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

[Micah Sweet]

I've not had a lot of bad DMs, but I did have some very bad experiences with a few DMs. The guy I mentioned wasn't very long lasting, I dipped out after a few sessions. But I did have a DM who I felt was a close friend for a long time and who ended up being emotionally manipulative (in all areas of life, not just D&D) that really helped form my strong opinions on player agency and the rule of God-Emperor DMs. He routinely liked stirring up drama and used the "the DM is always right" garbage from the rules itself to justify it.

Two examples out of 20+ years isn't a lot, but one example being a long running example that still leaves me with some PTSD regarding DMs who use the rules justify attacking players (not the word I wanted to use, Grandma rule). So the more the game pushes away from DM is all powerful to DM is the facilitator amongst all the players is a good and healthy one.

I'm sorry you had a bad experience, and it makes sense that it would affect your viewpoint going forward. Just don't expect agreement that your conclusions should be implemented by folks who don't share your experience.

 

[James Gasik]

This guy (played briefly in college with him) claimed he was a very old school DM. One of his favorite tricks was to cripple a PC if they got too powerful. And by powerful, it usually meant they could stand up to his amazing NPCs who were supposed to be awesome and powerful. He targeted spellbooks, forced alignment/code conflicts that would cause divine characters to lose their powers, and if you got a too awesome set of magic items, you better be sure he was busting out Disjunction, Crystal brittle, or other item destruction. He also would lock you in dungeons with vampires to de-level you if you got too powerful. There is a good reason I have negative reactions to a lot of those "old school killer DM" boasts

I think I played at that guy's table once! He killed my Gnome Cleric for having the nerve to do nothing but cast healing spells so the party would survive an encounter with dire wolves and a Greater Wolfwere!

 

[kermit4karate]

Good, clear advice can do that IMO. Rules that enforce behavior just breed resentment and make people feel constrained.

Round and round we go!!!

 

[Remathilis]

I'm sorry you had a bad experience, and it makes sense that it would affect your viewpoint going forward. Just don't expect agreement that your conclusions should be implemented by folks who don't share your experience.

I Honestly don't care how any DM plays except for the ones I play with. I DO care how the game is presented in the rulebooks and nothing more. I have found as the game has aged, it has grown more to my preferred style so outside of some occasional disagreement, I have felt the game as a whole is more suited to my liking now than it was before. Which is why I focus on how the rules book present the game rather than what any given DM does with it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

So your argument is that any disagreement with your position is "badmouthing" it?

Read again. I said he was badmouthing players as a set. I didn't say anything about how he was responding to my position, nor do I care other than to the degree someone misrepresents me.

I'll make my position extremely clear here just to avoid any further misunderstanding: I have no reason to think suggesting that players as a set (note this is distinct from an individual player, who can have tunnel vision, or as bad a judgement as any GM) are going to have not as good or better judgment about rules as a GM. That's why I've been focused on the player group as a group. At the very least, applying that as a generality (as compared to a specific group which could always be a set of problems) seems clearly insulting to the population of players as a whole, and I'm not going to hesitate to say so.

Basically it comes down to the fact I think as long as players as a set in a given game want to weigh in on the houserules and as a set have as much impact as the GM, there's no rational reason that shouldn't be true. All of the responses I've seen to the contrary have been from people who either seem to have negative views about players as a set, a strong sense of personal control past the reasonable, or both.

(I'll acknowledge there are some corner cases where a houserule impacts the campaign structure as a whole that complicates this, but I think that's a case where if the GM can't explain that to the players and get buy-in either their sense of what actually impacts the campaign structure is over-expansive, or the players don't have buy-in in the first place (and that's a whole different and larger magnitude problem)>

 

[Micah Sweet]

I Honestly don't care how any DM plays except for the ones I play with. I DO care how the game is presented in the rulebooks and nothing more. I have found as the game has aged, it has grown more to my preferred style so outside of some occasional disagreement, I have felt the game as a whole is more suited to my liking now than it was before. Which is why I focus on how the rules book present the game rather than what any given DM does with it.

I feel the opposite. The official game has been moving farther and farther away from my preferences for years now. So my focus is on individual tables and options for different kinds of play, because that doesn't cause problems for people who don't agree with me.

 

[Remathilis]

I think I played at that guy's table once! He killed my Gnome Cleric for having the nerve to do nothing but cast healing spells so the party would survive an encounter with dire wolves and a Greater Wolfwere!

Depends where you went to college!

I heard a lot about this guy second hand. The vampire story was real though. Someone asked if they could play their PC (a half-elf mage/thief) in his game. Rather than say no or even say "yes, but with changes" he tossed the PC into a dungeon run by a vampire who took all his gear and level drained him several levels until he was "at the correct level" for the game. (We were all around 5th to 6th level and I think the PC was originally like 8/9 MT. He level drained him to 4/5) None of that was cleared with the player prior to playing, and he would have adjusted his character if the DM had asked. But he felt so betrayed by the DM basically trashing his PC that he left the student union and never came back.

Me and my roommate I don't think made it to much longer. I missed a well for school related stuff and my friend played that game. His character lost a powerful sword he had gotten by attacking the statue of an evil deity who affected the sword with Crystal brittle and shattered it when it struck. Apparently they all left the dungeon they were after that but since I wasn't there, my PC was apparently left behind in the dungeon. If I had shown up next session, I was going to have to leave the dungeon by myself and rejoin the party. Roommate and I never came back. That poor ranger is still in that dungeon I guess...

 

[Cadence]

In all my years of gaming I've never understood boasting about being a "killer DM."

It's extraordinarily easy to kill PCs or to take their stuff, make them depowered etc. As the saying goes the DM has infinite dragons.

Anyone who thinks that's, in any way, the mark of a good DM, is not someone I want to be playing with.

