I don't know what just happend, but it seems that Ayn Rand corrupted my player!

[S'mon]

At my work we have staff seminars where anarchist academics say things like: "Everyone must be free and equal! Anyone who disagrees is Authoritarian and must be eliminated!"
When I disagreed, when I said humans are pack animals who naturally form hierarchies, I was told I had an Authoritarian Personality.

It reminds me of the scene in Life of Brian:

Brian: "You're all individuals!"

Masses cry out: "Yes! We're all individuals!"

Lone voice: "I'm not."

Anyway, suffice to say that there are plenty of situations IRL where leadership is called for, and while there are RPGs that do not require the GM to take a leader role, D&D is not one of them. The GM always has to exercise judgement, even if that judgement is to give the players what they ask for.

Re Adventure Paths - I'm not sure what the point of playing through all those dozens of fights is, if the PCs are guaranteed to reach the end? Isn't that tedious?

 

[chubbyloremaster]

Well a lot happend and I tried for the third time to talk to the players and reach an agreement. We are all friends and it would be very bad if we stoped talking to each other because of our rpg game.

We talked very long about the case and I figured out a sollution. What I did I allowed a time travel mechanic where if the PCs where TPKed I would set them back to a time before the encounter started but I wouldn't give them any XP and drasticly reduce the reward for the encounter be it combat , social or skill.

My point here wass not to let them go with a reward. Death of characters is common in D&D, if it wasn't there the players wouldn't respect me , make fun of the game etc. Not only that but it is also a challenge for the players and leting it go would influence how the game is played. I did it several times with them and it always lead to the end of the game because the only way to pose some threat to them was to screw with their heads, which I always did after few months of gameplay. What I did, I turned the game into a heavy roleplaying theme. Even if the characters were immortal they would lose if they choose wrongly or got deceived. If you play for two years with people who are so strong that you have little or no means to kill them and you don't want to end the game it was perfect and they even liked it. But everything has its end.

Calling me a jerk has no bearing here. Mostly because my players don't care if I'm a jerk because theye by this standard are jerks too. This objectivist selfishness doesnt care what you lose in the exchange. If I were a big jerk or a yes-man it would'nt matter, what they are concerned is their objective and nothing else. If my objective coresponds with theirs, its fine, if not, no one cares.

The truth is this game was an experiment. 2 month ago I posted a thread on this forum about GM authority. I was a very yes-man at that time and allowed my players 20th level and unlimited amount of gold at the creation process. I ditched the game after two sessions just from the absurde power levels and the thin line between death and life, which after forcibly introducing a LOAD GAME mechanic, was complytly obsolete.

Now the game I was tring to set up was an experiment because I tried to see how far can I go before my players will rebel. It means that I set a clear line division between player and GM authority and when I wanted to say no to a player request I would say that I am not comfortable with his vision in the game I play.

What houserules i manage to set up where these:
-We don't play evil characters because it is very easy for an evil character to just being a jerk and destroy the campaign for his own amusment. But if someone really made a very convincing evil character I would make it an exeption, for example a pathfinder Hellknight.

-During character creation and advancment you can choose to roll a hit die or get 75% of you maximum score.
This was a trick to make them go from , only maximum scores on hit dice which worked

-The players start at the 9th level due to the Harrowing being a 9th level module.
This was a very good choice because they previously told me that they won't play any game which is less that 15th level

What they did forced me to do is:
-25 poin buy which is the highest amount of points you can spend on your character creation.
-use of every rule in the book there is for maximum experiance.
Here I didn't want all of them because I didn't read all of them but I somehow managed to get the most important ones appearing in the SRD

From the players standpoint the game is a bussiness transaction, and not all bussiness transactions end well. I agreed with them and made a house rule which I described above.

The stuff which I described in my previous post was what the players wrote to me so with each paragraph I had some reference that I could look up if my memory was a little bit shaggy.

