D&D General How has D&D changed over the decades?

[Hussar]

I didn't say they don't care. I said they care when it's in their character's best interest. Often it is. When a player has authority outside their PC, however, there will be many opportunities to put forward or protect their character, personally, and in my experience most players are not going to use that power to enhance the story at their PC's expense.

Again. Totally different experience. My players love to see their characters suffer. They will very deliberately use their powers at the expense of their own character.

It really does come down to truly giving ownership of the game, at least in part, to the players.

And as was said above, expecting that everyone at the table will make an effort beyond just their own self interest.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It absolutely depends on the game you're playing, but what I was really talking about was commitment to the game and contributing as an active participant, which you mention in the last part of your post.

I don't think I'm nearly as committed when I'm playing, though, which is why I said I'm more haphazard (to be clear, I don't consider this a virtue, but it is what it is and I still like to play sometimes. But if someone said I was kind of a bad player I wouldn't probably argue with them, where I'd be more prone to if they were talking about me as a GM, even though I consider myself a work in progress, but I at least still feel like I'm progressing there.)

 

[Campbell]

I don't think I'm nearly as committed when I'm playing, though, which is why I said I'm more haphazard (to be clear, I don't consider this a virtue, but it is what it is and I still like to play sometimes. But if someone said I was kind of a bad player I wouldn't probably argue with them, where I'd be more prone to if they were talking about me as a GM, even though I consider myself a work in progress, but I at least still feel like I'm progressing there.)

I'm actually kind of the opposite. I bring a lot more energy and emotional investment to the game as a player character. As a GM almost all my investment is in the other players' characters or seeing how they choose to overcome the challenges I present. I view my role as a facilitator of the other players' play.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Maybe it wasn't, but this post (and a few before and after iirc) felt to me like it was saying it specifically wasn't good enough that the GM went with the player idea - because the GM going with it were showed the GM still had final say. So the GM should let the player tell them what it was with no final say.

D&D General - How has D&D changed over the decades?

Lots of good points from both sides here. And à lot to think about. It also goes back to the perception of what kind of backstories a DM is ready to allow or not to allow. Whenever a player was making a level 1 character on his own with a mile long backstory, I was getting serious hitches as...

www.enworld.org

I very well could have been over-reading it. That seems to be a thing all over the place in this thread

I'm not certain which post you meant... was it the one about the player saying his character's sister worked for the mayor?

If so (with the caveat I don't know the entire scenario), I don't see the problem with allowing that, overall. Why not? It introduces a new NPC to the world, and makes a connection between that NPC and other elements of the fiction. The world becomes a bit more detailed, the PC has a connection the GM can use in future situations. There's a clear path forward and you get closer to the actual important bit of meeting with the mayor. The player is actively adding to the world....what's not to like?

My question here is that if the action in the game has pointed the players' characters toward the mayor's office, surely the GM has some ideas about how they can go about interacting with the mayor and his staff, right? Chances are the players would need to make some kind of roll... maybe Investigation or Persuasion or something similar.... to learn some information that they would then use to proceed on with the mayor in some way.

So isn't the role the sister plays in this scenario going to simply be provided by something else anyway? Why not go with the idea of the sister instead of making the players interact with the mayor's personal assistant or whatever first? You can still require rolls to be made. The sister may not have complete information, or she may not want to share what she knows, or risk her job to help. And so on.

The fear, it seems to me, is that these kinds of player-side introduction of fiction are auto-wins... and that once they do it once, then they'll do it again and again, and suddenly you have a PC with 12 sisters all of whom work in important places! But it need not be an auto-win... you simply shift the nature of the challenge; instead of figuring out how to get an audience with the Mayor, you have to figure out how to convince the sister to get you the audience. And it need not descend into absurdity; players absolutely are capable of the kind of discipline that many are reserving only for GMs.

It can simply be a tool for the GM to use that is largely identical to something else he would have used anyway.

Another way to look at it is, what do you accomplish as a GM by saying no? No, your sister does not work at the mayor's office. What does that accomplish? It shoots down an idea that could be good fodder for future situations. It blocks contribution from the player, and may prevent some amount of investment on their part in the gameworld. It preserves the ideas that the GM had already set as the ways to resolve the situation with the mayor's office or else preserves their ability to decide how the situation is to be resolved.

What do you lose by saying yes? Your prepped Mayor's Assistant NPC, who is likely used once and forgotten? The authority to control the narrative in its entirety? What else?

