D&D General Player Responsibilities

[Lanefan]

Every RPG rules system can be abused. I think an important player's responsibility is to play along with the spirit of the game and therefore not to try to abuse the system. Strive to connect with the RAI more than serving the RAW. If you find a loophole that can be exploited, seriously consider whether exploiting it would serve your game and make it better, or destroy your fun, and in case of the latter, just don't exploit it. Complaining about loopholes, blaming designers... we have forums for that! Just don't destroy your own game only to "prove" you are smarter than the authors because you figured out they made a mistake.

IMO a player who finds a loophole can either a) point it out to the DM so she can close it, or b) use it in expectation that the DM will close it before the next time someone can use it.

In fact, one can almost argue it's part of the players' responsibility, as an offshoot of advocating for their PCs, to push the rules a bit and see if they break; just as it's the DM's responsibility to push back and make sure the rules don't break.

Concrete example (pet peeve of mine): skill checks retries.

The rules don't say you can't just keep trying a skill check you have failed. There are plenty of example where it seems "it makes sense": searching for something, force open a stuck door, recall a piece of knowledge... If you roll a low number, you may be convinced you could have in fact found something, and want to try again. The rules usually make it so that these tasks take only a little time, so if you can afford to take more time, why not retrying when your previous dice roll(s) clearly showed you were way below your possibility of success?

This one's a complete DM fail in two ways, and not a player fail at all.

DM fail 1: allowing retries, unless there's been a material change in circumstances and-or method of approach.
DM fail 2: allowing the player to roll for skill checks with non-obvious success-fail outcomes rather than doing the roll behind the screen and narrating the in-game results. Climbing, where the other PCs can see what you're doing, has an obvious-to-all success-fail outcome and thus having the player roll the check is fine. Searching, OTOH, does not have an obvious-to-all outcome: whether failure was due to incompetence/bad luck (as represented by a poor roll) or because what you seek isn't there to find (as represented by any roll) isn't known to the PC(s) and thus should not be known to the player(s).

If a player insists that "it makes sense" to retry, or that the RAW doesn't say they can't, they are failing their responsibility to play along with the original spirit of skill checks, which is simply to "toss a coin" to determine if the game goes right or left at a plot point.

Nothing wrong with a player trying to talk the DM into a more lenient interpretation of the rules. Lots wrong with the DM agreeing to it.

I agree with your points in general, except I put the fault at the DM's feet rather than the players.

 

[Scott Christian]

There are a few rules in here, like knowing the rules, that seem a little too far for me. But here are my top three:

• Be in the moment. We can all be distracted at times, but try to be in the moment when at the table. Negatively phrased: don't come to the table to multitask. In my experience, I have never been in a bad game where people are all playing in the moment.
• Understand the term from the PHB: "working together." Some objectives are shared. You don't have to like the other PC's, but you do need to work together (most of the time).
• Know when to step back. Let other characters and players have the limelight. Let the GM do their job. Allow for some things to not go your way.

 

[MNblockhead]

DM: So the Dragon comes swooping down and star-
PCs: Nope not heading to that town. Leaves the beginning of the Module to go screw around like blockheads.

Hey!


;-)

 

[MNblockhead]

If I am dealing with a slapstick group of players like this, I put away the D&D books and run a session of InSPECTREs. That is a system that makes this kind of dynamic fun rather than frustrating.

Be ACTUALLY willing to play a module, especially if you agreed to join in/play it. Yeah yeah yeah we all love our homebrew or like to DND Flex by coming up with the next Lord of The Rings, but if your playing a module and agreed to play the module, don't throw it out the window. Otherwise it leads to examples such as:

Tyranny of Dragons 2019

DM: So the Dragon comes swooping down and star-
PCs: Nope not heading to that town. Leaves the beginning of the Module to go screw around like blockheads.

Mad World starts playing as the camera pans up close to the Disgruntled DM's face as he's wondering why people agreed to play the module but NOPED outta it

Out of The Abyss
DM: So the Demon Lor-
PCs: Hard Pass: screw the Underdark. NOPES outta it again.

DM: I mean.....do you guys wanna play or not?

PCs: HAHAHA, dice gets rolled.

DM: Uh.... yeah I know we covered thi-

PCS: We're KINGS OF THE WORLD!!!! SUCK IT ELMINSTER!!

DM: Rolls for Self Mental Breakdown check.

Descent to Avernus
DM: So these guys come into the Tavern. It seems like they may know something to leverage against you, possibly even death. There seems to be no w-

PCS: So wait, your forcing our hands or using a cutscene on us?

DM: What? No...we discussed this during Session 0 and spent most of that time coming up with a Group Secret that ties the party together. Knowledge that shouldn't normally be known and could give a disadvantage against the party should it be leaked....Don't you guys remember this?

PCS: HEY LOOK AT THE NERVE OF THIS DM HERE, TRYING TO FORCE THIS STORY ON US!