D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[AlViking]

No.

Only a GM who has those preferences...and demands absolute power...is doing so.

Hence why I keep saying that that specific thing is a problem.


I can accept most--possibly all--of those things.

I cannot accept "absolute power", and never will.

You gave the example of not being allowed to play a Tiefling as a DM demanding absolute power and once have again gone on for pages saying the the DM could find some corner of their world where the Tiefling could come from.

People have all sorts of ideas of what their ideal game looks like. Some want curated worlds where the players explore the mysteries of the DM's world that they've established. Some want to have a hand in creating a brand new world for every campaign. Some want to help decide what rule set every campaign is going to use. Some want narrative campaigns, some want more traditional games. Some want to play a Connecticut Yankee in <some fantasy world's> Court.

All of those options are fine, and I don't begrudge anyone their preferences. I'm genuinely glad there are so many options out there for people to choose from. But as a GM I cannot accommodate them all and if I tried I would fail miserably. I have my own preferences but I can also celebrate that we have so many options and so many ways to play a game without saying that someone who runs a game that wouldn't work for me is demanding absolute power.

 

[Umbran]

I wasn't talking about an internet message board. I was replying to your suggestion to "talk things out"

You stipulated, "You like long tedious rules debates. My group does not. "

You only know my behavior on internet message boards, and chose to extrapolate that to game and table management. I'm making clear that this is inappropriate.

During a game session, time is precious. So yes any out of game discussion over 5 minutes is wasting needless time and 5 minutes is pushing it.

Mature adults, whenever possible, pick appropriate times to have discussions. It is unclear why you assume that discussion must be in the middle of a session of play. Did it not occur to you that "talking things out" might well happen outside a game session?

Well, what is flipping over tables? It sounds even figuratively antagonistic.

It is dramatic, a frustrated form of golden flounce, really.

For me, leaving a DM I did not enjoy playing with was nothing more or less than a decision about a particular game.

Flipping the table is about the game that's on the table, and doesn't signify a decision about anything else, either.

 

[Enrahim]

We have:

1. You simply must trust the GM. No other option is permitted, unless you leave.
2. Any reference to anything involving cooperation or collaboration is dismissed as "having reality-altering powers".
3. The world is specifically expected to be self-consistent and definite ("clearly defined or determined; not vague or general; fixed; precise; exact").

Between the three, I don't see how we can avoid this.

Because of 1, all and anything the GM says goes, and there can be no commentary, criticism, or alteration--trust, or depart.

All collaboration is nixed by 2, hence everything in the world must be produced only, exclusively, through GM effort. Hence, for there to be anything for the players to engage with, it must already be fleshed out by the GM.

And then 3 closes off any remaining loopholes, because self-consistency and definiteness require that any information the players could obtain is already defined. Ad-libbing fails the definiteness requirement (and puts the self-consistency at great risk), randomness puts both at risk; and incomplete efforts cannot remain self-consistent because they aren't closed systems.

3 was already established by the thread ages back. It's the "realism" or "verisimilitude" criterion.

And the three together are summarized by "The GM is reality, and reality must be definite for simulation."

Ah. I think I see the issue. Would it alter your perception if 2 and 3 is ideals that is sought but not actually obtainable? I think the unobtainability of these might be what saves the play style from degenerating in the way you seem to describe.

That is your theoretical deduction of the effect of taking these to it's ultimate limit might indeed be correct, but practicality places actual play far enough from this extreme that these effects are never actually observed.

 

[FrogReaver]

I'm the polar opposite; having aspects of the setting my character would either already know, or be able to immediately sense, be told to me is what I find "immersion"-breaking.

I think it's a pretty stark divide between players that isn't bridgeable by technique or approach. What helps my immersion hurts yours, and vice versa.

But you don’t find it immersion breaking at all for you to just make up those details on the spot?

 

[The Firebird]

Which, as usual, completely ignores the social cost of this choice.

Rejecting someone's offer is not free....because of the social contract.

Nor is saying "sorry Dave, no Tieflings" free, because Dave is your buddy and you want to have players for your game.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Nor is saying "sorry Dave, no Tieflings" free, because Dave is your buddy and you want to have players for your game.

I fully agree.

I have yet to see a single person recognize such a social cost to their GMing, other than the banal "you won't have players."

Which, as I've said, no GM lacks for players in this digital world. The GM shortage is eternal and intense. One might say it's a seller's market.

 

[Gimby]

But you don’t find it immersion breaking at all for you to just make up those details on the spot?

To give an example from a few years ago. Game is 13th Age set in Greyhawk. My character is an elven princeling playboy and is in conversation with the ghost of a local NPC lord. We'd established the two characters knew each other and had been friends, but had parted on bad terms when they last met. Beyond that there were no details. The conversation became a blazing row between the two characters over the details of the grievance that were made up on the spot. It was an intense, emotional and very immersive scene. What would have broken up the immersion was going back out of character to the GM and determining these details out of character, before repeating them in character, but I've done that on both sides of the screen and it's always felt to me a bit like reading from a script.

What was required was that both I and the GM trusted each other not to drastically mischaracterise each other's character and to accept that some details of the character could be defined by the other participant. But by making up details on the spot (or if we were to be a little more formal, plausibly extrapolating them from already established fiction) we had one of the most immersive RP experiences I've ever had.

-edit While this was a 13th Age game and we were following some it's principles in this case, this kind of thing could have happened in any game, no mechanics were invoked.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Ah. I think I see the issue. Would it alter your perception if 2 and 3 is ideals that is sought but not actually obtainable? I think the unobtainability of these might be what saves the play style from degenerating in the way you seem to describe.

That is your theoretical deduction of the effect of taking these to it's ultimate limit might indeed be correct, but practicality places actual play far enough from this extreme that these effects are never actually observed.

Okay, but I was explicitly told #2. Like I used a direct quote for it. Collaboration and cooperation are not acceptable; that has been made very clear. No amount is acceptable; any amount of it would be, as quoted, "having reality-altering powers".

I can see relaxation of 3, but I was under the impression that any relaxation of 3 was a really terrible thing to be avoided at any cost. Like...I thought just you and I, to say nothing of the more strident "traditional GM" voices, had come to the conclusion that that isn't just an ideal to pursue, it's something where backsliding isn't tolerated. Is that not the case?

 

[Enrahim]

I have yet to see a single person recognize such a social cost to their GMing, other than the banal "you won't have players."

Yet this was in reply to a post where a person indeed recognized such a social cost, other than the banal "you won't have players."...

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Yet this was in reply to a post where a person indeed recognized such a social cost, other than the banal "you won't have players."...

Other than the person I was speaking to. I had assumed that was obvious.