Rant -- GM Control, Taking it Too Far?

[Hussar]

I assume the backstory is there to inform the player's roleplaying of their character. Nothing to do with me, unless I choose to use an element of it in play. I run dungeons, not soap operas.

Eg I recently had a nameless bandit mook encountered in the dungeon turn out to be the brother of a PC - he could well have been killed before she recognised him; but luckily it worked out, there was a tearful reunion, and very happy player. Conversely I had a player who sent reams of backstory I barely glanced at after a while. When the PC died he informed me that in fact he could not die; his PC was cursed to be killed by a red dragon and therefore unkillable otherwise (!!!!!). I booted his arse right away.

Very cool. And I love the Wizard concept too.

I think, S'mon, our positions are actually very very close. So, let me ask you this: What would you do?

You are running your campaign and the player comes to you with the "touched by the divine" hook. You hate it (work with me here) and want to nerf it down to something less than godly. You hit an impasse. The player, like you said yourself, would absolutely hate the dilution of the concept and you the DM would hate to have the touched by divine hook.

So, how do you resolve it? Do you stand firm and take the "my way or the highway" approach, or do you step back, put yourself in the player's shoes, realize that in the grand scheme of your campaign it isn't going to make a lick of difference and let him/her have it?

 

[Vegepygmy]

If you're saying that the GM has the right to make a private note to himself "Thinks she was god-possessed... actually a lich." - sure, that's fine. I agree 100%.

I disagree with you 100%.

When I write a background for my character, and the DM gives it his stamp of approval, I consider that almost like a contract between us. We've had a meeting of the minds, and this is what my character's background is; there's no "Well, that's just what your character thinks," unless the background actually says "Maekrix believes he was possessed by a god (which may or may not be true)."

What you are suggesting sounds to me like a bait-and-switch, and I'd be pretty annoyed as a player if the DM later revealed I wasn't possessed by a god like he agreed I was when he okayed my background. I would much rather be told the divine angle doesn't work in the DM's opinion, but it's okay for my character to believe he was god-possessed. I'd then play the character that way, and not feel like the DM is pulling the rug out from under me when it is revealed that my character is mistaken.

 

[S'mon]

Very cool. And I love the Wizard concept too.

I think, S'mon, our positions are actually very very close. So, let me ask you this: What would you do?

You are running your campaign and the player comes to you with the "touched by the divine" hook. You hate it (work with me here) and want to nerf it down to something less than godly. You hit an impasse. The player, like you said yourself, would absolutely hate the dilution of the concept and you the DM would hate to have the touched by divine hook.

So, how do you resolve it? Do you stand firm and take the "my way or the highway" approach, or do you step back, put yourself in the player's shoes, realize that in the grand scheme of your campaign it isn't going to make a lick of difference and let him/her have it?

We're very very close because 99% of the time our approaches will give the same result. I will make a big effort to have the player's concept become sonething that is cool to me as well as to the player. I'll look at it from various angles. But I won't step back and allow in somethng I hate. Life's too short.

 

[S'mon]

I disagree with you 100%.

When I write a background for my character, and the DM gives it his stamp of approval, I consider that almost like a contract between us. We've had a meeting of the minds, and this is what my character's background is; there's no "Well, that's just what your character thinks," unless the background actually says "Maekrix believes he was possessed by a god (which may or may not be true)."

What you are suggesting sounds to me like a bait-and-switch, and I'd be pretty annoyed as a player if the DM later revealed I wasn't possessed by a god like he agreed I was when he okayed my background. I would much rather be told the divine angle doesn't work in the DM's opinion, but it's okay for my character to believe he was god-possessed. I'd then play the character that way, and not feel like the DM is pulling the rug out from under me when it is revealed that my character is mistaken.

How about if you're the player and the GM says: "OK, you believe you were posssessed by a god."

Do you say:

"No! I definitely was possessed by a god! No funny business mister!"

