I want my actions to matter

[Maxperson]

Except you don't understand how a game can possibly work where what the players do matters.

If the only person at the table whose actions matter is you then everything that happens at the table is on you.

More to the point. If the only person at the table whose actions matter is him, then there's no point of even having players. Just write the story and read it a few times.

 

[Maxperson]

I'm a Forever DM.


What I don't understand is the fixation players have on wanting a super easy pointless game

You could have stopped with "I don't understand," because everything you said after the word "understand" is wrong. Wanting actions to matter does not mean super easy or pointless.

Except the whole "actions matter" is a smoke screen.

Wrong.

So there is an adventure over here to go on.....and "suddenly" the cool players just randomly want to rob the Gambling House on the edge of town. I'm fine with it.

Good so far,

So then the players have the characters wait until the place closes....and they don't sneak it. And find the vault is locked, has guards and alarms.

Okay.

Then, like five year olds, they toss up their hands and whine and cry their actions don't matter. So the idea of "actions matter" to them is only: They randomly pick something to do and the game reality alters so they do that.

Their actions did matter. You let them try to rob the gambling house and they failed. If you had not let them try then their actions wouldn't have mattered. If you put in those alarms and guards after they said they wanted to rob it just so that they would fail, then their actions also wouldn't have mattered.

 

[pointofyou]

More to the point. If the only person at the table whose actions matter is him, then there's no point of even having players. Just write the story and read it a few times.

Precisely. If you want to control the story that much just write the novel.

 

[hawkeyefan]

It would seem doubtful anyone would post so. But then no one online ever seems to notice such things. It's one of those things like Rubbernecking: everyone will swear they would never, ever do it......and YET every single time there is an accident nearly EVERYONE rubbernecks to look...and especially everyone who swore they would "never" do it.


This is a big part of the problem. Though it's a bit odd as most games do have limits in the rules for such things, and might even have text that says "no matter how high the roll is you can never persuade a king to give up the throne and name your character king for life." I lot of players and many DMs think persuasion is total mind control, that is altering game reality.




Weirdly, only some players will accept their character can't just make a mundane jump over a 100' rift. The rest fall under the "high roll alter reality" problem and will say if the roll high their character can jump anything the player wants.

And why should a DM not just shut down impossible or near impossible thing? The deluded player thinks "My character will just walk up to the king and the king will give my character 100 billion gold coins". Is it not just better for the DM to say "no". Is there anything to be gained by wasting the 10 minutes to role play out the character walking up to the king and the player making a high roll? The player will sit there and say "my persuasion total is 18, so the king gives my character 100 billion gold coins."

And sure the above is a silly extreme....though not above some players delusions. But for more reasonable things....why is it such a problem for players to accept somethings sometimes might be difficult, hard, very hard, near impossible or impossible. Why do players get so fixated on everything must be super easy?


I think the DM should describe how well guarded something is....though this won't work too often as many players won't understand anyway. Few players understand concepts like "security".

Worse is when the group is like a halfling fighter, a half elf arcane archer, a tabaxi barbarian and a human 'death' cleric. Not exactly a good 'heist' group. Like the barbarian can do some damage with their claws...but that does not directly help with the heist at all.

This does not work for me at all. I don't want to pause the game every couple of minutes to just "talk" to the players and try to explain things like locked doors and fences to the players.

I get a LOT of games are like this. They pause the game every couple of minutes to talk...and goof off.


Right but this is the problem. When talking about vague nothings players will say they "want a challenge", but in the game they will just complain whenever they can't just do an action with easily with no effort.

And the connection between players wanting their actions to matter and altering the game reality to make their action matter seems very clear.

There are some games that make a big push to make the whole game this Dice First Style. Though in piratical game play the DM can't just roll the dice first for everything. Most of the time the DM just needs to decide things on a whim.

