How many times do I have to say "If you want to play a gonzo game, go for it." Different games have different structures and different goals. So?
I prefer D&D games that are relatively grounded no matter which side of the screen I'm on. Because some people? Some people absolutely would wreck the enjoyment of the game for everyone else. I've seen it time and again. Usually they don't realize it, but there are absolutely people who want to make the game all about them at the cost of everyone else.
The players in my games I DM and play in do awesome and incredible things all the time. But part of doing that is figuring out how to achieve their goals within the limits of the game we're playing.
It mystifies me why you believe that if there isn't a GM enforcing some iron rules that the game has to be 'gonzo'. Nobody is disagreeing with you that people can do 'awesome and incredible' stuff using process X, Y, or Z. The problem is when you keep telling me how someone inevitably will ruin the type of game we play. It just doesn't happen. I can take any 5 random people that want to play an RPG and play Dungeon World with them, and there is no more chance of anything going wrong than if we played 5e, or any other RPG (generally speaking).
So not know "the offical rules" your talking about, I very much doubt the rules say anything like that...simply because it is impossible. If you could maybe post the amazing rules? I doubt they are even close to what you suggest. After all, at minimum the wordy legalese would need to be at least several pages. And I doubt they exist. I think it's much more likely your talking about some vague useless rule that says "have fun and don't be a jerk". Ok, but see with out 100,000 words to define both "fun" and "jerk", such typed rules are useless.
Again, this goes back to the game only working when all the players think alike and agree on nearly everything.
Just save us the trouble and go read Dungeon World. Its a free download I believe at this point. Anyway, its certainly not an expensive PDF. It is very clear, and very understandable, and quite easy to do at the table. There's a process of play, and there are principles, agenda, and moves for each participant, and a very solid explanation of how to apply these. Yes, it occupies a significant portion of the rules, but it essentially IS the game, its no more elaborate or hard to understand than the equivalent parts of 5e PHB/DMG.
It mystifies me why you believe that if there isn't a GM enforcing some iron rules that the game has to be 'gonzo'. Nobody is disagreeing with you that people can do 'awesome and incredible' stuff using process X, Y, or Z. The problem is when you keep telling me how someone inevitably will ruin the type of game we play. It just doesn't happen. I can take any 5 random people that want to play an RPG and play Dungeon World with them, and there is no more chance of anything going wrong than if we played 5e, or any other RPG (generally speaking).
I've played with people that would ruin the game for others. Correction ... I've played with people that were actively harming the game and the enjoyment of others at the
table. We had to have an intervention with the player to explain what the issues were. It worked, sort of for a while, although we decided to not include them in future campaigns.
By the way, can you lay off the annoying DM crapping? I understand different games work differently. In D&D the DM wears many hats including referee. No "iron rules" involved, just following the rules of the game except for the house rules we've decided to use.
I believe that a few players exist who are the way you describe in response to minimal provocation. Multiple posters have posted to say we've all DM'd for a wide range of people and almost never seen the behaviour you describe in response to the way we DM,
Well, Id say that the small group of posters only play with a small circle of people. That seems to be very common. As is the typical once a week game.
So, I'm the other type of DM, running eight games a week( one each tues and thurs, and three sat and sun) and an occasional pick up game. So roughly 35 players, and I'm only friends with nine of them (my bar for friends is super high), the rest I know...and a good handful I do not get along with even slightly(though yes, we game for four hours). I have gamed with thousands of strangers. In the old days, I could just go to the mall (remember malls) and wait to see who randomly showed up. Now a days I game at the library/center, often with strangers 13(the minimum aged "allowed")-60+
And I (and I believe almost every poster on this board or we wouldn't be posting here) cares about the hobby and like sharing it with others. I, and I believe most others, don't want to see people driven out of the hobby by bad DMing.
Well, I doubt anyone has given up gaming forever from my game experience. They just go to other games. There are anti-my types of games advertised. And then for a crazy fun twist...one of them groups wanted to play Spelljammer. Their DM did not feel like doing it, and they could not find one. So...they asked me. They even agreed to my house rules (that they hated back then). And now this is my sat afternoon group, and they found my house rules "not so bad"....
It mystifies me why you believe that if there isn't a GM enforcing some iron rules that the game has to be 'gonzo'. Nobody is disagreeing with you that people can do 'awesome and incredible' stuff using process X, Y, or Z. The problem is when you keep telling me how someone inevitably will ruin the type of game we play. It just doesn't happen. I can take any 5 random people that want to play an RPG and play Dungeon World with them, and there is no more chance of anything going wrong than if we played 5e, or any other RPG (generally speaking).
I find it odd you think so. Really for ANY social activity go gather five people and you will likely get at least one that will try to 'bend things' and one that out right cheats. And it's very common in RPGs too. A lot of players only care about themselves and their own fun. And too many players idea of fun is to ruin the fun of others.
A LOT of players (and people) need a leader with authority or they do lots of bad stuff. This is just human nature.
I've played with people that would ruin the game for others. Correction ... I've played with people that were actively harming the game and the enjoyment of others at the
table. We had to have an intervention with the player to explain what the issues were. It worked, sort of for a while, although we decided to not include them in future campaigns.
By the way, can you lay off the annoying DM crapping? I understand different games work differently. In D&D the DM wears many hats including referee. No "iron rules" involved, just following the rules of the game except for the house rules we've decided to use.
Honestly, the world is large, and its ENTIRELY likely that this can come up once in a while. I'm sure if I went back to, say, 1978 when I was in high school, there was certainly problems of this sort. I can remember in the mid-80's (when I was in college, maybe even after) I got roped into having a younger teen age kid in the game. He was pretty socially inept, and there were some 'challenges' with integration. OTOH he was (and is) a nice person, intelligent, etc. He was just 13 and we had to work out how to make the game fun for him and for us. We did though, it was not perfect, but we all had fun, there were many sessions he played in, of various games. Once I had a random person join one of my 4e Maptool games (I think the game was listed on their server or something) and he didn't really mesh with the rest of the group. He just wanted to hyper optimize and couldn't seem to put up with the other player's slightly more quirky builds and whatnot. He played a few sessions, did a disproportionate amount of the 'killing stuff', and seemed uninterested in the fiction. Still wasn't a disaster, I guess he got bored eventually and stopped showing.
