D&D General Alternate thought - rule of cool is bad for gaming

[Micah Sweet]

Just to note that Apocalypse World and PbtA world games in general are very/vastly different games from 4e D&D as well.

So, all of D&D (and plenty of other games as well; PbtA is quite a different approach).

Oh, I know. But @pemerton has said many times that he ran 4e in a manner that conceptually seems much closer to the playstyles of PbtA than it does to non-4e D&D and its ilk.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The scenario that brought us to this part of the discussion is, as I recall it, that having considered compromise on initial presentation for one character, other players are jumping on the bandwagon. So... they kind of are a block.



So, here's a perspective problem that is rather central to the discussion.

Maybe to the GM who is unwilling to compromise, "the game" - the thing they want to run - is somehow special. But to the players... not really? In this scenario, we are still talking about compromise around character generation. Play of "the game" hasn't even begun! The players (individually, and as a group) haven't invested much, so no big loss.

In this scenario, the GM, who is apparently invested in this offering enough to reject players over its integrity, is the one who has something to lose.

GMs, and their specific visions, are not irreplaceably special.

Someone still has to run, and we recently went over all the reasons why getting someone else to do it not a sure thing.

 

[Oofta]

The scenario that brought us to this part of the discussion is, as I recall it, that having considered compromise on initial presentation for one character, other players are jumping on the bandwagon. So... they kind of are a block.



So, here's a perspective problem that is rather central to the discussion.

Maybe to the GM who is unwilling to compromise, "the game" - the thing they want to run - is somehow special. But to the players... not really? In this scenario, we are still talking about compromise around character generation. Play of "the game" hasn't even begun! The players (individually, and as a group) haven't invested much, so no big loss.

In this scenario, the GM, who is apparently invested in this offering enough to reject players over its integrity, is the one who has something to lose.

GMs, and their specific visions, are not irreplaceably special.

I would much rather have a DM who is not only okay with running their campaign, they are enthusiastic and excited about it. So I'm going to compromise far more as a player than I will as a DM. There's also issues of does the DM have a ongoing continuous campaign, do they care about that campaign world's lore and history. For example, I've been DMing the same world for a long, long time and I currently have (gods help me) 3 groups running in the same world. I'm kind of hoping to have some crossover events if things work out.

So yeah, I'm pretty restrictive in what I allow rules wise. Meanwhile, my campaigns are wide open and if the group doesn't want to turn left at Albuquerque, that's perfectly fine by me. The most I'll lose is part of a session prep (which I'll likely reuse), perhaps an NPC or two I was fond of and a general outline. But want to play a warforged? Sorry, they don't exist in my world.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I am simply not familiar with these places where seemingly every game except D&D is welcome.

If you got that from my statement, somehow it got inverted; I was saying there were places no game but D&D was welcome.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Most people seem to categorize gaming into two buckets. Either it's 100% exactly perfectly what they want or it's bad, terrible, and no good crap and the referee should feel bad for not providing the perfect gaming experience. I've run into that often enough that I've simply gone back to laying things out up front exactly what my style is and players can self-select from there. I still have zero problems filling tables using that approach.

That seems an overstatement just form what you can see around here. I don't think its useful to confuse "these things are dealbreakers" with "100% exactly perfectly what they want". I do think some people are overly rigid, but "most" seems a pretty big piece of hyperbole. It just may be that the dealbreakers are, in some case, common enough that someone who really wants to run the game that way can hit them an awful lot, but that doesn't mean the same people aren't flexible in other ways; it just means that the GM hitting that is some degree of an outlier, so he's going to run into that problem a lot.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Flip side: it's not just DMs who present ultimatums.

Read the last sentence I wrote in the post you're responding to. Of course it isn't.

 

[Thomas Shey]

GMs, and their specific visions, are not irreplaceably special.

Generally.

As I've noted before, in FTF play its entirely possible that an area has a very limited number of people willing to GM, and a population of interested players that exceed the practical limit on those they can support. At that point its possible that, in practice, they are irreplaceable.

(Yes, I know that VTT play is a thing, its what I do these days, but not everyone is willing or able to do that for various reasons, so its still a situation that can occur).

 

[Oofta]

Generally.

As I've noted before, in FTF play its entirely possible that an area has a very limited number of people willing to GM, and a population of interested players that exceed the practical limit on those they can support. At that point its possible that, in practice, they are irreplaceable.

(Yes, I know that VTT play is a thing, its what I do these days, but not everyone is willing or able to do that for various reasons, so its still a situation that can occur).

Even in a larger area, finding a FTF DM that fits can be difficult. If anyone puts out the word that they're looking for a group, they get bombarded pretty quickly. Depending on your standards and what you're looking for a good DM is, if not irreplaceable, rare and difficult to find.

 

[Micah Sweet]

If you got that from my statement, somehow it got inverted; I was saying there were places no game but D&D was welcome.

Ah. That makes much more sense.

 

[Remathilis]

Exactly. It's such a weirdly and intentionally bad framing. You need one referee and 1-50+ players. If a player leaves, as long as you still have one or more left, the game can keep going. If the one referee drops out, that's the end. Even if all the players drop out...the referee can simply find more players and keep running the same campaign world. Depending on how it's set up, can even run the exact same game...just with new PCs.

An actual example:

I knew a DM who was a bit of a megalomaniac. He was a great storyteller, but his game picked up all the hallmarks of a control freak DM: ubercool DM PCs, invincible villains, railroad plots, deliberately screwing with certain PCs to create drama. One day, one of his players told him off and left. Not long after, that player started up his own game. Three players dropped and joined the new DMs game, and the old DM screamed how he was being betrayed. That caused one of the remaining two players to quit and the other to join the other four.

Last I had heard, the old DM was big into Warhammer 40k complained D&D was for children. (This would have been early 2000s)

See, the four players were pretty good friends beyond the game and even if they were enjoying the old DMs game, they left in solidarity. That's a powerful voting block. If every player is for their enlightened self interest, losing one player doesn't hurt. If one leaves and all his friends go with him, that's a different problem (especially in a social game).

I'm not going to say that is an incredibly common occurrence. The DM was an arse and even if he was entertaining, his behavior was atrocious. But it illustrates that players sometimes do exodus en masse, even if only one player is having a problem.