D&D General Fighting Law and Order

[Mort]

Well, you are looking at it out of context. In this case I was just covering a game for another DM. And it's often hard to take over just about anything from another person.

That's true.

Generally, if I'm "guest DMing," I provide pregens (or let experienced players make their own new characters) for a limited run game, expected to go 1-2 sessions, or whatever. Certainly don't want to contaminate someone else's sandbox.

This group of players are the type I would normal not agree to run a game for as we are night and day. For example, y game is unrated and they would insist on a PG-13 game with nothing that would 'trigger' them. They would be fine with a mayor feeding innocent citizens to an owlbear to thin out the population a bit; but they would go crazy and run from the room if I mentioned some drow slavers with some gnomes in chains.

You seem to know these players' preferences so why not either adjust to them? Or be explicit that you absolutely will not and they really don't want you. Some tables are just not a fit.

But if you're willing to answer, what table IS a fit for vindictive execution of PCs. I mean you KNEW your doppelgangers would slaughter the group, that was the primary intent. Where's the fun for the table?

Though I would not say that we could never game together. Just take one of my other groups. So they are all 20 somethings and were all excited to play the new Spelljammer 5E. Their DM did not want to run it though, so they put up and add. After a couple weeks of no takers, they came to me. I run a 2E spelljamming game for older gamers. They asked me to run the game, and I told them we can't game together. I'm an Old School Unfair Unbalanced Hard Fun type.....and they game 180 opposite of that. Then they offer to play the game my way. So of we go into the Black. The first couple of sessions were a bit rocky(and not just from the murderoids!), but they never complained once. And a couple more sessions and everything was going smoothly. Today, they play the Adventure is Survival, Combat is War, Hard Luck Nitty Gritty game with no problems.

They found that many things they thought were "so bad" about my game, were not so bad at all once they played things out in the game.

If the table is a fit for the style great.

 

[dave2008]

If they choose to commit evil acts they can no longer run that character in my game. Call it what you will.

I call that objecting to them playing an evil character. Seems pretty straight forward to me. It seems we agree on what you are doing, just not what you call it.

PS - I am 100% ok with not allowing evil characters in your game.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

And given that (i) all of these various reasons are not, and could not, possibly all be written down and cognised by a GM, and (ii) even if they were, there is no algorithm to integrate them all and produce a mandated outcome, therefore (iii) a GM just makes stuff up that strikes them as not contradicting the most obvious in-fiction considerations.

Right, this is the heart of my "there is no such thing as world sim" position. GMs cannot possibly have mapped out the world in a rich enough way to make decisions about what is and is not feasible based purely on fictional considerations. At best such judgments represent only one of a vast range of possibilities. How does a GM filter these possibilities and prioritize them? Inevitably that process involves "meta-game thinking"! In fact, given the extreme thinness of the descriptions of D&D worlds, almost ALL the thinking must be meta-game thinking!

Thus when someone says to me "well, logically Mob Boss X absolutely must be going to send 100 thugs after the PCs for that!" all I hear is "the GM has decided that he wants plot element '100 thugs pursue the PCs' to happen!" He could JUST as logically imagine that all 100 of Mob Boss X's thugs are already busily employed on other tasks (else why would they be employed at all) and that any consideration of sending some/all of them after the PCs will involve his making a cost/benefit calculation as to what a reasonable response is. Now, its not WRONG (or as you point out, illogical) to say "He's ripshit, he sends all 100 of them, damn the consequences!" OK, sure! But to say this is inevitable and that any other sort of outcome is ridiculous and 'ignoring the consequences of PC actions' is frankly absurd!

Beyond that, there's nothing constraining the GM to a preference for non-meta-game thinking in the first place. My own thinking might be "Oh, yeah, a war with Mob Boss X might be cool, the PCs seem to be aiming for that. Lets go for it!" And then I'll make some purely narrative choices about what exactly this will constitute. Fiction here will remain as a constraint, so I'm going to abide by any previously established limits on X's resources, established NPCs in his employ, etc. but beyond that logic be damned, I can come up with a lampshade for anything.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

You're arguing that murder-hobo players looking to kill NPCs for trivial reasons is 'uncommon'?

Dude, I've met hundreds of them in my lifetime, and I'd be shocked to meet someone who has never met one of these guys on an at least semi regular basis.

At the risk of offense: Maybe it isn't that they're common, but that the specific style of play which you espouse either draws them, or inspires people to play in that way! I've run a lot of games in my time. I have VERY rarely run into situations where D&D parties 'went off the ranch' in the sort of way you're talking about. I can see how it can happen in a specific situation, like the one in the OP, due to mistakes in framing and maybe misjudging the players, but its not something that just happens all the time!

And @bloodtide's description of players as lazy, idiotic, confused, and lacking in any sort of wit or agency whatsoever, does not inspire confidence in his ability to judge and work with people! I started and ran 4 companies. I may not be a genius at dealing with people (I'd probably be in politics or a high level business leader if I was) but I sure know one thing. When you take a group of people and assume they are idiots, incapable of basic decision making, etc. and that you must ruthlessly 'school them' by repeated application of punishments, you will get s**t out of them. I mean, you are absolutely bound to end up with a terrible experience. And indeed, as we just saw, BT's approach imploded the entire game in under 2 sessions!

I am 100% sure that if I'd been put at the head of that table instead of BT, that game would have been fun, rewarding, entertaining, and at the very least it wouldn't have imploded in 2 sessions. I mean, the worst games I've ever run didn't fizzle in 2 sessions, and none of them ever 'imploded' in the way this one did! I'm literally horrified by the description of how the players were treated. Its completely uncalled for.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Wow, that last post.