Now, maybe if I went to a con or did open tables at the library, maybe I'll get a 'goofer' that just wants to jerk people around or something. They do exist, but it ain't going to matter what game we play.
I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm 'crapping on DMs' or something. I'm not. I GM a huge amount. Its fine however people do it that works. I just get a little frustrated by people who INSIST that there are certain specific techniques that just obviously must always apply.
I find it odd you think so. Really for ANY social activity go gather five people and you will likely get at least one that will try to 'bend things' and one that out right cheats. And it's very common in RPGs too. A lot of players only care about themselves and their own fun. And too many players idea of fun is to ruin the fun of others.
A LOT of players (and people) need a leader with authority or they do lots of bad stuff. This is just human nature.
I am not going to say that there is never ever such a person. Honestly, 99% of the time the person WANTS to constructively participate. The only 'troubling' players, in a kind of "this never works" way are the "I'm just here anyway, so I'll pretend to play" person. Again though, IMHO, that type of person actually is BETTER off if they're allowed to really own part of the fiction, they may actually get sucked in (this could happen in various types of games, but it doesn't require GM-centered fiction). I have run games for various types of groups, certainly some are better and easier than others. One great thing with, say, PbtA games is you can actually just ask "Hey, what is it you want to have play look like?" Ask questions, use the answers is a actually a really good tool for pulling players in and getting them all to mesh. Its HARD for someone to just screw off when you pull that one on them.
So not know "the offical rules" your talking about, I very much doubt the rules say anything like that...simply because it is impossible. If you could maybe post the amazing rules? I doubt they are even close to what you suggest. After all, at minimum the wordy legalese would need to be at least several pages. And I doubt they exist. I think it's much more likely your talking about some vague useless rule that says "have fun and don't be a jerk". Ok, but see with out 100,000 words to define both "fun" and "jerk", such typed rules are useless.
Again, this goes back to the game only working when all the players think alike and agree on nearly everything.
To begin with, I want to be clear about what I am responding to. Your first "example" had spoken of games where a player can simply declare that there is a secret exit out of a trap room they were caught in, and that that simply becomes true. Your second example had spoken of games where a player can simply declare that ten 100d100 lightning bolts strike their enemies, whenever they feel like it, and that that simply becomes true.
Unfortunately, to a certain extent, I cannot do as you have asked, because you are asking for me to quote the absence of a rule, and...I can't do that, I can't hold a book up for you and show how it does not contain anything that works that way. But I can quote for you the parts which tell you why you shouldn't do that.
Here's the introductory text for the "Playing the Game" chapter (all emphasis in original):
Playing the Game
Playing Dungeon World means having a conversation; somebody says something, then you reply, maybe someone else chimes in. We talk about the fiction—the world of the characters and the things that happen around them. As we play, the rules will chime in, too. They have something to say about the world. There are no turns or rounds in Dungeon World, no rules to say whose turn it is to talk. Instead players take turns in the natural flow of the conversation, which always has some back-and-forth. The GM says something, the players respond. The players ask questions or make statements, the GM tells them what happens next. Dungeon World is never a monologue; it’s always a conversation.
The rules help shape the conversation of play. While the GM and the players are talking, the rules and the fiction are talking, too. Every rule has an explicit fictional trigger that tells you when it is meant to come into the conversation.
Like any conversation, the time you spend listening is just as important as the time you spend talking. The details established by the other people at the table (the GM and the other players) are important to you: they might change what moves you can make, set up an opportunity for you, or create a challenge you have to face. The conversation works best when we all listen, ask questions, and build on each other’s contributions.
This chapter is all about how to play Dungeon World. Here, you’ll find information about the rules—how they arise from and contribute to the game. We’ll cover both general rules, like making moves, and more specific rules, like those for dealing with damage and hit points.
This isn't rules text per se, but it does explicitly tell you part of what I've been saying: the game arises from people talking to one another like people do. If you don't understand what someone else means, you ask questions. If you and another person have made assumptions and you realize those assumptions differ, you find a way to resolve those differences. Just like any actual conversation. That doesn't mean the people involved have to think perfectly alike--indeed, in most conversations, the participants don't think alike.
From there, it lays out the general format of Moves, which are the things that fire when the players actually do something that requires rules to resolve (such as doing damage to enemies, escaping traps, casting spells, searching for information, or all sorts of other things.) All emphasis in original.
Making Moves
The most basic unit of rules in Dungeon World is the move. A move looks like this:
When you attack an enemy in melee, roll+STR. • On a 10+, you deal your damage to the enemy and avoid their attack. At your option, you may choose to do +1d6 damage but expose yourself to the enemy’s attack. • On a 7–9, you deal your damage to the enemy and the enemy makes an attack against you.
Moves are rules that tell you when they trigger and what effect they have. A move depends on a fictional action and always has some fictional effect. “Fictional” means that the action and effect come from the world of the characters we’re describing. In the move above the trigger is “when you attack an enemy in melee.” The effect is what follows: a roll to be made and differing fictional effects based on the outcome of the roll.
When a player describes their character doing something that triggers a move, that move happens and its rules apply. If the move requires a roll, its description will tell you what dice to roll and how to read their results.
A character can’t take the fictional action that triggers a move without that move occurring. For example, if Isaac tells the GM that his character dashes past a crazed axe-wielding orc to the open door, he makes the defy danger move because its trigger is “when you act despite an imminent threat.” Isaac can’t just describe his character running past the orc without making the defy danger move and he can’t make the defy danger move without acting despite an imminent threat or suffering a calamity. The moves and the fiction go hand-in-hand.
Everyone at the table should listen for when moves apply. If it’s ever unclear if a move has been triggered, everyone should work together to clarify what’s happening. Ask questions of everyone involved until everyone sees the situation the same way and then roll the dice, or don’t, as the situation requires.
