I want my actions to matter

[Jefe Bergenstein]

There's a lot of "just let the players do whatever they want, however they want, with no real chance of failure" energy in this thread. Why even play the game? Just let the players take turns narrating how they win. Take the dice, rules, and GM out, and just get it over with quicker. There's a middle ground between a petty tyrant of the lunchroom table DM and a pointless doormat DM. For me, as both a player and DM, if you succeed no matter what how you tackle a situation, your choices and actions in fact do NOT matter.

I will say pickup group randos don't necessarily make the best players/DM's. There may well be a reason they don't have a standard group of friends to game with, so Bloodtide may be experiencing some nightmare players.

It seems the players in this instance want to impose incompetence on the world. I've run into this sometimes with my own players. No, the crime boss will not follow the group of 5 PC's out of his lair and away from his bodyguards to a secondary location to be murdered just because you rolled a minor success on a Deception check. He might go with a couple of guards, so your plot did eliminate some threat, but if you want to play in a breathing world you cant just go "kill yourself" with a DC 20 Persuasion lol.

 

[CleverNickName]

There's a lot of "just let the players do whatever they want, however they want, with no real chance of failure" energy in this thread.
...
For me, as both a player and DM, if you succeed no matter what how you tackle a situation, your choices and actions in fact do NOT matter.

That's a good point.

 

[pointofyou]

There's a lot of "just let the players do whatever they want, however they want, with no real chance of failure" energy in this thread. Why even play the game? Just let the players take turns narrating how they win. Take the dice, rules, and GM out, and just get it over with quicker. There's a middle ground between a petty tyrant of the lunchroom table DM and a pointless doormat DM. For me, as both a player and DM, if you succeed no matter what how you tackle a situation, your choices and actions in fact do NOT matter.

I will say pickup group randos don't necessarily make the best players/DM's. There may well be a reason they don't have a standard group of friends to game with, so Bloodtide may be experiencing some nightmare players.

It seems the players in this instance want to impose incompetence on the world. I've run into this sometimes with my own players. No, the crime boss will not follow the group of 5 PC's out of his lair and away from his bodyguards to a secondary location to be murdered just because you rolled a minor success on a Deception check. He might go with a couple of guards, so your plot did eliminate some threat, but if you want to play in a breathing world you cant just go "kill yourself" with a DC 20 Persuasion lol.

This seems like a pretty strenuous misreading of what people have said. I don't think anyone has suggested "just let the players do whatever they want however they want with no real chance of failure." Pickup groups by their nature can contain ringers and oddballs but I've never experienced anything like what the OP describes. If no matter what you do the next situation is carved in stone it seems to me your choices and actions as a player in fact matter.

The "persuasion roll to induce suicide" strawman notwithstanding even your crime boss has the players' actions potentially mattering.

 

[FrogReaver]

I think session 0 of setting genre and tone of the game isn’t being done well, and the group is apparently incapable of reconciling that on the fly.

It’s a social issue where you aren’t willing to compromise. And with that kind of stance I don’t know why your players would compromise either.

one way to achieve some of what the players want is to be less strict about NPC personalities. Let the dice decide more in the moment what they are like.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

The "persuasion roll to induce suicide" strawman notwithstanding even your crime boss has the players' actions potentially mattering.

FWIW, that's not a strawman, that is literally something that happened to us with some friend of a friend in college joining us for a one shot. He was not invited back lol.

 

[Bagpuss]

There is a vault full of gold, and the player wants to "unexpectedly" rob it. So, does the DM just say "your character now has a billion gold coins"? Because if the DM even says "well the vault is locked" then the player will whine they are being "shut down" by the DM.....right?

I don't think I have ever met or even heard of someone objecting to a vault being locked, as being shut down. That's a pretty logical thing for a vault to be. Now if they attempted to research who made the vault, what flaws it might have, the nature of the wall and the mechanism and you shutdown every attempt saying that information isn't available then they would have a point.

