D&D 5E (2014) DM imposed restrictions to the game (+)

[Crimson Longinus]

Like the example i gave in the post you quoted, if you think you have a valid reason why your character wouldn’t be scared by X or Y I’d be genuinely open to hearing your argument in that situation, but you don’t get to just claim fearlessness by yourself.

I am not interested playing in game where I need to debate with the GM in every turn whether I get to decide the personality of my own character.

Seriously, why you feel the need to do this? As a GM you already control the whole world. All the NPCs and creatures, everything the PCs hear and see. Is that not enough? Can you not let the players play their characters in peace?

 

[billd91]

Seriously, why you feel the need to do this? As a GM you already control the whole world. All the NPCs and creatures, everything the PCs hear and see. Is that not enough? Can you not let the players play their characters in peace?

Well, there's playing your character in peace and there's unilaterally immunizing yourself against the slings and arrows of failed defenses or opposed checks in a game where those effects are part of the rules. If a spidery creature is defined as having a fear effect and you fail the save, you're going to be frightened (whatever the rules for that entail) - whether you rationalize you should be immune because you're from Australia or Menzobarranzen or not.

I understand that there are differing levels of mandated consequences that different games and different genres have for some things. Some are relatively low key like D&D (particularly in recent editions with the imposition of conditions but little prescriptive behavior outside of outright mind control effects) and some have a stronger prescriptive element like Pendragon. But you basically should play out in good faith what you sign up for.

 

[AlViking]

Like the example i gave in the post you quoted, if you think you have a valid reason why your character wouldn’t be scared by X or Y I’d be genuinely open to hearing your argument in that situation, but to me, you don’t get to just claim fearlessness by yourself.

Where does it talk about this in any rule in any D&D book? Unless a monster or spell explicitly causes a fear effect there's no justification for your stance as a default assumption of the game.

 

[AlViking]

Well, there's playing your character in peace and there's unilaterally immunizing yourself against the slings and arrows of failed defenses or opposed checks in a game where those effects are part of the rules. If a spidery creature is defined as having a fear effect and you fail the save, you're going to be frightened (whatever the rules for that entail) - whether you rationalize you should be immune because you're from Australia or Menzobarranzen or not.

I understand that there are differing levels of mandated consequences that different games and different genres have for some things. Some are relatively low key like D&D (particularly in recent editions with the imposition of conditions but little prescriptive behavior outside of outright mind control effects) and some have a stronger prescriptive element like Pendragon. But you basically should play out in good faith what you sign up for.

If it's an effect of a creature or spell that's specifically called out it's fine. But please quote a rule from a D&D book that says the DM can just decide the PC needs to make a saving throw without that. The DM deciding that clowns (or anything else you want to throw) are inherently scary is not in the rules of the game.

I sign up for a D&D game. I don't want to suddenly be rolling for sanity checks unless the group agreed to it in our session 0.

 

[billd91]

If it's an effect of a creature or spell that's specifically called out it's fine. But please quote a rule from a D&D book that says the DM can just decide the PC needs to make a saving throw without that. The DM deciding that clowns (or anything else you want to throw) are inherently scary is not in the rules of the game.

Fear and Horror checks, 2014 DMG. Granted, if you're using an optional rule variant like that, the players will know about it but that does give the DM a lot of leeway about imposing various checks. And going outside D&D, a GM may have a lot of leeway about other things - sanity checks in Call of Cthulhu, for example, for witnessing various things that aren't specifically defined in the rules.

Moreover, back in D&D's court, a DM generally has a LOT of leeway in designing challenges, including redesigning monsters (it's pretty trivial to add on a frightful presence or horrifying visage to a monster's suite of abilities) or determining the effects of various exploration hazards.

 

[AlViking]

Fear and Horror checks, 2014 DMG. Granted, if you're using an optional rule variant like that, the players will know about it but that does give the DM a lot of leeway about imposing various checks. And going outside D&D, a GM may have a lot of leeway about other things - sanity checks in Call of Cthulhu, for example, for witnessing various things that aren't specifically defined in the rules.

Moreover, back in D&D's court, a DM generally has a LOT of leeway in designing challenges, including redesigning monsters (it's pretty trivial to add on a frightful presence or horrifying visage to a monster's suite of abilities) or determining the effects of various exploration hazards.

I will grant you that I don't remember that option, probably because I dismissed it out of hand. As you said, it's an optional rule right in there with madness and should be cleared with the players because it's not a default assumption. I wouldn't want to play a game with that rule and fortunately never have. Meanwhile the DM can do a lot of things like rocks fall and everyone dies - something I actually did run into once long ago (we were saved by a "get out of boxed text certificate"). \

Just because you can it does not mean you should. It is not standard practice or anything I've seen at any table I've seen or heard of.

 

[Lanefan]

I will grant you that I don't remember that option, probably because I dismissed it out of hand. As you said, it's an optional rule right in there with madness and should be cleared with the players because it's not a default assumption.

When designing an adventure, if I decide to throw in a chamber that's so eeeeevil that anyone non-evil has to save on entering the space, and those who fail feel so uneasy they have to leave the room and cannot re-enter, I'm not going to clear it with anyone. It'll just be there, as one challenge among many that they have to find a way to overcome.

 

[tetrasodium]

Indeed, it doesn't. It would merely be for edification of the participants.