I believe the problem now is whether these kind of people can or will play rpgs at all, and by these kind of people I mean objectivist because it clearly says that there is no argument for them to listen to the GM because the only authority that matters is Ayn Rand and themselves, at least this is what they told me.

And once more I am very sorry for making you all worked up because of some misunderstandings.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I believe the problem now is whether these kind of people can or will play rpgs at all, and by these kind of people I mean objectivist because it clearly says that there is no argument for them to listen to the GM because the only authority that matters is Ayn Rand and themselves, at least this is what they told me.

Ach- don't fret about it: there are all kinds of games and groups out there, some portion of which support exactly that playsyle. There are even RPGs without game masters.

They just may not be able to play with you as the game master. That's not a judgement on you or them, just an observation that your respective playstyles may not mesh well with you on the other side of the screen from them. If you were a player alongside most of them in a campaign run by one of them, there might be no problems at all.

 

[FireLance]

The cultists in this scenario were under their control too, which would be part of the plot. They're essentially thralls (willing or unwilling) to the Dragon Masters. For the sake of the argument, say the reasoning makes sense in-game. What's your take on my situation, then?

Same with the gunpowder issue: the PC is special. The ritual affected him differently, either because of some slight change in the way it was performed, or because the PC had some special ancestry or supernatural protection. I agree that the "why" is important, but I'm prepared to create a plausible "why" out of whole cloth (of course, ensuring that it doesn't contradict anything that has already been established) to let the player have his fun.

 

[JamesonCourage]

Same with the gunpowder issue: the PC is special. The ritual affected him differently, either because of some slight change in the way it was performed, or because the PC had some special ancestry or supernatural protection. I agree that the "why" is important, but I'm prepared to create a plausible "why" out of whole cloth (of course, ensuring that it doesn't contradict anything that has already been established) to let the player have his fun.

I really don't see anything objectionable from your methods. It wouldn't work for my specific group because of my game, but I think we're a pretty obvious corner case. Thanks for the feedback! As always, play what you like

 

[Pentius]

-snip-

Chubs, my Ayn Rand Knowledge isn't enough to know why your player(s?) are speaking out, but if you don't play the game to enjoy it(hedonism) then why play at all?

 

[Jhaelen]

What they did forced me to do is:

Eh, did they point a pistol at your head or something?

I have trouble thinking of a way players could force me to do anything.

This seems to be a strange reversal of my local situation: Here, DMs are a rare commodity. It's players that are plentiful. If players start to make (unreasonable) demands, it's the players that are politely invited to look for a new DM to make room for more reasonable players.

 

[GameDaddy]

I believe the problem now is whether these kind of people can or will play rpgs at all, and by these kind of people I mean objectivist because it clearly says that there is no argument for them to listen to the GM because the only authority that matters is Ayn Rand and themselves, at least this is what they told me.

Hrrrmm????... The players are not objectivists. They completely failed to understand the principles Ayn Rand set forth. If they did understand, they would have supported your experiment until you understood exactly the rewards you wanted, in playing that particular style of game.

In fact, they did just the opposite. Like Weseley Mouche in the book, They voted themselves in charge of "your" rpg experiment, and then proceeded to derail it.

 

[Janx]

Eh, did they point a pistol at your head or something?

I have trouble thinking of a way players could force me to do anything.

This seems to be a strange reversal of my local situation: Here, DMs are a rare commodity. It's players that are plentiful. If players start to make (unreasonable) demands, it's the players that are politely invited to look for a new DM to make room for more reasonable players.

Whoever needs the relationship less, has the power.

For a GM, with plenty of players to pick from, that means they get to set the terms of the relationship. Because the individual player NEEDS a GM. An Individual GM may not need a specific player as he has others to choose from.

Right or wrong, its economics and psychology.

 

[nedjer]

In the world of Alternate Reality Games they started out with the referee/ co-ordinator as the Puppetmaster. This has now been change to the Architect. If ARGs can do that in five years how come RPGs can't go from Gamesmaster or Dungeonmaster to Architect in closer to 50 years?