long story. Tools make people more capable.

As an aside, I'd note not all suggestions in rulebooks for this kind of thing are good, but they're ideas, that you can use. What I found was that I often came across an idea, suggestion or approach, even a mandated one (rarely) and my initial reaction was often to reject it, but I'd think about it, and sometimes I'd later see how that would actually be useful. Further, some RPGs really only work well if you're willing to adopt a particular approach that may be at odds with how you DM normally (particularly PtbA and FitD). There's still some advice that was just bad of course - I'm thinking of some 1E and 2E World of Darkness Storyteller books which would have like, several chapters with basically good or ok advice, and then there'd be one which was basically silly. But they're tools you can use or not, generally speaking, and where they are mandated or strongly suggested, there's usually an actual game-function-related reason.

(Memorably on the "bad advice" front, there was a big RIFTS book which I think gave pretty good DM advice, and then gave an example of play where the guy who wrote the advice just completely did the opposite lol. Either that or the reverse, but I think it was that way around. It was pretty funny either way.)

I accept you're not going to respond, note, but I'm putting this here in case others want to discuss any of this. Thanks for the conversation (no sarcasm).

 

[Bolares]

Yeah, well, human nature there - don't rely on a document to get important things across on its own. Put all the important bits into Session Zero for actual discussion.

"This meeting could have been an e-mail," is a lie.

This. Just talk to your players. This solves almost all table problems (assuming you are not playing with naughty word people)

 

[Umbran]

Even if people try to respect the opinions of others and find common ground, like, innately, or because they were raised well, they don't always have great tools to do it, or to do it in a gaming situation.

Also, we should remember that the same books are used by people who are 40+ years old, and kids who are, like, 10 and 12 years old. If someone is going to sell a game that requires a lot of interpersonal interaction to kids, it makes huge amounts of sense to give those kids at least a little advice on how to get by.

 

[S'mon]

This. Just talk to your players. This solves almost all table problems (assuming you are not playing with naughty word people)

'Session 0' can be tricky when players are joining an ongoing campaign. But yes I do agree that synchronous communication generally works best.

 

[S'mon]

Also, we should remember that the same books are used by people who are 40+ years old, and kids who are, like, 10 and 12 years old. If someone is going to sell a game that requires a lot of interpersonal interaction to kids, it makes huge amounts of sense to give those kids at least a little advice on how to get by.

Plus it's the 40-plusers who are most likely to ignore advice - "I already know how to do this!" Whereas 10-14 year olds are a massive information sponge.

 

[Bolares]

'Session 0' can be tricky when players are joining an ongoing campaign. But yes I do agree that synchronous communication generally works best.

When that happens I try and have a quick session 0 with that player, be it in person before the game, by messages on the phone, on discord... It always helps them get up to speed with what the table is doing, and always gives me cool hooks for their character.

 

[Campbell]

You will generally be hard pressed to find gamers that are more challenge oriented than I am. Here's my Quantic Foundry profile:

My Gamer Motivation Profile: Action-Oriented, Proficient, Relaxed, Social, Deeply Immersed, and Creative

Want to know your profile? Take the survey!

quantic.page.link

What I generally like about games that have formal systems that allow for either negotiation or a degree of player choice around character death is they preserve the integrity of the challenge, allow us to have meaningful failure while retaining our creative connection to the game, and allow GMs to include harder content than they otherwise would. The issue with trying to achieve mastery in games like D&D is that any sort of failure is basically catastrophic. Failure means no progress so challenges need to be easy enough that frustration over lack of progress does not set in. You cannot have situations where players might regularly lose fights if losing a fight means they lose their character. You cannot make it possible to make the wrong call on a regular basis if making the wrong call means the game is locked in stasis or catastrophic stuff happens to the setting.

The games I run in other systems are all about enabling that sort of Dark Souls energy where losing can happen as often as winning. Where you can make the wrong calls and keep playing. I want loss conditions not to be catastrophic so players are less afraid of losing and GMs (myself included) do not feel pressured to fudge dice or manipulate the setting so everything works out in the end.

I don't really look to D&D for character investment though because characters are generally not all that integrated into the setting. Plus there's generally a spell for that.

 

[Umbran]

Plus it's the 40-plusers who are most likely to ignore advice - "I already know how to do this!" Whereas 10-14 year olds are a massive information sponge.

There is no emoji for "Ezzactly!"