D&D General Fighting Law and Order

[EzekielRaiden]

Right, this sounds good in a vague general sense....but does not quite work out in real life.


My house in a non smoking house. You come over to play a game: you smoke outside. I will never "adjust" and say "sure come on it and light up and fill my house with your stinking smoke".

Same way I don't put up with personal attacks, bullying or hitting on players during the game, even "as a joke". Again, I will never "adjust" and say "oh sure go ahead and attack and insult Bob all you want".

So...you also never take into account the things other people like? If you have a lactose intolerant Jewish friend visit, you'll cook the sausage alfredo you were going to cook and if they don't like it they can just leave? If you invite your friends over for movie night, sucks to be them if they don't like horror movies because guess what, it's all horror all night?

I'm not saying you should let people smoke in your house. That's--rather trivially--a perfectly cromulent thing to simply forbid. But what others explicitly said, and you explicitly rejected, was lifting even one finger to try to embrace the tastes or interests of your players if they don't happen to be 100% perfectly your own tastes. Hence my dismay. Adjusting to the tastes and interests of others when it costs you nothing and does you no harm is not at all like letting people smoke in your non-smoking house. It is, instead, being friendly and positive to others--and an absolute refusal to do those things is only barely shy of open insult.

 

[Flamestrike]

"Teaching the game" is completely different from "teaching moral lessons."

No, it's not. Part of teaching the game, is enforcing the social construct. See my post above this one re Sarah (a new player) playing a LG character breaching the social contract, being unfaithful to her alignment, and acting like a jerk by seeking to murder the other PCs as they sleep (derailing the entire campaign, and likely leading to the game falling apart).

How is reigning her in, saying 'Nope' to her, and explaining why you're not going to let her murder the party (along with an explanation on alignments, the social contract of the table, importance of teamwork, and why that action wont be allowed) anything other than teaching her a moral lesson?

That's part of the DMs job in addition to teaching the rules in the book. You're doing her a favor in this case, because it's her 1st session, and you're reigning in bad behavior by a player.

A weak foundation leads to an unstable house.

Or to put in another way, how would you define a DM reigning in a player who is contravening social conventions of the table by acting like a Jerk?

Remember, nothing in the rules against being a jerk. Saying 'no Jerks at my table' is a moral position to take (on behalf of the other players), and correcting Jerk behavior or booting a Jerk from your game is clearly a moral position to take.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Murder hobism dnd reddit - Google Search

The above is a google search, with the terms 'Murder Hoboism, DnD, Reddit' with 87,000 hits.

They're common.

Look, I hate to break it to you, but 'murder hobos' was a term coined to refer to the standard average trad D&D party, which spends its days wandering the countryside looting dungeons full of monsters and stealing their gold, without seemingly any care or concern or relationship with the world at all. As a rule this meant that PCs might well kill ANYTHING that has treasure, and MANY groups, maybe most at some point or other, did some 'edgy things'. It didn't refer to some kind of specific groups of players, in fact to the opposite it was, in the day, HIGHLY UNUSUAL to find groups where PCs had some depth to them, some attachments to the campaign world, and enough of a personality for it to really make much difference how they behaved.

So, the fact that the term is commonly used, what is surprising about that? But the truth is, this sort of play has always existed and probably always will exist, it is just low RP gamist trad or even neo-trad D&D! What I'm saying is, that it is a product of unsophisticated GMing practices for the most part. If you are running into this sort of play everywhere, you need to reexamine your GMing techniques and toolkit, because its failing you! The last time I saw play that I would describe as something close to this was maybe around 1986 or so. Its relatively easy to avoid if you know what you're doing (and want to avoid it, which I am not saying people must do). I could probably also put together a game and virtually guarantee that this kind of play WOULD happen, as the causes and such are very well known and understood!

 

[Zubatcarteira]

What is a murderhobo can vary from person to person, on r/dndmemes a while ago there was a lot of debate about parties killing kings and nobles for the lulz and whether it'd be morally wrong since feudalism isn't the nicest of systems around.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Then they wouldnt be Lords for long. It's literally the role of the Lord to investigate and bring the offenders to justice.