Back around '81-'83 there was a group of 10-20 folks once a week playing in a game that a local comic/record/book/game store owner in Rockford IL ran. They ranged from maybe 7th grade to mid-40s and some had probably played with Gygax before the rules were published, and the players used whichever of 1e, B/X, or OD&D they had (I'm not sure which version the DM used).

About 1/3rd of the party died every night, and it was a feat to make it to 2nd level. My elvish cleric was one level below retirement in the boss battle after a probably year long dungeon crawl. The vampire touch (iirc) brought me down in level, and then (after I had to go home so my parents didn't metaphorically kill me) the friend I had playing my character reported the lich teleported behind the back row of the party and let off a 20-die lightning bolt.

The DM didn't try to kill us, she played the things the way they were written up and we all had a blast. And none of us spent a lot of time making up our characters, even though we tried to throw in some flashes of color. (Iirc, my 300 lb. cleric brought chickens with in the dungeon and always scouted out restaurants when in town. He made it a couple of levels, but then I [and he] learned what the Necronomicon was and that you shouldn't read it, or there's a chance Cthulhu decides to pay attention to you and you need a new character).

I think the important thing is that we all knew what we were getting into (or at least knew if we talked to anyone else before joining, and certainly by the end of the first session) and that she didn't play favorites. And I can't think of anyone who played back then wouldn't love for Bev Mason to be back at Toad Hall running games so that we could do that again.

Even if it was totally unlike our own games that we ran for each other where the characters seemed to last a lot longer, we shared GMing, and we would have been crushed after a while to have them die. And even if it is totally unlike any of the games we've played since or run ourselves.

On the other hand, some of the killer DM descriptions on the last few pages sound like no fun at all.

 

[James Gasik]

Depends where you went to college!

I heard a lot about this guy second hand. The vampire story was real though. Someone asked if they could play their PC (a half-elf mage/thief) in his game. Rather than say no or even say "yes, but with changes" he tossed the PC into a dungeon run by a vampire who took all his gear and level drained him several levels until he was "at the correct level" for the game. (We were all around 5th to 6th level and I think the PC was originally like 8/9 MT. He level drained him to 4/5) None of that was cleared with the player prior to playing, and he would have adjusted his character if the DM had asked. But he felt so betrayed by the DM basically trashing his PC that he left the student union and never came back.

Me and my roommate I don't think made it to much longer. I missed a well for school related stuff and my friend played that game. His character lost a powerful sword he had gotten by attacking the statue of an evil deity who affected the sword with Crystal brittle and shattered it when it struck. Apparently they all left the dungeon they were after that but since I wasn't there, my PC was apparently left behind in the dungeon. If I had shown up next session, I was going to have to leave the dungeon by myself and rejoin the party. Roommate and I never came back. That poor ranger is still in that dungeon I guess...

It's unlikely to be the same guy really, but if the DM I knew was related to him, I wouldn't be surprised. Here's something else he pulled.

3.0 game, our first, in fact. The DM simply thought he could continue to use his 2e game with no changes, and was constantly flummoxed by the new rules and lamenting how "stupidly powerful" we all were. We were fighting a vampire in a cavern, when the Fighter finally had enough. He dropped his shield, downed a potion of Bull's Strength, and put a two-handed grip on his Dwarven Waraxe and went to town on the guy, boosting his damage per hit by 4 points- which you wouldn't think was too bad, but the DM freaked out when his precious NPC's hit points melted away.

"The last attack hits the vampire with such force that it cleaves through him and into the rock pillar he was standing next to, cleaving it in twain. Suddenly, cracks appear in the cavern's ceiling and it collapses!".

Yeah, literally rocks fall, though only the Fighter died. But wait, there's more! Upon recovering the body, an NPC Druid wandered by and offered to restore the Fighter to life. The DM rolled some dice behind his screen and our Fighter came back as a Gnome. -1 level, -2 Strength, and unable to use his old armor or shield (but by 3.0 rules, he could at least use his Waraxe as a two handed weapon) as his "reward" for defeating a major foe.

And of course, no vampire xp since he "died in the encounter"!

 

[kermit4karate]

Read again. I said he was badmouthing players as a set. I didn't say anything about how he was responding to my position, nor do I care other than to the degree someone misrepresents me.

I'll make my position extremely clear here just to avoid any further misunderstanding: I have no reason to think suggesting that players as a set (note this is distinct from an individual player, who can have tunnel vision, or as bad a judgement as any GM) are going to have not as good or better judgment about rules as a GM. That's why I've been focused on the player group as a group. At the very least, applying that as a generality (as compared to a specific group which could always be a set of problems) seems clearly insulting to the population of players as a whole, and I'm not going to hesitate to say so.

Basically it comes down to the fact I think as long as players as a set in a given game want to weigh in on the houserules and as a set have as much impact as the GM, there's no rational reason that shouldn't be true. All of the responses I've seen to the contrary have been from people who either seem to have negative views about players as a set, a strong sense of personal control past the reasonable, or both.

(I'll acknowledge there are some corner cases where a houserule impacts the campaign structure as a whole that complicates this, but I think that's a case where if the GM can't explain that to the players and get buy-in either their sense of what actually impacts the campaign structure is over-expansive, or the players don't have buy-in in the first place (and that's a whole different and larger magnitude problem)>

Speaking of control, if someone were to say that they were comfortable leaving the ongoing debate over DM vs. player control as "agree to disagree," are you OK leaving it there too? Agree to disagree?

Seems like a cyclical debate now, doesn't it? The same folks repeating their positions over and over? Neither side convincing the other? Minds not being swayed? Folks see it differently, and that isn't a big deal.

Better to stop at "agree to disagree" than have feelings get hurt.