Player Telling Other Player How To Play Their Character

[ChelseaNH]

Re: boring backgrounds

I'm newish at being a DM. In our first game (LMoP), we used mostly pregens because we were just testing out the new system; no point in investing a lot of time if we didn't like it. So this is the first game where everyone created characters. They came up with their own backstories, which told me a lot about what they were looking for in the game. My only advice was to understand why your character is out adventuring instead of holding down a job and raising a family. I came up with a few ideas in case people needed them, but most of them were fine on their own.

 

[GreenTengu]

I can see a few situations where it might be a good idea to advise a player or double-check with a player if the action they are taking is really an action they want to take. Particularly if you are in the role of the DM.

There are times, particularly with new players, that a player of a character might want their character to take a specific action that their character-- either because of race or background or alignment-- would have knowledge that the player might not have or might have more aversion to that a different character would not.

"Your character has managed to survive for a hundred years in this world and knows that all sorts of nasty critters lurk around this area at night. Are you absolutely certain you don't want to make a watch rotation? It would kind of be the standard action."

"Your character has lived in this area all his life and knows for a fact that hunting in this forest is illegal. Your character is also supposed to be Lawful so this probably wouldn't be her typical behavior. Are you really sure you want to shoot the deer?"

I mean-- it would kind of feel like a totally unfair "gotcha!!" moment not to inform the player of the likely consequences of the actions that the character should know and punish them for having taken those actions without making sure the player was aware of what the character was aware of.