The GM’s monsters, NPCs, and other assorted beasties also have moves, but they work differently.
Notice some really important text here: "Isaac can’t just describe his character running past the orc without making the defy danger move and he can’t make the defy danger move without acting despite an imminent threat or suffering a calamity. The moves and the fiction go hand-in-hand."
According to the actual rules of the game, you cannot just declare that whatever you want to happen happens. If you're attacking the enemy, as in the case with the 100d100 lightning bolts, you would have to make some kind of move that involves attacking--which requires making rolls and succeeding, for one thing, and doesn't include 100d100 lightning bolts for another. If you want to perform a move, you must actually describe the action that IS the move, and every single time you describe the action that IS the move, you must follow the rules of that move, even if you weren't intending to do so.
Also, note that it explicitly says that it's possible for people to disagree about whether a move has been triggered. That means the rules expect that some of the time, people will disagree. The response, according to the rules, is that "everyone should work together to clarify what's happening. Ask questions of everyone involved until everyone sees the situation in the same way and then roll the dice, or don't, as the situation requires." Talking to people, figuring out the disagreement, is literally one of the rules of the game.
Finally, in the GM rules section of Dungeon World, the text includes the following (all emphasis in original):
Dungeon World adventures never presume player actions. A Dungeon World adventure portrays a setting in motion—someplace significant with creatures big and small pursuing their own goals. As the players come into conflict with that setting and its denizens, action is inevitable. You’ll honestly portray the repercussions of that action.
This is how you play to find out what happens. You’re sharing in the fun of finding out how the characters react to and change the world you’re portraying. You’re all participants in a great adventure that’s unfolding. So really, don’t plan too hard. The rules of the game will fight you. It’s fun to see how things unfold, trust us.
"Play to find out what happens" is one of the Agendas of Dungeon World. Agendas are the things you, as GM, should always be trying to do, at all times. Having encounters planned out the way you described--where on round 3, everyone already knows that someone will break out of their chair--is explicitly contradicted by the rules themselves. The rules explicitly say, "Don't do that. It wouldn't be fun, and the rules of the game will make your life unnecessarily harder."
This is what I mean when I say that the books repeatedly and explicitly reject the kinds of examples you're giving. It isn't just "oh, if you read the rules charitably, they wouldn't support it." The actual rules of Dungeon World itself say that you should not do that. That doing so is boring or frustrating. Exactly as I said before.
But to what end? A great many players will abuse any system of rules, there is no "talking to them". And plenty of players will try to sneak stuff around the edges of rules, or demand RAW. Again, you can't "talk" to such players. And why would I ever 'buy' most anything a player sells?
I disagree with the following claims here (all emphasis added):
a great many [read: majority of] players will abuse any system of rules
there is no [benefit to be found in] "talking to them"
plenty [read: a majority of] players will try to sneak stuff around the edges of the rules
All of these claims are, fundamentally, saying that most players are abusive, coercive, selfish, power-hungry, and rude. That statement is simply false. Most players are just...people. Sometimes they'll grub for every tiny advantage they can get. Sometimes they will be kind to you and to one another. Usually, they'll just be enthusiastic about something and not always aware that the thing they've asked for isn't good.
Unless and until you are willing to relent on this objectively false statement that most players are abusive jerks, it's going to be very hard or even impossible to discuss things with you. Because most players, by and large, are just ordinary people--neither sinners nor saints, just...people.
So, to answer your question "to what end": To the end of reasonable people coming to a reasonable agreement about how to move forward. Because most players are fairly reasonable. Some will be unreasonable some of the time, and (lamentably) a few will be unreasonable all of the time. But most people will generally be fairly reasonable, and will want to help make sure everyone has fun, both them and others.
The problem is, you keep acting like your statements are a broad generalization which covers essentially all games. Your response here is woefully inadequate, because I'm not saying "but that doesn't describe this one game I play." I'm saying, "That doesn't describe ANY game I've ever heard of, and I've heard of a lot of games!" Unless and until you actually DO name a name or two--unless you can give me a specific game that actually does get played this way--you haven't responded to the actual criticism.
There are no games that get played like this. Name one. Just one! If you can name just one game where it's actually permitted by the rules that players can just declare the kinds of things you've spoken of, and that just happens no matter what the declaration is, then I will grant that you have responded to the criticism. I will still have reservations about whether your claims describe more than just that one game (because you keep making statements about how this is essentially universal, about how almost everyone does certain things, about how nearly all players are abusive and rude and selfish, etc.)
TL;DR: I'm saying "No games work this way. Prove me wrong." You can't respond to that with, "Well I'm not talking about YOUR game, I'm talking about OTHER games." Name a game that actually gets played this way by most people who play it.
Well, it's way more common then you think. And Really, it goes for most games and activities. There are people that should they get even three letters in the basketball game "horse" will just throw away the ball and say "they don't want to play anymore".
Again, that's irrelevant. Name a game that actually gets played this way, or stop saying that most games are played like this. Because none of us have ever heard of even one game actually played like this.
Your original assertion was that even the smallest, tiniest, most minor problems (including taking any amount of damage whatsoever) cause total and complete meltdowns nearly constantly in most players. Your follow-up statement then asked if Neonchameleon had never seen anyone "freak out" at all, for any reason, ever, or "give up," etc. Those two are NOT the same thing. The former is saying that almost all players are incredibly hyper-sensitive to the smallest of problems and will respond with the emotional equivalent of the Chernobyl disaster. The latter is saying that sometimes players get really upset. That is, pretty much definitionally, moving the goalposts.
It's also rather a classic "motte and bailey" argument: you opened with a statement that is extremely strident and difficult to prove, then retreated after being challenged to a statement that is trivially true, only to pretend that by granting the trivial statement, Neonchameleon had also granted the extremely strident statement. This is unfair and invalid. Either you must grant that your original statement is not supported, or you must provide support for it--you cannot pretend that the statement "sometimes players freak out or give up" is at all the same as the statement "many players will have a total meltdown simply because they took damage."
