D&D General The Tyranny of Rarity

[Imaro]

I think they mean "unhappy with the world," not "unhappy with a particular event."

The conversation moved to a particular ruling that the players were unhappy with.

 

[Imaro]

You added something to what I said that I didnt say.

The argument against the ruling that levitation triggered pressure plates was not because "it's more fun if it doesn't". The argument was "You heard us planning, never clarified to us that it wouldnt work because of your not in the book interpretation, and let us carry on a plan that ended up in a PC death. This wasn't fair."

No the argument of fun was brought into the discussion here by you...

Yes? If the goal of a table is to have fun playing DnD then 80% of people having fun is a better outcome than 20%.

Of course this simple math has nothing to do with a player and a GM collaborating.

The info/explanation you posted above was not previously explained anywhere in the discussion.

EDIT: Also by the book you can levitate one creature or object. As a DM I would have warned you beforehand but there is no way I would have agreed with an interpretation that allows you to levitate a single object and then pile it full of numerous other objects and/or creatures. IMO your interpretation of Levitate could be as erroneously interpreted by the players as you believe the DM's to be.

 

[Helldritch]

But if you're looking to improve as a dm, my advice is this: fidelity to the setting isn't usually much of a priority. You're bigger than god in the setting, you can change anything you want. Feel free to alter details to let players play characters they're excited about. I assure you, players being excited about their characters is a lot more important than how internally consistent the setting is across campaigns.

Ahem...
Fidelity to your setting is exactly what some (if not a lot) of players are looking for. Consistency is appreciated by a lot of players. Yes, the Cantina can be fun sometimes, they are usually one off and not for the long long term of a true campaign world.

If you want to improve as DM...
Learn the rules
Prepare, prepare and then prepare again.
Take notes.
Be ready to improvise a lot. And when you do Take notes.
Rail road can be your friend if done correctly. It can also be your worst enemy.
Sand box can be a curse (as it can often lead to Monty Haul) and a blessing (as it can jumpstart a campaign in a new direction).
But the most important two:
Observe player and character interactions. Learn and adapt to each groups/players.
Make absolutely sure that every player/character has a chance to shine in the first few games!

Players will love their characters if you do the above. Even with subpar characters.

 

[Faolyn]

The conversation moved to a particular ruling that the players were unhappy with.

My bad, then.

 

[Filthy Lucre]

Humble too.

The truth is the truth - I've been doing it a long time. That people are still hung up on alignment, biological determinism, and safety/consent rules makes me roll my eyes in annoyance because they're so obvious.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Again, it's one of those hypothetical situations... Has it ever happened ? I don't think it has ever happened to me in 43+ years of DMing. Has it ever happened to you? Moreover, there might be reasons that the players are not aware of, and should not be aware of. For example someone cannot hide somewhere because, actually, an invisible NPC is directly watching them. And in that kind of case, the DM is perfectly right to say "look guys, there are reasons that you don't know about and should not know about, let's move on and we'll discuss that at the end of the evening." And even, by then, the players might reconsider.

So let's not base complete arguments on situations that (almost) never happen...

It happened in the actual example that was offered that started this tangent of the discussion. The levitating shield triggering pressure plates. So it seems odd to tell people not to base their responses on the specific example given.

Disagreements about rulings are common enough that I think the topic is worth discussion.

No clarifications have been provided on the use of that word.

The entire OP is explaining what was meant. Many posts since then have also done so.

And I have done so, and I will do so again and again until you realise that the methods that you use for "debating" are wrong.

No, you compared me to another poster in such a way that implied they have a pattern of behavior, and which I may or may not understand.

And that is once more simply a lie (especially considering that the sentence above makes no sense at all). Here are you two quotes:

• Post 494: "care about something other than the little bit they are allowed to craft."
• To which I answered "It's not a question of being "allowed..."
• Post 501: "I didn't mention being allowed..."

Please start debating properly, without lying and misquoting.

No, it's not a lie....I misspoke and was unclear. That's my bad. But I had and have no intention of deceiving you.

