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Message: <blockquote data-quote="l0lzero" data-source="post: 6900683" data-attributes="member: 6855137">Not wanting to get into a politics/religious discussion regarding this, but who you are attracted to isn't a choice, so I don't see how the player could impose their "values" (I don't think sexual preference is a value, it's a fact of a person's traits) in this instance. In this analogy the DM is trying to punish the player for the player's choices.Absolutely, but the OP was looking for ways to compel his players to, effectively, enjoy his style of play. I think that's wrong and an inappropriate way to do things.But he's not having this discussion with his players, he's asking for advice from us. He said he already talked to his players and they made no progress in this regard, and so now he wants to find a way to, effectively, punish them in game to change the player's behaviors out of game. Clearly this is not a well-functioning group with different goals for play.I agree.That's kind of the point I'm getting at; the DM has one idea of how it should run, and the players have another. If the DM wants to continue running the game, he should adapt his expectations or not run the game with that group. I understand he has a desire to tell a particular story in a particular style, but desiring something is not justification for imposing something the players clearly don't want on them.From my understanding they already have had a talk, and the players have continued the behavior, which to me, is a clear indicator that they're not interested in that style of game. If the DM is determined to tell that type of story, he should seek a more agreeable audience, or, he should produce content that his current audience wants. Justin Beiber doesn't perform at metal clubs for the same reason that Megadeath doesn't tour churches; the audience is not appropriate for the content.I happen to have the view that the DM, in exchange for control and authority, is responsible for telling a story that the players want to participate in, and if they are behaving disruptively then the story being presented is likely not one the players are interested in. When I play or run, I try and gauge the people I'm playing with to see if we're enjoying ourselves. If we're not enjoying ourselves, I will work (as a player or DM) to make things more interesting (whether that means I start taking actions that push the narrative in a particular direction as a player, or I work to alter the story as a DM). I just feel that the players start from a point of disadvantage (subject to DM whim, ignorance of the plot, etc.) and so the DM should cater to his audience.A better accounting of the table's play would probably help shed some light on this situation, as I tend to assume people attempt to minimize their own fault when describing things, so when I read that the players are mocking his content (making jokes about the actions of NPCs or the setting itself) I infer from that that the mocking is fairly serious (I will mock something I think is ridiculous in a game, especially published adventures when it's not the DM's special pet project, but a single incident every once in a while isn't going to put someone off) and that the DM is being put off by it because it happens consistently, rather than sporadically. Maybe the party isn't joking as often as it'd take for me to get annoyed (I run fairly lax table talk rules, sometimes people just want to talk about something else, it's not the end of the world) or the DM is not particularly good at taking criticism, I can't really make great assumptions since all we have are a few posts by the DM, which also color my opinion negatively in the sense that the posts appear to me to be antagonistic towards the players ("These players don't take MY game seriously enough for my tastes, and are making too many jokes at my expense" which may or may not be an accurate representation of the situation).Like I said in my other really stupid long post, I would totally play in that story and I would enjoy it, even being an atheist pretending to be a devout follower, I'm cool with that, other people not so much, and I think he may have chosen the wrong story for the audience he has, like a DJ at a metal club dropping "Baby" by Justin Beiber or the sound guy at a church throwing out "New Faith" by Slayer in the middle of mass. It's not that either one is inherently bad (ok, beiber is probably inherently bad, I just can't prove that empirically...), it's just not something the audience is going to be interested in.</blockquote>

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