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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 2447761" data-attributes="member: 7240">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.</blockquote>

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