Fighters vs. Spellcasters (a case for fighters.)

[Ahnehnois]

The problem is Ahn, all your examples are extreme. In every single one of your examples, it's the players who are trying to disrupt the game on the poor, beleaguered DM. IME, it's often the other way around, and very little in this thread has convinced me otherwise. I mean, you've specifically stated that you are the primary motivator in the game and the players are there to play in your world. For my personal preferences, I do not like to play in this style of game. I don't DM this way and I don't play this way.

I have no interest, anymore, in the experience you are advocating.

It seems logical to counter your dogma about megalomaniacal DMs with something a little more typical.

But take the charm and the king out of it, and make it a more reasonable scenario. Let's say there's a wizard who deals in magic items, and the players have some they want to sell. They go to his tower, and ask to see him, nicely. The imp at the door says that he is not accepting visitors. They make a persuasive case as to why he would want to see them, roll a Diplomacy check and get a high result, definitively enough to make the imp's attitude friendly. But the imp still says no.

Which lends itself to a variety of possibilities. Maybe the wizard is, again, out of town and the player's endeavor is (perhaps unbeknownst to them) pointless because there is no wizard to find. Maybe the wizard is working hard on spell research and gave specific instructions that he not be disturbed no matter what, and the imp explains this to the players cordially. Maybe the imp is an illusion programmed to always say no. In none of those cases does the player have any right to expect that any ability on his character sheet will change that.

None of which changes meaningfully if a player whips out a charm monster spell and successfully charms the imp. It's not a plot coupon that lets the player decide what happens next, simply another way of modeling social interaction. The only thing that changes if the player does that is that by casting the spell, he risks angering the wizard through his use of magic (or possibly impressing him, to be fair).

And of course, the opposite is always possible. Perhaps whatever gatekeeper we're talking about says "welcome in" and leads the PC to the king/wizard or otherwise gives them what they want. The point is not that the answer is always no, merely that the DM, who is in charge of arbitrating actions and roleplaying NPCs, decides whether the answer is yes or no. It's very possible that the DM says yes, but nothing on the player's character sheet will ever mandate that answer.

In D&D, anyway.

 

[N'raac]

where is this "Sock Puppet" straw man coming from? I mean, is it unreasonable that a charmed chamberlain would let you in? Oh, that's right, it is. According to you, even though the chamberlain now sees me as a completely trusted friend, letting me in to see the king would be beyond the power of the spell. Thus, even if I do somehow manage to successfully charm the chamberlain, you'll still interpret the spell in such a way to negate any success.

Ahn provides a good explanation. Like mine, it will fall on deaf ears, yet hope springs eternal.

It comes from your assertions that the Charmed character will now do pretty much anything you ask. He will not act as a character whose attitude is friendly (not, I note, helpful, but friendly) is described in the rules. Note that only one who is helpful will take risks to help you out – "friendly" will not. You have often harped on the need to follow the rules so we are all playing the same game, but your interpretations rarely fall within a reasonable reading of the rules.

What will the charmed Chamberlain not do, in your view, which he would do if his attitude were Helpful? After all, Helpful is better than Friendly, so presumably it carries a higher level of assistance.

I’d be interested to see how you would play your own character with someone he is "friendly" with when that person asks you to take various actions similar to those you expect of the Chamberlain.

Pretty much proves my point doesn't it? No matter what the players try, they will never get to see the king, because the DM has dictated that they shall always fail.

Once again, it does not prove your point. To me, at least, there is a lot of room between "The Chamberlain cheerfully ushers you in for an immediate audience with the King because you made a die roll or cast a minor spell" and "the players can never succeed at anything, no matter how much effort, resources and/or ingenuity they bring to bear because the GM will just override them into failure".

You clearly view any result other than the rules interpreted your way to grant exactly what you want, precisely as you desire it, immediately, to be "adversarial GMing".

Because unlike you, I'm not presuming that the players are jerks?

No, you presume that the GM is a jerk instead, and that GMs live for the sole purpose of frustrating players and making their lives miserable. Yet you still game.

I mean, there's a pretty significant difference between, "I use a spell which makes someone my friend to get past this guy so I can move on with the adventure" and, "I completely munchkinned my character to the point where it breaks your game, now deal with it".

But, judging from this thread, you view them both the same.

