NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 6401958" data-attributes="member: 22779">The problem with that analogy is that you typically only sing karaoke for a couple of hours.  Not hundreds of hours.  Imagine going to karaoke with your friends every week for three or four hours at a time and the karaoke machine only has a kind of music that you don't like.  Is it inappropriate to request that the group go to a different karaoke place and, if that group refuses to change karaoke places, is it inappropriate to say, "Sorry guys, I'll catch up with you later"?But, this works both ways.  I'm not interested in playing with a DM whose enjoyment of the game is so fragile that choosing something for my character will ruin the feeling and theme of the game for him or her.  Nor am I interested in dictating to the players that my personal preferences are always going to trump theirs simply because I'm sitting behind the DM's screen and if they don't like it, GTFO.  I'll give another example.  I was running a 3e campaign years ago and said, "Good only".  Standard reasons, mostly didn't want to deal with the intra-party crap that comes up with someone trying to play an evil character.  I wanted heroes.  One of the players insisted on playing a CN character.  And he was ready to walk over this.  He was not going to play a good character and he, in his words, "wanted to be free to do whatever I want to do".  So, I caved.  I didn't want to boot the player, so, I told him he could play the character provisionally and if it became a problem, we'd be having another conversation.Couple of months and a few levels go by.  I turn to the player and say, "Your character isn't really CN.  He's reliable, dependable, always does the right thing, isn't selfish or whimsical.  This character is pretty much textbook Lawful Good".  The player very strongly insisted that his character was CN despite the fact that at no point had the character ever acted in a chaotic manner.  But, then I started reading between the lines.  He wasn't interested in playing CN to be a disruptive player.  He quite obviously had been burned by previous DM's who would force him to do certain acts (or prevent him from doing things) and bludgeon him over the head with the alignment rules.  He simply did not want to give me, the DM, any sort of lever or hook to hold over him during the game.  He wanted his character to belong to him and him alone.Fine by me.  I stepped back, realised that changing the C to an L on his character sheet would make zero difference to the game and having that C meant a lot to that player.  Was it perfectly kosher by the rules and did it make in game sense?  Well, maybe not.  It wasn't consistent after all.  But, then, at the end of the day, at little inconsistency would mean a happy, engaged player who was an excellent participant in the game.  Very much not worth being right about.See, ten years ago, I'd be standing right behind you patting you on the back and telling you how right you are.  Ten years ago, I believed EXACTLY what you do.  But, I changed over the past ten years or so.  Began implicitly and explicitly trusting the players and became confident in passing off responsibility for the game onto the players.  I never, ever want passively consuming players ever again.  Give people respect and trust and responsibility and they will do far, far more for you than I could possibly do on my own.</blockquote>

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