D&D 5E Character play vs Player play

[Majoru Oakheart]

wow... I know people who I call powergamers (hence my screen name) that I wouldn't say that about... heck I only a few times can say people really tried to make bad faith proposals (although I was one of them...) and the people who made them too many times have long sense left all of the groups I know... how can you even attempt to play with people who do this all the time?

Just by telling them no all the time. It's not that difficult. Most of them have stopped asking ALL the time. Mainly because I've told them no enough times that they've learned that I won't give them what they want. Though they'll sometimes ask again because they think it's funny.

The really bad offenders have stopped playing a while back. The person in question who spent 2 hours arguing for more power for his character eventually stopped playing RPGs entirely since he didn't get what he wanted often enough.

Either way, it's trained me to look at a request and think "How about...no. You get the advantages listed in the book and no more."

 

[Neonchameleon]

This is just impossible in most cases. If I show up with a copy of the Tomb of Horrors in hand

No. This is impossible in a specific and limited subset of cases. Tomb of Horrors is a specific and almost unique example of a dungeon (the only comparison I can think of is White Plume Mountain). If I turn up with e.g. Hoard of the Dragon Queen what you say is "just impossible in most cases" is not only not impossible; it is desirable. And that's even assuming I'm the sort of DM who only uses off the peg adventures; if I actually customise the adventures then of course I pitch.

You play one specific style of D&D. One in which you ensure that the PCs (and by extension the players) can know very little about the world. You yourself have admitted this. And your style might as well have been designed to make denying player agency workable. This works. It is just one style and in my experience very much a minority style. Please stop presenting it as the One True Way.

I don't want my players "adding to the richness" of Greyhawk. I know what all the countries look like and a general idea of its geography and political situation. I don't want my players making up new countries. I want them to make their character to fit the world, not the other way around. Feel free to make up things as long as they fit within the framework I've established as a DM before the game started.

And this works. Allowing the players to make up villages, merchant families, small local thieves guilds they've been exiled from, and other parts of the setting. All of which (a) are not in contradiction with the setting and (b) add to the richness of the setting.

Not being able to contradict that which has already been established about the setting is normal in just about any style of play.

I'm also running a written adventure.

Indeed. Not everyone does this. Some of us write our own. Some of us even write our own on the fly. Starting with a couple of thematic elements and an enemy and seeing what happens (for the record, this works much better in short campaigns).

However, I've never bought a D&D adventure that said...

I've never bought a D&D adventure that didn't make me want to hack it to pieces either.

No, they aren't being treated as children. They are being treated like players and not like the DM. They understand their role within the game and maturely play that role instead of demanding abilities that aren't part of their role.

Hint: Everyone's role in the game is whatever that group treats it as. Stop treating your game as the One True Way.

In my experience, players tend to have no limit on what they'll ask for if you keep giving them stuff.

And I take this as proof positive that you have an adult/child relationship going on. In my experience the people most fun to play with will ask for things that make the game more entertaining - and frequently things that screw over their own characters badly.

It's obviously a disingenuous attempt to see what they could get away with.I was one of hundreds of those attempts I had to deal with. I should note that I started DMing when I was 15 and mostly played with my friends at the time. Though our primary group consisted of people between 15 and 23. Over time I've DMed with all ages of people but when I first started all I got was attempts to become the most powerful people on the planet.

That's because you were fifteen. Seriously? Teenagers having power fantasies? I'm unsurprised. And yes, teenagers often get sent to their rooms (and adults sometimes need it).

Most of the player's I've run into tend to write things so that the story revolves around THEM. If their goal is to overthrow a country, the adventure better revolve around that. The other players better just be background to their grand quest.

The problem is that when you have 6 players who each want to write their own stories, have their own goals and ALL want the story to revolve around them. All of them can't be at the table at once without the plot becoming a chaotic mess.

Alternatively you have collaborative character generation a la Apocalypse World. You then work together and what people want. And people all play off each others' ideas fairly often.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Just by telling them no all the time. It's not that difficult. Most of them have stopped asking ALL the time. Mainly because I've told them no enough times that they've learned that I won't give them what they want. Though they'll sometimes ask again because they think it's funny.

maybe one of these days you should try playing with people who ask only for things that make the game better...