There's also a pretty significant difference between, "Your use of a spell does not result in the instantaneous granting of your every desire" and, "Under no circumstances will the players ever be permitted to succeed at anything, now deal with it".

But, judging from this thread, you view them both the same. It does not seem you are capable of perceiving that difference.

The problem is Ahn, all your examples are extreme.

As are yours. That tends to feed on itself.

In every single one of your examples, it's the players who are trying to disrupt the game on the poor, beleaguered DM. IME, it's often the other way around, and very little in this thread has convinced me otherwise. I mean, you've specifically stated that you are the primary motivator in the game and the players are there to play in your world. For my personal preferences, I do not like to play in this style of game. I don't DM this way and I don't play this way.

In each of your examples, it’s the bastard GM making every effort to make the game an exercise in frustration and futility for the poor, put upon players.

IME, it's often the other way around, and very little in this thread has convinced me otherwise. I mean, you've basically spelled it out that the game you want requires all rules to be interpreted (or overridden) to work as you envision them, always very favourable to your goals and objectives, with the GM and any other players just being along for the ride in your game.

 

[ImperatorK]

I don't like "video game" DMs.

 

[Ahnehnois]

The original context was this idea that the charm spell is somehow "fiat", that it grants the player, rather than the DM, the ability to narrate some meaningful outcome in the game world. Obviously, this is false.

 

[Savage Wombat]

... In every single one of your examples, it's the players who are trying to disrupt the game on the poor, beleaguered DM. IME, it's often the other way around, and very little in this thread has convinced me otherwise. ...

See, this is exactly the point. Hussar's experience is one of mean DMs trying to abuse the players to make them play his way. The problem is, he's never been in the position of having a player try to run roughshod over the DM, to the detriment both the game and the other players. Trust me, it's a pain.

Now, I've personally been in both kinds of games. And if you get a DM who literally (as Hussar seems to imply, at the end of the slippery slope) arbitrarily blocks any action by the players other than what he's planned - it's no fun, and you stop playing. But at the other end of the spectrum, we get players robbing the local magic shop with their first-level characters because the DM was inexperienced enough to realize that might happen, and wasn't prepared for it. And the game stops being fun and you stop playing.

I understand that a DM shouldn't be adversarial towards the players, but if the players are adversarial towards the DM - treating his presence as an obstacle to be overcome (Knights of the Dinner Table anyone?) you have an equal problem.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I don't think it's necessarily a question of adversarial behavior on either side. Sometimes, they're just on a different page. The players might try to do something that seems reasonable to them, but causes problems for the DM. This can happen easily for any number of reasons, given that the DM knows what is going on behind the scenes and the player's don't. The point here is that it's for the DM to decide what's in the world and how people behave.

Of course, DMs who do use excessive force and can't walk the line between too much and too little are out there, but they tend not to last long as DMs. Mine didn't.

 

[ImperatorK]

The original context was this idea that the charm spell is somehow "fiat", that it grants the player, rather than the DM, the ability to narrate some meaningful outcome in the game world. Obviously, this is false.

Well, yeah. Because the DM is the King of fiat. But players also narrate things in the game by using their mechanical abilities.

 

[Hussar]

I guess, looking at the wizard example above, is why bother? Why would you put a wizard in the town where the players can sell their loot, and then have the wizard unavailable and then be coy about why he's unavailable? Isn't that a whole lot of work for nothing?

The players have gone to see the wizard for a reason. They want to sell this loot. Obviously they are there because the DM has indicated that the wizard is actually in this town. It's not like the players have decided, on their own, that there is a wizard in this town that will buy their loot. So, they use the information given to them by the DM to make plans. But, then they have these plans foiled completely arbitrarily because the DM has decided that the wizard is "busy".

What a major PITA. It's such a huge waste of time at the table. Why bother?

I guess that's my problem here in a nutshell. The DM is arbitrarily blocking player actions. Why? What's the point? It's so disheartening to a player to actually try to be proactive and then have their ideas shot down in flames presumably because it doesn't fit with the DM's pre-ordained plot. No thank you. I don't want to play that way anymore. Pro-active players should be rewarded, IMO.