Though I take your point about the bait & switch, and I would be reluctant to do this to a player character in a way that seemed disrespectful to the player.

OTOH, this 'contract' approach was exactly what got the unkillable-PC player booted from my game last December - he'd sent me a multi-page background, poorly written, I'd glanced at and signed off on. When his PC died he emailed me after the game and said that the bit in the background about his family being cursed to be killed by a red dragon meant a contractual obligation on me that he could only be killed by a red dragon. This wasn't the first attempt to pull crap like that on me, though by far the worst, so I kicked him out of the group. I take such demands very poorly. The PC's background is not a contract on me in any way.

 

[DonTadow]

How about if you're the player and the GM says: "OK, you believe you were posssessed by a god."

Do you say:

"No! I definitely was possessed by a god! No funny business mister!"

Though I take your point about the bait & switch, and I would be reluctant to do this to a player character in a way that seemed disrespectful to the player.

OTOH, this 'contract' approach was exactly what got the unkillable-PC player booted from my game last December - he'd sent me a multi-page background, poorly written, I'd glanced at and signed off on. When his PC died he emailed me after the game and said that the bit in the background about his family being cursed to be killed by a red dragon meant a contractual obligation on me that he could only be killed by a red dragon. This wasn't the first attempt to pull crap like that on me, though by far the worst, so I kicked him out of the group. I take such demands very poorly. The PC's background is not a contract on me in ay way.

There we agree. Your backgrouns is as it is, it can not change the rules of the game nor add additional rules for me to keep track of.

I had a player tell me she wanted her character to be very chaotic, loosing control on a whim , and then she proceeded to send me 3 pages of rules and charts for the "anger" of this character. I pololitly told the character that I have no problem with wanting to play your character that way, and if you want to roll to make decisions i am fine with it, but i have no intention on changing the rules of the game to accomodate your character.

In your situatoin that's not a background situation, as much as that is a player tryng to put one over on you. A background situation would be if he had in his background that he's from Molthune, and you introduce his bandit brother as always living in Nirmathas.

I think there needs to be an agreement before you play the ame of what the background is. Hussar in your game its a contract and set in stone. In my game its a living document, its a telling by the PC of the story of his life. It is written from the point of view of the PC, not the player.

YOu also got to watch for players who make toooo elaborate plots in their background, that could derail the campaign.

BTW, wasn't knocking your campaign or Decent. I love decent, and when you described what you guys do it reminds me more of decent than a campaign world type campaign. Decent has some graet scenerios, and its primarily dungeon crawl with a bit of role playing thrown in. Wheras the op's dm seems to be a story driven campaign.

 

[S'mon]

BTW, wasn't knocking your campaign or Decent. I love decent, and when you described what you guys do it reminds me more of decent than a campaign world type campaign.

It's a campaign world type campaign, inspired by Narnia (esp The Last Battle), Lord of the Rings, the Master of the Desert Nomads modules, and the 732 AD Battle of Tours. Modules give me a good framework. I guess it's not a player-driven campaign; which would not work in my public access gamer club situation with a highly variable player base.

 

[S'mon]

I had a player tell me she wanted her character to be very chaotic, loosing control on a whim , and then she proceeded to send me 3 pages of rules and charts for the "anger" of this character. I pololitly told the character that I have no problem with wanting to play your character that way, and if you want to roll to make decisions i am fine with it, but i have no intention on changing the rules of the game to accomodate your character.

My dragon-curse player was exactly the same, constantly emailing me poorly thought out rules he'd made up, though in his case it was all stuff to benefit his character, like being able to use craft skill to churn out magic weapons & armour (he was playing a Fighter). I'd never seen this before.

 

[DonTadow]

It's a campaign world type campaign, inspired by Narnia (esp The Last Battle), Lord of the Rings, the Master of the Desert Nomads modules, and the 732 AD Battle of Tours. Modules give me a good framework. I guess it's not a player-driven campaign; which would not work in my public access gamer club situation with a highly variable player base.

