D&D General Player Responsibilities

[Lanefan]

Engage with the game. Don’t be a passive lump waiting for me to roll up the plotwagon week after week so you can passively be spoon fed. I am not here to entertain you. That’s not my job as the dm.

If you can’t engage, and I could replace you with a chatbot and a random number generator, I’d rather not game with you.

OK, that settles it: my next character's name is going to be Chatbot.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I tried the search function because I thought we have discussed this before, but alas.

What responsibilities do you think players have in the game? As players, in regards to the social contract, even economically if we are talking about things groups have to buy?

One thing that came up in another thread that I was actually surprised at my own vehemence of was this: players need to.show the GM the respect of actually paying attention and engaging the game enough to remember important events and people and things. Not every detail of all the lore, just things that actually happen in play. Take notes.

What do.you think the player responsibilities are?

Player responsibilities, at least at my table, are:

1. As you say, be respectful to me and the other players. This means showing engagement and care, letting people know if there will be an issue (e.g. "I can't make it this week, I have to take my semi-half-cousin to a calvinball game"), playing along with the overall tone, etc. If you have an issue, bring it up at an appropriate time (e.g. don't challenge the fundamental game premise mid-session.)
2. A soft responsibility to know your abilities and the basic rules of the game. Now, I play with some folks who have never done TTRPGs before, and others who have been out of the loop for ages, etc. So I'm cool with having to check (for example) what the specific list of questions is for Discern Realities. It would be annoying for players to constantly ask, "What dice do I roll for that?" when the answer is always "2d6, unless I specifically tell you otherwise."
3. Honesty. I separate this out from respect because, even though it's part of that, a lot of people seem to like their rules-lawyer wiggle room. I play with my dice in the open, players should too. I don't hardcore track stuff like exact GP amounts, I trust my players to mark off XP they spend, etc. It puts a damper on everyone's game when people don't play honestly with one another.
4. An extremely important responsibility to call me out on my naughty word. If I err, I NEED to be told that I have, so that I can fix it. This is why I am constantly asking my players for feedback and review, and I listen very carefully when they provide it. If I do something legitimately unacceptable, I need to be told so that I can apologize and fix my error. My players are the only people, other than me, who can hold me accountable. I depend on them to do that.
5. A firm responsibility to support one another. Build each other up, both as fellow players and as characters in the game. Cooperation is better than competition (unless this is an intentional OOC collaboration for IC stuff.) Camaraderie and True Companions make for some of the best storytelling. When we work together, everybody wins.
6. Keeping character sheet records. This isn't about honesty (that was already addressed), but rather just...keep your stuff recorded, please. That's how we avoid issues of "how does Hammer and Anvil work again?" or "wait...what abilities do I have???" etc. Good records are, in fact, quite useful for playing a long-running game.

That's...probably it? A lot of it is "be respectful, don't be a dick, know & use the rules." Just being more specific.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I've long since learned that sometimes seeing to this stuff during the session is the only way it'll ever get done at all.

Unfortunately, yeah. I have a player who is like this. We've more than once talked about addressing concerns or weirdness or the like between sessions.

We have done so exactly once in the past two-ish years that he's been in the game, and this happened quite recently, earlier this year to be specific.

So yeah. Sometimes, if you have logistical stuff, you just HAVE to spend "in-game" time on it, or it will simply never, ever happen. It's deeply frustrating, but I've yet to find a way to avoid it.

 

[Hussar]

God.

I've never met players like this and I certainly hope I never do. That sounds horrifying.

Considering the horror stories you tell about your own players, that's saying a LOT.

 

[Hussar]

An extremely important responsibility to call me out on my naughty word. If I err, I NEED to be told that I have, so that I can fix it. This is why I am constantly asking my players for feedback and review, and I listen very carefully when they provide it. If I do something legitimately unacceptable, I need to be told so that I can apologize and fix my error. My players are the only people, other than me, who can hold me accountable. I depend on them to do that.

I've found over the years that it is SOOOO hard to get feedback from players. "Yeah, I'm having fun" "Thanks for the game" "Good game tonight" so on and so forth. Getting real, actual feedback is like pulling teeth. I have a pretty thick skin. Honest I do. If you don't like something, or you want to see something, or you want something to change or not change or whatever, FFS TELL ME.

Sigh.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I've found over the years that it is SOOOO hard to get feedback from players. "Yeah, I'm having fun" "Thanks for the game" "Good game tonight" so on and so forth. Getting real, actual feedback is like pulling teeth. I have a pretty thick skin. Honest I do. If you don't like something, or you want to see something, or you want something to change or not change or whatever, FFS TELL ME.

Sigh.

Oh yeah. I'd say about 75% of the time, that's all I hear, which is...not always super useful. I try to be very direct about questions though, "what did you think of X?" "were you happy with Y?" "I wasn't sure about Z, did you feel the same way?" etc.

Fortunately I have one player whom I have worked with on other things, so he's much more willing to be specific about his feedback. Another player (the only one who's been here for the whole game up to this point) has been my friend for like 16 years, so I can usually rely on him to eventually spill the beans, even if it takes some doing because he's very conflict-averse.

I would never do things to intentionally upset my players, but if things have genuinely been good up to now...I guess I can try to be more "daring" with my DMing. Do some things that push the envelope a bit.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Considering the horror stories you tell about your own players, that's saying a LOT.

Do I lol? It's always interesting to hear from the outside.

When I think "player horror story" for myself, I really only think of the munchkin who thoroughly traumatized me (across various games lol), that one time I got completely "owned" whilst running Against the Giants in 2E (holy hell did I get schooled), and various players I mostly didn't DM for but did play with from like 1990 to about 2002. Otherwise at worst it's mostly idiocy rather than anything bad (like the guy who insisted the party hand him all potions to go in his backpack so he could manage them, then tried to climb 70' of rope in full plate, refusing to be hoisted up because it was "undignified". I imagine you can guess the outcome of that one).

I guess people remember others or the "played with" category, which I often forget unless specific subjects come up.

Oh and I got a ton of "terrible DM horror stories" also all from about 1990-2002.

I've never really had to deal with unengaged players. The worst time for that was in like 2010 or so when smartphones had come in and everyone was on Facebook, and we were also so young we all had social lives (lol) so everyone was being pinged all the time by various people, but by 2012 people were largely bored annoyed with that and shut that stuff off (except the poor reformed munchkin, who has a very needy and controlling spouse).