any person can be wrong... including the DM (IN A COOP GAME LIKE OURS)
Yes, certainly, but in this case the action was one which I don't think it is possible for a GM to be wrong about. We're not even dealing of a case of a red dragon in a room with no exits big enough to let the red dragon out, which is unartful when it happens by accident, but is certainly never wrong. A manticore not in a desert by accident isn't even bad DMing.
no but the DM made a mistake and did not know that....
So? Not knowing what the favored terrain of a monster happens to be does not make placing that monster outside of that favored terrain wrong.
my friends are free to question me when ever they like...
Sure. But I don't see your point. Sometimes questioning is good. Sometimes it is not. This particular case seems pretty clearly in the not category. To illustrate my point so people could tell the difference between the two, I wrote a little script intended to be humorous, showing how - even if you have the right to question a GM, and even if your information is correct - you can still be wrong.
whoa.... in a thread where I keep being told I am being to know it alley and telling people how to game where do you come off commenting on any player skill with no info?
Well, I don't recall saying anything to you personally, but yes, I think I can evaluate skill in a RPer just as I can evaluate skill in a singer or a painter. As for no info, I certainly wouldn't be commenting on the situation if someone hadn't described it.
no he only failed to do so the way your group does it... by my standard it was fine...
No comment then.
read that again... and realize you are talking about a fellow gamer you have never met nor did you even see what happened, and to make things worse the only side you have for learning info admits HE not the player made a mistake....
Read that again, and realize you are talking about me talking about the fictional player of 'Luke' in my example intend to illustrate how questioning the GM could be poor play. That's the example where I have enough information to draw the conclusions I made regarding the player's behavior.
where are you getting this from??!?!?!!?
From the example I wrote.
you just openly insulted me and my players, and a dozen other people I know...
FULL STOP...
So, you're telling me that as players you are all the time trying to wheedle out of a GM whether he made something up on the spot or whether he had planned it ahead of time, and that conversely as the GM you never see any reason to hide this information? And your insulted because I see that as poor play, full stop? There isn't much I can do about that.
WHO GIVES YOU THE RIGHT TO MAKE SUCH JUDGMENTS???
You are of the mistaken impression that someone has to grant me the right.
After blowing your top though with all your big capital letters, you just get a little bit weird.
if in the middle of my game I stall for a moment and say something silly like "When you finish or need more help come find me I have a job for you"
and one of my players jokes "Oh, is it on my mini map as a mission now?" we can all joke for a moment then keep going...
sometimes I just openly say things like that... and my PC love my games for it.
during mystery....
PC1 "Hey, I bet the gardner saw something, lets go question him..."
Me "To be honest I didn't think of a gardner at all, so you go question him, he knows nothing and then..."
PC1 "OK, then lets try..."
I don't make my players waste time on every false lead they invent... sometimes it's ok or fun, and sometimes it's just easier to say "Oops"
so maybe the GM could talk to the luke player like a grown adult and friend and ask "Why don't you get where I'm going?" or just come out and say "Trust me this is leading somewhere..."
To begin with, a lot these suggestions you are making you'll find me utilizing in my posts or my example script as a way to try to deal with situations that are going wrong and put them back on the right track. What you are missing is that you shouldn't have to tell your grown up adult friend, "Trust me this is leading somewhere." Your grown up adult friend if he's really adult friend shouldn't be such a whiny baby that needs his hand held and explicit reassurance all the time. I mean it's great and all that you have the patience to keep patting his hand every time he doesn't know where this is going, but you know, maybe it would be great if you demanded as much maturity from the players as you are insisting is there from the DM. Unless you think the example Luke is exhibiting good form and manners, in which case, again, I have no response I can make to that.
I can even tell you what made me snap at a dark sun game once and literally (no really literally) bang my head on the table.
Yeah, speaking of maturity from the players... what exact conclusions do you want me to draw from that? I'm sorry your bad experiences with DMs make you 'snap' and force you to do things that my nine year olds would get a scolding for doing. I hope you have better experiences in the future.
except I have never met anyone like this player you describe
Ok...
the steam rolling was not acknowledging a fellow rpg fan's feelings and interests and instead just push past it...
He has feelings about manticores showing up in the desert that can't be smoothed over by any of the dozens of plausible explanations for why he's observed a manticore outside the desert, and further those feelings compel him to bluntly challenge DM's placement of the monster??? Seriously? It doesn't matter what compelled the player to bring it up. I don't know how much more obvious it can be that responding to what the DM describes by challenging his right to describe it and demanding he retract it is not functional or attractive play by the player, nor can I imagine a more trivial example to illustrate the point than the one Hussar provided me with of a player demanding that manticore's not appear in forests because their favored terrain is desert. The powers of my imagination couldn't have come up with such a straw man example. If I'd imagined it, I would have rejected it as too absurd to believe. There is another thread about whether RPGs are watchable. Well, if this happened during a big formal podcast with an audience in the room, I'd hang my head in shame to be involved with. As a member of the audience, my feelings would provoke a desire for me to leave the room in embarrassment for the people on the stage. It's worst sort of example of rules lawyerish play, worthy of appearing in a comedy movie.
Sorry you find that opinion insulting, but I suspect I'm not going to prove to be all that unique in that regard to this judgment. Please if you are invited to perform a role-playing game for a large audience, for your sake, don't hold in your mind that this sort of rules lawyering and challenging the DM is an example of skillful play by a player at a table.