D&D 5E Deal Breakers - Or woah, that is just too much

[JonnyP71]

Or you could look at it another way - on a battlefield, brimstone heavy in the air, with squadrons of Manes advancing on a city a slightly build "human" boy who shows no fear faces down a Chain Devil.

Now the Chain Devil has got to be wondering what edge the obviously out classed "human" has that it does not know about. Now this devil would be no dumb brute and it would definitely know that apparently harmless creatures thrive in the hierarchy of the hells, so yeah a nat 20 Intimidate should at least have made it look for an easier target.

The Chain Devil was in melee with the Elven Fighter and Dwarf Cleric in the Party - it wasn't paying attention to the 'insignificant boy' as it didn't deem him a threat.

Until the boy started giving it the verbals!

 

[greyauthor]

One real-life "too much railroading example" was when we had one of the players DMing, he'd written this elaborate adventure and so on (this was just after the first Prism Pentad book had some out, so early '90s), we were excited as prior to me being DM, he'd been a DM, though none of us had played with him then.

We get to the end of an adventure - and finally confront the evil wizard! But the DM has decided that we don't get to fight the wizard, his GMPC does, so he says the wizard gets to go first (even though he lost initiative!), and cast some paralyze-y spell on us (I forget what). My PC is, for some reason, explicitly immune to their spell (item or race, I forget which). Two of the other PCs roll their saves. The DM gets very angry, insists those saves didn't count and that my immunity doesn't protect me - I point out that it literally specifies that spell... eventually he argues us all down, we agree to go along with it, then the GMPC runs in, throws a magic spear, and boom, the evil wizard is dead (one-shot!).

That was the last time he got to DM.

Of course there was an earlier incident, no so much "railroad" as "DM attempts to enforce his own twisted morality on the players" which would probably have made it his last time too:

So usual adventure stuff, then after fighting some orcs we find there are some baby orcs. They are harmless and pathetic by the DM's description (in fact, he emphasized how pathetic they were). So we, being not monsters, decide they're now basically orphans, so we'll take them back to the local church of some nice-guy loves-the-weak deity and they'll look after them (one of us is a cleric there). The DM flips his chips. He never questions the premise, in fact he agrees that said church would take care of them, but he demands that because we are good-aligned, we have to murder the baby orcs. Raising them good isn't enough. They are apparently inherently evil. This is in the FR, where orcs are not inherently evil, just tend that way, note, and that had been established even back then.

So we're just refusing to go with this, and he has his GMPC Paladin turn up, zap all the orc babies somehow (to our utter horror!), and then attempt to tell us off (which was a bit like Genghis Khan trying to explain to some peaceable monks how THEY were the evil ones!). Le sigh.

I'm hilariously stunned. Wow.

 

[Hussar]

Actually, I do have one, iron clad, Deal Breaker, but, it's a pretty darn corner case one that has only come up once. If we're playing an online game over some VTT, LEARN TO TYPE. I played in an early 4e online game using Maptool and the DM refused to pre-type anything (so no macros or anything) and then could only type about twenty words a minute. So, every single monster attack had to be fully typed out every single time (no macros) and then he insisted on narrating the results afterward. Single creatures with one attack could literally take minutes to resolve. Every single one. We had a 1st level (or thereabouts) fight with four hobgoblins take THREE HOURS to resolve. O.O

This is often a pet peeve of mine for online games. I once had a player who was notoriously slow to take his turn. I timed him one session, and timed all the other players, including myself. It turned out that his turn (with a 3e 4th level fighter) took more time than the entire group COMBINED. He got rather pissed at me for pointing this out with evidence, but, in all fairness, did go a long way in the future to speeding up his own play.

Slow players (or DM's) has only been a deal breaker once, but, it really, REALLY wants me to invent a way to stab people in the eye over the Internet.

 

[nickverto]

Most of the standard dealbreakers have been covered for me already, but here's one that's very specific to me:

Plane-hopping. If the "end game" of a campaign involves plane-hopping, or there will be significant focus in taking the the party to the Abyss, the Ethereal plane, the Elemental planes, the Astral plane, the Whatever-the-crap-else plane, I will walk. There's more than enough conflict, drama, and interesting stories to be told on good 'ole planet earth (or wherever else you live in the Prime Material) without having to do all that crap. I find the very notion of plane-hopping absurd and completely immersion-breaking.
.