I don't get the push back. Ok, lets say that you personally have never, ever seen such a player. Why are you so opposed to the idea that the players exist? Why do you care if something exists or not, if it does not exist for you anyway.
Because you described someone who, to quote your own words, "For a lot of players, as soon as the slightest thing goes slightly wrong......they give up at best, and stop playing at worst. And this is the normal 'good' players. A lot more players are super over sensitive. The charterer fails a check or takes some damage, and they are ready to quit RPGs forever."
You have said that a lot of players instantly give up at the smallest issue, and that even more players would simply quit TTRPGs forever solely because their character took some damage one time. That's so cartoonishly irrational and petulant, it beggars belief. I'm sure that, in the grand and glorious panoply of humanity, there have been a few people with their heads shoved so far up their own butts that they would respond that way. It's unavoidable that, with something like eight billion of us out there, a few are going to be THAT bad. But they are NOWHERE NEAR common, unless you can actually give evidence otherwise.
Like if I was to say there are people who watch very little 'screen shows/movies' and read books. Would you say you have never met a person that reads books, just because no one you know reads books?
Not at all. Because "doesn't read books" (or "reads books," if you prefer) is a pretty simple thing, which doesn't require someone to fall into hysterics or insanity. But what you spoke of wasn't that. What you spoke of was, if I may edit your original words...
"For a lot of people, as soon as they see a single word they don't know......they give up at best, and stop reading at worst. And this is the normal 'good' readers. A lot more readers are super over sensitive. The reader doesn't understand the meaning of a sentence or reads something they find upsetting, and they are ready to quit books forever."
"For a lot of viewers, as soon as they see an unpleasant scene......they give up on that episode at best, and stop watching entirely at worst. And this is the normal 'good' viewers. A lot more viewers are super over sensitive. The viewer dislikes a character or is upset that their favorite characters aren't in a romance, and they are ready to quit television forever."
That's the kind of ridiculous hysterical nonsense you were asking us to accept--and then, when challenged, you tried to pass off these ridiculous hysterics as "you've never seen someone get upset because of a TV show? You've never seen someone stop watching a show because they got angry? Okay...sure...not sure why you want to pretend such people don't exist..."
Yes, but it is a "story" game. And you were speaking of "story" games as though essentially all of them are like that.
The problem is, almost all of them are like Dungeon World. Sure, they have their differences...but almost all of them have the very restrictions you're saying don't exist. They do not allow players to just invent reality whenever they want, however they want, with zero costs or consequences. They may, in fact, allow players to alter reality under limited circumstances, or for specific purposes, or with approval, or after a successful roll, or because a valuable resource was spent, but none of them (to my knowledge, which I recognize is limited) allow the utterly insane things you specifically called out.
So: Name a game that DOES do this. Just one! Give me just one game to talk about here. Just one "story" game that allows players to "alter reality" with no limitations or restrictions or caveats. That's all I ask: one system I can dig into and attempt to find out what on Earth went so horribly wrong with it.
Then you are simply, fundamentally wrong. 50% of people do not suddenly break out into infantile, rolling-on-the-floor, fist-beating tantrums because their character took damage or they failed a skill roll.
The vast majority of people are just people. Not particularly good, not particularly bad. They don't begrudge others having fun, but they probably wouldn't completely sacrifice their own fun just so someone else could have fun instead. But if they can do something that will be fun for them and for someone else, well sure, why not?
It mystifies me why you believe that if there isn't a GM enforcing some iron rules that the game has to be 'gonzo'. Nobody is disagreeing with you that people can do 'awesome and incredible' stuff using process X, Y, or Z. The problem is when you keep telling me how someone inevitably will ruin the type of game we play. It just doesn't happen.
I dunno...without even trying to I'd probably break it within 30 minutes of my character entering play. If I were actively trying to break it, reduce that time to under 5 minutes.
I can take any 5 random people that want to play an RPG and play Dungeon World with them, and there is no more chance of anything going wrong than if we played 5e, or any other RPG (generally speaking).
I dunno...without even trying to I'd probably break it within 30 minutes of my character entering play. If I were actively trying to break it, reduce that time to under 5 minutes.
...what does "break" even mean in this context? Because if you mean it the way I understand the term, what you've just said sounds literally not possible. Which suggests we are talking past each other.
Do you have to enforce the rules of conversation to discuss things with people?
And no, "principles" are not rules, not exactly. The Agendas and Principles are part of the rules text, but the former are high level purposes for what the GM is supposed to do (they apply to players but in a rather different way), and the Principles are methods the GM should use to give life to those Agendas. Stuff like "Draw maps, leave blanks" and "think off screen, too" and "name every NPC." I hope this demonstrates how these things can't really be "enforced" on anyone because... they're actions for the GM, not rules of conduct for the players.
Here's the introductory text for the "Playing the Game" chapter (all emphasis in original):
This isn't rules text per se, but it does explicitly tell you part of what I've been saying: the game arises from people talking to one another like people do. If you don't understand what someone else means, you ask questions. If you and another person have made assumptions and you realize those assumptions differ, you find a way to resolve those differences. Just like any actual conversation. That doesn't mean the people involved have to think perfectly alike--indeed, in most conversations, the participants don't think alike.
From there, it lays out the general format of Moves, which are the things that fire when the players actually do something that requires rules to resolve (such as doing damage to enemies, escaping traps, casting spells, searching for information, or all sorts of other things.) All emphasis in original.
Notice some really important text here: "Isaac can’t just describe his character running past the orc without making the defy danger move and he can’t make the defy danger move without acting despite an imminent threat or suffering a calamity. The moves and the fiction go hand-in-hand."
According to the actual rules of the game, you cannot just declare that whatever you want to happen happens. If you're attacking the enemy, as in the case with the 100d100 lightning bolts, you would have to make some kind of move that involves attacking--which requires making rolls and succeeding, for one thing, and doesn't include 100d100 lightning bolts for another. If you want to perform a move, you must actually describe the action that IS the move, and every single time you describe the action that IS the move, you must follow the rules of that move, even if you weren't intending to do so.
