D&D 5E Rejecting the Premise in a Module

[WayOfTheFourElements]

Uhhuh. There is no responsibility on players to, basically, buy into the premise of the game being played?

No. The players have no responsibility. The DM agreed to run that specific session for that specific set of players. It's the DM's responsibility.

 

[Oofta]

No. The players have no responsibility. The DM agreed to run that specific session for that specific set of players. It's the DM's responsibility.

Add me to the list of people that disagree completely. If the DM says "I want to run mod Adventures in ToyLand, is everybody okay with that?" The players have agreed to play along. A group has to have some consensus on what their goals are and what they're trying to achieve, otherwise one player can spoil the fun for everyone.

The DM is doing far more work than the players. The players agreed to play what the DM had planned. If you don't like the restrictions the DM (or mod) puts on the game find another game or start DMing. I, for one, have been DMing for a long time. I have no issue with the fact that the game I run isn't for everyone. If you don't like it, go find another game so I can open up a seat for someone who does want to play the game I'm running.

I try to make the game fun for everyone, but you can never please everyone.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

If they wanted to play a module and you took the time to read and prepare running it, then that's kind of crappy of them to do that.

I couldn't agree less.

If the stock module has such an uncompelling scenario that the PCs decide to go rogue half-way through it, the fault lies in exactly two places:

1) The module writer for writing a terrible module/unengaging. A lot of WotC modules are pretty bad. Now, before anyone faints from horror, some are also good, but it's actually shocking to me how many really, really aren't good, or have really weak elements. I didn't actually realize quite how bad a few of them were until lockdown, when we tried some. One was so downright bad it had World of Warcraft-style fetch quests thrown at the PCs within minutes of starting it. The party resolved this by saying "no" to the NPC demanding them, and just forcibly evacuating him, but what the hell was the writer thinking? They clearly believed PCs would mindlessly go along with these frankly ludicrous requests - it was like the US National Guard turning up outside your house, when huge bomb blast has gone off less than a mile down the road, and an entire small town been destroyed, and fires still raging, and telling you to evacuate, and instead you're like "Well, okay, maybe, but I need you to make me a coffee, pick some apples in my garden, and shine my shoes first!" (said NPC was not senile or mentally ill, which might have excused it and warranted gentler treatment). You'd be lucky if they didn't just leave you to die. Another one just didn't understand movement rules, or allow for a bunch of really basic possibilities, and had a pretty weaksauce plot (also they got FR heraldry wrong, though that is honestly a nitpick), and didn't have maps for a couple of pretty important encounters (lovely non-functional town map though!).

I could go on and on but a lot of pre-built modules are really weakly designed, both WotC and third-party.

2) The DM for picking the module and not managing to make it compelling, either by how he presented it, or, if necessary, by modifying and tweaking it to make it more engaging for his group.

The players can't judge what module, because they obviously can't pre-read it. It's all very well for the DM to say that he wants to run something, and the players to go "sounds good", but when he reads it, he should be able to tell if parts are weak or strong, if it's going to work or not, and so on. They cannot be held responsible just because they agreed to play a module. That's a ludicrous idea akin to saying they have to go along with railroading in a homebrew campaign. Only if they agreed to that, specifically, should they.

The less experienced the DM is, the more the weight of blame falls on the module itself, particularly if it presented itself as accessible, for beginners/new DMs, and so on.

 

[WayOfTheFourElements]

Add me to the list of people that disagree completely. If the DM says "I want to run mod Adventures in ToyLand, is everybody okay with that?" The players have agreed to play along. A group has to have some consensus on what their goals are and what they're trying to achieve, otherwise one player can spoil the fun for everyone.

The DM is doing far more work than the players. The players agreed to play what the DM had planned. If you don't like the restrictions the DM (or mod) puts on the game find another game or start DMing. I, for one, have been DMing for a long time. I have no issue with the fact that the game I run isn't for everyone. If you don't like it, go find another game so I can open up a seat for someone who does want to play the game I'm running.

I try to make the game fun for everyone, but you can never please everyone.

I don't think we disagree at all. As a responsible DM, you realized there was a problem and solved it. You realized it was your job to set standards for your table. When those standards weren't met, you booted the player and fixed the problem. As DM, you took full responsibility to maintain your game.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Add me to the list of people that disagree completely. If the DM says "I want to run mod Adventures in ToyLand, is everybody okay with that?" The players have agreed to play along. A group has to have some consensus on what their goals are and what they're trying to achieve, otherwise one player can spoil the fun for everyone.

That doesn't make sense unless you basically pre-explain the plot of the entire adventure. In some cases that'll be valid, but most D&D Adventure Paths/campaigns/modules are designed to be surprising to a greater or lesser extent.

If a module's main plot is dumb/boring, or the DM makes it that way, then the players are not at all to blame for deviating from it.

And your example is a useless counterfactual. The example is all the players agreeing that they want to do X, not one player deciding to do Y. That's an irrelevant example.

