Unpopular opinions go here

[humble minion]

Because a lot of people don't entirely trust any GM from their history, but they'd still like to play. As the saying goes, "Its the only game in town".

As a DM, I don't want to have to deal with people in my game who are going to be defensively rules-lawyering me all the time and are assuming at every turn that I'm there to screw their PCs over. D&D is a game for DMs too and that's just not my idea of a fun time.

There's piles of players out there looking for a table, and a lot less DMs. If a new player (obviously this is more a problem with new groups because long-established groups hopefully trust their GM...) rocks up at my table and their playstyle is this hostile and oppositional, I'm going to quickly decide they're a bad fit for the sort of game I'm running and find someone else.

 

[teitan]

Gary constantly contradicted himself in his writing, sometimes within the span of a single year's Sorcerer's Scrolls. And then, in his posting here on ENWorld, he regularly contradicted what he'd said back when he was writing for TSR. Rewriting history to make him a clear and consistent communicator requires ignoring the very abundant paper trail.

I think it made it all the more clear. Always exceptions.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Heaven help you trying to find a decent Texas BBQ joint around here.

It’s always difficult to find “authentic” cuisine outside of its original confines. I’m not just talking about things like the Americanized versions of Chinese dishes we usually find in the USA- just a few hund miles can do it.

I went to a wedding in Missouri, and most of the people in the wedding party had all gone to school in San Antonio. So some one suggested we go to a certain chain restaurant and order fajitas.

Most. Disappointing. Fajitas. Ever.

 

[MGibster]

I went to a wedding in Missouri, and most of the people in the wedding party had all gone to school in San Antonio. So some one suggested we go to a certain chain restaurant and order fajitas.

While living in Texas, some friends invited me over to have some chili and watch the football game. That was the day I discovered what Cincinatti Chili was and coincidentally the day my faith in humanity died.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

While living in Texas, some friends invited me over to have some chili and watch the football game. That was the day I discovered what Cincinatti Chili was and coincidentally the day my faith in humanity died.

I know what that is, but have never had it.

 

[Hussar]

.

There's piles of players out there looking for a table, and a lot less DMs. If a new player (obviously this is more a problem with new groups because long-established groups hopefully trust their GM...) rocks up at my table and their playstyle is this hostile and oppositional, I'm going to quickly decide they're a bad fit for the sort of game I'm running and find someone else.

Unpopular opinion time.

Your response is not exactly proving them wrong. It’s actually just reinforcing their perception. They think the dm is out to screw them. When they challenge the dm, said dm boots them from the table, this “proving” their preconceived notions.

You assume that the players should automatically trust you. You back that up, not by proving that you can be trusted but by simply rejecting players who challenge you this getting a group that always trusts you.

It really is a vicious circle. Don’t challenge the dm or you’ll be labelled a bad player. Doesn’t matter if you’re right or not. Doesn’t matter what you think at all. Trust your dm or there’s the door

Not a healthy dynamic.

 

[humble minion]

Unpopular opinion time.

Your response is not exactly proving them wrong. It’s actually just reinforcing their perception. They think the dm is out to screw them. When they challenge the dm, said dm boots them from the table, this “proving” their preconceived notions.

You assume that the players should automatically trust you. You back that up, not by proving that you can be trusted but by simply rejecting players who challenge you this getting a group that always trusts you.

It really is a vicious circle. Don’t challenge the dm or you’ll be labelled a bad player. Doesn’t matter if you’re right or not. Doesn’t matter what you think at all. Trust your dm or there’s the door

Not a healthy dynamic.

Massive difference between 'not challenging the DM' vs 'being defensive and hostile' which is what i was talking about. I'm fine with being challenged. If the players say 'hey, what about X?' in disageement to a ruling, I'll quite often say 'oh yeah, you're right'. And I always give a new player the presumption of good faith, but i reckon I've got a right to expect the same.

And also unpopular opinion time - 'trust your DM or there's the door' is the absolute only way to play. And in fact I'd expand it to 'trust all of your fellow players or there's the door'. It's a game, we're all playing it in the hope of enjoying ourselves. We all trust our fellow players, whether they're GMing or running a PC. We trust our fellow PCs to not, for example, slit our PCs sleeping throats and run off with their stuff because 'what's what my character would do'. We trust the GM to not have seventeen sudden red dragons attack our PC out of the blue because our PC didn't want to sleep with their pet NPC. If you don't trust your gaming group not to be fun-killing jerks, why are you even there? You should be heading to the door yourself, never mind being booted from the group.

