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

[AlViking]

But, you also made point of saying that the player moved on to other games more to his taste. IOW, it was a player problem that he didn't bite onto your hook. So, it's not really all that much about objective DMing is it? After all, if it was, then ignoring the plot hook would have been zero problem and wouldn't even be remarkable since it should happen all the time.

So a DM should always try to please every single player even if it means the DM and the other players are less happy with the game? Sometimes it's just not a good match and you can't fix it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yes, I clearly didn't do it fast enough, but I actually went back and changed my wording in the bit you were responding to there, because there are some situations where the advice I was giving won't necessarily apply. I think it does apply to most of the specific examples I've come across in this thread (at least with respect to people engaging with me directly), but there are certainly situations where it may be less useful.

Well, keep in mind that I'm not coming from the same place a number of people in this thread are coming from in some ways. I just happen to overlap with some of them in some areas (and very much with different ones in others).

 

[Zardnaar]

At what point does it stop being conservatism and turn into a simple preference for one game over another?

If I lije the games it's great. If I don't it's the conservative gamers fault.

 

[Zardnaar]

So a DM should always try to please every single player even if it means the DM and the other players are less happy with the game? Sometimes it's just not a good match and you can't fix it.

No sometimes players have contradictory aims, goals, expectations.

I give them a list of ideas im happy to run. Then they can suggest levels to start at.
Generally they veto the most unpopular ones. Eg undead themed post CoS.

Generally I'll pitch 5 ideas/themes. Hypothetically if they're not happy with any of them they can DM. Examples would be be Eberron, Midgard, BG3.5, Eberron, Drow or whatever.

 

[pemerton]

Nit-picking the example doesn't change anything. If a character wants to climb something like El Capitan it's not going to be easy. Those 50 people? They are pro climbers with gear that characters don't typically have and all climbers in today's world are following established routes discovered mapped, and in many cases with climbing aids such as bolts and pitons left in place.

It doesn't change anything. It's still up to the DM in D&D to determine the difficulty, how much the PCs can learn and everything else about the climb. Just like everything else external to the character.

This is why I regard the approach to framing and resolution that you describe as involving modest player agency and a high degree of GM control.

 

[pemerton]

Because I'm not trying to force them to play a specific story. I want to provide interesting things for the players to want to investigate. That particular player wasn't interested.

But then why not just ask them what they are interested in?

 

[AlViking]

This is why I regard the approach to framing and resolution that you describe as involving modest player agency and a high degree of GM control.

This has nothing to do with the game being played.

 

[Hussar]

So a DM should always try to please every single player even if it means the DM and the other players are less happy with the game? Sometimes it's just not a good match and you can't fix it.

Missing the point.

He claimed that he was running a player driven game. But, when the player decided to drive somewhere else, the result wasn't good.

That's the point I'm trying to make here. These "oh, my players have all this freedom. They can do anything" campaigns that people seem to hold up as examples often break down as soon as you start doing any sort of examination. Freedom seems to mean, very often, "freedom to choose from the list I provide".

 

[AlViking]

Missing the point.

He claimed that he was running a player driven game. But, when the player decided to drive somewhere else, the result wasn't good.

That's the point I'm trying to make here. These "oh, my players have all this freedom. They can do anything" campaigns that people seem to hold up as examples often break down as soon as you start doing any sort of examination. Freedom seems to mean, very often, "freedom to choose from the list I provide".

if one person is being disruptive and wants to go a completely different direction from the rest of the group there's only so much that can be done.

When you're running a game it's for everyone at the table, not just one person.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'll flat out say that sometimes that's, in practice, a dodge. There's two reasons it can be:

1. Its easy given the time frames and such of a game session for that "talk about it later" to just never happen. Even if that doesn't happen every time it requires a very persistent player to make sure that their concerns are always at least heard out.

2. If you have a GM unwilling to roll things back, addressing a problem later is sometimes useless. Its hard for me to believe most GMs don't, on some level, know that either. While an overly dramatic comparison, "justice delayed is justice denied".

This doesn't mean that every case is important enough to justify taking the time to thrash it out, but its a very uneven process powerwise, since in practice it means that if the player thinks it is, and the GM thinks it isn't, there's a strong tendency for the latter to get to win.



The problem is, some of these things aren't the sort of thing that will come up in campaign setup discussion. They can be as simple as the GM being casual about things that a player thinks are important, and they may not find that out until well into the game when it keeps coming up. This can cover all sorts of ground from consistency of decision making (and transparency for reasons for the decisions) to how clear communication on things like difficulty is expected to be.

If a player wants to grind a game to a halt to address an issue, they can, whether or not the GM or the other players want that. It's actually pretty easy.