Certainly sounds like "I got a chance to have a go at some people I disagree with and took it".

 

[Micah Sweet]

Right, this is the heart of my "there is no such thing as world sim" position. GMs cannot possibly have mapped out the world in a rich enough way to make decisions about what is and is not feasible based purely on fictional considerations. At best such judgments represent only one of a vast range of possibilities. How does a GM filter these possibilities and prioritize them? Inevitably that process involves "meta-game thinking"! In fact, given the extreme thinness of the descriptions of D&D worlds, almost ALL the thinking must be meta-game thinking!

Thus when someone says to me "well, logically Mob Boss X absolutely must be going to send 100 thugs after the PCs for that!" all I hear is "the GM has decided that he wants plot element '100 thugs pursue the PCs' to happen!" He could JUST as logically imagine that all 100 of Mob Boss X's thugs are already busily employed on other tasks (else why would they be employed at all) and that any consideration of sending some/all of them after the PCs will involve his making a cost/benefit calculation as to what a reasonable response is. Now, its not WRONG (or as you point out, illogical) to say "He's ripshit, he sends all 100 of them, damn the consequences!" OK, sure! But to say this is inevitable and that any other sort of outcome is ridiculous and 'ignoring the consequences of PC actions' is frankly absurd!

Beyond that, there's nothing constraining the GM to a preference for non-meta-game thinking in the first place. My own thinking might be "Oh, yeah, a war with Mob Boss X might be cool, the PCs seem to be aiming for that. Lets go for it!" And then I'll make some purely narrative choices about what exactly this will constitute. Fiction here will remain as a constraint, so I'm going to abide by any previously established limits on X's resources, established NPCs in his employ, etc. but beyond that logic be damned, I can come up with a lampshade for anything.

Well one thing I can say is that dismissing someone's preference as not really existing is an excellent argument that is sure to not elicit negative emotional responses.

 

[Lanefan]

More seriously, nothing in this thread has changed my mind as expressed in my first post in it: I find it utterly baffling that anyone would treat what @bloodtide is describing as reasonable, let alone serious, RPGing. To me it seems obviously dysfunctional and frankly toxic. Why would any players be interested in putting up with it?

They seemed more keen on playing under the original DM than under the replacement, if the update is anything to go by. (side question: has there been any indication yet as to how long this campaign had been going before the session in the OP took place?)

I'm not sure it's either dysfunctional or toxic provided the DM is willing to go along with what the players have their characters do - in this case, go murder-mad against some prison guards - and simply have the setting react as it reasonably would. Also, keep in mind some players don't at all mind being railroaded provided the results are entertaining enough to keep them coming back; thus the fact that there was some railroading may not play into this very much if it was already accepted as being how they rolled.

The setting's reaction as posted in the update - jumped-up alt-clones of the PCs arriving and whaling on them - is IMO not reasonable; it's an over-the-top meta-attempt at a) punishing the players and b) forcing their characters back into being something the players seem not to want to play, and a and b are both where dysfunction and toxicity arise.

 

[pemerton]

Well one thing I can say is that dismissing someone's preference as not really existing is an excellent argument that is sure to not elicit negative emotional responses.

@AbdulAlhazred didn't argue the preferences don't exist. He argued that, as they are literally stated (a preference that everything in the fiction follow by way of in-fiction causal logic), they are impossible to satisfy.

 

[bloodtide]

That's true.

Generally, if I'm "guest DMing," I provide pregens (or let experienced players make their own new characters) for a limited run game, expected to go 1-2 sessions, or whatever. Certainly don't want to contaminate someone else's sandbox.

I should have just done a dream game where the characters are in candyland and had to fight a Chocolate Chimera. So fun silly and would not matter.

You seem to know these players' preferences so why not either adjust to them?

Why would I ever do that? What reason would I have to take their views into account to play a fictional game?

And why not the other way? Why don't the players adjust to my view point?

But if you're willing to answer, what table IS a fit for vindictive execution of PCs. I mean you KNEW your doppelgangers would slaughter the group, that was the primary intent. Where's the fun for the table?

The fun is playing the game, but not by having a red Carpet of Positivity rolled out in front of the players. It's a problem I see with a lot of players in a lot of games. And not just RPGs. The classic is playing a game like basketball, volleyball or softball. As long as the players on the team are winning as they have more points then the other team, they are "have fun". The second their team is loosing, as they have less points then the other team, they are "not having fun". When they are having fun they will laugh, dance around, talk smack and be all happy. When they are not having fun they will mumble, complain, whine and quite often just walk away from the game.


Any of my more regular players would have loved to jump at the chance to "game outsdie the box". They would have quickly made "anti-characters" made to kill the alt characters. Then they would have come up with a plan, and quite likely won. They would have a fun time "making copies of their PCs to kill the evil twin copies of their PCs". Then with the fixing items from the "evil twins" they could have brought back all the dead guards....and even if they wanted to, the original PCs. And they could 'switch' back to the OG PCs and let the alt ones fade back to where they came from.......OR even kept both PCs and continue onward in the game with two PCs each.

Now many people reading the above would find no fun in any of that. They want to play a game where the player "makes a scene" and the GM only reacts to the player in very set limiting ways as the player "asks questions" and the GM "makes up answers" and maybe some dice are rolled to show how much the player "wins". And that is fine, if that is fun for you. But trust me that there are players that would find the above fun too.

 

[Lanefan]

You wouldn't think "don't vindictively slaughter the PCs..." NEEDS to be front and center DMing advice, and yet...

It's the "vindictively" piece that's the problem.

Slaughtering PCs without emotion when they face-charge something miles above their pay grade and decide to fight to the death is, however, fair game.