Out of curiosity what happened that you dislike "other" planes so much? Some of the most fun I have ever had in a campaign took place in the Planescape campaign setting for the very reason you never know what you might encounter and how different it is. I almost view it as someone who will only eat hamburgers and french fries and no other food. Not that I would run an entire campaign from another plane but going to one as part of a quest can add something new and exciting.

I DM'd a game where the PC's started by waking up in the Mortuary of Sigil with no equipment, being wheeled on a cart by a zombie who was taking them to a portal where they would be cremated. I think the PC's had a good time figuring out how they got there and who took their gear and getting it back.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Out of curiosity what happened that you dislike "other" planes so much? Some of the most fun I have ever had in a campaign took place in the Planescape campaign setting for the very reason you never know what you might encounter and how different it is. I almost view it as someone who will only eat hamburgers and french fries and no other food. Not that I would run an entire campaign from another plane but going to one as part of a quest can add something new and exciting.

Personally, I dislike it because it's too magical and unpredictable. A game is supposed to be a series of choices, but if you don't have any way of guessing what might happen next, then there's not enough context to make any informed decisions, so your choices become meaningless. I'm fine with magic and dragons as understood properties of an internally-consistent world, but it's hard to account for suddenly losing a consistent orientation of gravity (for example). That sort of thing just doesn't exist in my hypothesis space.

I view it as someone who will only eat food, and isn't willing to experiment with random objects found on the ground, regardless of how interesting they might taste.

 

[nickverto]

I view it as someone who will only eat food, and isn't willing to experiment with random objects found on the ground, regardless of how interesting they might taste.

I think your analogy is flawed. The planes are an official part of D&D (including 5E) so I would say they are part of the menu if you wish to use them. You don't like them which is fine and your prerogative but it's not like people who use them in their games are "eating random objects off the ground" that aren't part of the core game.

Just to be clear there is nothing wrong at all with not liking the planes (they aren't for everyone) I was just curious if you had a bad experience that caused this outlook.

 

[Shasarak]

I view it as someone who will only eat food, and isn't willing to experiment with random objects found on the ground, regardless of how interesting they might taste.

Yeah, if I was meant to eat stuff coming out of the ground then they would not have invented processed food and Mickey Ds would they?. Mmmm, bland processed food high in salt and carbohydrates.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

[MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION], [MENTION=76341]nickverto[/MENTION], I think this food and the planes analogy would be more accurate if the various non-material planes were being equated to things that people absolutely do eat, even particularly large groups of people, but that another large group of people have no interest in eating for some variety of reasons.

Such as sushi, durian, dragon fruit, deep-fried arachnid, monkey brains, or any other number of things which are 100% genuinely food (analogous to 100% genuinely fun to play in) but some simply don't see as appetizing in any way.

 

[nickverto]

@Saelorn, @nickverto, I think this food and the planes analogy would be more accurate if the various non-material planes were being equated to things that people absolutely do eat, even particularly large groups of people, but that another large group of people have no interest in eating for some variety of reasons.

Such as sushi, durian, dragon fruit, deep-fried arachnid, monkey brains, or any other number of things which are 100% genuinely food (analogous to 100% genuinely fun to play in) but some simply don't see as appetizing in any way.

No argument here. Although it makes me wonder how many people like/dislike anything other than the prime material plane (ie Faerun for Forgotten Realms etc). Am I in the minority (as someone who likes the planes) or somewhere more in the middle of RPGers?

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

No argument here. Although it makes me wonder how many people like/dislike anything other than the prime material plane (ie Faerun for Forgotten Realms etc). Am I in the minority (as someone who likes the planes) or somewhere more in the middle of RPGers?

That is really hard to say. My experience is that players generally don't mind occasional trips to other planes interspersed throughout campaigns, but I've never actually run a campaign or played in one that intended the action to take place off the material plane for prolonged periods of time - excluding one potential example wherein the entire party was trapped in Avernus on the grounds that the DM was intending the campaign to irritate the players and make us all quit because he didn't actually want to be running a campaign but felt the need to try and manipulate the group, and me especially, with that whole "What do you mean you're bummed out you never get a chance to play instead of DM? I ran a campaign just last month, and you said you'd rather be DMing, so here we are." BS rather than just saying "I don't want to DM."

I've not encountered anyone besides Saelorn that stated a confident non-interest, but I also never thought to add "How do you feel about other planes of existence in campaigns?" question to those I ask my players to make sure I've got the best info for making enjoyable campaigns for them to play in.