Sorry was deriving my opinion off of the previous brief statement, (friends come over, we go into the dungeon, divide xp). That description sounds more campaign worldish and very creative.

 

[Hussar]

How about if you're the player and the GM says: "OK, you believe you were posssessed by a god."

Do you say:

"No! I definitely was possessed by a god! No funny business mister!"

Though I take your point about the bait & switch, and I would be reluctant to do this to a player character in a way that seemed disrespectful to the player.

OTOH, this 'contract' approach was exactly what got the unkillable-PC player booted from my game last December - he'd sent me a multi-page background, poorly written, I'd glanced at and signed off on. When his PC died he emailed me after the game and said that the bit in the background about his family being cursed to be killed by a red dragon meant a contractual obligation on me that he could only be killed by a red dragon. This wasn't the first attempt to pull crap like that on me, though by far the worst, so I kicked him out of the group. I take such demands very poorly. The PC's background is not a contract on me in any way.

Yeah, well, there's always THAT sort of player. I think we've all seen that sort of thing. And, since, as you said it wasn't the first time, giving him the toss is probably the best idea.

I've run across that as well.

A lot of this sort of thing can get nipped in the bud with sitting down with the players, before any character is created, and being extremely open about what your campaign is about and what you expect from it. Don't pussy foot around it and don't wait until you have problems to try to fix them.

Fear the Boot (a podcast I regularly listen to) calls it a Group Template. I think it's an absolutely fantastic idea. Instead of everyone going off to write up their characters, showing up on the first game day and trying to shoehorn things in, have a very detailed point form list of what your expectations are for the campaign and have everyone sit down and talk together about them.

Once you do this, and get everyone on the same wavelength, so many of these issues go away.

S'mon, I realize you have a problem doing this simply because of your gaming situation. My advice would be to have a short, one page handout of THE RULES. Since you're almost running a sort of Convention game where you have players coming and going constantly, you can't really afford the time to build up that level of trust between you and the players.

I know in my first OpenRPG campaign I had a similar issue. Actually, in a few of my campaigns I've had this issue. In my first camp, I had two players who always showed up, one that was very casual and two chairs at the table that changed almost every week, certainly every month. It was brutal. A completely eye opening experience that was. This was where I developed my The Rules guidelines and they got revisited and revised constantly for a while.

When I ran my World's Largest Dungeon campaign, my group had settled for the most part. I had four players that were pretty much rock solid and a fifth seat that seemed to get changed far too frequently. It became something of a group joke that anyone who sat in that seat was doomed to fade away to nothing. But, since I had a more static group, I could really start to build up the trust between the players and myself and relax my grip considerably. The players themselves began policing each other much more than I do.

Now, with my Savage Tide campaign, the group has been pretty much together for over a year now, with an addition of a sixth player a few months ago. Having a stable group makes a world of difference.

Thinking about it now, I think that's where our different approaches lie. I have a stable group that is all on the same channel as I am (more or less) and I know that they aren't going to pull red dragon crap on me. You're in a different situation, where you are constantly gaming with strangers. Makes "say yes" much, MUCH more problematic.

I wonder what Gregk's situation is. If you're still reading this Gregk, do you have a fairly stable group or are you gaming with strangers often? On a side note (because I missed your post a while back) I agree that a player who refuses to compromise the background of a dragonborn would be a problem. If he's insisting that a dragonborn MUST come with the entire package listed in the PHB, then, yup, I 100% agree with you that I would likely say no as well because that entails too much change in my campaign world. My question to you is, what if the player is willing to change the flavour, so that it suits your campaign world (heck, using the tried and true "fell down a rabbit hole and is trying to get home" trope works), would you still veto dragonborn?

 

[Varianor Abroad]

How interesting! (Or, should I say, how typical?) At the end of the day, it's a difference in play styles! One highly creative player vs. one DM with a clear vision and a group that works well together. It's come to a mutual resolution (parting of the ways).

What did we learn?