Suspension of Disbelief

[fusangite]

I'm pretty good at suspending disbelief in an RPG but certain kinds of events in a session can just ruin it for me and put me in quite a foul temper. My current DM has made a very culturally rich world that I find it enjoyable and easy to get immersed in. My PC naturally remmebers his culture and has a feel for his environment.

Unfortunately, every few months, my DM throws the party a puzzle of some sort that is absolutely guaranteed without fail to annihilate my suspension of disbelief for whatever session the puzzle appears in and usually a session or two after.

These puzzles consistently reference things outside the campaign world. Our DM has lovingly crafted all these different languages in our world based that have complex and realistic relationships to one another and reveal interesting things about the world's cultures and history. AND YET. The first three "puzzles" our characters were faced with were word-games in English -- when I asked what game language they were in, the DM did not know. It had not occurred to him that giving us essentially English crossword puzzles might damage our ability to believe in the reality of his game world's languages. After the third incident with this, I finally told him that this sort of thing was damaging my suspension of disbelief. As I put it; I find subtitled worlds credible, not dubbed ones.

I wish, now, that I hadn't complained. The replacement puzzles were so much worse tonight. One was based on Sun Tzu's art of war. The other, however, required that one read a 424-page work of 19th century military theory (apparently a seminal work) before the game. (He told us we would need to do this but none of us did. I figured 223 pages of Sun Tzu and commentaries was sufficient to indicate my commitment as a player.) The thing is that the game world we're in has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Taoist or Prussian theories of war -- there are no symbolic resonances, no narrative parallels; the world is based on the 15th century Pontic steppe and the creation of Muscovy after the Black Death.

Anyway, we failed to solve the second puzzle. But there couldn't be any consequences because like every other puzzle episode, no contingency plan had been established for what would happen if our characters didn't know 19th century Prussian military theory. Sorry -- side complaint -- not what the thread is about. Pardon me while I vent pointlessly.

So, I'm curious: what does it take to wreck your suspension of disbelief in a D&D game? Amusing/sad stories would be appreciated. I'm also interested in getting a sense of whether it is normal for the things that damage mine to damage others' suspension of disbelief or whether this stuff is just me.

 

[Glyfair]

Usually, as long as a reasonable effort is made, I'm usually fine.

Actually, I tend to dislike the level of immersion you seem interested in. I don't like worlds where the GM/World designer tries to focus on the primary language not being English. That hurts my sense of disbelief because eventually some confusion or misunderstanding comes up that would make no sense if we were speaking the "made up" language. Not to mention that it eliminates any possibility of word play puzzles, and occasionally numerical puzzles.

I'm really turned off by worlds where the players are expected to know a huge amount of detail. The worlds where the GM expects you to learn a new language, understand the complexities of a new culture he introduced, or even just be completely accurate with a historical culture (to the GMs level).

 

[Elf Witch]

There are a couple of things that do it for me. One is when we play in a published setting like Kingdoms of Kalamar and some of the players don't bother to read any of the background on what their character would know. So they say and do things that their character would not do.

A good example is a player who played a cleric and he did not bother to know whose his Gods allies were. We got into situation where the party went up against one of his God's allies and since he did not know the situation he played it totally different than if he had known. My character knew and kept waiting for his to say something the more he kept silence the more my character began to distrust him. It was a mess. My character took actions that I would never have had her take if I had realized at the time that the player did not know about the ally.

Another thing that blows it for me is stupid names or names that don't fit the world.

There are certain spells that just make me go huh. Fireball for one. You just cast a huge fire on someone and nothing else burns. Or the fact that some spells have an evil descriptor like inflict pain but it is okay to fireball or disengrate someone. Things like that just make me realize hey its a GAME.

 

[sukael]

One was based on Sun Tzu's art of war. The other, however, required that one read a 424-page work of 19th century military theory (apparently a seminal work) before the game. (He told us we would need to do this but none of us did. I figured 223 pages of Sun Tzu and commentaries was sufficient to indicate my commitment as a player.) The thing is that the game world we're in has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Taoist or Prussian theories of war -- there are no symbolic resonances, no narrative parallels; the world is based on the 15th century Pontic steppe and the creation of Muscovy after the Black Death.

...see, this'd be the sort of thing that would be having me go "WTF" and looking elsewhere for a DM.

 

[Telsar]

Is it possible your GM was trying to show you, with these new puzzles, how extreme suspension-of-belief puzzles could be, and that the original ones weren't all that bad? I agree, word puzzles really make no sense when the setting doesn't include english (or whatever language the puzzle is in). But at the same time, if you don't suspend disbelief on language, then you also can't have something like a rhyming poem, since it may not rhyme in that world's language. Or even many traditional riddles work by a word having a double meaning; something like "I have hands, but no arms. What am I?" (A clock, perhaps), doesn't necessarily work in anything other than english.

To answer your actual question, however, one GM I've had threw suspension of disbelief out the window: any time a PC or NPC would badmouth a deity, you could expect a lightning bolt from the sky. Dark-skinned and asian individuals had sterotypical speech patterns. Another GM felt the need to introduce canned soda in a Forgotten Realms game. These were all funny, and the games were enjoyable, but because of these things, it's hard to take the setting seriously when it happens.

 

[TheGM]

The worst for me is when the players aren't in synch. Style of play being different is the worst, but even level of comedy and joking being off hurts. As the GM I feel kind of responsible for them all to have some amount of fun, but some nights you can tell in the first twenty minutes it is not to be. Depends a lot on the group of course, but it happens sometimes with every group.

I also can't stand computers at the table. I've banned and unbanned them several times. The fact is that if it's there in front of some people they can't help but play with it, then when their turn to interact (be it conversation, combat, whatever) comes around they're like "Huh? What's going on?" Makes me wanna smack 'em. And it's a disease. You can talk them, but it will eventually happen again.

 

[TheGM]

...see, this'd be the sort of thing that would be having me go "WTF" and looking elsewhere for a DM.

I have to agree. I like an occasional puzzle as much as the next guy, but he is definitely asking too much of you.

 

[WayneLigon]

I felt the same way when I saw puzzles in Dragon or Dungeon that were just word-play puzzles (and they were presented as 'riddles' which is a very differrent thing) or required modern knowledge to solve.

 

[Orius]

I wish, now, that I hadn't complained. The replacement puzzles were so much worse tonight. One was based on Sun Tzu's art of war. The other, however, required that one read a 424-page work of 19th century military theory (apparently a seminal work) before the game. (He told us we would need to do this but none of us did. I figured 223 pages of Sun Tzu and commentaries was sufficient to indicate my commitment as a player.) The thing is that the game world we're in has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Taoist or Prussian theories of war -- there are no symbolic resonances, no narrative parallels; the world is based on the 15th century Pontic steppe and the creation of Muscovy after the Black Death.

That's just asinine. I don't know what he was smoking, since most of the players I've gamed with can't even be bothered to read 2 or 3 pages on general gampaign background. I don't think any gamer alive would read that for prep, hell the puzzle sounds like more of a test than part of a game.

 

[Teflon Billy]

LOL

I would kill myself lauhing at the notion that I needed to read 500 pages of soemthing out-of-game to be able to solve one part of the guy's adventure.

And Fusangite, you well know what would happen next: I'd convince the group to try and solve it with violence