Then I'd adapt to what the players want to do, but quietly resent them and make sure the next session featured a lengthy crawl through an overly described, but very consistently similar maze.

Keeping it real here I see. Quiet resentment is the stock and trade of so many DMs.

 

[Raaron]

Yeah afraid I can’t go with the players are completely free agent said no responsibilities whatsoever”

 

[WayOfTheFourElements]

Yeah afraid I can’t go with the players are completely free agent said no responsibilities whatsoever”

Here's my philosophy:

If the players are responsible for fixing the problem, the DM can't fix it. If the DM is responsible for fixing the problem, the DM can fix it.

If the DM didn't fix the problem, the DM is responsible for not fixing it.


What's an alternative?

 

[Oofta]

That doesn't make sense unless you basically pre-explain the plot of the entire adventure. In some cases that'll be valid, but most D&D Adventure Paths/campaigns/modules are designed to be surprising to a greater or lesser extent.

If a module's main plot is dumb/boring, or the DM makes it that way, then the players are not at all to blame for deviating from it.

And your example is a useless counterfactual. The example is all the players agreeing that they want to do X, not one player deciding to do Y. That's an irrelevant example.

Then see my first post on this thread. If a mod isn't working, act like an adult and discuss it out of game.

What I disagree with is "the players have no responsibility". It's a team game. Everyone has a responsibility to everyone else at the table to be part of that team. In addition, the DM puts more work into the game than anyone else at the table, they deserve some respect.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Then see my first post on this thread. If a mod isn't working, act like an adult and discuss it out of game.

What I disagree with is "the players have no responsibility". It's a team game. Everyone has a responsibility to everyone else at the table to be part of that team. In addition, the DM puts more work into the game than anyone else at the table, they deserve some respect.

You're making a lot of assumptions here, ones which seem ill-founded.

First off, you're assuming the players know perfectly well, that they're "ruining" the module. The better the DM is, the less likely they know that. A terrible DM, it's going to be immediately obvious, as he goes "Errrrr I dunno what to do", and you've probably seem him struggle a bunch of times with even minor deviations from what is expected. But a good to great DM will have handled any previous deviations so well, that the players likely don't even know that they were deviations. I'm not that great, but I've managed this a lot of times back when I still used modules. The players were like "Oh that bit in the temple was awesome this module rocks" and I'm like "I improvised that entire bit, you weren't even supposed to go there..." except obviously I kept that to myself.

The better the DM, the less you need to explain the entire premise and forward-looking plot of the module, too, especially if the module isn't exceptionally weird.

Don't think I have no sympathy. I am a DM, and very experienced one. I share your pain when things go off the rails, and I'm not always super-keen to continue such a campaign. But unless you have clear agreement to being basically railroaded, to a specific, singular campaign goal, which I think is going to be rare in most groups, the players are not at fault here. Even you might not be at fault, if the module is sufficiently bad and you somehow legitimately didn't realize how bad it was (it does happen).

Second-off, there's a lack of responsibility from a lot of the DMs here. My experience as a DM and player for 30+ years is that, by and large, most groups want to stick to the module plot, unless it's dire. Yes, sometimes you get "that guy". You, Oofta, seem to want this to all be about "that guy". We all hate "that guy". But that's why I said your example was irrelevant, because it was about "that guy" - and further examples had the same problem - about "opening a seat". This isn't about "that guy". This is about the entire group deciding on a different direction. You're not opening a seat, you'd be firing the entire group.

And the reality is, a lot of DMs screw up. They pick a bad module. They fail to think about how their actual players will actually respond to the actual module. Sometimes they don't even read it properly. Or they don't understand it. Or they see problems, but they can't be bothered to fix them, or don't know how to fix them, but run it anyway. Or they take a great module, and by dint of bad DMing, manage to make it dull. I've seen it done.

When you've got to the point that ALL the players are saying "Okay let's go do this instead!", either you've run it so brilliantly that they think that's totally legit, or more likely, something has gone profoundly wrong. What that is can vary wildly. I've seen some modules where, the plot doesn't fail forwards, it basically just dead-ends unless the PCs do something incredibly specific and non-obvious. Often at the same time, there's an obvious course, but the module author didn't realize that. I've seen other modules where they're designed to horrifically railroad the PCs at some moment, but do so in a way such that the railroad can be avoided, and make no allowances for what happens if it is. I've seen yet others which put the PCs in a potentially cool situation, then expect them to do something boring, and if they don't do the boring thing (which is often doesn't even make sense), then the module can't cope. This isn't even rare, this is like a dead minimum of 30% of modules longer than a single adventure. And sometimes it's on the DM, as discussed, but the point is, entire groups of players don't go rogue for no reason.

Third-off, you say the DM puts in more work than any given player, but when he's running a pre-gen module (not one he wrote himself), especially running it stock, with few/no modifications, is he really putting in more effort than the entire rest of the table? I doubt it. I've never felt like I was, when running a largely-stock pre-gen module/AP/campaign. When I'm writing adventures from scratch, heavily modifying a campaign, running in my own gameworld and so on, yeah, then absolutely, I am putting in more work than the entire other 4-6 people, but that's not the case here.

