D&D General The Virtues of Prioritizing What You Like, as a DM

[Clint_L]

A teacher as an adult is in a privileged position with respect to their students. I’m glad that you can teach material that you personally are enthusiastic about, but crucially, in an academic environment, whether your students are enthusiastic about the material or whether they would like to learn something else is irrelevant.

Oh wow. You couldn't be more wrong.

Say, for the sake of argument that you arrive in class on the first day of the semester jazzed to teach about the Western theater of the American Civil War. I guarantee that no student will stop you to say “Look, we’ve really enjoyed the past three years of military history, but we all agreed that it was Bill’s turn to teach this semester. He’s really excited about Star Wars, and I, for one, have a cool concept for a Jedi Knight that is weak in the force.”

No, they'll just completely tune out and learn nothing. I guarantee you that teens required to be in class when they'd often rather do anything but are a much tougher audience than a few friends you enjoy gaming with.

 

[Toe Knee Nose]

Oh wow. You couldn't be more wrong.

No, they'll just completely tune out and learn nothing. I guarantee you that teens required to be in class when they'd often rather do anything but are a much tougher audience than a few friends you enjoy gaming with.

As an ESL teacher whose students are forced to be in my classes, I can 100% vouch for this. It is PAINFUL teaching required classes where the students would rather be anywhere else than in the class.

 

[Scott Christian]

I can see that if playing in a game store or library or similar; but depending on your surroundings and-or who you know "on the inside" you could maybe find a public or quasi-public space such as a school or university classroom on the weekends where, while in theory it's public, you're highly unlikely to be disturbed or disrupted.

There's one building on the local campus here that every Sunday afternoon (all year round!) you can hear the sounds of people's RPG games echoing down the halls, and I'm fairly sure not all those games are bring run by the student gaming club.

I second this. Our public library has individual rooms you can sign out. They are built for six to eight people, have comfortable chairs, and are quiet. Also, food and drink are permitted. (No alcohol of course.)

 

[Scott Christian]

No, they'll just completely tune out and learn nothing. I guarantee you that teens required to be in class when they'd often rather do anything but are a much tougher audience than a few friends you enjoy gaming with.

Truer words have never been spoken.

 

[Dessert Nomad]

Umm, yes? Kinda by definition. If you state that you will not, under any circumstances, do something, you are, in fact, delivering an ultimatum.

Under that definition, pretty much everyone is routinely delivering ultimatums, just establishing basic things like game system, time and location, drug use (including alcohol) at the table, what sort of sexual themes, time, and a bunch of other things. Most people are going to have a hard line on at least one of those - it's a rare person who's fine with literally any time/location since most people have jobs and aren't going to take a plane flight for a session, or who's fine with anything from 'never even mention kissing' to 'explicit ERP including visual aids', or fine with anything from 'no one may drink any alcohol at all' to 'we're going to pass out drunk every session and maybe throw in some harder drugs too'.

If everyone is constantly issuing dozens or more of ultimatums as a matter of routine, then why even point out that someone is issuing an ultimatum? What's the significance of 'issuing an ultimatum' if it's just a routine thing literally everyone does? In the original message I responded to, the DM 'issuing an ultimatum' was intended to paint them as doing something bad and out of the ordinary, but it's a criticism along the lines of 'the DM was breathing' - everyone at the table is breathing unless you manage to get actual undead to show up, pointing it out doesn't have any significance.

I don't think it's a problem if they don't want to GM. It does become a problem if they're using their position to force a particular game or play style on the rest of the group.

If a member of my play group said "It's my house we play at, so we're going to play 5e because it's my house" with actual sincerity, then I'm going to leave the group. That's not how friends treat each other, and I have no interest in playing with people who aren't friends (or at the very least friend-adjacent).

These threads are always so bizarre to me. The idea of demanding that someone host a game at their house that they don't want to participate in and accuse them of being a 'bad friend' for their gaming preferences and limits on who they allow into their own space is absolutely foreign to me. I respect my friends' choices of what hobbies they like and don't like (some don't play any RPGs at all!) and on what they want to allow or not allow in their own homes, and I think that the blatant disrespect of treating someone deciding what games to participate in and what activities to host at their house is the 'not how friends treat each other' behavior. But it's so outside of my experience that if someone did react like that, I'd assume there was some deeper grudge than 'Dave doesn't want to play X game, and if we're running a game Dave doesn't want to play he's not going to host it'

A: I am going to run Game X
B: I'm not interested in playing Game X, so, I'll bow out.
A: But, we game at your house... if you bow out then none of us can play.
B: Well, according to the collected wisdom at En World, I should never have to compromise, so, I don't want to play Game X. If you're running Game X, I'm not interested in playing.
A: Well... I guess we're going to play Game Y then.

