D&D General The Monsters Know What They're Doing ... Are Unsure on 5e24

[tetrasodium]

Pretty much all discussions of GM vs player entitlement become oversimplifications, because nobody ever wants nuance - they just want to be right.

Such conversations generally drive to extremes, in which characters get lynched rather than get charged a little extra in the shops, and players massacre entire villages without having notable consequences for those actions.

My suggesting that both sides need to be able to trust each other seems rather less oversimplification than that.



I thought we were arguing over Jimmy wanting to play a tortle. You're... kind of far afield from that here.

I've been considering bringingup a less silly less extreme example from actual game I've run than the hypothetical burn down a town and lynching one being flung around for a few pages now, but that tangent was pretty heated because it links to a point I made earlier showing the importance of maintaining the setting alongside video game mentality and the earlier mentioned 70ish page pseudo-setting guide.

Take these two players, Alice with a war forged warlock in a sharn game and Bob with a vaelenar elf noble in a game set in and around a Cyran refugee camp. Alice went with war forged and leaned in hard because it let them do things like stand by the coat check and rifle through pockets of costs literally handed to them after being slighted by wait staff and patrons alike or simply show up looking ready to work alongside other warforge and walk through the side door with minimal hassle. While I don't recall the reasons those things were done, both of them got quite the applause from other players for the assistance it gave the group having Alice lean into local prejudice against war forge.

Meanwhile in a different game Bob wanted a vaelenar elf noble warlock because it gave healing word and was the most optimal choice for a warlock. I tried to explain the reasons why that was a monumentally awful choice given that the game was going to feature cyrans so heavily and explained how the vaelenar were basically hired mercenaries who staged a coup to steal cyre from the cyrans, but Bob would hear it. For some reason the players were working for one of the local cyre linked dragon marked houses. Upon their first visit they were treated with polite disdain and needed to negotiate just to be considered for the adventurer job they heard about ; but they seemed competent enough and the house did have a job that needed doing .. so the party got the job. Upon returning to collect payment Bob decided that the best way to cut through the prejudice caused by a vaelenar elf in the party would be to declare his nobility , show his signet ring and demand an immediate audience with the local dragon marked house head ... Things went poorly fast and the party was led to/locked in storage shed of some form where stake bread was tossed in while waiting for a meeting first thing the next morning.. all of that was pretty quick in terms of actual table time, but the problem was Bob's choice and the party not to stop him from poisoning their social interaction before it even started


Both of those memorable events were possible for the groups involved because I don't treat the game world as meaningless throwaway thing to swap in every throwaway suggested revision cooked up during character creation to fit any poorly fitting concept, and my players enjoy the results.

I really don't care if "Daddy rolled a 1" made an argument in a tediously long video. While there are some sources whose opinion I may take more seriously than others, "Daddy rolled a 1" is not among them, as I don't think I've ever even heard of them before this thread.

So, really, forget the video.

You don't need to care, that's why I described it and explained what was the relevant bit due to it being a long video I wasn't going to rewatch for a reference. The mention is because it came up earlier

 

[TwoSix]

Lack of compromise itself is not a red flag.

Lack of compromise without describing or explaining why one won't compromise is a red flag.

People who don't engage in either direction are problematic. Players and DMs both need to step up and explain their thought processes to make sure the fiction works; failure by either party to do so will destroy games.

 

[TiQuinn]

I mean, if the alternative is "Play a human fighter with nothing but the stuff in my pack", than I would play OSE or Cairn or Knave or any of the myriad OSR/NSR systems that make such an experience actually gamable and enjoyable.

Absolutely. There’s also D&D 1e, BECMI, and 2e if it has to be the D&D label. I would imagine they’re used to playing those systems so why stop?

 

[mamba]

Lack of compromise itself is not a red flag.

Lack of compromise without describing or explaining why one won't compromise is a red flag.

nah, lack of any compromise is a red flag in itself, that doesn’t mean that everything is fully negotiable. There probably is something you want to keep around from your initial idea though, and that is fine

 

[Maxperson]

Personally, I still find it so bizarre how GMs seem to want to nail down every square inch of their world, leaving no place with anything the GM doesn't already know to the smallest stitch. That doesn't sound like a setting to me; it sounds like a prewritten play that I get to watch unfold, I just happened to be allowed to name and voice one of the characters in it. I find it hard to see the difference between such incredibly restrictive "curation" and simply running down the rails of the GM's unpublished novel. It gives me the feeling that the GM isn't even remotely interested in anything I care about, and if there's ever a gap between what I want and what the GM wants, I will always be dismissed, shame on me for having wanted anything the GM wasn't offering. Etc.

I will admit that I skipped most of the thread, coming into it around 50 or 60 pages in, but in the time I've been present here I haven't seen a single DM indicate his game was anything like what you describe here.

 

[TwoSix]

I think this is where the disconnect is, this is not a setting being designed for a new campaign, it is a setting that has existed for 10+ years already, seeing play over that period.

I tend to ignore that use case because I would never join a game that has a 10+ year old setting that also has a ton of built-in restrictions.

I have one DM that uses the same setting for all his games, but it's just a generic D&D type setting with a few custom gods that he uses for NPCs; he has no setting detail that impacts our character creation or concepts at all.

I, personally, am on my 4th Eberron game (stretching back to 3.5), all nominally in the "same setting". But other than occasionally having something that happened in a previous game impact a scene framing, the fact that I'm using the "same setting" is completely opaque to the players, since only a few players have been in more than one game.

 

[Scribe]

I will admit that I skipped most of the thread, coming into it around 50 or 60 pages in, but in the time I've been present here I haven't seen a single DM indicate his game was anything like what you describe here.

No, but we cannot let that get in the way of grievance.

 

[Pedantic]

....I really shouldn't have brought up tortles in my initial "stuff you might not include in a proposed setting" example. That was clearly more resonant than blood magic.

 

[Maxperson]

Though I didn't see your post, I would argue that is a capitulation by the DM, not a compromise. The set up was simply:

1. The player will only play a tortle
2. The DM will not allow tortles

I can see no way to compromise those two stances.

@AlViking offered up one. He offered up a race that was visually human(I think), but had tortle stats and culture. That's moving the DM's stance off of "The DM will not allow tortles" and moving the player off of "The player will only play a tortle."

That's what a compromise is. Moving off of your stance towards the middle. In this case the DM is offering the player about 90% of what the player is asking for(all but the visual). Apparently, though, given the responses to ALViking in this thread, the DM offering the player a 90% compromise isn't good enough and the DM can only "compromise" through complete capitulation to the player.

 

[Maxperson]

Just be ready of some serious baddies coming your way!

Obviously I was having a bit of fun with the Solar thing. That said, if a DM was really willing to let me play anything from the MM, I'd probably go with the Couatl. Since I started playing the game in 1983 they've been my favorite good creature.