D&D 5E As a Player, why do you play in games you haven't bought into?

[Hussar]

My opinion on this is that you should have run the game anyways, and just told them that this was also meant to tie them into plot hooks in the adventure, making the town more dynamic and engaging for them.

Yeah, well, hindsight is 20:20 and it's easy enough to say while armchair DMing.

At the time, I felt that the players displayed pretty much zero interest in the mini-game, since they came with mostly completed characters, and I felt that there was an expectation of, "Quit futzing around, we've got our characters, get the show on the road".

Like I said, multiple times. I'm not the right DM for this group. When faced with outright opposition to an idea, I tend to side with players. If they didn't want to do the mini-game, and it seemed that they didn't, I certainly wasn't going to force the issue. Maybe I should have been more forceful? I dunno. It's water under the bridge and I'm certainly not looking for advice on what I should have done differently. I'm saying what mistakes I made in the hopes that others don't make the same mistake.

Your solution is apparently to force the issue and over rule the players. I don't play like that. So, my solution should have been, at the time, to simply step back and let someone else run a game. Instead, I tried to triage the situation and it just didn't work.

 

[MikalC]

Depending on the available pool of players, it can turn into a self-solving problem where you don't have any players. As I said, resistance to reading things is not uncommon.

(Honestly, the assumption that there's large player pools available everywhere does not seem well supported, and you see it a lot, I suspect from GMs and players who happen to have been fortunate in this regard).

Fine with me. If players can’t even put minimum effort in my game I don’t want to put effort into running it for them. Unless they have a reading disability if they can’t respect my time and effort enough to read?
I’d rather okay a video game or do something else.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Sure, but I tend to limit those to things that fall under Wheaton's law.

No PvP, no stealing from other players, ect. Because we are all a group here to work together and have fun, and one of us constantly attacking the others isn't fun.

It can be a fine line. Having a character who, under some circumstances, might attack another PC can be both reasonable and actually bring extra value to a game (even for the other players).

But there are some practical limits beyond which its just a campaign breaker looking for a place to happen, and in practice, if a player isn't willing to accept that there's going to be some behaviors off the table, they aren't willing to take up their part of keeping that campaign going.

 

[Zardnaar]

It can be a fine line. Having a character who, under some circumstances, might attack another PC can be both reasonable and actually bring extra value to a game (even for the other players).

But there are some practical limits beyond which its just a campaign breaker looking for a place to happen, and in practice, if a player isn't willing to accept that there's going to be some behaviors off the table, they aren't willing to take up their part of keeping that campaign going.

It's fine if DM has influenced it via mental control eg domination. Otherwise no.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Fine with me. If players can’t even put minimum effort in my game I don’t want to put effort into running it for them. Unless they have a reading disability if they can’t respect my time and effort enough to read?
I’d rather okay a video game or do something else.

A perfectly reasonable position, but some people have to deal with the reality that they'd really like to game, and have the player pool they do.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It's fine if DM has influenced it via mental control eg domination. Otherwise no.

Naw. Sometimes its just that another character does something the first finds completely unacceptable. PC Glow doesn't paper over everything.

 

[MikalC]

A perfectly reasonable position, but some people have to deal with the reality that they'd really like to game, and have the player pool they do.

If people want to game so badly they’ll let other people half ass it then they probably don’t care if people ignore any effort the dm put into the game anyway so they don’t matter for this discussion...?
I mean if someone’s gonna be that desperate to play they aren’t going to have many limits if any.

 

[Thomas Shey]

If people want to game so badly they’ll let other people half ass it then they probably don’t care if people ignore any effort the dm put into the game anyway so they don’t matter for this discussion...?

Naw. They'd probably really prefer people put in more effort, but if they only have people who are half-assed about it (or aren't half-assed per se--they may put a lot of effort into other areas, but just won't spend much time reading material) they'll deal with that rather than not game.

I mean if someone’s gonna be that desperate to play they aren’t going to have many limits if any.

There's a difference between limits and preferences. As far as that goes, some things may bother them more than others. Truth is, while I'm a big preparer of campaign documents, I'd rather have a player who never reads them but is active and involved during the game than one who reads the material and remembers it but is pretty passive during the game.

 

[Raunalyn]

At the time, I felt that the players displayed pretty much zero interest in the mini-game, since they came with mostly completed characters, and I felt that there was an expectation of, "Quit futzing around, we've got our characters, get the show on the road".

Some of us were interested, including myself. But yeah, I think in that case the "Ayes" were over-ruled by the "Nays."

 

[Chaosmancer]

Yeah, well, hindsight is 20:20 and it's easy enough to say while armchair DMing.

At the time, I felt that the players displayed pretty much zero interest in the mini-game, since they came with mostly completed characters, and I felt that there was an expectation of, "Quit futzing around, we've got our characters, get the show on the road".

Like I said, multiple times. I'm not the right DM for this group. When faced with outright opposition to an idea, I tend to side with players. If they didn't want to do the mini-game, and it seemed that they didn't, I certainly wasn't going to force the issue. Maybe I should have been more forceful? I dunno. It's water under the bridge and I'm certainly not looking for advice on what I should have done differently. I'm saying what mistakes I made in the hopes that others don't make the same mistake.

Your solution is apparently to force the issue and over rule the players. I don't play like that. So, my solution should have been, at the time, to simply step back and let someone else run a game. Instead, I tried to triage the situation and it just didn't work.

I think you misunderstood me, or maybe I misunderstood you.

It seemed that one of the big reasons you felt the game failed was because you didn't run this mini-game that tied them to the setting. And yeah, I know that being in the moment things would be very different, but looking at this from where I am, if them being connected in the way you imagined was that important to the proper running of the story.. then yes, I would have pushed the issue a little.

But, I also have never run into a group of players who would feel like I was forcing them if I pointed out that this was part of my plan to run a better game. Again, be explicit and don't try and be mysterious and hold back information. "I have a plan to tie you guys into different plot hooks using these cards and the background we tie together, could you please give it a shot and let's try this? I think you'll find it a fun excersise and it will make getting into the adventures easier"

And yeah, if they explicitly tell me after that "No, not interested, we just want to get started" then sure, I'll back off. I'm not going to over rule them. But, I'm also not going to assume that they aren't interested. They need to tell me, because my assumptions are worth about as much as a hay penny.

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Naw. Sometimes its just that another character does something the first finds completely unacceptable. PC Glow doesn't paper over everything.

100,000% agree with you on this. It happened to a PC of mine multiple times. But, that was a specific group and a specific problem.

And I guess no PvP is a bad way to put it. One of my most successful sessions once involved quite a bit of player character conflict, but.. everyone knew and agreed to the stakes? I'm not sure how to phrase it.

It wasn't one player slitting the others throat, or a sudden betrayal, but a conflict where both parties agreed on the meta-level that a fight was likely and that they were both okay with that outcome.

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