D&D General The Monsters Know What They're Doing ... Are Unsure on 5e24

[soviet]

Let me double down on that:

The "GM-Side" is saying, that when a GM and Player have two preferences that are incompatible, e.g.

• wants to play evil PC vs no evil PCs ever
• wants to sex up all the Tavern Maidens vs. no akward sex and flirting in my campaigns
• Tortle lover vs. Tortle hater

Those should not play together.

This is about a situation, where a compromise is not possible.

And not playing together is actually a win for both, because they are incompatible at the table. Playing together would be a loose situation

This is not about a sitiuation where a compromise is possible. This is about red lines in the sand, that shall not be crossed.

A GM with chelonaphobia should not play with "I only want to play a ninja turtle!"-guy.
A 12 year old DM should not play with 34 year old horny bard guy, who hits on his mom in front of him.
Some of those red lines are irrational or don't make sense to you. But especially when they don't make sense to you then you should not play together. And that is a "win"!

Note how you have made 'I want to play race X' the same as playing an evil PC, or making the game some sort of awkward sexual harassment experience involving children, or triggering the GM's phobias.

It's almost like you know that 'I want to play race X' is a difficult thing to object to unless you exaggerate it to something much worse.

 

[soviet]

The issue is that it's all make believe. Of course I could always add something but since I am the author of the world I make the final call on what fits. Still standard practice for D&D and always has been.

So you're conceding that players don't meaningfully impact what happens in play? You're The Author and they're just replaceable audience members?

 

[AlViking]

So you're conceding that players don't meaningfully impact what happens in play? You're The Author and they're just replaceable audience members?

Ah, the same old strawman. How do you go from "DM authors the world" to "players have no meaningful impact"? I create the sandbox, what the players do to it is largely up to them. They can make dramatic changes to the world's order or just run around making themselves wealthy. Up to them.

 

[AlViking]

Note how you have made 'I want to play race X' the same as playing an evil PC, or making the game some sort of awkward sexual harassment experience involving children, or triggering the GM's phobias.

It's almost like you know that 'I want to play race X' is a difficult thing to object to unless you exaggerate it to something much worse.

No evil PCs and a list of accepted species are just preferences. I don't think anyone is doing it wrong if they want to play evil characters, it's just not what I want. Or are you saying that groups that allow evil characters are having bad-wrong-fun?

 

[Belen]

So you're conceding that players don't meaningfully impact what happens in play? You're The Author and they're just replaceable audience members?

You can be the author of the setting and the PCs can still overthrow the monarch.

He is only saying that he wrote the background elements.

It is the same as no Halfling in Dragonlance.

 

[Remathilis]

What about, The GM always gets what they want, and the Players usually do also?

Why does the DM always and the Players usually? The implication is that in a conflict of wants, the DM wins all disputes. There is never a situation where the DM says "I didn't want this, but it made my player happy so I will sacrifice a little of my happiness to make them happy?" Is getting 95% of what you want not good enough that you need 100% or you leave? Every DM can be a primadonna who demands a bowl with exactly 100 green M&Ms or they aren't performing?

 

[tetrasodium]

Fwiw I don't have any issues with allowing "evil" characters at my table, but defining what evil means is also hard line with very little room for compromise with good reason.

Spoiler: evil vrs villainous

Most players who go "oh you don't ban evil, so does that mean I can be evil?" get told no simply because they don't show a willingness to grasp the difference those two.

I think a huge part of the disconnect is the people talking about their power of veto rarely actually use that power, and never use it to ruin other people's fun because (assuming they're part of a functional group), it's simply rarely or never needed and they of course have no desire to ruin anyone's fun; whereas some others assume it's used regularly and arbitrarily (with certain posters going as far as to assume that if the power exists, it must inevitably be wielded with wild abandon at every possible opportunity).

Edit:
In this thread, someone who is complaining about a GM vetoing a concept almost always assume that the player didn't already agree to play a game where that concept isn't appropriate. Conversely, someone who is complaining about a zany player concept assumes it was already agreed this concept doesn't fit the game that was pitched.

Neither of those scenarios is likely to fit a situation that is going to arise in the real world, as long as there is clear communication from the start..

Pretty accurately aligns with my experience and even a generous benefit of the doubt reading of posts advocating for player agency or whatever.

