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Message: <blockquote data-quote="l0lzero" data-source="post: 6901968" data-attributes="member: 6855137">I would concede that the players are imposing their play style on the DM, I just don't find it to be as egregious an act given that the players already cede everything but their character's actions to the DM's whim. DM gets more authority and in exchange tries to tell a story that the players enjoy.I was make an ethical judgement on the use of punishment to compel players' cooperation. I agree that it's also ineffective, I just happen to also think it's unethical, and since I'm not a mod I don't have to remain neutral.From the information I had, I didn't think that advice was effective, especially given the comment that he had attempted it before and it produced no change. I type a lot, if you think that's a lecture, I'm sorry, I'm going for my 2nd degree and am used to fluffing the word count and trying to be specific about concepts and ideas, tends to make me wordy. Not trying to lecture, I apologize.The only details I saw as relevant was that they had attempted to have a talk, and that the behavior continued. Sounds like enough information to assume that such a talk won't likely have any different results since it was attempted before. Apparently (evidenced by the OPs later posts) the talk was not at all in-depth. I was wrong on my assumption, my bad.When I say effectively, I'm characterizing. If you think that's an unfair characterization, that's fine, but to outright dismiss it as though I am supposedly quoting him is (I use quotes to quote, just sayin') is inaccurate. Looking back at HIS specific wording, yes, that was an unfair characterization, I apologize.<.< I didn't think I was being mean to anyone. Did I call him names? I specifically said I don't think he's a bully, and that I didn't think it was intentional. I'm explaining why the "punish the players for defying your setting/story/whatever" method is bad and bullying behavior. It was a LOT of the suggestions in the thread up to that point, that's a BAD suggestion.Nope, I didn't, you didn't miss anything, I had read he had talked to them about it but the behavior continued, assumed it was a dead end path.You're right, and I have reassessed, I was writing from memory not direct quotes, so my recollection was skewed by the plethora of posts urging him to punish the players into complying with the tone he was looking for. My bad.I wasn't trying to dump on the OP, I was dumping on the idea that you should punish players for not playing the way you want them to. As DM you already have control over LITERALLY everything else in the game world; demanding certain behaviors from your players under threat of punishment is bullying (it's just like someone demanding your lunch money from you, except in this instance the DM would be the bully and the lunch money is the happiness gained from participating in a hobby). I think DMs who think that way need to take a step back and think about what it is they're really asking of the players at that point; will you sit here and roll and speak for this character for me while I run a game for myself?Look, I'm not mad at anyone here, and I am definitely wordy, so if post-length is associated somehow with aggressiveness in people's minds, I can't really help that but I'm not trying to be aggressive. I don't think the OP, or anyone suggesting those tactics, are bad people, I just think that they haven't really thought about what they're actually doing when they do such things. It's not like the players came in and killed all the towns-folk and tried to "accost" their corpses, they just didn't take it all that seriously. If you get so offended at someone not playing the game the way you want it to be played that you would be willing to attempt to ruin their fun to spite them, I think that's the wrong, and unethical, approach. I don't think ANYONE here is evil, so if my posts came across that way, I sincerely apologize, but I can think particular actions aren't good. If me voicing my opinion on such a topic comes across accusatory, my bad. Clearly it's a fairly common behavior, and I'd have to think a lot of people were bad people just because I disagreed with them, which is a terrible way to live life.My whole intention was to offer why I thought that method was wrong, and then suggest a different approach; to run a different style of game. Mayhaps I should spend more effort espousing the different idea than poo-pooing the ideas I disagree with (I still don't think an "adult conversation" is going to be all that effective, but that's clearly intuition as my interpretation of his comments were off-base).Sorry for the super-long posts, like I said, I'm still stuck in college mode and it makes me vociferous.To The OP ( [MENTION=6783980]intently[/MENTION] ):If you felt like I was attacking you personally, I'm sorry, that was not my intention. I thought I had made it clear that I didn't think you were a bad person, and if it came across that way, my bad man. I just don't think the punishment route is going to produce results that you are at all interested in, and I feel like the conversation route is also unlikely to be all that effective because people all have different preferences.I do think it might be possible for you to have a serious tone to your game, but I think it boils down to what the players themselves take seriously; people have to be able to identify with their characters and if they don't find particular topics (religion, politics, economics, etc.) to be interesting or view them as serious topics, I don't see the players being able to identify well enough to participate in a serious fashion. You might consider talking to them about what kinds of themes and ideas they do take seriously (maybe they don't particularly care about politics, but they all value freedom as a concept, so your serious game could revolve around dismantling a network of slavers, or they value innocence, so you could run a more serious game around a cult that targets children, or something along those lines).If your group enjoys sports, you could easily have them play characters who are athletes and they'd be, in my estimation, more likely to take such a game seriously. The game starts with them in their starting town, they are atheletes, they compete a few games to nail down the rules of the sport and make sure the sport plays well. Then they win some regional tournament, and then are sent off to some far-flung major city to participate in some grand tournament. Bandits, rival teams, bookies, etc. could all try any number of ways to sabotage them, and the players could engage in social/combat encounters to thwart such plans. Basically, the sports are the context in which the players are drawn into the fictional world enough to take it seriously, and the game itself is the bookies and rivals and whatnot trying to stop them from winning the tournament or whatever.Once they've gotten accustomed to playing in games which are serious in nature, then you can then branch out and begin incorporating other themes and concepts that they were not previously amenable to. I do understand the desire to get this campaign played given the relatively short life-span of editions, so I can understand if you're not in favor of such a suggestion, I just think it would work better now, and in the long run, if you reworked the game to focus on the players' areas of interest, rather than the world that you have made.Again, I would totally play in such a world because I happen to have an interest in religions, so don't take this to mean I think "your campaign sounds dumb, you're dumb" because I don't think that AT ALL, I just don't think your players particularly care about it given the information available. You can keep trying to make the world work, more power to you, I just think you'll be beating your head on the wall for a while until you can find some way to tie your setting to things they care about. If your players are amenable to a retcon, you could easily incorporate the sport storyline into the world and use that as a jumping off point, a lot of sports originated from religious practices and festivals, so I think the two tie-in rather nicely, if you think that might get them more involved in your world in a way that you would prefer.</blockquote>

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