Either way, it's trained me to look at a request and think "How about...no. You get the advantages listed in the book and no more."

well there is a good reason to feel that way sometimes, I have been trained the opposite...

in 3.0 I had a game where the gods (a basic noris theme with some hombrew crazy thrown in) had been cast out of heaven by oden and was a basic rip off of the times of trouble from FR... my twist was it was 300 years later and the gods controlled huge city states and where making alliances and war on one another. There were a handful of freeholds that avoided the 'divine war' but the world was pretty bad being very war torn. Even goodish gods where pretty petty and cruel so there wasn't a lot of freedom in the world. twice before the freeholds tried to work together to kill/overthrow the 'evil' gods. both times the 'gods' kicked there buts... All the PCs knew was that this time they would be going to a meeting about a new alliance to take down god cities, and I had 5 free holds they could be from, each had classes and races allowed from it (no clerics or paladins for obvious reasons).

At character creation I had 7 players, and 6 of them followed the lists no problem... then came Jon. He decided he wasn't from a freehold, he was the last son of Oden and Frya raised after they cast out the other gods, he isn't from a free hold, but cast out now to help end this war on mudguard. He would be the race assimar and the class cleric...

I said, um OK, but you have to multi class fighter, and you can never have more cleric levels then fighter levels, and I would make a prestige class "last son of oden" before game three...

that game was awesome fun.

A second game (this one deadlands) the GM wanted everyone to make characters in a western town on the north south boarder... one player came up with something from hell on earth (a radiation priest) and we rolled with it, he had fallen through a whole in time. he was the ultimate outsider, it worked well...

so I've over the years learned Yes is much more fun if you can make it work. There are times you can't get things to work, and have to say "sorry, but no" and there are times when people do crazy things you have to say "Hell no" but I've also learned that people except no from me easier then DMs who almost never say yes...

 

[GMforPowergamers]

No. This is impossible in a specific and limited subset of cases. Tomb of Horrors is a specific and almost unique example of a dungeon (the only comparison I can think of is White Plume Mountain).

to be fair I think there are 3-4 others like it, dragon MT is the only one I can place, but I'm sure there are more... but yea it is super nit picking to take tomb of horrors

And this works. Allowing the players to make up villages, merchant families, small local thieves guilds they've been exiled from, and other parts of the setting. All of which (a) are not in contradiction with the setting and (b) add to the richness of the setting.

sounds great to me...

Not being able to contradict that which has already been established about the setting is normal in just about any style of play.

the problem is he can't see a player as ever brining a worth while idea to the table so he pretends everyone just wants to destroy his world...

Indeed. Not everyone does this. Some of us write our own. Some of us even write our own on the fly. Starting with a couple of thematic elements and an enemy and seeing what happens (for the record, this works much better in short campaigns).

I take that and raise you a 2 1/2 year campaign in 3e where we had 4 people who normally DM and one person brand new to RPGs (infact of the 4 of us 3 had regular games running including me) w took out a piece of graph paper put a dot in the center and labeled it "new Glastonbury" made up some very thin and generic setting points, wrote them in a compastion book, then ran the game as round robin... we meet every other week and each game a different DM. We made up the details and filled out the map as we went...

I've never bought a D&D adventure that didn't make me want to hack it to pieces either.

I never ran one that didn't end up with me having to homebrew a bunch of things some on the fly...

And I take this as proof positive that you have an adult/child relationship going on. In my experience the people most fun to play with will ask for things that make the game more entertaining - and frequently things that screw over their own characters badly.

+1,000 infact half of the things that PCs bring to my tables are things that are not power upgrades///

 

[Hussar]

I agree with this entirely. However, I have no problem with it as I've said in a previous post because there are rules and limitations on when and how often it can be used. It is also assumed that the character gets to decide on the effects of these spells, not the player. Which is a key difference for me since it means that the spells will likely be used to accomplish character goals instead of player goals.

That's a pretty fine line to draw though. I use Presdidgitation to create a bunch of balls and start juggling, just for giggles. I had a player who would consistently try to be able to pull random crap out of his bag - I had a table of some 300 results for it. Is it a player goal? Is it a character goal? The two are hardly incompatible.