I guess you can randomly say this and think it's a truth. But how true is it? If in your game you have some sort of special houserule that 'adventures' are famous and seen as demigods, that is one thing. But why would you think it's automatically universal?

And if the group of adventures are not 'easy targets', then the game should have no encounters, right? As all NPCs will just give up as they know they are over matched....


Yea, ignore the rules you don't like.

This might be a big part. Many, many DMs follow the idea of telling the players all the DCs. It's a typical buddy DM thing to do: ""ok players the DC is 11, lets roll to see what the dice will tell us what happens".


I think this might be the answer.....

The bad player types don't role play, pay much attention or immerse themselves in the game world. They just do stuff at random.

So the answer would seem to be to force the players to role play, pay attention, and immerse themselves in the game....even when they don't want too.

I don’t think we’re connecting at all, so I’ll go ahead and wish you Happy Holidays and I hope Santa brings you the players you’d like and who will appreciate your game!

 

[Maxperson]

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.

That's not how the rules work, though. You don't even get to roll unless there is a chance of success. There's no DC out there to persuade the boss to kill himself with a persuasion check. You just fail.

 

[MNblockhead]

A library community center.

It is a very common thing said by the bulk of players.


Sure. We we toss around vague words to cover vague concepts, everything sounds great.

Of course, we it gets down to specifics it all falls apart. This is why I asked for more specific examples.

So NOT in my game.....forget about MY game. In OTHER games this happens. So for example a player "wanting their actions to matter" has a character that attempts to open a door. The character finds the door locked, so the player whines about "actions matter" . And what does the DM do....other then alter game reality and tell the player they win D&D forever?

You seem to be cursed with an especially annoying cohort of players.

If I were faced with that situation, I would say "your actions matter within the rules of the game and the logic of the fantasy world we are playing in. The door is locked for the same reason you probably lock the door to your home. Your actions matter, so much so that the game is making you take multiple actions to resolve this challenge. If you only want to take one single action and for it to be the one and only action that matters, well congratulations, you win. Please narrate how your PC solved the entire adventure. Then go find another group to play with as I expect that the other players at this table would like their actions to matter as well."

 

[pointofyou]

You seem to be cursed with an especially annoying cohort of players.

I agree the OP seems to find many of the players he games with to be exceedingly annoying. I do not think I agree with your framing as to the locus of the problem/s.

 

[MNblockhead]

Yes. I only game with adults. Most of them are 20 ish, or right around 30 or so.

I find age and maturity are not always correlated.

I doubt many of them know. They get told things by other players and reading the internet. And as "everyone" in their social group says and believes it...whatever it is....they must do so also.

I've only run into this issue when it comes to rules interpretations or expectations regarding whether a game is more thespian or crunchy tactical in style. The examples you give are so far outside of my experience IRL or online that I feel you must have stumbled into a strange pocket culture of players.

I'm talking about Altering Game Reality as part of the players Wish Fulfillment and Easy Button desires. When the Buddy DM/Player Advocate DM alters the game willing as the players want.

Well, that's part of being a DM. The only sticking point I see here is "Easy Button". Some discussion is needed to calibrate how challenging you are going to want to make a game. From my experience with most Adventurer's League and convention games, many players would not like playing in my home game. But I'm fortunate to have a group of players interested in playing in the kind of difficult and deadly campaign I'm interested in running.

DM: "you see the locked vault door and the two iron golem guards"
Player: "AAAa...DM that is too hard"
DM: "Oh...um, you blink and see the vault is unlocked and there is just one sleeping goblin guard!"

Yuck. I've never encountered players that expect that level of accomodation. Nothing wrong with playing like that if you are into it. You, obviously, are not into this style of play and should set expectations and may need to find different players.

Or like if the player does not like traps...the DM gives a nod and "yes player" then never ever has any traps in the game

That's more reasonable. I wouldn't enjoy DMing such a game, but I can understand why some players may not be into games with lots (or even any) traps. Personally, I'm a little like this with mazes, at least how I see most of them run. I've come up with a various home-brew subsystems to make mazes less of a boring grind. But I also avoid using mazes too often.

