D&D General D&D Assumptions Ain't What They Used To Be

[Lanefan]

Not at all. I'm the same. I won't run a campaign where the players want to role-play as evil psychopaths. That's just not fun for me, and I'm the one doing all the work.

What I've found over time is that all things shall pass. They might be playing a bunch of dysfunctuonal murderhoboes at the moment, but give it a few months or years and they'll get bored of that and cycle in different characters with a not-so-nasty bent to them.

Fun evil (supervillain style) is fine, but I'm not going to narrate a D&D version of Hostel. I quite enjoy horror, and you've played Dread with me. That's fun. But I have run into to players in the past who want to go kind of pointlessly homicidal with their characters, and it both makes me uncomfortable and bored.

And yet once things got going, that Dread party came across as the sort of wonderful powderkeg (and having both played in and DMed a whole lot o' those, I know the signs) where one little spark could easily have sent the whole group abandoning the adventure in favour of throwing down on each other.

I think we probably all agree that it's a consensual game that has to be fun for everyone, including the DM. From everything I know, your games are fun for everyone involved, so it's not an issue, especially as you're a pretty chill guy. All I'm saying is I think it's just as valid for the DM to have clear boundaries as it is for players.

If the DM's not having fun there's soon enough no game at all.

That said, I see having a pretty broad mind overall as one of the soft-coded DM job requirements.

 

[Mind of tempest]

You care that WotC addresses this issue? It can't be anyone else?

anyone else get buried so unless someone can make a proper rival for dnd it ends up having to be wotc if you want something to stick.
not that I believe it will happen.

I meant more so crapsack desert world ruled by evil Dragon Sorcerer-King where the city is painted pretty and nice but is actually horrific underneath the layers and if you go out into the wasteland everything is trying to kill you.

It's less Psionic, but it hits a lot of the same tropes. Probably because both are drawing on Semitic Bronze Age City-State Desert Empires for inspiration.

That all said, I said Amonkhet is the closest MtG setting to it, not that I thought it was sufficiently close. My point was more that there is NO sufficiently close MtG set and trying to make a NEW MtG set that was like Dark Sun but different at this stage would be counter-productive if the goal was in part syncretisation with D&D. Innistrad only exists as its own plane because (1) Ulgrotha wasn't Gothic Horror ENOUGH to be twisted into the setting of the 2011-2012 sets and (2) WotC had a policy at the time of "don't cross the streams" between their two franchises. They wanted an original Magic Setting they could bring their Planeswalker protagonists to for Magic Story reasons, and Ravenloft would carry a lot of baggage they don't want to mess with. Case in point: Guildmaster's Guide to Ravenloft showed that Acquisitions, Inc. has an office on Ravnica, but this office (and everything else D&D original) is non-canon to Magic Story, because that would open the can of worms that the Magic Planes and the D&D Planes are one larger story, and then we get into weird cosmological questions for their story and characters that they really don't want to open either property up to. More so, any crossover is really for Rule of Fun rather than making a larger meta-narrative. Strixhaven was DEFINITELY created in part with D&D in-mind, but not so to bring the narrative of Strixhaven in the context of the Phyrexian invasions plot into D&D, so much as bringing magic school tropes setting, the platonic ideal of Strixhaven, into D&D.

I see your reasoning I am just unsure what to do with it.

 

[Hussar]

To me, that's conflating the players with their characters. A good person playing an evil-to-the-core character does not become a bad person just because of that.

But, by the same token, if whatever that player is doing during the game, while playing that character, is making me feel icky, then, well, I don't want to play with that person, regardless of how nice they are outside of the game.

 

[Micah Sweet]

anyone else get buried so unless someone can make a proper rival for dnd it ends up having to be wotc if you want something to stick.
not that I believe it will happen.

I see your reasoning I am just unsure what to do with it.

EN Publishing's Level Up is all the rival to WotC 5e I need, and if it isn't, plenty of WotC 5e 3pp out there too, all of which is far more likely to address this issue than an official WotC book is.

 

[MGibster]

Also: while you knew she was innocent (presumably because the module text said so) the players (and their characters) did not.

It was five heavily armed people versus a lone individual armed with a dagger who did nothing to provoke an attack. They murdered her. I know you're trying to give them the benefit of the doubt here, but I was there and saw what happened. Like I said earlier, this was just the straw that broke the camel's back. i.e. It wasn't an isolated incident.