Without this assumption you get people casting spells to turn their friends invisible just so they can sneak into the women's showers because it is a player fantasy when neither of the characters involved likely care.

OTOH, it's pretty easy to think that a young male character being able to turn invisible and sneak into the women's showers actually would be an in-character fantasy for a LOT of PC's.

Besides, most spells are limited in scope as well to prevent the complete rewriting of everything. There isn't a spell that says "Make up an organization and give them a history spanning the last thousand years. You immediately belong to this organization and you gain a bunch of advantages, skills, and contacts."

But that's the kind of thing people like to ask for authorial control to do.

Yet, funnily enough, that's precisely what you get with followers. Maybe not a thousand year history, but, an entire organization (remember, 1e followers could number in the hundreds) that likely should come with some sort of history. I build my castle/church/whatever, and these guys just sort of turn up. Do they actually exist in the game world before i build my castle? Not really - at least, I've never heard of a DM having you meet your future followers beforehand. And there's certainly nothing in the DMG or PHB to indicate that you should. If you build it, they will come.

is that a player goal or a character goal? Does the character actually know that these followers will appear? How? There's certainly no reason I can't build a castle at any level. But, for some reason, completely unknown to the character (unless you go by the idea that level has an in-game reality), if I kill enough orcs and steal just enough treasure, dozens, if not hundreds of dudes are going to show up and obey me unto death.

There's a fair degree of player authorship involved here. Would any DM have a problem with the player detailing his own followers, so long as he kept to the restrictions? If I wanted my followers to come from a specific region, would a DM have a problem with that? On and on.

 

[Manbearcat]

And I take this as proof positive that you have an adult/child relationship going on. In my experience the people most fun to play with will ask for things that make the game more entertaining - and frequently things that screw over their own characters badly.

...

That's because you were fifteen. Seriously? Teenagers having power fantasies? I'm unsurprised. And yes, teenagers often get sent to their rooms (and adults sometimes need it).

Great post by the way.

When I wrote the post that MO responded to, I was expecting it would elicit the precise response that [MENTION=5143]Majoru Oakheart[/MENTION] provided. Further, given his prior post history on his group dynamics, and certain players' poor behavior, I was specifically expecting it from him.

Your response above neatly captures my thoughts on the matter. Is there a decent cross- section of the gaming populace that are basically dysfunctional teenagers (even if they look like adults) who attempt to use the medium as a conduit to resolve their sense of their own inadequacy (power fantasies)? Of course. But that sort of deal isn't remotely inherent to gaming alone. Go to any basketball court. It will be fraught with weekend warriors who didn't make it because a, b, c. They lie, cheat, swindle, rage (etc) for all the same reasons. Its a cesspool of poor behavior because the world doesn't agree with their overdeveloped sense of themselves.

Guess what? Not all gamers are so dysfunctional and not all amateur ballplayers are either. There are plenty of well-adjusted/humble adults who pay their mortgage/rent, raise their kids/take care of their dog, work a 9-5/go to school to earn their degree, and are just looking to play a game and have some enjoyable time amongst friends. The difference between a court bereft of such play disruption/narcissicm/antagonism or a table bereft of the same is 100 % night and day.

Indeed. Not everyone does this. Some of us write our own. Some of us even write our own on the fly. Starting with a couple of thematic elements and an enemy and seeing what happens (for the record, this works much better in short campaigns).

<snip>

Alternatively you have collaborative character generation a la Apocalypse World. You then work together and what people want. And people all play off each others' ideas fairly often.

What I wrote directly above notwithstanding, obviously I hold the position that certain systems, certain GMing techniques/principles, and the coherency of the table agenda (with respect to the afformentioned two components) is a huge driver in whether a table will yield some dysfunction or not.

As you've written above, consider the Apocalypse World engine and its D&D derivative. Dungeon World makes it almost (*) impossible for wierdly passive-aggressive/adversarial, "D&D play", to exist at a table and the players are extraordinarily empowered. You've got an entirely transparent basic resolution mechanic. You've got various currency that you can spend on specified things or to avoid specific things (hold, balance, rations, adventuring gear, etc). You've got clear, focused GMing principles and techniques.

