How Accommodating to Player Preferences Should the GM Be?

[overgeeked]

I cannot disagree with you in stronger terms.

Back in 3.5 days, I was creating a character and my young daughter wanted to make one as well. What they wanted wasn't channeled into the narrow constrictions of what D&D offers. They weren't trained to think along the lines of how classes grouped things together, they weren't trained to think abotu how ability scores collate with classes, so putting your lowest ability score into Wisdom to be impulsive wasn't the best for a druid. We've been playing D&D, we think along the lines it gives us. Someone new to the hobby does not yet.

Full. Stop.

They are more likely to want to try something fantastical that they've seen or read than a long time player. That those who don't know the restrictions of class or race or how they are enshrined as sacred cows are most likely to ask. Judging 9 out of 10 of them as dysfunctional when you admit you'd let a long time player do it is nothing short of judgemental gatekeeping.

Exactly.

 

[grankless]

What nonsense.

I'm genuinely astonished at how many people in this thread are bragging about refusing to have conversations with their players.

 

[Jack Daniel]

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[Reynard]

. It's just a fact that the GM is in the business of managing player gratification,l

No, they aren't. That is not the GM's role.

 

[grankless]

Then you've probably misunderstood what I'm getting at here. I'm talking about how GMing works in the broadest possible terms, irrespective of play-style. It's just a fact that the GM is in the business of managing player gratification,

Yes, the GM, as a player, is responsible for player gratification. So are all the other players at the table. Everyone in the group is responsible for having fun.

 

[overgeeked]

It's just a fact that the GM is in the business of managing player gratification, no matter whether they're doing something fudgy and neo-trad (placing a magical weapon perfectly spec'd for a player character's build in a chest in the very next room, on a mid-session whim to adjust the game's balance and reward the player for something) or something very OSR and hard-landscape (stocking a dungeon with randomly diced treasures six months before the campaign begins with no meaningful knowledge of what any player characters may be like). How the GM winds up going about it is beside the point.

I like to know how that's supposed to work with the OSR, pre-stocked style of play.

 

[Jack Daniel]

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[payn]

Pre-stocking a dungeon is itself an example of managing player gratification. It's a very rote and mechanical one if you're going about it in the usual way and placing better treasures guarded by scarier monsters on the deeper levels (as opposed to building a deliberately imbalanced nega-dungeon), and it puts a lot of power in the hands of players to seek after their own risk-managed rewards. But that's still broadly what's going from a high-level view of game management.

Ohhh I like the sound of a naga dungeon! I know thats not what you meant.

 

[overgeeked]

Pre-stocking a dungeon is itself an example of managing player gratification. It's a very rote and mechanical one if you're going about it in the usual way and placing better treasures guarded by scarier monsters on the deeper levels (as opposed to building a deliberately imbalanced nega-dungeon), and it puts a lot of power in the hands of players to seek after their own risk-managed rewards. But that's still broadly what's going from a high-level view of game management.

Huh. So by completely ignoring player gratification you're somehow still managing player gratification? That doesn't make sense. It's like saying bald is a hair color.

 

[Jack Daniel]

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