Unpopular opinions go here

[MGibster]

Last time I ran a game at my FLGS, Deadlands, one of the players would go out of their way to tell me he was reloading his pistol at the end of every encounter. After he did this the third time, I told him it was unnecessary. "Your character is a professional gunfighter, and I will always assume he reloads his weapons once a fight has ended." I can only assume he's had a GM who would say, "Hur! Hur! You didn't say your reloaded."

 

[Thomas Shey]

Is it possible to trust the DM but not the fiction?

Not sure what you mean there, but I've certainly trusted GM's intentions but not their judgment.

 

[Thomas Shey]

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.

And that's fine for you; but the inverse of my former statement is true. Scar tissue in this area is common enough that not dealing with people who have some reflexive defensiveness can easily translate in many cases into "not have any player pool to draw from".

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.

And when virtually all of those piles of players have some degree of this? I think you're seriously underestimating how common this is. Especially when you consider such people are going to be disproportionately represented in people looking for new games outside an extent group.

 

[Thomas Shey]

And also unpopular opinion time - 'trust your DM or there's the door' is the absolute only way to play.

Nah. If I was required to absolutely trust my GM's judgment, I'd have been out of the hobby 40 years ago. I'm more prone to wanting to trust their intentions, but even with that, there are too many GMs who have been trained to have an excessively top-down approach for me to even automatically write them off on that grounds.

 

[Lanefan]

Last time I ran a game at my FLGS, Deadlands, one of the players would go out of their way to tell me he was reloading his pistol at the end of every encounter. After he did this the third time, I told him it was unnecessary.

As would I, as the player had by then established reloading as a SOP.

Had that SOP not been established, however, I-as-GM wouldn't assume anything.

"Your character is a professional gunfighter, and I will always assume he reloads his weapons once a fight has ended." I can only assume he's had a GM who would say, "Hur! Hur! You didn't say your reloaded."

 

[Guest 7042500]

Unpopular opinion: If a player doesn't trust me after 3 or 4 sessions they are uninvited. I give time for some accomidation, but constantly dealing with a player who is so convinced I am out to brutalize them is mentally and emotionally exhausting.

I am entitled to enjoy my own game. I'm not a therapist.

 

[Guest 7042500]

I can only assume he's had a GM who would say, "Hur! Hur! You didn't say your reloaded."

I call this "Zipper GMing."

"You never specified you zipped up your zipper when you got dressed, so when you hit the dirt you skinned your dinkie and you now have -2 on all rolls."

 

[payn]

Restating the same unpopular opinions multiple times isnt necessary.

 

[Alzrius]

Restating the same unpopular opinion multiple times isn't necessary.

 

[Faolyn]

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.

So your table plays evil characters?

Why would anyone travel with anyone they don't trust to not slit their throats?