And I have not misquoted anyone.

And i've been gaming in part with the same friends for 35+ years, and it's just not what our tables expect. When they (and I, as well) are playing, we want to DISCOVER the world the DM has prepared for us, all the intrigues and all the surprises in there. We don't want to invent them. When I want to invent things, I'm a DM, and then I can surprise and delight my players with intrigues.

Then don't describe your players as "entitled and only caring about themselves" and I won't respond about that. Instead, say your players are "surprised and delighted."

I mean, I hope you see where this confusion comes from.

I'm sorry, but that kind of approach just does not cut it. What I specifically wrote is "creative players usually focus their creativity on their characters and their stories", because the stories are what results from the interactions of the characters (which the players play) with the world, created and incarnated by the DM. It works really well that way, so much so that it is actually the very principle of the game.

Some players might feel more involved if you let them participate in your world building, why not, I've never encountered those. But our players are very much involved in the setting and what is happening there, we have summaries, some of them with very nice writing of every single adventure that we've had there. We have summary tables, I'm actually just doing one for our current Odyssey of the Dragonlords campaign, to list all the locations that we have taken our odyssey too, all the clues that we've had, all the navigation clues, etc. So we are very much involved, but as players, not dictating what is in the world but enjoying and discovering it.

And we would not have it any other way, as it would ruin the joy of exploration and discovery. Please do not try to peddle player involvement in world building as "superior", it's not.

So here you've just described your way and why it works for you. Are you saying it's superior? Or is that just me when I state what I like and why?

And again, the picture of your players now is very different than the one you painted earlier, to which I was responding, copied below.

And, in general, for good reasons, the DM thinks about the whole of the campaign and all his players, when it's very rare that a player thinks about anything else than his entitled little self.

 

[FrozenNorth]

I'm actually genuinely curious as to why it matters whether the DM restricts the available races. We've been moving away from assigning any specific traits to races. Attributes? Not tied to race. Abilities? Many of them not tied to race. Culture? Again, we're moving away from essentialism so there's no racial culture.

To me, that is slightly backwards. My understanding is that 5e is moving away from race essentialism because players don’t want to be tied to certain attributes or to a single culture but they still want to play that race.

Concluding that DMs or designers can restrict certain races “because 5e is moving away from essentialism” is ignoring the fact that 5e is moving away from essentialism because players want to play different races.

 

[Filthy Lucre]

Because, for me, if my players only cared about their own character, it'd seem pretty clear to me that my setting doesn't really interest them all that much, and so any priority I place on setting fidelity above player satisfaction is in fact, counterproductive.

Welp, I've got some bad news for you, my friend.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

No the argument of fun was brought into the discussion here by you...


The info/explanation you posted above was not previously explained anywhere in the discussion.

EDIT: Also by the book you can levitate one creature or object. As a DM I would have warned you beforehand but there is no way I would have agreed with an interpretation that allows you to levitate a single object and then pile it full of numerous other objects and/or creatures. IMO your interpretation of Levitate could be as erroneously interpreted by the players as you believe the DM's to be.

Actually Hawkeye brought up the term fun when they asked why 1 person should have fun I stead of 4. Then you asked them why 4 people having fun is better than the one. Then I replied because 80% having fun is better than 20%, but then added a line saying this math has nothing to do with players and GMs collaborating.

You can rule on levitation how you like. I think your ruling is really bad and would not let many common uses of levitation work (like levitating a log straddling a ravine so the players can walk across it to the other side) but you do it how you like.

I'll just tell you that in this situation, if you were the GM making the bad call you could have stuck by your guns in which case the game would have ended as the players would have switched to playing a different game without you as the GM. I'm not sure that's a better outcome than revising and moving on but it's your game.

 

[MGibster]

Concluding that DMs or designers can restrict certain races “because 5e is moving away from essentialism” is ignoring the fact that 5e is moving away from essentialism because players want to play different races.

And I'm asking why they want to play different races when they're all essentially the same now.