Petitioners come to the Lord, complain, and the Lord sends forces after them.

It goes something like this:

Sure, in Hollywood! lol. I mean, nobody is disputing that unlawful behavior is going to be unwelcome to local authorities. The only thing we are questioning is whether or not the logic "and thus the miscreants WILL be punished" makes any sense. Sure, the local lord probably wants that to happen, which is a lot different from "able to make it happen."

I mean, look at Mexico today. Do you think local government officials there are in a position to punish lawbreakers as they please? If you do think that, I suggest you may not be terribly well informed! Modern Mexico is probably a much better model of a medievalesque society than the US is.

 

[Micah Sweet]

@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.

That just makes anyone who holds those preferences delusional. Do you think that's what he's saying?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

What is a murderhobo can vary from person to person, on r/dndmemes a while ago there was a lot of debate about parties killing kings and nobles for the lulz and whether it'd be morally wrong since feudalism isn't the nicest of systems around.

What murder hobo REALLY was rooted in, was a critique of classic/trad D&D and the way it lacks any mechanisms by which the characters are related in any way shape or form to society, each other, or really anything. The game actually seemed to go out of its way to avoid such things, and thus PCs were simply heavily armed, greedy, usually ruthless, persons who lacked any reason (aside from alignment change punishments) to do anything except whatever was in their own immediate materialistic interests.

This is in contrast to other games of the earlier times. Like Traveller, where the PCs generally have a ship and payments to make, and associations with patrons, a reason to not become outlaws because the TAS will disown you, etc. Even Traveller parties were noted for a tendency towards greedy unethical behavior, but not to the degree of D&D (Traveller combat is also pretty lethal, so its hard to survive when everyone shoots at you). Other games like CoC, RQ, the now forgotten but once famous Bunnies and Burrows, etc. all had either concepts which went against this sort of behavior or simply didn't focus much on violence in the case of CoC (and when it did the cultists and monsters are pretty skwicky). So this tended to be a D&D problem above all else.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That just makes anyone who holds those preferences delusional. Do you think that's what he's saying?

Huh? It just means you disagree with me. I don't understand what you expect, for me to adopt a belief system which comports with your ideas because every other possibility is insulting to you? What is this, thought police? You're the one inventing names for yourself and then telling me that my existence amounts to calling you by them. Ease off, please!

 

[Micah Sweet]

Huh? It just means you disagree with me. I don't understand what you expect, for me to adopt a belief system which comports with your ideas because every other possibility is insulting to you? What is this, thought police? You're the one inventing names for yourself and then telling me that my existence amounts to calling you by them. Ease off, please!

I have never told anyone that their game preferences are impossible. If I did, and they saw it as insulting, I would agree with them.

 

[Flamestrike]

Sure, in Hollywood! lol. I mean, nobody is disputing that unlawful behavior is going to be unwelcome to local authorities. The only thing we are questioning is whether or not the logic "and thus the miscreants WILL be punished" makes any sense.

I didnt say 'will be'. In fact I said 'It depends on the status, power, importance, and alignment of the victim and/or Lord.

My game world is Faerun. Expect the ruler of even a small town of a thousand or so to have access to 3rd level spells (local Churches, including the rulers own faith, and court Wizards and the like). Expect them also to be relatively invested in enforcing Law and Order in their domains.

Lawful rulers especially so.

I mean, look at Mexico today. Do you think local government officials there are in a position to punish lawbreakers as they please?

Last time I checked Mexicos prisons are pretty full.

Dude have you been to Mexico? What do you think would happen to you if you went to Cancun and shot a local?

Oh yeah wait. You'd be tracked down by local law enforcement and thrown in prison.

Modern Mexico is probably a much better model of a medievalesque society than the US is.

What an insanely uninformed, disturbing and ethnocentric thing to say. Mexico is a Federal Republic just like the USA, and to some degree my country as well (Australia). It in no way resembles a Feudal medieval society to anyone other than... well you know exactly to whom.