Also, note that it explicitly says that it's possible for people to disagree about whether a move has been triggered. That means the rules expect that some of the time, people will disagree. The response, according to the rules, is that "everyone should work together to clarify what's happening. Ask questions of everyone involved until everyone sees the situation in the same way and then roll the dice, or don't, as the situation requires." Talking to people, figuring out the disagreement, is literally one of the rules of the game.
Which is fine if you're playing with non-stubborn people who are sometimes willing to concede arguments or positions.
I run with some rather stubborn people, and even the non-stubborn ones now and then dig in their heels on something. In a system like this, any time anything contentious came up we'd spend half the night arguing how to resolve it, then spend the other half of the night arguing over what that resolution would be.
That, and IME and IMO it's pure human nature to try and gain an edge. Even though the game is cooperative, it's still seen as a competition; much like on a sports team where you're all working toward the same goal there's still competition as to who's the best player on the team.
"Play to find out what happens" is one of the Agendas of Dungeon World. Agendas are the things you, as GM, should always be trying to do, at all times. Having
I disagree with the following claims here (all emphasis added):
a great many [read: majority of] players will abuse any system of rules
...
plenty [read: a majority of] players will try to sneak stuff around the edges of the rules
I would certainly hope so; as in any game where the rules are not hard-coded and-or a referee's judgment is involved, it's the duty of a player to push against those rules until and unless the rules or the referee push back. That right there makes the second claim above true.
If the isn't any pushback then yes, the first claim above also becomes true.
Most players are just doing their job as players of a game, that job being to access the "win condition" by the most efficient means available; and accessing that 'most efficient means' often requires pushing the envelope of the rules if not outright breaking it. If you think doing that makes players abusive, coercive, and all the rest then I think I got some bad news for ya.
It's on the GM-as-referee, of course, to push back against this.
...what does "break" even mean in this context? Because if you mean it the way I understand the term, what you've just said sounds literally not possible. Which suggests we are talking past each other.
When there's stakes involved, in this case being yes or no to the minor achievement of a win condition (e.g. can I make this move or not), people can get stubborn in a real hurry; at which point discussion becomes argument.
Talking it through will IME most likely only serve to entrench positions further, until either the game collapses or the loudest person wins the argument. Plan B, which I've found far more effective in the past, is to simply take it to a vote.
Again, I'm still waiting for evidence that the types of games you decry are anything other than strawmen invented by you out of your imagination to criticise. Dungeon World is based very closely on Apocalypse World which might not be the founding Storygame (that would be My Life With Master) but is probably the single most popular
Well, Id say that the small group of posters only play with a small circle of people. That seems to be very common. As is the typical once a week game.
I for one have been running an open table on and off for over a decade as well as several closed groups and I'm not the only one among the people you are disagreeing with who runs open table.
I find it odd you think so. Really for ANY social activity go gather five people and you will likely get at least one that will try to 'bend things' and one that out right cheats. And it's very common in RPGs too. A lot of players only care about themselves and their own fun. And too many players idea of fun is to ruin the fun of others.
First bending things is not actually a problem by itself and frequently working with it can lead to the most fun experiences. Second a lot of people care about the fun of others - and most players can be encouraged to care about the fun of others if they learn that they themselves will find it more fun if they do. Third few people have ruining the fun of others as the most fun (and most of those play online games) and some can be drawn to better fun.
A few do. A LOT of people respond to a leader who wields authority hard with negative behaviour and a LOT of people live both up to and down to expectations so if you assume they will be a problem they will. This is just human nature.
Honestly, the world is large, and its ENTIRELY likely that this can come up once in a while. I'm sure if I went back to, say, 1978 when I was in high school, there was certainly problems of this sort. I can remember in the mid-80's (when I was in college, maybe even after) I got roped into having a younger teen age kid in the game. He was pretty socially inept, and there were some 'challenges' with integration. OTOH he was (and is) a nice person, intelligent, etc. He was just 13 and we had to work out how to make the game fun for him and for us. We did though, it was not perfect, but we all had fun, there were many sessions he played in, of various games. Once I had a random person join one of my 4e Maptool games (I think the game was listed on their server or something) and he didn't really mesh with the rest of the group. He just wanted to hyper optimize and couldn't seem to put up with the other player's slightly more quirky builds and whatnot. He played a few sessions, did a disproportionate amount of the 'killing stuff', and seemed uninterested in the fiction. Still wasn't a disaster, I guess he got bored eventually and stopped showing.
Now, maybe if I went to a con or did open tables at the library, maybe I'll get a 'goofer' that just wants to jerk people around or something. They do exist, but it ain't going to matter what game we play.
I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm 'crapping on DMs' or something. I'm not. I GM a huge amount. Its fine however people do it that works. I just get a little frustrated by people who INSIST that there are certain specific techniques that just obviously must always apply.
You've been lucky. But it's not even just the people that want to bend the game to their will, it's about the role of the DM in D&D. In D&D the DM is explicitly the referee. They make the final call on all sorts of things. That does not mean they rule with an iron fist, it just means that as a DM I have to think about what everyone at the table will have the most fun with. Yes, that includes what I, as DM, will have fun with. The DM decides the fiction of the world, what characters are capable of outside of what is explicitly stated in the rules.
A lot of DMs will make the decision about the type of campaign and the shared expectations of that campaign world with the players when they start a campaign. I'm a bit different from some in that I run campaigns in my own homebrew world, so how a lot of things work have already been established. I suggest alternate campaigns occasionally (a Weird West or Space Fantasy game for example) now and then but the players like my sandbox and I have fun with it so we stick with it.
Games have rules, both the rules written in the book and the too often unspoken social contract of the group. The buck has to stop somewhere on what is acceptable and what is not. In D&D, the buck stops with the DM and that's worked pretty well for going on half a century. I don't see a reason to change it. If you want to have an anything goes campaign, go for it. If you think the authority of the DM should change, justify it with something other than "because I said so" or "DMs that make the final call are tyrants".