The totality of the system and the play agenda inexorably funnel play precisely toward the genre, the table experience, and the emergent story that it advocates for on the tin. I've never run adventures, I've always prepped low (very consistent with DW's formalized GMing section) with antagonists and their motivations (that firm up as play manifests them) and an assortment of conflict-charged scene openers/situations that will test the players and their thematic interests/abilities (eg bonds, alignment and their archetypal shtick). Then just let it snowball and see what comes out of it.

Amusingly enough, Dungeon World is precisely the type of coherent, elegant system that I would have expected the 5e designers to push toward given their elevation of "rules lite" (which 5e isn't even close) and "focus on the fiction" tenets. But that was mostly just talk. They had to satisfy a certain cross-section of D&D players' interests, and that interest includes massive and varying player-side crunch, action economy in combat, and the GM being heavily involved in the action resolution stage of play (which a rules-lite, utterly clear, basic resolution mechanic which just focuses on the fiction works 100 % against).

With that formula, saying yes and empowering players is easily achieved and pretty much fundamental to play...and I've never had an issue with player agency. The few times that I did have to bear with disfunctional players (who were disfunctional either because of having to endure past GMing or something internal to themselves), we either worked it out or I excised the cancer if there could be no meeting of the minds. I have yet to see this "all players come equipped with bad wiring" phenomenon. If that is all you're finding, I suggest seeking out a different pool of players or try a different system.


* I could see it under poor GMing; lacking in creativity or understanding of how rules lite, fiction-first, abstract conflict resolution mechanics are supposed to work and the play experience that is supposed to follow from it.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Yet, funnily enough, that's precisely what you get with followers. Maybe not a thousand year history, but, an entire organization (remember, 1e followers could number in the hundreds) that likely should come with some sort of history. I build my castle/church/whatever, and these guys just sort of turn up. Do they actually exist in the game world before i build my castle? Not really - at least, I've never heard of a DM having you meet your future followers beforehand. And there's certainly nothing in the DMG or PHB to indicate that you should. If you build it, they will come.

is that a player goal or a character goal? Does the character actually know that these followers will appear? How? There's certainly no reason I can't build a castle at any level. But, for some reason, completely unknown to the character (unless you go by the idea that level has an in-game reality), if I kill enough orcs and steal just enough treasure, dozens, if not hundreds of dudes are going to show up and obey me unto death.

yea, so there is a 6th level fighter who just helped save a city, and is using his money from adventuring to buy land and build a keep mere miles from where the bards are sining his songs... nothing happens.

or
a 10th level fighter who has only ever been in 2 dungeons, admittedly 2 big dungeons, and raided an orc encampment in between them builds a keep in the middle of a set of rolling hills... followers show up...

there is 0 ingame reason

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

FIrst, so everyone is assured to be on the same page (which I believe is already the case, but let us just cross our t's and dot our lowercase j's), the definition:

I've read this. I'm still confused as to why any of this is bad. I watched the video just to double check that something bad had happened and I couldn't find anything. All I saw was an adventure opening fairly typically with the DM choosing a starting point then summarizing what the players know from before the adventure began. Then allowing them to use their skills to determine how much extra information they have to help them with completing the adventure.

Basically every game of D&D I've ever played has started this way or at least very similarly.

As far as I'm concerned, buy in comes by showing up to ANY table, whether it is a home game or a convention. You show up to play the game that is offered. If you don't like the game that is offered, you leave. I'm sure these players all knew they were playing Against the Slavers when they decided to show up.

Just like all of my players knew I was running Murder in Baldur's Gate by showing up. My first session consisted of summarizing why everyone was in Baldur's Gate, their personal reasons for being here and what they knew about the city, it's current political situation and culture. It then summarized why they were all at the Founder's Day celebration where that particular adventure starts.

I'm really, really confused as to what is so horribly wrong about this. The rest of your post is filled entirely with bile. It seems like the point you are getting across is that this method of playing is extremely lowbrow and that only idiots would use it. The tone really comes across as very elitist in terms of "Haven't these people graduated to the proper way of playing D&D yet?"