And note the difference between 'trust the GM' and 'toe the GMs line without dissent' or 'cower in fear of the GMs tyrannical dictates.' One is a healthy dynamic, the others are not.

 

[Lanefan]

And also unpopular opinion time - 'trust your DM or there's the door' is the absolute only way to play. And in fact I'd expand it to 'trust all of your fellow players or there's the door'. It's a game, we're all playing it in the hope of enjoying ourselves. We all trust our fellow players, whether they're GMing or running a PC. We trust our fellow PCs to not, for example, slit our PCs sleeping throats and run off with their stuff because 'what's what my character would do'.

I don't, in-character, and nor do I expect them to trust me. The setting is a vicious world full of vicious people, and adventurers can sometimes be the most vicious of all. What stops me from slitting another character's throat isn't trust, it's that the rest of the party will turn around and slit mine in return.

At the table I trust us to be and remain friends as we laugh about the silly things our characters do, sometimes to each other. In the fiction, anything goes.

 

[Jd Smith1]

Massive difference between 'not challenging the DM' vs 'being defensive and hostile' which is what i was talking about. I'm fine with being challenged. If the players say 'hey, what about X?' in disageement to a ruling, I'll quite often say 'oh yeah, you're right'. And I always give a new player the presumption of good faith, but i reckon I've got a right to expect the same.

And also unpopular opinion time - 'trust your DM or there's the door' is the absolute only way to play. And in fact I'd expand it to 'trust all of your fellow players or there's the door'. It's a game, we're all playing it in the hope of enjoying ourselves. We all trust our fellow players, whether they're GMing or running a PC. We trust our fellow PCs to not, for example, slit our PCs sleeping throats and run off with their stuff because 'what's what my character would do'. We trust the GM to not have seventeen sudden red dragons attack our PC out of the blue because our PC didn't want to sleep with their pet NPC. If you don't trust your gaming group not to be fun-killing jerks, why are you even there? You should be heading to the door yourself, never mind being booted from the group.

And note the difference between 'trust the GM' and 'toe the GMs line without dissent' or 'cower in fear of the GMs tyrannical dictates.' One is a healthy dynamic, the others are not.

Well said.

An adventure group, regardless of setting or system, is a squad, and living in that close of a social construct, are forced to rely on each other under the worst of circumstances, so there must be trust. In that situation, if a member of the group does not conform to the group standard, they are out, and booting the player is simply the logical extension of this.

 

[Cruentus]

Your response is not exactly proving them wrong. It’s actually just reinforcing their perception. They think the dm is out to screw them. When they challenge the dm, said dm boots them from the table, this “proving” their preconceived notions.

You assume that the players should automatically trust you. You back that up, not by proving that you can be trusted but by simply rejecting players who challenge you this getting a group that always trusts you.

But this, of course, goes both ways. And a lot of this - table style, approach, how disagreements are handled, etc. - should be discussed and agreed before hitting the table at all. I’ve had players do what you’re saying - start off hostile or argumentative, reject what the DM is doing or trying to do, early on in campaigns. So it cuts both ways.

Did you ever use the rules from Further Afield? I've held off on picking that up, but I find all of Flatland's systems to be super-interesting and creative. I still use the dungeon building templates in Grizzled Heroes for my Shadowdark games, for instance.

Yes, I have all the Flatland products, and combed through them for the skills, spells, monsters, etc. The only problem I have is that when I read an expansion like Further Afield, I immediately want to add THAT into the campaign, or the threat pack, and then get jammed up with trying to do or add too much. I am going to add either the Blight or the Veil threat pack to a nearby ancient ruin, triggered by an NPC who is traveling there now, having passed through the village, and then let that run with the escalating and spreading effects. Or they might totally ignore that (which will escalate) and go do something else. There are a lot of threads in front of them.

I’m running a sandbox, so it’s totally open for the players, rather than how I expect I might do a Beyond Campaign where I would link the threat packs, or have them ‘in the timeline’ to occur (or not, depending on how play develops, or what the characters do.).