Why doesn't A offer to host, or find another player to host, or find another location to play in, or play online? I've played games in dorm rooms, in apartments, in off-hours classrooms, in parks, in gaming stores, in people's basements, in people's garages, and a lot of places over time, B's gaming room is not the only place in the world where it's possible to game. This sounds like B trying to guilt-trip A into doing something A won't enjoy because it's easier than B sorting things out, and again I'd say that's the 'not how friends treat each other' behavior. Though again this is one of those 'don't see it IRL' things because I just don't know any As who'd demand B host a game B doesn't want to play.

 

[TwoSix]

These threads are always so bizarre to me. The idea of demanding that someone host a game at their house that they don't want to participate in and accuse them of being a 'bad friend' for their gaming preferences and limits on who they allow into their own space is absolutely foreign to me. I respect my friends' choices of what hobbies they like and don't like (some don't play any RPGs at all!) and on what they want to allow or not allow in their own homes, and I think that the blatant disrespect of treating someone deciding what games to participate in and what activities to host at their house is the 'not how friends treat each other' behavior. But it's so outside of my experience that if someone did react like that, I'd assume there was some deeper grudge than 'Dave doesn't want to play X game, and if we're running a game Dave doesn't want to play he's not going to host it'

No one is "demanding" anything of anyone. What a bizarre thing to suggest.

My friend has offered to use his house for our gaming venue for the past dozen or so years. He takes quite a bit of pride in his overall gaming setup, and enjoys hosting these functions.

It's the idea that he would possibly leverage the fact he's hosting to dictate what games we play that I found foreign and repellent. It would be one thing if he said "Hey, I'm having a Catan night on Friday, come on over". It's another, worse, thing if he would say "You guys come over for board game night every other Friday, but since it's my house I'm always going to pick the games we play that night."

If he doesn't like a particular game we probably won't play it, but that's true for almost any member of our group. We don't have much difficulty ever in achieving consensus as to what to play.

If most of your play revolves around online play, or organized or convention play, most of your games will revolve around trying to build a table for the game concept. There are very different social dynamics and expectations when you have a long-term table, and your focus is the reverse, it's finding a game concept that fits the already established table.

And even those dynamics are splintered for groups that have a primary GM and mostly recipient players, versus tables that have multiple GMs that want to take turns running games.

 

[billd91]

It's the idea that he would possibly leverage the fact he's hosting to dictate what games we play that I found foreign and repellent. It would be one thing if he said "Hey, I'm having a Catan night on Friday, come on over". It's another, worse, thing if he would say "You guys come over for board game night every other Friday, but since it's my house I'm always going to pick the games we play that night."

If he doesn't like a particular game we probably won't play it, but that's true for almost any member of our group. We don't have much difficulty ever in achieving consensus as to what to play. [emphasis mine]

Well, there you go. You're already pretty much self-censoring your game choices for the host's preferences (or any other player's). He may not be "demanding" it, but you're still compliant.

And it's not that doing so is unreasonable in any way. It's perfectly normal. But you see how this could develop into someone at the table feeling their gaming itch is consistently unfulfilled or at least not as fulfilled as others' might be. And while your group may be pretty easygoing about playing a variety of games, not all groups/players will be.

 

[cranberry]

Of course the GM should run what they like. They should have fun too. It's not a job for a paycheck.

 

[TwoSix]

Well, there you go. You're already pretty much self-censoring your game choices for the host's preferences (or any other player's). He may not be "demanding" it, but you're still compliant.

And it's not that doing so is unreasonable in any way. It's perfectly normal. But you see how this could develop into someone at the table feeling their gaming itch is consistently unfulfilled or at least not as fulfilled as others' might be. And while your group may be pretty easygoing about playing a variety of games, not all groups/players will be.

Sure? But we've been all in the hobby for a while, I imagine, we all have dozens of games and game concepts that we're attached to but also realize we're probably never going to get a chance to play.

And that's OK! Having a solid play group is so much more important than game X over game Y, or setting A over setting B. As I've said in other threads, as an example, I'm pretty much over 5e, but I'm not going to derail a table because I'm a bit bored. It's not hard to have a great time at a table you like even if you're not enthusiastic about the system.

If you absolutely can't stand a game, then sure, step away graciously. Or have a conversation, maybe other players aren't actually that enthusiastic about it either. But if you're really just completely misaligned with your group, don't actively be a spoilsport because of your gaming preferences.

 

[Dessert Nomad]

No one is "demanding" anything of anyone. What a bizarre thing to suggest.

If someone hosts game nights at their house, and you state that if they only want to host games they want to play in, you'll call them a bad person and consider them not a friend, then as far as I'm concerned that's a demand that they host games they don't want to play. You may not actually use the word 'demand', but that's clearly what's going on.

"I'm not demanding anything, I'm just saying that if you only host games you want to play and decline to host this game I want you to host, I don't consider you a friend and will cut ties with you" sounds like there's actually a demand in there to me.