Player is aware of the relevant details. The player knows what situation the GM describes (e.g. swarming spiders appearing) and they know how their character feels about spiders. No world editing is happening.

You literally quoted the words "Because the player is incapable of knowing details that may or may not be present that they are unaware of they must take that step or [of making a case]" in the same post that you declared that the player who is told they are affected by something with details they are not yet aware of knows everything "relevant" to deciding if their reason for choosing to nosell the apparent affect is justified. The spider example is also one you have wildly misunderstood, it was originally made back in 676 by @CreamCloud0 as a no broader context needed example of a player trivially making a case for why they should be unaffected by what seems to be the source and it was implied the reasoning was just as trivially given a nod of agreement.

Since you seem to think that the player is incapable of not knowing relevant details to the point that such a simple process of trust but verify though I'll expand on it to show a hypothetical unknown that the player could be unaware of. If those spiders that seem to be the frightening thing were simply fleeing the same burrowed sleeping dragon dormant god ancient evil or whatever that is starting to wake up then it's entirely possible that the gm chose the swarm of spiders as a hook to past declarations the player had made cases for over the weeks and months of play with the expectation that the Australian drow pc player or another player would bring it up giving such a devout follower of llolth a warning to the growing danger. By making the original case they could be told that it's not the spiders that are causing it and the player could even be made aware of how their devotion had led to lolth blessing them with that tiniest of warnings they something had changed.

I am not shifting it. That is where its place is. You're trying to shift it under GM approval in your railroady desire to control the characters.

Wow... You can't even grant enough acceptance to the idea that the player might not know all of the details for why a thing is affecting them in order to distinguish the difference between making a case for why something should not affect their PC and unilaterally deciding to "narrate" that it simply doesn't.

I am not interested playing in game where I need to debate with the GM in every turn whether I get to decide the personality of my own character.

We aren't talking about a game you would play in, we are talking about the game as a whole and you have already declared that making your expectations known by flying your rwd flag loud and proud during session zero was not something you would do as a player. Nobody invited anyone to play a game. It doesn't really matter if you want to play in a game where a player's PC is constrained by the game world's reality in ways that may be more involved than what the player knows about it so far
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Seriously, why you feel the need to do this? As a GM you already control the whole world. All the NPCs and creatures, everything the PCs hear and see. Is that not enough? Can you not let the players play their characters in peace?

That is apparently not as true as you are of claiming. By your own position that bold bit is subject to the whims of a player to decide for themselves about the world even if their PC is currently being affected by something they do not or could not yet see without further action investigation time or the like.

"Tell your story" as marketing for a game where a shared tapestry of story evolves over time through play where each participant is working in parallel with their own unique contributions has always been incredibly misleading and toxic in ways that encourage the worst & most disruptive of Mary Sue/Gary Stu impulses to be wielded against the GM's efforts to actually gm the game & it's world where that shared story evolves

 

[EzekielRaiden]

In real life, tech and machinery is just better than non-tech and non-machinery and people who never use tech or machinery in their lives are seriously gimping themselves.

But technology isn't magic. It's a skill that literally anyone can master, that works anywhere the tools and materials are present. This is not true of magic.

Using machinery or tech does not, however, mean you need to know anything about it beyond how to operate it, nor how to create/program/repair it. I know next to nothing about how cars work, for example, or how to build one; and yet I drive one around all the time.

Yes. But magic is exactly the opposite. You have to know magic--even if only at the level of intuition--in order to even use it. So your analogy is already wildly off-base even before we get off the ground!

The same goes for a non-casting character in a magical world:

Nope. For exactly the reasons above.

said character might not know a thing about (or care about) how magic works or how to manipulate it into spells or enchantments or whatever, but she sure likes this highly-magical sword she's got and she knows how to use it. Other people can make the "tech", she just uses it to her best advantage. Seems fine to me.

Except that that's nothing like the tech? Like literally not anything like it? Even just basic usage with the tech requires training in the technology itself. You cannot learn to drive without actually being in a wheeled vehicle. You cannot learn to handle weapon recoil without having a weapon that recoils.

I'm fairly confident that any technology of meaningful depth requires at least basic training in how to use tech.

And keep in mind: Your definition of tech is so broad that it includes pulleys and rope, spears and wheels. A person who genuinely uses no tech at all doesn't exist on this Earth.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Note that most people are fine with the PCs using their nonmagical social skills to convince the NPCs, just not vice versa, so there really isn't magic superiority in that sense. Unless you are offended on behalf of the non-magical NPCs? And at least I have said that the agency eroding magic should be used on the PCs pretty sparingly too.

That has literally nothing to do with what we said.

Magic can do what non-magic can't. Anything non-magic can do, magic can always meet--and nearly always succeed. Skill checks? Guidance. Ioun stone. Enhance ability. Any of a zillion wondrous items. Attack rolls? Again, easy-peasy lemon-squeezy--do you want that in spell, non-spell, spell but not a slot, or class feature? Oh, and is this just for yourself or for other people? Defenses? Pfft, as if anything mundane could ever give you something as simple as advantage against a single damage type!

Magic is, very literally, "Anything you can do, I can do better."

We do not have to choose to design magic that way. There's plenty of literature, precedent, and myth which doesn't characterize things like that at all. Hell, after a fashion, even Vance didn't write magic that way!