Oh, and a monk is not a superhero speedster. They cannot create a Flash tornado*, especially since they aren't even running as fast as Usain Bolt in 5e; in some editions they may have been slightly faster. The Flash, depending on writer, can run at least Mach 4 while other incarnations have him running faster than the speed of light.
*I also find Flash tornados and that weird "I twirl my arms and somehow create a blast of wind" monumentally stupid in the first place, because it makes absolutely no sense physically. But that's a different story and I accept it because it's comic book superhero magic. In other words, the ability to manipulate air is not solely because they're moving fast it's just another supernatural ability speedsters can use while moving very fast.
I am not going to say that there is never ever such a person. Honestly, 99% of the time the person WANTS to constructively participate. The only 'troubling' players, in a kind of "this never works" way are the "I'm just here anyway, so I'll pretend to play" person. Again though, IMHO, that type of person actually is BETTER off if they're allowed to really own part of the fiction, they may actually get sucked in (this could happen in various types of games, but it doesn't require GM-centered fiction). I have run games for various types of groups, certainly some are better and easier than others. One great thing with, say, PbtA games is you can actually just ask "Hey, what is it you want to have play look like?" Ask questions, use the answers is a actually a really good tool for pulling players in and getting them all to mesh. Its HARD for someone to just screw off when you pull that one on them.
I've played with multiple people that did not realize they were problematic. The guy who broke the fiction of the world to make himself more "cool", the one who pouted if they didn't personally dominate the battlefield and laughed every time they totally nerfed encounters (making it boring when it happens all the time for everyone else). The guy who just wanted to mess with the DM and be disruptive is fortunately rare, although I've run into those as well.
Truly disruptive and abusive players are fortunately rare. But people that will push the game and rules beyond reasonable expectations to try to "win"? Others that will push the envelope just to see how much they can get away with? Lots more than 1%. I sometimes push the envelope just to see what's possible sometimes, there are times when the DM just has to say "no", and I have no problem with that.
Which is fine if you're playing with non-stubborn people who are sometimes willing to concede arguments or positions.
I run with some rather stubborn people, and even the non-stubborn ones now and then dig in their heels on something. In a system like this, any time anything contentious came up we'd spend half the night arguing how to resolve it, then spend the other half of the night arguing over what that resolution would be.
I have never met someone so stubborn that they would actually behave this way, and if they did, they would quickly be asked to leave the table and never come back. Standing one's ground and seeking benefit for oneself are perfectly good and healthy things. Being so stubborn that you literally refuse to let the game happen unless and until you get exactly what you want? Unacceptable. I wouldn't want to play checkers with a person like that. That sort of behavior is unbelievably rude, rude to the point of ruining friendships.
It is human nature to try to improve one's position or lot, yes. That is NOT the same thing as stamping your feet and refusing to let anything happen because you haven't gotten your way. Nor is it the same as intentionally and aggressively trying to pervert a shared social activity, especially when you know that doing so is disrespectful, hurtful, and counterproductive...which "grind every session to a complete halt because every single objection will take hours to resolve" absolutely is all three of those things.
By whom? You make this assertion as though it is a universal truth but it emphatically is not. D&D books have been explicitly saying otherwise for decades, and Dungeon World is no different.
Firstly: why? There are no prizes. Nobody gets rewarded for being "best on the team." Screwing over your teammates by, for example, wasting hours of their time every single night so you can secure every advantage, or intentionally and aggressively flouting decorum and respect for your fellow players, is a pretty $#!+-awful way to behave under any circumstances. To do so solely to "win" at a cooperative game is beyond the pale. I'm dead serious when I say if someone treated my game that way it would be grounds for ending a friendship.
Secondly, there's nothing automatic about any of that. There are sports teams where everyone on the team genuinely just wants to succeed, and they don't care about position. Professional teams are of course not likely to do that because they're being paid in part based on relative performance in many cases. Even then it's not some kind of guarantee of ravenous hunger for position, and there are other kinds of sports teams besides professional ones...and I would think non-professional sports would be a better comparison given D&D doesn't keep score and the players are not paid!
I would certainly hope so; as in any game where the rules are not hard-coded and-or a referee's judgment is involved, it's the duty of a player to push against those rules until and unless the rules or the referee push back.
What? No. Absolutely not. The player does not have a duty to cheat and swindle and coerce and abuse unless the referee stops them. That's not just ludicrous, it's straight up logically suspect. Whence does this duty arise? You are committing an is-ought fallacy: there are rules, so you ought to exploit them. This does not hold.
The "job" (if one can call it that...) of a player is to play. It is up to them to decide why they play. Winning is only one possible goal, and you can't win D&D. (Or most TTRPGs.) It's not how the games are designed. You can "win" individual conflicts, but that's not the same thing at all, and conflating that with a more generic "winning" condition will lead to all sorts of problems.
Absolutely the hell not. Again, you are conjuring up some bizarre duty to cheat. Where does this duty arise? Why does the player, who is responsible for choosing their motives for play, get a pass for being an abusive, coercive, destructive influence?
It's also on the players to be respectful of other human beings, their preferences and feelings, and the group as a whole. As is the case with all social activities.
Because the thing you are talking about is NOT just a person being a person. It is a person being callous and even cruel to others solely to gain a personal advantage (read: abusive), manipulating and/or deceiving others in order to gain personal advantage (deceptive), knowingly and intentionally breaking actually explicit rules they claimed to abide by (cheating), prioritizing personal satisfaction or benefit to the total exclusion of the satisfaction and benefit of others (selfish), prioritizing personal power even when it requires morally dubious actions (power hungry), and openly and knowingly flouting decorum and social norms purely for personal benefit (rude.)
I used all of these terms very intentionally and specifically. Doing the things you described at my table would be incredibly offensive, to the point that if the person was lucky we would have an extremely serious talk outside of game and they would get one chance to apologize, make a plan for reform, and follow through thereon. If that chance were rejected or they failed to actually reform? Gone. And likely taking whatever friendship we had with it. That is how horrifically offensive I find the behavior you're describing. I've got no time for users and abusers. I choose to associate with people who can actually treat others with kindness, respect, and support, regardless of the social activities we join.
