D&D General A glimpse at WoTC's current view of Rule 0

[EzekielRaiden]

I think most DMs will listen to your arguments; I know I would, for example. But listening does not equal doing what you want. Sometimes you listen and the answer is still no.

Several people in this conversation right now have told me they would not even listen. More than once, even.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think it's hubris(?) to claim that you can declare every DM that runs their game with slightly different style than what you want as "bad". There are plenty of DMs out there that run games I'm not interested in. They would be bad DMs for me, they are not bad DMs.

Is a DM "bad" because they're running a campaign in Dark Sun and don't allow gnomes?



We were all inexperienced at one time or other. No DM is perfect and not all DMs run games you want to play. Once again "they don't run the game I want it run so they're bad".



What can I say. I disagree with pretty much everything you've stated. But it's insulting to say that just because a DM runs a game you don't like that they will fall back on undermining, deception and deniability. Whether you intend it or not you come off as a toxic player because every description of a DM that does something you don't like is bad, harmful, avoiding accountability.

Different DMs will have different preferences and styles. No DM can be for everyone and I will never, ever, call a DM bad simply because they run a game I don't want to be part of.

You started off assuming that I would only ever assign these categories to people I disagree with, and thus concluded that nothing I sad had any value.

Your problem was your starting assumption, not my argument.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Sorry to hear that. My suggestion - keep looking! Today's failure is tomorrow's success!

A year's labor where I continuously lowered my expectations until it became "anyone? Anyone? Bueller?" left me too disheartened to keep trying. Thankfully, I now have a very good 5e DM (even if I don't care for 5e as a system), but I've pretty much given up finding a long-runner 4e group. As far as I can tell, they just don't exist.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Several people in this conversation right now have told me they would not even listen. More than once, even.

Have they though?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

No. The PHB has species that may be allowed in any given setting. Many published campaigns give a list of species in their worlds. It also explains what evil alignments are, do I need to allow evil PCs in my game over the objection of other players because the PHB includes the alignment?

Alignment is irrelevant in 5e, so not the best example.

And, again, in the absence of other information. Did you tell your players you wouldn't let them play X Y Z before things got started? No? Then maybe you should reflect on the consequences of your choices as DM. It's not my fault if the DM only decides three sessions in that they hate sorcerers.

 

[DEFCON 1]

So...yeah. I tried. I tried quite hard. I scoured forums (including this one). I scoured Roll20. I put up ads. I checked discord servers. Multiple days a week, even. My schedule is very open (other than my weekly DW game), so schedule wasn't an issue. I even went for PbP games, all of which folded within weeks of starting. A year's labor left me with no prospect of an ongoing game, so I gave up.

So what do you believe are the reasons you have been unable to find games? You must have ideas as to why you haven't been accepted into some of the games you may have applied for, or were unable to find games that matched the requirements you would need to have to play in them, or why the games you did play in ended much earlier than planned for. Presumably you have analyzed the issues you've had in this endeavor and have made determinations on what would have to change (either in your own requirements and preferences, or in the places to look for other opportunities.)

But if there's really this big gap between what you think is necessary and what others do and none of us can figure out where the discrepancy lies... then none of us here are going to be able help out to either shed light on what might be the potential problem, or give recommendations on what might need to happen going forward.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The bolded rather strongly hints at some DM authority, if I-as-DM am the one who can shut it down.

I've mentioned the GM having a tiebreaker vote several times. Giving the GM a tiny bit of authority more than any individual other player is not even close to the same as they having all authority this side of everyone taking a walk. It just says you probably want to have somebody be able to do so, and while you could have a designated player who does instead of the GM, there's no particular reason not to have that vested in them, too.

 

[Thomas Shey]

This has never been my experience. I expect players to suggest readings of the rules that are coherent, balanced, sensible and playable. And generally they do.

There are players who sometimes have trouble getting out of their narrow perspective sometimes, but to suggest they're even the majority let alone all players seems a pretty big stretch. This is particularly not something I'd expect to find from a player who's also GMed.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Have they though?

Absolutely! Multiple have said it is never acceptable, for any reason, to have any discussion actually at the table. If you try, you're a problem and you will be removed. This effectively nixes the vast majority of possibilities of discussion, particularly because in my experience, even with very good DMs, discussion outside of game is akin to Mr. Sopwith's description of how many camels he's spotted: "Nearly...ooh...nearly one." "Nearly one?" "Call it none."

Several others have openly rejected any possibility of even out-of-game discussion in past threads. One has said, repeatedly, that they know every territory, polity, and faction of the entire world in which their campaigns occur. It literally isn't possible for any PCs to come from a "ʜɪᴄ ꜱᴠɴᴛ ᴅʀᴀᴄᴏɴᴇꜱ" type region, nor to be any sort of one-off experiment or the result of an accident, nor any other possible way a being could be anything other than one of the races they have established...even though (by their own admission) the players have never been to several of those regions, know nothing about them, and have no possible way to have learned the slightest thing about those places.

There is absolutely a strong antipathy for ever sitting down, hearing what the player has to say, and sincerely working to find a resolution that would please both parties. In some cases, to even ask for it has been likened, I kid you not, to being an outright terrorist trying to destroy the DM's "vision." I can't recall if it was "terrorist" or "saboteur", but it was definitely one of those two words explicitly used to refer to players who dared question anything about the setting or options not explicitly included.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I've never once seen any proponent of the absolute-power DM, of "DM Empowerment," spend more than the briefest "oh yeah I guess consistency matters" side of things. DM accountability never comes up. Period. Try to discuss it? "Why don't you TRUST your DM, huh?" Or the hilarious one-two punch of "Oh, if you don't like it, just leave!" followed by getting upset about examples where players left because they didn't like it!

I have to point out an exception in this thread: Lanefan has repeatedly indicated he finds consistency crucial, not only in this thread but others. I might disagree with him about any number of things, but he's been pretty, well, consistent about as an expectation from both sides of the table.