I called out one person for making stupid assumptions about my personal game and trying to reduce my argument to personal experience to then dismiss it and then you come along doing the exact same thing, with extra dose of acussing me of being a bad dm. I have explained in another post, that you conveniently ignored, it is a hypothetical scenario. Do you need me to refer you back to it?
If the risk is purely hypothetical - which in this context means it's purely imaginary, given that no reason has been given to think that the hypothesis is plausible - then why do we need to even worry about it?
To offer a parallel - to the best of my knowledge, every version of D&D permits a player to decide if their PC has any scars, birthmarks etc. This is not within the remit of the GM. Do we need to change that allocation of authority because I can imagine a PC deciding that their PC has some crass/vulgar/hateful symbol emblazoned on their face in the form of a scar or birthmark?
And to return to your imagined scenario: if it were to really come about that a player was playing a PC who (i) purported to be the leader of a community of devout and honourable knights, and (ii) was themself a scoundrel, and yet (iii) the player was not interested in exploring the tensions between (i) and (ii), or the consequences that (ii) might have for (i), then the problem would not be
the bastion rules. The problem would be one or both of: (a) the player is not very good (or worse); (b) the player and the GM have different ideas about how they want to do their RPGing.
So because I don't run the game exactly the way you personally want, you have decided I'm a bad DM
I didn't say anything about the quality of your GMing.
the "failed author" who "should just write a book" and my players are just hopeless victims trapped on a railroad
Nor did I say either of these things.
What I did do was respond to what you described as your preferred approach to RPGing: "[The players] Play their characters and shape the world by their decisions and actions. I run reactive world that changes and responds to the PCs".
The only process you identify, for determining the consequences of PC actions, is that you make decisions - by "running a reactive world". So you are the author of the fiction. You treat the players' declared decisions and actions for their PCs as input.
As one example of the picture that I am painting, based on what I read in your post: a player has their PC say something to a NPC (eg ask for their help; offer them a bribe; tell them to go to hell), and then you as GM decide how the NPC responds, based on your conception of
what the PC has done and
how you imagine this NPC would respond to that.
Is that picture inaccurate? Do you use resolution processes that
constrain what you as GM can describe as the consequences of the PC's decisions and actions? If you do use such processes, then by all means you should post about them!
you come off as a player who wants the complete control over the game, to detriment of the GM and the players, and who treats the GM as an enemy to defeat and wrestle control of the game from. You come to me as someone who doesn't understand, nor respect the idea of social contract and player buy-in, someone who is told the GM wants to run a nautical campaign and shows up with heavy-armored Dwarf with flaw "cannot swim" and a sacred oath to never set foot on a boat and first thing you do is sell party's ship and forcefully enlist them into an army marching to liberate your ancestral homeland in the mountains. Who then screams about having your creativity limtied when GM tells you you cannot do that and doesn't understand why other players didn't left once you've been kicked out. Is it so nice when people make assumptions about you?
Well, there's no need to make many assumptions about me, as I have dozens if not hundreds of actual play posts on these boards, mostly from the perspective of a GM (see eg
my current Torchbearer game) but some from the perspective of a player (see eg
this Burning Wheel actual play report).
From my actual play posts you'll be able to see that I adhere to the procedures of the game I'm playing; but also that I generally choose games whose procedures are reasonably clear, and in particular that tell the GM what decisions they are expected to make about the fiction, within what sorts of parameters.
You will also see that I enjoy playing with players who are interested in the game I'm GMing; and that I like to GM games that my players are interested in. So your player-rejects-nautical-themed-game scenario isn't one that resonates very strongly with me. For instance, when
I started my Torchbearer campaign, one of the players built a PC whose hometown was a Forgotten Temple Complex and whose knowledge was Explosives-wise; when I asked where on the Greyhawk map the complex was he pointed to a hollow in the mountains on the edge of The Theocracy of the Pale; and when I asked what gods are worshipped in the temple complex, he answered - as if it should be obvious - "Gods of explosion!" Left to my own devices, I wouldn't have made an obscure explosives cult located on the edge of The Pale a prominent element of the shared fiction; but the player did that, and so it has been. Besides its inherent humour value, it has given me a basis for reframing the basic idea of the Temple of Elemental Evil in a new way that I otherwise wouldn't have thought of. Through a similar pathway of extrapolation from, and riffing on, player-introduced fiction, in this campaign Lareth the Beautiful is a Half-Elf, the Moathouse is in the Troll Fens (not too far from the Forgotten Temple Complex), and there is a village of Nulb on the edge of the Fens, but no Hommlet.
If something is not added by the player to the setting, it just doesn't exist. If player adds something but then proclaims it is their thing and I am not allowed to touch it in any way, hen it a) will not be integrated into the setting properly and break suspension of disbelief b) it communicates to me that the player doesn't trust me as a Dungeon Master and therefore that I need to pull them out and have a conversation with them and be prepared they want to leave the campaign.
Re (a) - there is no reason I know of to think that it will be true. I mean, whose suspension of disbelief is going to be harmed? That players? Why - presumably they enjoy the whole thing given that they are the one who introduced it. The other players? Why - what is it about a player-authored bastion that is going to stretch their credulity more than anything else that might be part of the shared fiction.
And why can't you build your fiction around the player's thing, just as I have built around the Forgotten Temple Complex with an explosives cult?
Re (b) - what it communicates to me is that the player wants to have their thing. That doesn't show that they don't trust you to do your thing. Unless your thing is
deciding everything about the fiction other than what actions the players declare for their PCs. Which goes back to the impression you have given me of your preferred approach to RPGing.
I mean, if that is how you want to GM then it makes sense that you should not play with a player who doesn't want to play in such a game. I certainly wouldn't want to! But that's not any sort of moral failing on the part of me, or any other hypothetical player. It just means that I (or we) want a game with procedures around resolution and framing that go beyond "GM decides".