When there's stakes involved, in this case being yes or no to the minor achievement of a win condition (e.g. can I make this move or not), people can get stubborn in a real hurry; at which point discussion becomes argument.
It...doesn't though. I have never once had to "argue" with my players. They are polite, respectful, attentive, and positive basically all of the time. They know that as long as they approach a discussion in good faith, seeking an outcome that is in some way reasonable, I will do whatever I can to make that outcome actually come to pass. It might not take the form they originally intended, but they know I will do my level best to meet the spirit of their goals even if I can't (or am unwilling to) make the letter happen. And with the power of God and anime on my side, there is little I cannot do!
Do you seriously get into heated arguments with your players? Why? Why would you tolerate that from anyone? Just stop playing with them if they're going to be so rude!
Talking it through will IME most likely only serve to entrench positions further, until either the game collapses or the loudest person wins the argument. Plan B, which I've found far more effective in the past, is to simply take it to a vote.
But...why? I'm legitimately baffled here. You can only learn what a person is truly seeking by asking them. If they are able to answer, you can then look for ways that they can get what they want, or something sufficiently like what they want, without forcing something you as DM are opposed to or uncomfortable with.
For example, I once had a player who wanted to dabble in necromancy in a game. The setting (same as my current setting) is highly antagonistic toward necromancy--as in, if the character were discovered to practice necromancy, they would be effectively excommunicated from all civilized society. I don't personally have any beef with necromancy but that was part of the setting and I didn't see any way around it. So I asked questions, dug deeper, tried to figure out why they were going for this. After a bit of dancing around the topic, it became clear that the player was concerned because the wording of the ability they were replacing implied that I as GM could screw them over with their elemental creature, so they were switching to something that didn't have any text implying the GM could do that. I promised that I would never use those rules in that way, even offering to rewrite the text a little to close the unfortunate loophole, but the player in question opted to do something else instead so the question was moot.
My players frequently surprise me with unexpected or novel approaches to things. I have almost never had to simply refuse. Indeed, I have almost always found ways to make even high-powered requests both reasonable and highly constructive, improving the game experience for everyone, not just the person who asked. Part of why I have so few issues is that my players are respectful, refusing to stoop to abuse or coercion. They bring their earnest requests to me, and I return the favor by genuinely striving to implement them.
I've played with multiple people that did not realize they were problematic. The guy who broke the fiction of the world to make himself more "cool", the one who pouted if they didn't personally dominate the battlefield and laughed every time they totally nerfed encounters (making it boring when it happens all the time for everyone else). The guy who just wanted to mess with the DM and be disruptive is fortunately rare, although I've run into those as well.
Oh, sure, people who don't realize some aspect of their behavior is a problem are much more common. I would never argue otherwise. The issue I have is the assertion of intentionality.
Truly disruptive and abusive players are fortunately rare. But people that will push the game and rules beyond reasonable expectations to try to "win"? Others that will push the envelope just to see how much they can get away with? Lots more than 1%. I sometimes push the envelope just to see what's possible sometimes, there are times when the DM just has to say "no", and I have no problem with that.
Okay so...what do you mean by "push the envelope"? Because as it stands I already embrace player creativity and off-the-wall ideas pretty heavily. To push the envelope even further than "if you work with me I will do everything I can to make things you're sincerely enthusiastic about happen," well... you'd need to be doing something for reasons other than sincere enthusiasm. You would need to be trying to game the system, or trying to exploit my goodwill solely in order to exploit it and not because you have an idea that you just find too awesome not to pursue (or whatever else you find stirs your enthusiasm.) Like...you would have to want to be disruptive. Which is exactly my problem here.
Anyone willing to meet me halfway will find I will go much more than halfway for them. Anyone trying to exploit my goodwill, or trying to twist the letter of the rules against the spirit thereof or otherwise abuse the system I have agreed to abide by, is liable to find themselves with an express ticket out the door. I will not be used.
I have never met someone so stubborn that they would actually behave this way, and if they did, they would quickly be asked to leave the table and never come back. Standing one's ground and seeking benefit for oneself are perfectly good and healthy things. Being so stubborn that you literally refuse to let the game happen unless and until you get exactly what you want? Unacceptable. I wouldn't want to play checkers with a person like that. That sort of behavior is unbelievably rude, rude to the point of ruining friendships.
It is human nature to try to improve one's position or lot, yes. That is NOT the same thing as stamping your feet and refusing to let anything happen because you haven't gotten your way. Nor is it the same as intentionally and aggressively trying to pervert a shared social activity, especially when you know that doing so is disrespectful, hurtful, and counterproductive...which "grind every session to a complete halt because every single objection will take hours to resolve" absolutely is all three of those things.
By whom? You make this assertion as though it is a universal truth but it emphatically is not. D&D books have been explicitly saying otherwise for decades, and Dungeon World is no different.
Firstly: why? There are no prizes. Nobody gets rewarded for being "best on the team." Screwing over your teammates by, for example, wasting hours of their time every single night so you can secure every advantage, or intentionally and aggressively flouting decorum and respect for your fellow players, is a pretty $#!+-awful way to behave under any circumstances. To do so solely to "win" at a cooperative game is beyond the pale. I'm dead serious when I say if someone treated my game that way it would be grounds for ending a friendship.
Secondly, there's nothing automatic about any of that. There are sports teams where everyone on the team genuinely just wants to succeed, and they don't care about position. Professional teams are of course not likely to do that because they're being paid in part based on relative performance in many cases. Even then it's not some kind of guarantee of ravenous hunger for position, and there are other kinds of sports teams besides professional ones...and I would think non-professional sports would be a better comparison given D&D doesn't keep score and the players are not paid!
What? No. Absolutely not. The player does not have a duty to cheat and swindle and coerce and abuse unless the referee stops them. That's not just ludicrous, it's straight up logically suspect. Whence does this duty arise? You are committing an is-ought fallacy: there are rules, so you ought to exploit them. This does not hold.
