D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[Bedrockgames]

That is wrong. People dying for their beliefs is extremely rare. That is why it is notable when it happens.

This is why I brought up Giles Corey. He was pressed to death for three days and refused to plead guilty. It is obvioulsy rare. But it can happen and in a fictional game where you might have over the top characters, it can very easily happen. In something like a wuxia campaign, a samurai campaign, a knights of the round table campaign, and bog standard fantasy I can very easily see a character like this

 

[Thomas Shey]

Clearly it doesn't work for you (and with your terribly unlucky gaming history I understand why), but you can't legitimately say it doesn't work at all, or that people shouldn't go into a game trusting their GM not to be a controlling jerk.

I think there's a pretty big gap between "GM is a controlling jerk" and "GM is not good at acknowledging he may have used bad judgement" and tossing all the responsibility into the GM's lap tends to enable both. Especially given the tendency for GMs to be taught not to accept being challenged on things.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Clearly it doesn't work for you (and with your terribly unlucky gaming history I understand why), but you can't legitimately say it doesn't work at all, or that people shouldn't go into a game trusting their GM not to be a controlling jerk.

Again, I am not saying "place all your trust in the almighty GM" has never worked for anyone ever.

I am saying that your argument of "wow, you just can't trust people, I feel sorry for you" is a crappy argument that doesn't actually establish anything.

 

[AlViking]

No. You are interpreting this as something I did not say.

I am not saying that NOBODY EVER can just coast on trust.

I am saying that it is a crappy ad hominem argument to say "oh, well I feel bad for you, you can't trust people and that must suck."

That's a crappy argument which does not actually achieve the rhetorical goal @Micah Sweet aims for.

I was responding to your statement that it doesn't work. Period. If it doesn't work for you then what can I say? It's too bad because I've only hit it once or twice over decades of play. When I did I just left the game. Since you have this much of a trust issue D&D may not work for you but you can't make the claim that it doesn't work for other people and your insistence that the rules are at fault simply doesn't hold water.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think there's a pretty big gap between "GM is a controlling jerk" and "GM is not good at acknowledging he may have used bad judgement" and tossing all the responsibility into the GM's lap tends to enable both. Especially given the tendency for GMs to be taught not to accept being challenged on things.

EXACTLY!!!

The big problem with "place all your trust in the almighty GM" approaches isn't jerk GMs.

It's mediocre GMs. Merely-adequate GMs. GMs who might do certain things amazingly well and other things really poorly.

People like that are extremely common, but they're just as much a problem as jerk GMs for styles dependent on an inexhaustible well of "well just trust the GM".

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I was responding to your statement that it doesn't work. Period. If it doesn't work for you then what can I say? It's too bad because I've only hit it once or twice over decades of play. When I did I just left the game. Since you have this much of a trust issue D&D may not work for you but you can't make the claim that it doesn't work for other people and your insistence that the rules are at fault simply doesn't hold water.

No. You were responding to what you thought I was saying. Which isn't what I said.

I would appreciate you responding to the clarified argument, and not to this straw man you've constructed instead.

Because I DID NOT say "trusting your GM never works for anyone ever". I said that the "trust me bro" DEFENSE does not work. As in, a rhetorical argument.

 

[AlViking]

The question is, "How well?" Observation in the field suggests for a fair number of people "worked" translates into "is tolerable, especially when you can either deal with it or not game."

I can only speak from personal experience over decades with dozens if not hundreds of players and GMs, that it works quite well in my experience 99% of the time. Since I've played with people all over the country, I doubt my experience is particularly unique..

 

[FrozenNorth]

By rare I don't mean "this is how the majority of people died" but "there are a lot of examples of it".

But that is exactly why it is a poor example. If « Less than 1% of people are willing to suffer certain death for their beliefs » than it strains credulity to claim « random NPC is so opposed to alcohol that they would rather be tortured than quaff a drink ».

 

[AlViking]

It literally just happened again:


I'm not going to trawl through the thread. It happened. Multiple times. People characterized their approach as being the only one they could stomach because it was verisimilitudinous/realistic/"based on real-world logic" etc. They also repeatedly portrayed PbtA and various other things as inherently unrealistic, indeed antagonistic to the very possibility of realism.

If it's so common then it shouldn't be hard to find an example where people were doing something more than just expressing a personal preference.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Again, I am not saying "place all your trust in the almighty GM" has never worked for anyone ever.

I am saying that your argument of "wow, you just can't trust people, I feel sorry for you" is a crappy argument that doesn't actually establish anything.

I don't want to play a game where I don't trust the GM to try to provide me with the best experience they can, and I don't want to run a game where the players mistrust me either. In both cases the experience won't be fun. And I definitely don't want to play or run a game with rules seemingly designed to constrain the GM from possibly making a decision I don't like. All of this is preference of course, but on this topic what else is there?