Or when the character hits for four damage...and the player wants to win....so the DM just crosses off the 102 hp and says "oh your four points of damage kill the giant!".

Seems like these players would like to play a very different game than D&D. They'd probably be happier with a more narrative, collaborative story-telling indie game. I bet these annoying D&D players would be fun InSPECTRE players.

A good enough base example. But your example is a Dice Deflection type (where the DM can "claim to do nothing" behind a roll of some dice). In my game, more things happen on the DM Whim Type game (the DM just decides what happens).

I'm more of roll the dice in the open and let the dice fall where they may style of DM. But you can't play D&D without a certain amount of DM whim. I don't think either style would necessarily help with the kinds of players you are describing.

Ok, now this more in line what I was asking. It's also a good example of altering game reality. To start with the two base lines:

Mine: It's rare to the extreme for bandits to just "go away". Bandits want to kill and loot: it's their way of life. In general, you can't just "say" something to the bandits to make them leave. Not that it's impossible.....but it's rare.

Fair enough. In my last campaign, the bandits would ambush PCs when they were making their way back from the dungeon and very low on resources. They've lost loot and magic items to keep their lives. I'm sure that this would not go over well with many players. I'd likely ease up on this with a different group of players.

The Other Side: Bandits are silly and pointless. Anyone can get rid of bandits, or anyone else, just by speaking a couple of words and persuading them to leave.

Well, not everyone wants the game to be combat focused and playing the bard who can talk his way out of any situation is not an invalid way of playing. Personally, I am fully open to a huge helping of cheese in my game. If you roll well enough with the dice, I'll roll with it with the role play.

So rules wise I think it would be at least hard DC 20 to persuade bandits to just "move along and don't attack us". While the 'other type player thinks the DC should be easy, like below 10.

I the DC is below 10, I'm not sure a roll should even be necessary.

Though I'd also note Persuasion is not the ability to use vs bandits. Persuasion, by the rules, is only for "When you attempt to influence someone or a group of people with tact, social graces, or good nature" That does not fit a group of bandits. The 5E ability to influence a group of bandits is: Intimidate.

I disagree. There should be multiple avenues of success. Persuasion, trickery, deception are all legitimate things to try.

 

[MNblockhead]

has anyone besides Bloodtide actually experienced any of these or had anything vaguely similar happening in their own games? these feel like these are overblown and reductive scenarioes put in an even poorer light from their dismissive attitude to the players wanting or 'not wanting'...well anything really?
Edit: also that same dismissive attitude to the idea of any GM who would go to that extent to kowtow to their player's desires.

I've certainly had players who were not used to the type of game that I run in my home campaign. But I've gotten pretty good at explaining the type of game I want to run, setting expectations, and talking with my players to ensure we are aligned before we start throwing dice.

From my reading, the OP and his players just want different things out of their game. It can be frustrating when you have style of game you really enjoy running but can't find players who are into that style. I would suggest trying to run games online. Write a clear description of the type of campaign you want to run, your style of DMing, any homebrew you use, what options are and are not allowed, etc. It is much easier to find players interested in what you are offering if you are not limited to your local pool of players.

 

[MNblockhead]

I agree the OP seems to find many of the players he games with to be exceedingly annoying. I do not think I agree with your framing as to the locus of the problem/s.

I don't know the OP personally, so I try to be as charitable as I can. There is nothing he has written that would make me think that I would have a problem playing in a game he ran. It seems he's been running games for a long time, I assume he's run games in the past with players he's enjoyed playing with. I think he just needs to get away from runnign games in the library and either put out a call for players on Meetup.com or try running a game online.

I see this whole discussion of players wanting their actions to matter to be the wrong thing to focus on. I would advise the OP to instead focus on finding players interested in playing in the type of game he wants to run.