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

[The Firebird]

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.

If you assume players are perfectly interchangeable widgits then sure it is a trivial cost.

They aren't.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

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.

Traditionally, this is a self-correcting problem.

Back in the old days (finds beard to stroke) ... the way a lot of games evolved was organic. People would play and learn how to play. Over time, one of the players would start to think to themself, "Self, I think I could run a better game. In fact, I'd like to try it!"

And then that player would take their ideas and become ... a DM. Usually, it would be rough sledding for a little while- because it's a lot easier to point out mistakes than ... you know, to actually run a game.* But they'd get the hang of it, find their own voice, and run games! And then, one of their players would start to feel that itch...

So it goes. As you correctly note- it is a seller's market. Because it's a lot easier, less time-consuming, and less stressful to play than to DM. It's certainly easier to focus your ire on a single point than to worry about how to make a campaign appealing to a disparate set of players so that everyone, not just a single player, is having fun.

Despite this, we see that there are many players who demand that their preferences are catered to. To that I will say only the following- I hope you find all the gaming joy that you seek. But the only way to have a game run the exact way you want it to be run is to run it yourself. Instead of criticizing all the terrible DMs out there, become the great DM that you demand others be! Be a positive influence. Put all of the material you've learned into practice, so that you can teach a new generation of players how to "play the right way" according to you, and you can also show them how to "DM the right way" by example, so that when they go off and DM on their own, they will have learned by your example.

Be the change you want to see.


*Critics are men who sit and watch a battle from a high place and come down to shoot the survivors.
-Papa Abraham Lincoln

 

[TwoSix]

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

No. As I said, just the opposite.

For me, when I'm really immersed in a character and a situation, it's closer to a lucid daydream. The authorship is subconscious, everything in my conscious frame is still in the character's perspective.

It's pretty similar to how I narrate scenes when I DM.

 

[TwoSix]

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.

100%. This is exactly what I'm talking about.

 

[Umbran]

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

I am not sure about this.

When we speak of "THE social contract" on this site, we are usually talking specifically about the social contract around the game you're in. That contract does not kick in until you accept the offer. It cannot exact a toll if you reject the offer, any more than a roofing company can bill you if you don't sign a contract for their services.

There are other social contracts in your life - and those are largely not our bailiwick for discussion. If your friendship with someone is contingent on accepting all offers of social engagement with them, for example, that's kind of a you problem.

 

[Enrahim]

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".

It is reality altering powers, and as such should be attempted avoided. Can you show me someone claiming to actually have managed it to perfection? (There is a difference between claiming to have made it really cold, and claiming to have reached 0K)

If so I would like to argue with them that they probably have forgot about the bias of inspiration recent experiences tend to have on judgment calls. I am not aware of any technique that allows a human to escape from that.

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?

I think everyone are willing to admit that they theoretically could have put more time and work into preparing material for the game, but at some point they just have to accept they cannot justify pursuing this ideal to perfection. As such there are clearly limits to how high this ideal is held for practical purposes.

I think a possible mistake I might have done is that I have spent some time writing about a certain ideal for sim play, without necessarily marking the context aproperiately. That is I might have claimed 3, thinking it was clear the claim was that 3 was a neccessary part of that sim ideal (and hence an ideal itself). Without this context it might indeed have seemed like I claimed 3 was neccessary for actual play of a certain style.

As such I think the problematic proposals in terms of 3 has been those that has made approaching 3 beyond a certain limit impossible due to hard rules or process constraints. Or proposals to actively making an in-fiction declaration known to contradict with 3. Common practical constraints doesn't have those features.

 

[AlViking]

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.

I play in person, I've never had an issue recruiting or retaining players. At the same time I've occasionally mentioned ideas like a weird west campaign that my players didn't show an interest in so it didn't happen. Exodus looks like it could be interesting and, depending on reviews, I might mention that as well as a possibility for our next campaign. But if people don't bite I won't run it. I run a sandbox style campaign because I want the players to have as much choice in the direction of the campaign as they want. Admittedly the campaign will still be in whatever campaign world we decided on and I retain veto power because I don't want to run a game for murder hoboes or someone that wants to recreate The Sopranos.

So yes, there are still a social restrictions to being a GM if you want to retain and make your players happy. I don't do whatever I want, I do what I will enjoy but also what I think my players will enjoy and make them want to come back for more. Fortunately I'm pretty flexible and open on how to do things and I'm always willing to try new things. I think it's a good attitude to have, but I also accept that I can't please everyone.

 

[Umbran]

Which, as I've said, no GM lacks for players in this digital world.

I think that's an overstatement.

In the simplest form - I don't generally run games online. The digital world is not a source of infinite players for me.

 

[SkidAce]

Wow. Really? I LOVE it when the players do that. Heck, my players do it all the time. It's fantastic. It means they do all the work and I just get to play with the toys they are gifting me. Why on earth would you want to stop that? My last character, for example, was a priest of Kossuth in a Forgotten Realms game. So, I made him a Thayan and then handed my DM a detailed description of the Thayan enclave in Baldur's Gate. Sure, I was using some of the FR stuff, but, the enclave, other than a single sentence saying that it existed, was entirely my own creation.

My DM thanked me very kindly and the enclave became a major element of the opening of the campaign.

This is fine in my opinion, I "think" sometimes the problem arises when people assume the worst and think that the player would do something more extreme, i.e.

"was a priest of Kossuth (there are no elemental powers in this game, only warlocks) in a Forgotten Realms game. So, I made him a Thayan (there is no Thayan cultures) and then handed my DM a detailed description of the Thayan enclave in Baldur's Gate (this is a sword and sorcery campaign, no big cities). "

But in all honesty, as many other things, people argue the extremes. The truth genrally lies in the middle (ish).

Work things out between the players and the dm, and things tend to...well...work out.

 

[Maxperson]

When one person has an enormous amount of power, that person can usually ignore the social contract on the regular.

And yet in reality that does not happen. Why is that? He has unlimited power given by the DMG, and yet does not ignore the social contract pretty much ever. If it's not the social contract, is it Batman? Does Batman keep it from happening? Or maybe it's M&Ms.

When a different person has almost no power, or only power equal to anyone else, that person is often incapable of ignoring it, and pays a hefty price for trying to do so.

Same when breaking the social contract. You make the others angry at you, and in many cases lose them as players and/or friends.

If you strike the social contract down, it shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.