Since I reject the claim as both factually untrue and logically invalid, this is not established.
See above.
They sure as hell do from where I'm standing!
The "job" (if one can call it that...) of a player is to play. It is up to them to decide why they play. Winning is only one possible goal, and you can't win D&D. (Or most TTRPGs.) It's not how the games are designed. You can "win" individual conflicts, but that's not the same thing at all, and conflating that with a more generic "winning" condition will lead to all sorts of problems.
Absolutely the hell not. Again, you are conjuring up some bizarre duty to cheat. Where does this duty arise? Why does the player, who is responsible for choosing their motives for play, get a pass for being an abusive, coercive, destructive influence?
How does it not? You are literally saying players should intentionally break the rules! That's literally CHEATING.
It's also on the players to be respectful of other human beings, their preferences and feelings, and the group as a whole. As is the case with all social activities.
Because the thing you are talking about is NOT just a person being a person. It is a person being callous and even cruel to others solely to gain a personal advantage (read: abusive), manipulating and/or deceiving others in order to gain personal advantage (deceptive), knowingly and intentionally breaking actually explicit rules they claimed to abide by (cheating), prioritizing personal satisfaction or benefit to the total exclusion of the satisfaction and benefit of others (selfish), prioritizing personal power even when it requires morally dubious actions (power hungry), and openly and knowingly flouting decorum and social norms purely for personal benefit (rude.)
I used all of these terms very intentionally and specifically. Doing the things you described at my table would be incredibly offensive, to the point that if the person was lucky we would have an extremely serious talk outside of game and they would get one chance to apologize, make a plan for reform, and follow through thereon. If that chance were rejected or they failed to actually reform? Gone. And likely taking whatever friendship we had with it. That is how horrifically offensive I find the behavior you're describing. I've got no time for users and abusers. I choose to associate with people who can actually treat others with kindness, respect, and support, regardless of the social activities we join.
Okay that is...a weird definition of "break" in context, but fair enough I guess.
But like...why? Why make things grind to a halt when you could instead avoid it? Why not seek compromise or mutual agreement?
It...doesn't though. I have never once had to "argue" with my players. They are polite, respectful, attentive, and positive basically all of the time. They know that as long as they approach a discussion in good faith, seeking an outcome that is in some way reasonable, I will do whatever I can to make that outcome actually come to pass. It might not take the form they originally intended, but they know I will do my level best to meet the spirit of their goals even if I can't (or am unwilling to) make the letter happen. And with the power of God and anime on my side, there is little I cannot do!
Do you seriously get into heated arguments with your players? Why? Why would you tolerate that from anyone? Just stop playing with them if they're going to be so rude!
But...why? I'm legitimately baffled here. You can only learn what a person is truly seeking by asking them. If they are able to answer, you can then look for ways that they can get what they want, or something sufficiently like what they want, without forcing something you as DM are opposed to or uncomfortable with.
For example, I once had a player who wanted to dabble in necromancy in a game. The setting (same as my current setting) is highly antagonistic toward necromancy--as in, if the character were discovered to practice necromancy, they would be effectively excommunicated from all civilized society. I don't personally have any beef with necromancy but that was part of the setting and I didn't see any way around it. So I asked questions, dug deeper, tried to figure out why they were going for this. After a bit of dancing around the topic, it became clear that the player was concerned because the wording of the ability they were replacing implied that I as GM could screw them over with their elemental creature, so they were switching to something that didn't have any text implying the GM could do that. I promised that I would never use those rules in that way, even offering to rewrite the text a little to close the unfortunate loophole, but the player in question opted to do something else instead so the question was moot.
My players frequently surprise me with unexpected or novel approaches to things. I have almost never had to simply refuse. Indeed, I have almost always found ways to make even high-powered requests both reasonable and highly constructive, improving the game experience for everyone, not just the person who asked. Part of why I have so few issues is that my players are respectful, refusing to stoop to abuse or coercion. They bring their earnest requests to me, and I return the favor by genuinely striving to implement them.
Oh, sure, people who don't realize some aspect of their behavior is a problem are much more common. I would never argue otherwise. The issue I have is the assertion of intentionality.
I have had players intentionally go out of their way to just be a pain in the posterior. I don't get it, but there are all sorts of antisocial behavior.
But even if someone is not causing issues on purpose, they can still cause problems that have to be dealt with. That can sometimes be a more difficult issue to deal with than the person who is just being a jackass.
Okay so...what do you mean by "push the envelope"? Because as it stands I already embrace player creativity and off-the-wall ideas pretty heavily. To push the envelope even further than "if you work with me I will do everything I can to make things you're sincerely enthusiastic about happen," well... you'd need to be doing something for reasons other than sincere enthusiasm. You would need to be trying to game the system, or trying to exploit my goodwill solely in order to exploit it and not because you have an idea that you just find too awesome not to pursue (or whatever else you find stirs your enthusiasm.) Like...you would have to want to be disruptive. Which is exactly my problem here.
Anyone willing to meet me halfway will find I will go much more than halfway for them. Anyone trying to exploit my goodwill, or trying to twist the letter of the rules against the spirit thereof or otherwise abuse the system I have agreed to abide by, is liable to find themselves with an express ticket out the door. I will not be used.
So we agree that there are limits and someone has to enforce those limits? Okay. We may draw the line at different points, but I don't see why that should be an issue. Different DMs, different groups, have different styles and expectations. I just don't believe that "always, or almost always, say yes" is a game I would normally want to participate in on either side of the DM screen. If it works for you, that's fine.
So we agree that there are limits and someone has to enforce those limits? Okay. We may draw the line at different points, but I don't see why that should be an issue. Different DMs, different groups, have different styles and expectations. I just don't believe that "always, or almost always, say yes" is a game I would normally want to participate in on either side of the DM screen. If it works for you, that's fine.
Again: Do you have to "enforce limits" on conversations? Do you have to have someone threatening you with expulsion in order to productively and respectfully spend time with friends, or go bowling, or whatever else you do socially? If you have a partner, do you need a third party to "enforce" the "rules" of your relationship?
