Celebrim
Legend
I'm disagreeing because you are painting it as though either (a) every request is such, or (b) it is impossible for any DM to successfully identify and oppose such requests. That all groups inevitably fall into it, and once they do they are tainted forever.
No, I'm not. All I'm saying is that there isn't a meaningful compromise that can always be reached even by the most functional of tables. At some point the GM has to say "No." Beyond that I'm saying that "The Rule of Cool" is a very bad rule, and is much like "Wheaton's Law" in that it actually tells you nothing, since the aphorisms are predicated on something very subjective.
If you set clear and meaningful expectations at the start, and truly listen for what your players actually want, not just the thing they initially requested, you can essentially always find a way to make their true desire happen.
No, you can't. That is ultimately the core thing I disagree on is you keep asserting this sort of blanket statement. It's not even remotely possible to do this always. Indeed, it's probably not possible to do this in the majority of cases it comes up. Because usually what these players actually want is to "win". I usually hear what they actually want rather quickly, and it's something like, "I want a get out of jail free card I can play at any time." Quite often, it's not even that that is the core problem, but rather what they want is, "I want to do cooler and bigger things than my companions at the table, because my aesthetics of play are a dysfunctional combination of Fantasy and Competition where I think the point of the game is impress my fellow players with how cool I am and I'm not patient enough to wait my turn for that or try to obtain my Shining Moment of Awesome fairly."
Look, I had a new player say to me, "What I want is to play a character that rides a dinosaur that shoots lasers from its eyeballs" and I didn't say "No" to that. I just said, "Well, that's something you'll have to work toward, but here is how you get started on that..." I'm the guy who runs a setting with innumerable gods just so players that want to play Clerics can make up their own deity if they want. I've written at EnWorld on how to flexibly handle requests for various stunts. It's perfectly possible to be flexible about some things and empower some desires. But those sorts of things in my experience aren't usually the source of friction at the table.
To hold someone accountable for wrongs done and yet also absolutely refuse to tell them how they have done wrong is pretty bad in my eyes. It's not the worst thing in the world, but it's pretty bad.
So let me get this straight. You think gracefully bowing out of something is more rude than confronting someone and telling them "how they have done wrong"? This isn't a marriage we are trying to repair here. This is a consensual social gaming interaction where I am just one participant of several. Why the heck should I impose my standard of play on someone? Why should I try to make them feel bad? Going back to the situation with the one really horrible player at the table at a recent gaming convention, what good do you think would have come of me challenging his behavior? Do you think that would have defused the situation?
I mean, it is deliberate in the sense that I could not (and still struggle to) conceive of a reading of what you said, given the context of the example I gave, that did not come across as you saying, "if I [Celebrim] was present for those events, I would resent the Bard, and would specifically resent them because they got a chance to do a cool thing, and I did not."
It's utterly bizarre that you think I want that as a player. You don't understand. It's not that you gave him a sweet, delicious cookie and I didn't get one. It's you collectively laid a stinking turd.
I thought I explained to you that I don't want to catch a break like that in combat. I don't want to be put into a situation where me arguing with you in the way you outlined in your example is how I go about solving problems and overcoming challenges. I can hardly think of anything less fun than earning "easy mode" based on dysfunctional processes of play like GM wheedling. It wouldn't be the Bard that made me leave that table. It would be the GM. Like I said, it's cool when a player can pull off an amazing stunt without stretching the rules to do so through actual creativity or outstanding luck or great role-play or whatever. It's utterly ridiculous when that stunt is just coercing the GM into giving them what they want because the GM has no backbone to say "No". I can do plenty of cool things in the game without cheating, which is what it feels like when you propose a new magical ability for yourself and then argue the GM into it. Like I told you, it's like activating cheat codes in PvE. I've got this little 8-year-old nephew that plays Minecraft by continually entering cheat codes. He is extremely quick at entering in cheats to give himself things or teleport or whatever. He doesn't play creative to build things. He wants to play survival, but he wants to cheat to feel powerful. I don't envy his ability to do that. I consider it missing the entire point. It's not that I'm envious of the player. On the contrary, my feeling toward them would probably turn to pity and disdain because they felt they had to do something like that in order to be "cool", and it actually feels just like the maturity level of my 8 year old nephew entering in cheat codes instead of trying to get good at the game. And really it was just cringey and lame, the more so because it came about by wheedling the GM. I'm sorry, but that's not the sort of gaming environment I want to be in.
I have no idea why you think I should be impressed with that or want that. You really think I'm sitting over here going, "Gee, I wish my GM would be FLEXIBLE like that." Really??
Your fluid switching between argument as a nasty and unpleasant thing (e.g. the guy at that convention game) and as just a person giving justifications for assertions makes it incredibly difficult to actually respond to this
You are the one that is doing the switching. You are the one that got focused on whether the debate was heated or nasty or not. I'm the one saying that it doesn't matter whether the argument is nasty heated and unpleasant or not. The debate itself is the problem. Your Bard player shouldn't be asking to do something that is neither something which generically anyone could attempt to do (the "Kindergartener Rule") nor a special power or ability of the class in the first place. And they certainly shouldn't be rejecting your initial assessment that that is a significant power up. It's one thing to attempt a stunt like jump on a Chandelier and swing across the room and drop kick a target. It's quite another thing to just make up magical powers. The debate itself is offensive, even if it isn't nasty or argumentative. It's more offensive when it emotionally charged, but it's always offensive in this context.
Player: Can my player attempt to parry a spell like a Jedi parrying a blaster with a lightsaber?
DM: Not without some special ability that explicitly allows that.
Player: Even with my magic sword?
DM: Yes, even with your magic wind sword made by genies.
Anything the player says after that point to debate is a problem regardless of how it is said.
This makes your opposition appear to arise no matter what: whether the "argument" is legitimate or illegitimate...
Yes, exactly. The process of play isn't wheedling the GM. Creativity arises from making use of limited resources, not wishing up whatever tool you need at that moment. Yes, of course you could solve the problem if you had a genie handing out wishes. But that's rather the opposite of creativity.
it is simply the fact that they made any petition at all.
There is nothing wrong with the petition. Petitioning the GM is not the same as arguing with the GM. I'll even generally allow players to make one appeal as it could be the case that the GM has forgotten some rules or something about the fictional positioning or something about the player's abilities. It's the part after you've realized that the GM is in full understanding of the facts and has considered them and has not agreed with you, where you think you now can argue him into seeing things your way where I think it goes wrong.
Hence, you seem envious because they got to do something cool.
LOL. OK, have it your way.