 

[hawkeyefan]

I don't think I'm nearly as committed when I'm playing, though, which is why I said I'm more haphazard (to be clear, I don't consider this a virtue, but it is what it is and I still like to play sometimes. But if someone said I was kind of a bad player I wouldn't probably argue with them, where I'd be more prone to if they were talking about me as a GM, even though I consider myself a work in progress, but I at least still feel like I'm progressing there.)

I read your earlier comment as being aware as a player that you should contribute, and for me, that's kind of all I expect. I have a couple of friends who are somewhat more passive in their play than other friends. I don't think there's anything wrong with that; they still contribute and still add to the game.

As I posted a few posts upthread, having a different mindset when playing versus GMing is to be expected.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

It is just sad that it is in the last paragraph that you actually opened up.

Mod Note:

Im assuming the questions you asked in the rest of your post were genuine. But this puts a bit of a personal barb in your discussion that could be taken as hostility. Try to avoid that going forward. Especially when moderators have already warned the thread about getting personal.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

So, don't Trust the GM until the prove they're not of the 10%. This seems to track with Don't Trust Players until they Prove Themselves.

The thing is, most people that pay Trust the GM are GMs, so that's a bit of self dealing. Trust Me it says. My problem with this is the simultaneous argument that players cannot be Trust with anything until they prove that they submit to the GM sufficiently. Because, honestly, people making this argument are also likely to view players that do not properly genuflect to the GM as problem players. And that's a whole bunch of blaming everyone else while never having to look at yourself. At some point you need to consider the common denominator.

To me, everyone at the table deserves to be treated with respect, and exhalations of Must Trust GM coupled with Don't Trust Them isn't it.

Mod Note:

The first two sentences and the last two sentences are solid points.

The chunk in the middle, though? There’s a lot of assumptions and finger pointing in there that aren’t conducive to continued polite discourse. Do better going forward, please.

 

[Lanefan]

I mostly agree with you, except this part. Even if something's been allowed in the past, it's not binding that they will forevermore be allowed in the game. For example, allowing something you're not 100% sure about, only to find it disruptive in play. Cool. We tried it. Now we're done. X race is banned. Or whatever example best suits.

Not me. If something ends up broken I'm stuck with it for that campaign, kicking myself for allowing it in the first place. End result: I think long and hard before allowing stuff, and have learned to err on the side of caution.

 

[Lanefan]

When I play my character, I'm focusing on being my PC. "Success" in this context seems like a metagame intrusion; I try to do what seems true to my PC.

Which if true is good; but does this mean that if being true to your PC means failing at whatever is at stake in the fiction you'll willingly play yourself into that failure situation, possibly with dire consequences?

If yes, good on you! I truly admire that; and it's a standard that I try (not always successfully) to live up to.

A huge majority of players would not do this.

 

[Lanefan]

This last bit about being entertaining is the kind of thing I'm talking about. I'm talking about contributing to the events of play.

Something doesn't quite parse here - are you suggesting that being entertaining is good, or is bad, or is irrelevant?

An odd thing happened here. I was talking about the game, and you split it up into characters for the players, and setting for the DM. But I'm talking about the collective activity of the game.

The collective activity of the game is the sum of the sub-activities of the participants; and those sub-activities are not the same between one participant (the DM) and the rest (the players). Therefore, talking about the collective activity as it impacts any one participant without splitting it out into which part(s) of that activity are within that participant's purview isn't of much use.

But your assertions here have clearly been proven not to be true for other players and GMs or other games.

So is this something you think is specific to you and your players, or to D&D in general?

Having seen a whole bunch of different players come and go over the years I can only assume the average there gleaned reflects in some ways the average overall.

Well, I don't think anyone is arguing for removing the GM as having final say.

I've got the sense in this thread that a few posters are taking exactly this position; that the DM should in fact give away veto power resulting in there being no veto power held by anyone.

Also, no one's talking about some kind of situation where the players can't or won't accept the GM's authority, but are talking about a situation where the GM knowingly shares some amount of authority with the players.

And what happens when - inevitably! - that shared authority leads to table-level conflict?

A classic example, and one I've seen myself, is when people try to overtly or covertly impose their own real-world religious ideas and ideals into and onto the divine aspects of the game. Having just one person - the DM - do it isn't so bad, as the players can always individually choose to accept it or leave. But more than one person trying to do this in the same game/campaign is nothing but a powderkeg with a lit fuse. Believe me.