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

[EzekielRaiden]

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.

I fail to understand why these invisible things are distinct. They're all social contract, and in my experience, they're never meaningfully separated from one another. Do something crappy in a TTRPG game you're playing with some people you also play an MMO game with? Hurt feelings are going to carry over and the costs will guaranteed metastasize beyond the specific activity where they occurred. Social behavior isn't neatly siloed off into clean separate things. Everything affects everything else. It's one of the (many) reasons I find offloading everything into the social contract so utterly exhausting.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

If 2 and 3 are ideals as has been suggested, one can believe in them quite strongly while also being aware full adherence to them is impractical.

So you don't actually think absolutely all forms of working collaboratively with your players is giving them "reality-warping powers"? You aren't going to write off every possible situation where players contribute as some horrible affront?

Because when you used that term and only that term to dismiss the kinds of suggestions I was making, that's what I got from it. Nothing--zip zero nada--will ever be acceptable. Player contributions are something to be eliminated, with prejudice.

 

[The Firebird]

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

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.

This is a great example. For the record, I see this as above board, and this isn't the kind of thing that would break immersion for me. The actions directly relate to the history of the PC and so it is appropriate (imo) for the player to have some narrative control.

What I dislike is the player creating fiction which is not closely related to the PCs history. Going back to the rune case:

-if the runes were made by the PC, I think the player defining is ok.
-if the runes were made by the PCs father in a language the two can understand, the player defining them is ok
-if the runes were made by the PCs ancestors four generations ago, it's a bit sketchy but I'd be ok with it.
-if the runes were made by other distant members of the PCs culture, I prefer DM control
-if the runes were made by a culture unrelated to the PC in a region the PC and her ancestors never encountered, then I find player control to break immersion. This holds even if the PC has a memory--"I remember a contact told me this culture created runes as maps".

That's just a selection of possibilities on the spectrum.

 

[AlViking]

On brand. There are refreshments on the last page.

The cake is refreshments are a lie.

 

[SkidAce]

The cake is refreshments are a lie.

Beat me to it.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I already tried that.

Guess how much I get to play?

Guess how much joy of playing I get out of running?

I'll give you a hint. The answer to both of those questions is a nonpositive, nonnegative integer.

This is like saying, "If you want to feel the joy of a great massage, become a masseuse." No! Being a masseuse has nothing to do with getting a massage! The response is a complete non sequitur!

Well, I can tell you that the zero amount of joy you are getting from repeatedly learning that others are not running games the exact way that you demand that they run them in real life ...

... will probably exceed the amount of traction you will gain from telling other people on the internet that they aren't running their games the way that you demand that they be run. Especially given that they aren't running games for you.

YMMV. Hope you find your joy!

 

[Micah Sweet]

Then I would never, in a million, billion years, ever call that even remotely like "absolute power", and it's incredibly frustrating to hear it being called "absolute power" with dogged, unrelenting insistence when...it's...it's so radically different I am struggling for words here.

It's like insisting the sky is violet, that it can't ever be anything but violet, that "violet" is the one and only word that could ever apply to the sky....and then saying "well I consider anything up to like 520 nm 'violet'."

Well, if I want the sky to be violet in my game, it's going to be. Does that make me an unimaginable tyrant?

 

[The Firebird]

Why wouldn't players be perfectly interchangeable widgets to the "traditional GM"? They don't want any contributions except character actions.

I would never have come up with this phrasing myself, but--yeah, this is precisely the problem I have. With all of the emphasis on "absolute power", on GM vision, on it being "my campaign" from that GM's perspective, the bottomless dismissiveness for the very concept of player contribution outside of character actions? As far as I can tell, to the "traditional GM", the players are perfectly interchangeable widgets.

They just happen to be the particular perfectly interchangeable widgets which coincidentally ended up experiencing that campaign.

Players are easy. Good players are hard to find. I've moved a few times in the past decade, and each time it takes 3-6 months of regular play in public settings to find people I want to recruit to a long-form campaign. You need people who have similar interests, whose goals mesh well, who collaborate well, who are pleasant to be around.

All of this is important even if the players are contributing just character actions. But in my games they contribute a bit more than that; see my previous post regarding scope.

Then I would never, in a million, billion years, ever call that even remotely like "absolute power", and it's incredibly frustrating to hear it being called "absolute power" with dogged, unrelenting insistence when...it's...it's so radically different I am struggling for words here.

It sounds like this is just a difference of opinion regarding semantics.

 

[Maggan]

Why wouldn't players be perfectly interchangeable widgets to the "traditional GM"? They don't want any contributions except character actions.

Your take on "the traditional GM" is perplexing. I find it hard to believe that anyone who has Identified as a traditional GM in this thread is nodding their head in approval of that characterization.

I can't remember any post of these over 18 000 posts where a traditional GM proclaims that players are interchangable widgets. The closest I have read is people saying that not all gamers fit their playstyle, and if they don't accept the GM's calls is probably better off finding another table, for the good of the game and for a better gaming experience for all.

 

[Maxperson]

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 keep using the word "demand" like it's applicable or something. It's not. The DMG gives DMs that power whether they demand it or not. There's nothing to demand.