With that said, there are two very different types of players I encounter. The first type is the usual closed groups where everyone is vetted invited and agreed to join a game I offered to run. Conflicts are rare and generally handled easily enough but usually somehow link to what is appropriate to be deliberately or accidentally imported into eberron.

The second type is mostly newbies but almost entirely different simply because it's made up of players who show up to a local FLGS to play that night at one of the open AL tables. Opportunity for vetting players is more limited in that format but the invite and agreement is STILL present in the form of "I'm running lmop(or whatever) that's what these guys are playing". Usually these groups become fairly stable but often keep a spot or two open for one off newbies or whatever. By agreeing to join the table rather than finding some other table, those rotating seats too agreed to the adventure pitch AND the ALPG framework outlining character creation rules where an awkwardly creative interpretation of how wildly overdeveloped a PC can be when showing up to "tell your story" with a personal fanfic novella worth of development.

 

[tetrasodium]

Why does the DM always and the Players usually? The implication is that in a conflict of wants, the DM wins all disputes. There is never a situation where the DM says "I didn't want this, but it made my player happy so I will sacrifice a little of my happiness to make them happy?" Is getting 95% of what you want not good enough that you need 100% or you leave? Every DM can be a primadonna who demands a bowl with exactly 100 green M&Ms or they aren't performing?

I don't think you've thought that through enough to ask that question without a boatload of sarcasm. You are advocating for this player's originally pitched PC and calling for an explanation for why the gm is even allowed that kind of veto level authority

Spoiler

The new player☆ first was told "it's going to be an eberron game" and given a quick description of eberron after admitting they knew nothing about the setting. Setting knowledge is not required though and I told them that we could probably work something out & figure out how the phb lore needs to change to fit if he tells me a little about he wants to play -> "Let me tell you about my fursona" -> "No. Please. Stop. " ->Moving on from that, the player asked if they could play an asimaar. I pointed out that the gods in eberron are extremely different and hands off to the point that they might not even exist but described manifest zones & said that it would be fine if he was a mutated something or descendant of a mutated something that lived near a manifest zone because that sidesteps all of the lore stuff he didn't know while fitting the setting & cleaving off some of the stuff from the last exchange. Things went downhill from there & he started telling me about his 4e character where every no but/no because/yes if was being pushed aside with suggestions about how I could just change something about the setting even when the being suggested for revision literally came up while explaining why making some other change to the setting would have huge ripples that made the setting something unrecognizable that I didn't want to track. Eventually he settled on an aberrant marked paladin & I don't remember anything else about it.

It falls upon the player to figure out how to fit the setting not the gm how to build a gordian knot around 3-5pc backstories generated in isolation. I once had a player tell me that I should rewrite eberron's history surrounding the giant empire being caught magic/uplifted by dragons and everything with the dhakaani empire along with the extraplanar invasions that caused their respective collapses and the orc druids trained by Vvaraak because he wanted to use a backstory started in someone else's 4e game that involved a romance between his aasimar and THE LADY OF PAIN FROM SIGIL. because it got in the way of something about celestials that were somehow involved having previously uplifted humans to help protect humans from the monstrous races. All of that was the result of me saying "no eberron deities are very different from most settings [details]. I'm ok with letting you play an aasimar if we say it is the result of you having an a errant mark [lore description].

Before anyone could pretend to give you the answer you are looking to the set on fire, you kinda need to start by explaining why players like that guy deserve to automatically have their PC accepted

Edit: that spoiler was not made up. It was an actual player

 

[SkidAce]

Why does the DM always and the Players usually? The implication is that in a conflict of wants, the DM wins all disputes. There is never a situation where the DM says "I didn't want this, but it made my player happy so I will sacrifice a little of my happiness to make them happy?" Is getting 95% of what you want not good enough that you need 100% or you leave? Every DM can be a primadonna who demands a bowl with exactly 100 green M&Ms or they aren't performing?

I guess I didn't highlight the change in what I quoted well enough to get my point across. I should have changed the "always" in the original to something else.

Mea culpa.

 

[Bae'zel]

Alright, this is just going in circles. Just bad faith hypotheticals. Why so much indignation? What the hell?

It really DOES feel like some here are just looking for ways to trip up others. Like they've chosen to be enemies for some reason.