To take it further the players actions have meaning. If they scout the place out and notice that at a specific time the vault door is opened to transfer in the nights takings, and they discover it takes 1 minute from the alarm being raised to the vault being closed and locked, then they have 10 turns to get to the vault if they fail in that time it is locked. That's when actions (getting to the vault in time) have meaning.

But also if they go in guns blazing killing guards, it will have a different meaning than if they tunnel in and never get discovered until the vault is opened in the morning.

Just giving the players a cake walk to get the gold removes that meaning.

 

[pointofyou]

That's not a strawman, that is literally something that happened to us with some friend of a friend in college joining us for a one shot.

Moreover, the DM in this question isn't shooting down their actions. He's establishing that the world isn't full of morons who don't lock their vaults. Failure and consequences are resonable outcomes of player actions and choices.

That sounds like a failure to understand tone. Either your friend misunderstood the table's tone or you misunderstood his.

The GM in the original question comes across as intentionally misunderstanding what the players mean and want when they say they want their actions to matter. I agree that failure and consequences are always possible when PCs try to do things.

 

[bloodtide]

So I mean this in the calmest, most neutral way possible… hard to do given the incredibly loaded language you use… your very first step to address this problem is to set aside your preconceptions and consider that maybe, just maybe, the players’ complaint has merit.

If you can’t do that… if you can’t even consider that maybe there’s at least a little truth to what they say… then nothing else anyone says will matter. If you insist that anyone who says they want their actions to matter is bad or unlikeable, then you’re not going to solve your issue.

That’s step one.

Is that something you think you can do?

I don't think your following. They are not bad and or unlikeable players as they say
they "want their actions to matter". They are all ready bad and or unlikeable players...and people in general... well, well, well before "actions" ever come up.

Some game related examples:

*The refuse to play with women gamers
*They will talk down, bully, harass, hit on...or worse any woman gamers they can
*They often think or are told at set thing...like one DM said to them five years ago "all orcs are dumb". So even today they are obsessed with the One Way Idea that "all orcs are dumb".
*They often want to reroll...if they fail at something...for dumb reasons...."the dice hit my Mt.Dew can...reroll!" Unless that make the roll...then they keep it(wink wink)

And in the games the normally play in, they play with DMs that agree with them 100%. It's only in the rare game like mine where I say "no" to them.

 

[aramis erak]

FWIW, that's not a strawman, that is literally something that happened to us with some friend of a friend in college joining us for a one shot. He was not invited back lol.

I've had a PC do the same... but it was in L5R, in a magistrate campaign... the PC doing so was a magistrate; the target was shown his traitorous writings, which were going to be burned if he committed seppuku... Magistrate also adopted the NPC's kids.

It's not always inappropriate; but the settings where it is appropriate are not the norm, either.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I don't think your following. They are not bad and or unlikeable players as they say
they "want their actions to matter". They are all ready bad and or unlikeable players...and people in general... well, well, well before "actions" ever come up.

Some game related examples:

*The refuse to play with women gamers
*They will talk down, bully, harass, hit on...or worse any woman gamers they can
*They often think or are told at set thing...like one DM said to them five years ago "all orcs are dumb". So even today they are obsessed with the One Way Idea that "all orcs are dumb".
*They often want to reroll...if they fail at something...for dumb reasons...."the dice hit my Mt.Dew can...reroll!" Unless that make the roll...then they keep it(wink wink)

And in the games the normally play in, they play with DMs that agree with them 100%. It's only in the rare game like mine where I say "no" to them.

Olay, this all sounds ridiculous. Where do you play? Is it a game store? Are these all kids? Why do you play with them?

But aside from that… can you consider that there may be a point to players saying they want their actions to matter? I mean… it’s a pretty common expectation for an RPG, and you seem to think it’s outlandish, and something only these problem players expect.

So let’s forget the behavioral stuff. Can you agree that players wanting their actions to matter is a legitimate request?