The Player vs DM attitude

[ArghMark]

I'd actually suggest a brief change of game to another setting. I feel you need to teach the players that trust is a two-way street for everyone.

Example: A Game of Thrones. (don't laugh, I have a good reason for this!)

The game has the players as noble scions or retainers. The land around the players is theirs, and they do with it as they will. There is a noble lord, a family, and most likely a village or small town that are all basically extended family or loyal serfs. They will never betray the PC's deliberately, though they may be forced to by unusual circumstances. These characters may get the PC's to do dangerous things, but will never deliberately betray them and will go out of their way to help the PC's. Vice versa the PC's will be expected to. These are family!

After the parties father busts them out of the neighborhood enemy lords donjon, pays ransom for them or what not and tells them to do it better next time, they begin to build trust with the NPCs.

They learn to trust that not all NPCs (And hence you, the GM) are not evil or antagonistic.



After you get some trust, you can add some betrayal. But never from the family itself; you don't want to break that bond.

 

[Odhanan]

Players need to understand that if it even was a competition, the DM has unlimited resources so it would be no contest. The idea of a Player(s) vs DM/GM/Referee competion is a fiction. The facilitator of such games is the challenge-enabler as well as the conduit to the gameworld. Players who view the relationship otherwise are misdirecting their focus and are likely to be less than fully successful handling the challenges and immersing themsleves in the scenarios. A discussion should be had to these points and if it is determined that one or more players are the root of this problem, the conversation should be repeated with them separately. If it continues, perhaps sterner measures might need to be taken to ensure the rest of the group has fun.

Quoted for Truth. This cannot be repeated enough.
If there truly were a Player vs. DM challenge, the DM would win every single time. The DM has unlimited resources. There is no contest. This "Player vs. DM" frame of mind is based on an illusion of optic, a myth based on a false premise. Same thing about the notion that somehow a DM can't control the players. Or that PCs become "too powerful" or whatever else. It's all bogus. You're the DM. You have unlimited power. The only reason you feel overwhelmed is because you're not thinking on your feet. Take a deep breath and take the bull by the horns, whatever that may be. You've got all the arsenal you need already, which includes and is certainly not limited to all the power of entertainment your imagination can muster.

 

[pemerton]

If there truly were a Player vs. DM challenge, the DM would win every single time.

This is part of the point of encounter-buidling guidelines and "points of light". The GM is constrained by the rules as well.

 

[ExploderWizard]

This is part of the point of encounter-buidling guidelines and "points of light". The GM is constrained by the rules as well.

Constrained is he? Heh heh heh. The rules are tools to be used to serve the game. If the GM feels constrained in any way then the game has started to serve the rules. This is when you begin to trust the computer citizen.

 

[LostSoul]

Constrained is he? Heh heh heh. The rules are tools to be used to serve the game. If the GM feels constrained in any way then the game has started to serve the rules. This is when you begin to trust the computer citizen.

4E has one approach to encounter-building; other games have different ones. "Maintain the consistency of the game world" is one such approach. In both situations the DM is constrained, and those constraints work to serve the game.

 

[pemerton]

LostSoul, I entirely agree - 4e's approach is just one of many, but if there is no constraint of some sort or another on the GM, it can become hard to avoid the game turning into GM fiat.

The rules are tools to be used to serve the game. If the GM feels constrained in any way then the game has started to serve the rules.

I agree with the first sentence. I don't see quite how it connects to the second - one part of the 4e rules is its encounter building guidelines, and they definitely serve the game. Using the guidelines for combat encounters, I can play my monsters to the best of my tactical ability and be pretty confident of getting a solid (if hack) fantasy adventure rather than a TPK, a walkover, a grind, etc - all things that I've experienced using other systems that have less solid guidelines.

The skill challenge guidelines, I'll grant you, are a bit more shaky. But they still help me put boundaries around encounters - especially social encounters, but also overland travel and strange magical phenomena - in a way that I feel works better than have more open-ended traditional approaches.

 

[Ariosto]

I don't entirely follow this. How is "Having gone to sleep in the tavern, you all wake up manacled in the dungeon" the GM playing the PCs or narrating their actions to them?

"You all board the ship, and sail without incident for a week" is the GM narrating to the player, but I think there are a lot of groups who don't find this per se objectionable. It's not dissimilar to a GM narrating a shopping expedition - "You want to buy some herbs - OK, you wander around the streets until you find an apothecary".

I'm playing catch-up with reading, here, so please pardon me if this has been adequately addressed.

The assumption in the sailing and shopping cases is that the players want to skip over intervening actions. Should anyone say, "Hold on! First, I want to ..." then the DM will make accommodation. It is not an attempt to deny a player a move to which he or she should be entitled.

Now, it could well be possible -- especially in a world of magic -- for the "wake up in gaol" scenario to come about. It might even make for a good story-telling device, if this were in fact a matter of telling a story rather than playing a game.

Either
(A) The capture was established as mere potential, something the players had a fair chance to avoid by taking appropriate precautions.
or
(B) At that point, the game proper is replaced with what D&Ders have called a "railroad".

Whatever it is, it is not what someone who complains about it considers a good game. This can be a matter of degree, with different people having different ideas of what would be fair.

 

[Ariosto]

A "capture scenario" can be interesting. (e.g., Escape from Colditz)

An "almost TPK scenario" can be interesting. (e.g., French at Camerone)

A "TPK scenario" can be interesting. (e.g., Spartans at Thermopylae)

A "battle of gods at the end of the world scenario" can be interesting. (e.g., Ragnarok or Stormbringer)

There are all sorts of scenarios one can set up and play with D&D rules that might be excellent fun on their own -- but not so appropriate as something pushed on the players in a campaign.

