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DM's Suport Group: Most Cliche Player Behaviors Ever
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<blockquote data-quote="Jack Daniel" data-source="post: 5478186" data-attributes="member: 694"><p>For my money, it all boils down to a simple attitude problem: </p><p></p><p><strong>Players treating the campaign world as a consequence-free environment for their characters to play "let's be a douchebag" in.</strong></p><p></p><p>It seems to follow from a casual lack of respect for the setting, the DM, and whatever work that the DM is putting into the campaign; from a desire on the part of the problem player to act out power-trip fantasies; and, most insidiously, from the very structure of the game itself. In a game like D&D, it's all too often the case that the disincentives to avoid general douchebaggery just don't outweigh the positive rewards (treasure, experience, getting one's way) of willfully engaging in the same.</p><p></p><p>Another aspect of this problem relates to an observation that I've only made recently, as a result of my current campaign. At the start of the game, I began with the usual "buy-in" statement: I wanted a high-fantasy campaign about big-time heroes, people who were out to do the right thing. Good guys, not murders and thieves and anti-heroes. The players said okay, and things got off to a decent start. Then the player roster started to grow (always a danger when gaming at the FLGS), and the median party alignment continued to sink ever closer to chaos and evil... not just from the new blood that joined the game after the buy-in, but also from the original players who initially set out to play good guys. It's as if "goodness and lawfulness" must inevitably atrophy as a campaign progresses, and any DM who expects otherwise must sooner or later have his hopes summarily dashed. (In my experience, anyway.)</p><p></p><p>And I've finally discerned another major aspect of why this is: the alignment system in D&D is fundamentally toothless. The DM can always say "if your character goes evil, hand over the sheet, he's NPC'd," but there's always something a little arbitrary and sudden about alignment change in D&D. Arguments and hurt feelings would inevitably ensue. At any rate, D&D alignment is basically <em>post hoc</em> and <strong>descriptive</strong>: a character's alignment changes after the fact, in response to a character's overall and relatively long-term pattern of behavior. Ergo, I've come to understand, if I want a campaign of proper, heroic high fantasy---defined as a setting like Middle-Earth or the Star Wars galaxy, where the good guys are good, and evil is a real, corrupting force that the setting simply does not tolerate for long in its protagonists---one must enforce a more stringent, black-and-white alignment mechanic, something like Dark Side points from Star Wars d20 or corruption by Shadow from Decipher's LotR game.</p><p></p><p>I'll just bet that having a number on each player's sheet staring them in face, saying "you are this close to losing your character to the DM, and <em>raise dead</em> doesn't work on getting NPC'd"... that'll probably have a very positive impact on player behavior.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Jack Daniel, post: 5478186, member: 694"] For my money, it all boils down to a simple attitude problem: [B]Players treating the campaign world as a consequence-free environment for their characters to play "let's be a douchebag" in.[/B] It seems to follow from a casual lack of respect for the setting, the DM, and whatever work that the DM is putting into the campaign; from a desire on the part of the problem player to act out power-trip fantasies; and, most insidiously, from the very structure of the game itself. In a game like D&D, it's all too often the case that the disincentives to avoid general douchebaggery just don't outweigh the positive rewards (treasure, experience, getting one's way) of willfully engaging in the same. Another aspect of this problem relates to an observation that I've only made recently, as a result of my current campaign. At the start of the game, I began with the usual "buy-in" statement: I wanted a high-fantasy campaign about big-time heroes, people who were out to do the right thing. Good guys, not murders and thieves and anti-heroes. The players said okay, and things got off to a decent start. Then the player roster started to grow (always a danger when gaming at the FLGS), and the median party alignment continued to sink ever closer to chaos and evil... not just from the new blood that joined the game after the buy-in, but also from the original players who initially set out to play good guys. It's as if "goodness and lawfulness" must inevitably atrophy as a campaign progresses, and any DM who expects otherwise must sooner or later have his hopes summarily dashed. (In my experience, anyway.) And I've finally discerned another major aspect of why this is: the alignment system in D&D is fundamentally toothless. The DM can always say "if your character goes evil, hand over the sheet, he's NPC'd," but there's always something a little arbitrary and sudden about alignment change in D&D. Arguments and hurt feelings would inevitably ensue. At any rate, D&D alignment is basically [I]post hoc[/I] and [B]descriptive[/B]: a character's alignment changes after the fact, in response to a character's overall and relatively long-term pattern of behavior. Ergo, I've come to understand, if I want a campaign of proper, heroic high fantasy---defined as a setting like Middle-Earth or the Star Wars galaxy, where the good guys are good, and evil is a real, corrupting force that the setting simply does not tolerate for long in its protagonists---one must enforce a more stringent, black-and-white alignment mechanic, something like Dark Side points from Star Wars d20 or corruption by Shadow from Decipher's LotR game. I'll just bet that having a number on each player's sheet staring them in face, saying "you are this close to losing your character to the DM, and [I]raise dead[/I] doesn't work on getting NPC'd"... that'll probably have a very positive impact on player behavior. [/QUOTE]
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