EDIT - The classic example of it being the module's fault when the PCs go rogue isn't actually a D&D one, it's a Shadowrun one. A number of adventures (esp. in 1E/2E) for Shadowrun feature ridiculous betrayals, or plot twists, which the PCs are clearly supposed to roll with, but where no real justification exists for doing so. People like to deny this, but it really is the case in a number of official adventures for earlier SR - this is part of why the legend of "just steal the cars" exists. Part of it is that official adventures, and generic suggested rewards in SR was just ridiculous lowballs for people full of expensive cyberware massively breaking the law and murdering a bunch of people and committing massive theft/industrial espionage, whilst risking not only their freedom, but their lives. But the other part was that so many adventures and so on had situations where it just made no sense to continue with the adventure - your employer backstabbed you, or wanted you to do some ridiculous thing not previous agreed to, with no extra reward (indeed, often the reward would somehow have decreased by then), and sensible, kind players who would go along with a lot of railroading woul be like "To hell with this, steal the cars!". I feel like when an entire group goes rogue like that in D&D ("to hell with this, let's become pirates!") then something similar has to be going wrong.

 

[Oofta]

You're making a lot of assumptions here, ones which seem ill-founded.

First off, you're assuming the players know perfectly well, that they're "ruining" the module. The better the DM is, the less likely they know that. A terrible DM, it's going to be immediately obvious, as he goes "Errrrr I dunno what to do", and you've probably seem him struggle a bunch of times with even minor deviations from what is expected. But a good to great DM will have handled any previous deviations so well, that the players likely don't even know that they were deviations. I'm not that great, but I've managed this a lot of times back when I still used modules. The players were like "Oh that bit in the temple was awesome this module rocks" and I'm like "I improvised that entire bit, you weren't even supposed to go there..." except obviously I kept that to myself.

The better the DM, the less you need to explain the entire premise and forward-looking plot of the module, too, especially if the module isn't exceptionally weird.

Don't think I have no sympathy. I am a DM, and very experienced one. I share your pain when things go off the rails, and I'm not always super-keen to continue such a campaign. But unless you have clear agreement to being basically railroaded, to a specific, singular campaign goal, which I think is going to be rare in most groups, the players are not at fault here. Even you might not be at fault, if the module is sufficiently bad and you somehow legitimately didn't realize how bad it was (it does happen).

Second-off, there's a lack of responsibility from a lot of the DMs here. My experience as a DM and player for 30+ years is that, by and large, most groups want to stick to the module plot, unless it's dire. Yes, sometimes you get "that guy". You, Oofta, seem to want this to all be about "that guy". We all hate "that guy". But that's why I said your example was irrelevant, because it was about "that guy" - and further examples had the same problem - about "opening a seat". This isn't about "that guy". This is about the entire group deciding on a different direction. You're not opening a seat, you'd be firing the entire group.

And the reality is, a lot of DMs screw up. They pick a bad module. They fail to think about how their actual players will actually respond to the actual module. Sometimes they don't even read it properly. Or they don't understand it. Or they see problems, but they can't be bothered to fix them, or don't know how to fix them, but run it anyway. Or they take a great module, and by dint of bad DMing, manage to make it dull. I've seen it done.

When you've got to the point that ALL the players are saying "Okay let's go do this instead!", either you've run it so brilliantly that they think that's totally legit, or more likely, something has gone profoundly wrong. What that is can vary wildly. I've seen some modules where, the plot doesn't fail forwards, it basically just dead-ends unless the PCs do something incredibly specific and non-obvious. Often at the same time, there's an obvious course, but the module author didn't realize that. I've seen other modules where they're designed to horrifically railroad the PCs at some moment, but do so in a way such that the railroad can be avoided, and make no allowances for what happens if it is. I've seen yet others which put the PCs in a potentially cool situation, then expect them to do something boring, and if they don't do the boring thing (which is often doesn't even make sense), then the module can't cope. This isn't even rare, this is like a dead minimum of 30% of modules longer than a single adventure. And sometimes it's on the DM, as discussed, but the point is, entire groups of players don't go rogue for no reason.

Third-off, you say the DM puts in more work than any given player, but when he's running a pre-gen module (not one he wrote himself), especially running it stock, with few/no modifications, is he really putting in more effort than the entire rest of the table? I doubt it. I've never felt like I was, when running a largely-stock pre-gen module/AP/campaign. When I'm writing adventures from scratch, heavily modifying a campaign, running in my own gameworld and so on, yeah, then absolutely, I am putting in more work than the entire other 4-6 people, but that's not the case here.

If someone isn't a good DM, suck it up and talk to them about it. If they aren't the DM for you , maybe you should DM or find a different game. Personally I find mods more work than home campaign.

As I said, I think everyone at the table shares responsibility for making the game fun and the DM deserves some respect. That's all. I have no idea where the rest of your post came from.

Have a good one.