 

[Ariosto]

I dislike a range of mechanical systems that I associate with a certain sort of RPG play, like alignment, that try to dictate the answers to moral questions rather than let the players explore their own responses to moral issues.

I don't know where you're getting that. It's not what I've seen alignment "try to do" in any TSR edition of D&D (although "2e AD&D" covers a lot of material).

Some simple example: in a game with thorougly implemented social skills, the best you can get for your rhetoric is +2 to the check. In a game with engineering skills as part of the character build, the best you can get for your detailed solutions to modules like White Plume Mountain is to explain what the PC who actually has the skill is trying to do as s/he makes a skill roll.

I didn't have this problem 30 years ago, playing Traveller, RuneQuest, The Fantasy Trip, and so on.

I think these things are related to system as well, but in different ways that are typically more closely linked to character build than action resolution. For example, playing out a betrayal is hugely different for an AD&D compared to a 4e paladin - the former faces a loss of class, plus loss of level for alignment change. These things are also different in a game with a disadvantage system - a player who gets bonus points for Disadvantage: Blindly Loyal, and who then goes on to play out the traitor role, is in effect cheating. In either case it can relate to action resolution if the GM applies a "no you can't break your alignment" approach to resolving action declarations - something not unheard of in D&D play.

"You can't break alignment" is something against the rules, though, at least of 1st ed. AD&D. Judge someone's house rules as what they are.

In more indie games these sorts of things tie more directly into action resolution - eg in The Riddle of Steel spiritual attributes give bonus dice to action resolution, and in HeroQuest relationships, which would include loyalties, can grant augments - but that's not normally the case in more traditional games.

So, we can make up games that are less about exploring an imagined world of places and people, and more about manipulating an abstract mathematical domain? This is not big news. Dice games go back thousands of years!

... a highly metagameable character build system (good for letting players set the agenda of play ...

This is an example of what I would call (for me) a distraction from the real game. Play with my gang, and you can "set your agenda" by setting your agenda.

 

[haakon1]

What can I do to combat that attitude both among my players and when I play in games DMed by other people?

Teach them.

1) ROLEPLAY every NPC and monster. Give them personalities and motivations -- even it's just "me want eat" and run with them. Then play them as if they were your PC, and let the story turn out however it does based on the PC's actions, the NPC's reactions, and the dice, without knowing what the end will be.

This means some NPCs should be generous, other manipulative, and many -- especially outside the dungeon -- having some overlapping interests shared with the PC's, so that they are basically helpful.

If it's hard to imagine that in D&D, use another setting. Imagine it's a Western. The folks in the town are mostly interested in typical human settler things -- build a life, create a home, raise a family. Some may be bitter alcoholic Confederate veterans bent on revenge against the world, scheming Eastern bankers and their hired guns, rustlers, or other stock villains, but most shouldn't be. And a few should be truly benevolent -- the pastor who is trying to convert the bitter alcoholic, the old lawman who has a soft spot for wanderers down on their luck, the prostitute with a heart of gold, the Chinaman who works at the laundry and is passing on his Shao Lin temple training to the local half-breed orphan to defend himself against bullies, whatever you want.

Then imagine the PC's enter town. Are PC's known rustlers, known Federal marshals or Mounties or soldiers defending against Indian raids, or just cowboys passing through on a cattle drive?

The average NPC will react to them based on their needs/desires and who the PC's appear to be. If the PC's are clearly protectors, there's zero reason for the average NPC to want to harm them -- in the real world, small town storeowners don't try to poison or rob the local cops, they give them free coffee and donuts because it's good to have them around. If the PC's are rustlers, the average NPC is going to be scared of them and want to have as little interaction as possible, to get the PC's out of their hair. If the PC's are just cowboys, the average NPC is just going to want to make a buck, and hopefully get a repeat customer.

Really, a decently roleplayed average townsfolk NPC has little reason to "screw with" the PC's.

The non-average NPC's, with non-average motivations, can have more complex interactions with the PC's.

If you give your players interactions like that, they may change their mind about NPC's -- and raise their own level of role playing. You may also winnow out players who just want to kill stuff, if you devote airtime to making NPC's real(-ish) people.

The ANTITHESIS of this approach is to treat NPCs as tools of the movie director to move the action along, rather than characters in their own right. If the NPC barber in the Western suddenly turns into a psychopath who wants to cut the PC's throat -- even though he was a normal person with no warning signs or previous incidents -- just because the DM decides it's time for a fight, then you're going to get paranoid players.


2) Make PC actions have consequences, good, bad, and indifferent. If the PC's kill intelligent folks, they are going to piss someone off. If they are kind, they make make a friend, or not, or piss off that person's enemies. Whatever the PC's do, run with it and make the world real, with feedback just like our world.

Again, think Western. If the PC's go into town -- or an Indian village -- and kill everybody to rob the place, because they are mad, whatever -- there should be serious consequences. People wanting revenge. The Marshall Service or the US Army or an army of braves wanting them hanged/shot/scalped ASAP, and running them down to do it.

On the other hand, if the PC's save the town from the bandits, a lot of people are going to be grateful. Maybe they'll get job offers as deputies. Maybe the laundry owner will teach them kung fu. Maybe the buxom widows will take an interest.

Run the campaign like that -- with consequences like an actual non-RPG story -- and I think the players will start acting more serious and less metagamey.