 

[CapnZapp]

It was five heavily armed people versus a lone individual armed with a dagger who did nothing to provoke an attack. They murdered her. I know you're trying to give them the benefit of the doubt here, but I was there and saw what happened. Like I said earlier, this was just the straw that broke the camel's back. i.e. It wasn't an isolated incident.

No, you are misunderstanding. All of our replies are based on the assumption there was a miscommunication, that isn't simply a case where high level heroes choose a zero level commoner and just slaughter him or her for funsies.

You see one thing, the players saw something else.

Whether they saw something real or imaginary doesn't matter. The knowledge they're playing Ravenloft can mess with players' heads. If the woman really was spying for Strahd or was just acting "regularly strange" for a insulated backwater village doesn't matter. She acted as if she was recruited (or at least paid off) by the Enemy and paid the price.

Everybody is responding as if you genuinely want help repairing your relationship with these players. They might have Blade the Day Vampire in mind where nobody raises an eyelid at killing a random villager. You clearly have something much more low-key (if not straight up humanistic) in mind.

Either way, there can be a dozen explanations for the players behaviors that does not include or even come near callous murder. In many cases, projecting your feelings onto their actions will make you act as if they did something they believe they have not done. Communicating what you want and need out of the campaign is key: have you even discussed what genre you want this to be or did you simply take for granted they were on board with your vision without even stating it out loud?

Since that could come across as me suggesting this was your fault, which I am not implying, here's the deal, MGibster:

If you are not open to seeing the players perspective, what are we even doing here? I mean, you don't need our help - or permission - to simply ditch a bunch of murder-hoboing players that are probably bored and should do something else entirely than waste your DMing efforts.

Thing is, we don't know that. Every response you've got you need to reread with the above in mind.

 

[MGibster]

All of our replies are based on the assumption there was a miscommunication, that isn't simply a case where high level heroes choose a zero level commoner and just slaughter him or her for funsies.

And I categorically reject the idea that there was any miscommunication. The players took what information they had and decided the best course of action was to kill an NPC who did nothing to provoke them. They made no attempt at communication, they just went straight to violence. None of you were at the game, so it's more than a little odd that you would presume to know what happened better than I do.

 

[Clint_L]

And I categorically reject the idea that there was any miscommunication. The players took what information they had and decided the best course of action was to kill an NPC who did nothing to provoke them. They made no attempt at communication, they just went straight to violence. None of you were at the game, so it's more than a little odd that you would presume to know what happened better than I do.

Fair enough. I do wonder about your decision to so instantly end a campaign that you had obviously put work into. That seems odd, but as you point out, I wasn't there. Was this kind of a final straw situation where you realized that you and the players were just not copacetic and it was never going to work?

I've had situations where I've really intervened hard and straight up told players that "if you really wanna do X, Y becomes almost inevitable, and it could well end the campaign. You decide." Typically, that's happened with players who aren't really buying into the whole TTRPG premise of shared storytelling, which sometimes happens with young beginners.

 

[CapnZapp]

And I categorically reject the idea that there was any miscommunication. The players took what information they had and decided the best course of action was to kill an NPC who did nothing to provoke them. They made no attempt at communication, they just went straight to violence. None of you were at the game, so it's more than a little odd that you would presume to know what happened better than I do.

None of us presume we knew better. Stop assuming we are trying to argue against you. We were trying to help, suggesting alternative perspectives: could it be a misunderstanding and your players really aren't murder-hobos? Most people when bringing up their players as murder hobos aren't really satisfied and thus are fishing for assistance.

You, however, clearly aren't open to suggestions and you have closed your mind to the possibility your players weren't murder-hoboing (which: what? why are you okay with that explanation??) and instead perhaps just had a different genre in mind.

Anyway, I'll take my advice to someone who appreciates it.

 

[CapnZapp]

Fair enough. I do wonder about your decision to so instantly end a campaign that you had obviously put work into. That seems odd, but as you point out, I wasn't there. Was this kind of a final straw situation where you realized that you and the players were just not copacetic and it was never going to work?

I've had situations where I've really intervened hard and straight up told players that "if you really wanna do X, Y becomes almost inevitable, and it could well end the campaign. You decide." Typically, that's happened with players who aren't really buying into the whole TTRPG premise of shared storytelling, which sometimes happens with young beginners.

I too got curious and offered to consider different perspectives. But MGibster appears to not want to discuss. He's fine with ditching his players on the assumption they're simple murder hobos even though it is possible (if not outright likely) he's just losing friends over a misunderstanding.

But whatever.