I really feel like I should be insulted if I knew exactly what you were talking about by "GMing principles, table agenda, and proficient techniques/interchanges indicative of an extremely matured understanding of the system."

 

[Hussar]

.

As far as I'm concerned, buy in comes by showing up to ANY table, whether it is a home game or a convention. You show up to play the game that is offered. If you don't like the game that is offered, you leave. I'm sure these players all knew they were playing Against the Slavers when they decided to show up.

"

Very different play styles. I generally don't have anywhere near as specific an idea as this at the outset of a campaign. And, because I've got six other people more than willing to run games, it means that if I don't get that buy in, my tenure as DM will get cut very short.

And, honestly, I've stolen groups from DM's for exactly this. The DM assumes that just having an adventure is good enough. Sorry but it isn't. With no buy in, no one is moe than casually engaged. Show players what it's like when the whole table is engaged and likely they will never go back.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Very different play styles. I generally don't have anywhere near as specific an idea as this at the outset of a campaign. And, because I've got six other people more than willing to run games, it means that if I don't get that buy in, my tenure as DM will get cut very short.

Your environment is very different than mine. Nobody wants to DM. It takes work. Right now all the players have to do is show up, roll some dice and pretend to be an elf reacting to what the DM says once a week for a couple of hours.

The couple of times I've suggested that I'm getting overwhelmed and needed a break, people begged me not to stop because none of them wanted to take up the mantle. The couple of times in my history of playing D&D when I pushed back and said "No, I really don't feel like DMing", one or two of my friends have stepped up to DM. However, when they DM they also just purchase an adventure and run whatever is written in there.

Recently, I convinced one of my friends to DM for Adventurer's League. All he has to do is study a fairly structured adventure given to him each week that only lasts a couple of hours and he often shows up having not read the entire thing and then forgets half of what is written in there. He's said that his experience running those adventures means his respect for me as a DM has grown immensely since he had no idea how hard it was to prepare an adventure someone else wrote and to handle everything that happens during the game. He thinks he does it very poorly but he keeps doing it because we need 2 DMs during our Tuesday night D&D Expeditions sessions based on the number of people coming. Sometimes we need 3. We are right on the edge of needing 3 DMs constantly.

Meanwhile, I know almost all the gaming stores in the city. In total they didn't sell more than 25 DMGs today. There aren't that many DMs in our entire city who run regular games in 5e.

And, honestly, I've stolen groups from DM's for exactly this. The DM assumes that just having an adventure is good enough. Sorry but it isn't. With no buy in, no one is moe than casually engaged. Show players what it's like when the whole table is engaged and likely they will never go back.

I think my table is plenty engaged. They enjoy their characters and love roleplaying them in various situations. For us, it's more about the characters than it is the plot. The plot of an adventure is sometimes good, sometimes bad. Some adventures are better than others. However, we have our fun because we are playing Punie Gringlesteen the Gnome Bard who likes to use insult humor and make puns all the time or Jack Tradesman, the Half-Elf chronic multiclasser who likes to hit on women and walk around being superior to other people or the dwarf whose name I can't remember now who brews his own beer and considers it holy water. He requires it to be drunk as a sign of solidarity to each adventuring party he joins in order to get Moradin's blessing. We engage the world through our characters. The world doesn't have to revolve around us to be engaged. It doesn't have to be a quest that Punie is personally interested in. He wants to be famous and saving people increases his reputation so he'll take any chance to do that regardless of what the mission is. I've never once felt less than "fully engaged" simply because the adventure didn't involve Punie's background.

I also think it's extremely insulting to say that my players aren't "fully engaged" simply because we play differently than you. I kind of resent the implication that the only reason my players haven't left yet is because they haven't been tempted by a better DM.

I think this thread is filled with DMs whoses ego are getting a little too large and are likely used to being in an echo chamber of a small number of players who really love their DMing style and therefore they've gotten the opinion that it's the BEST DMing style.

However, I can tell you that Mike Mearls's DMing style in the live stream I was referencing was nearly identical to the DMing style I've seen over 95% of DMs use. I can say this having played under hundreds of DMs. These posts seem to be implying that it is not "proper" D&D.