Now, true, the player could be a jerk - trying to rob the magic shop at 1st level. Fair enough. But, throughout all of this, that's not been the issue. In all the examples put forward, the players have been attempting perfectly reasonable things. And, note, we're also talking in context of the DM limiting caster power in order to achieve game balance. This isn't a thread about problematic players or DM's. It's about whether or not it's effective for DM's to be that heavy handed when achieving game balance.

To me, it's far more problematic that the DM has to show his or her hand so often just to keep the casters in line. Ahn's entire campaign setting is buit around casters and foiling casters. Note, non-casters are not even remotely an issue. But, we have to have all sorts of high powered, high magic settings, just to keep the casters in line. This is only true if you presume that D&D is a world building system.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I guess, looking at the wizard example above, is why bother? Why would you put a wizard in the town where the players can sell their loot, and then have the wizard unavailable and then be coy about why he's unavailable? Isn't that a whole lot of work for nothing?

How do you define nothing? It's nothing in terms of the players accomplishing their goal or the plot moving forward. However, what stuff like this does is establish that the wizard is not a plot device or a tool for the players to use. He is a person, who has motivations and activities completely independent of the PCs.

To me, one of the big differences between a beginner and an advanced DM is the ability to strategically put in red herrings: NPCs that aren't critical to the plot and situations that lead nowhere. It's tough to do in a time-efficient fashion, but critical to making sure that the players feel that they're in a real world and that the elements in it do not exist solely for their purposes.

Pro-active players should be rewarded, IMO.

I disagree. Players shouldn't be able to do anything and reliably get rewarded. Bad things happen to good people. The universe is large and uncaring. Stuff happens. Again, this is crucial to conveying the sense that the players are characters in a world, not pieces on a game board. At best, being proactive should incrementally shift things in a player's favor, but in some cases it should bring unexpected disaster. Because that's how life works.

Ahn's entire campaign setting is buit around casters and foiling casters.

You obviously don't know much about my campaign setting. It's actually built around psionics. Spellcasters are effectively pawns in a large cosmic war, while the nonmagical characters represent a common sense naturalism neutral to the ongoing battles between powers that ultimately lead to a Ragnarok-style war between dragons and deities. Foiling casters is not a major focus; it's assumed in the same way I assume in any of my modern games that hackers are foiled from robbing banks. Treat the rules of the game as rules of the world, and everything naturally comes to an equilibrium.

This is only true if you presume that D&D is a world building system.

A pretty basic assumption that is shared by every single D&D player I've ever met in person, including many who otherwise have nothing in common with me.

 

[Hussar]

But, Ahn, as the saying goes, the plural of anecdote is not data. The three people you've met (or however many it is) who share your preferences doesn't really say anything at all. Believe me when I say that there are people who do not view D&D as a world building engine. We really do exist. Trying to blow it off by saying that you've never met anyone only really tells us how limited your experience is.

So, treating the NPC as a "living breathing person" is completely pointless to me. I have no interest in it. The NPC is a plot device, same as every other NPC or element in the game. "World building" is what you do when you want to write a novel that's probably about a thousand pages longer than it needs to be.

See, I've done almost exactly what you're talking about. Some years ago, I ran the Scarred Lands Mithril campaign setting. In Mithril, a large city, there is a famous sage. In the text of the setting, it says that the Sage is very busy and it typically takes months to get an appointment to see him. The players discovered a threat to the city and decided that the sage was the best place to discover how to deal with the threat. At least it was an excellent place to start. So, they tried to see the sage, only to be turned away.

The group then spent about two hours of table time trying and failing to see the sage and getting more and more frustrated with every attempt, to the point where they were finally just going to kick in the front door before the session ended and cooler heads prevailed.

Since then, I realised that this entire fiasco, where no one had any fun, was entirely my fault. I was more interested in protecting the setting than in the group. The reason I don't do what you do Ahn, isn't because I think it's a bad idea, it's because I used to do it all the time and have come to realise that it's a completely bad idea FOR ME. It works for you and that's groovy, but, for me and the people I play with, it's about as much fun as watching paint dry. We came very close to ejecting the DM the last time he did it in our Dark Sun campaign where it became painfully obvious that he didn't really have any idea of what we should do next and we were left flailing around aimlessly.

We put the game on hiatus, gave the DM some time to recharge while others DM'ed some shorter games and now we're back on task and having lots of fun.

But, to me, when DM's start treating NPC's and the setting as more important than the players and the PC's, that's a recipe for failed campaigns.