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Generic Octopus
Mar 27, 2010

Taear posted:

It's more that I don't want to play with a grid and to me combat is something that happens in between stories.

There are loads of systems better equipped to handle this than any edition of D&D, 4e included.

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Taear
Nov 26, 2004

Ask me about the shitty opinions I have about Paradox games!

Generic Octopus posted:

There are loads of systems better equipped to handle this than any edition of D&D, 4e included.

I love forgotten realms. Plus D&D is huge and well known, easier to get people to play with me.

Splicer
Oct 16, 2006

from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

Taear posted:

I am not at all saying that because 4E combat is more complex it means you have less options for roleplay. It's more that I don't want to play with a grid and to me combat is something that happens in between stories. I feel like 4E was fixing a problem that I didn't have which was that spellcasters were more interesting, so they gave everyone loads of abilities to make up for it and it became a slog for me. I 100% feel that 5th is the easiest to just dump the grid with.

I guess 4th felt more like we talked about and did combat and things happened as a result of it. The best analogy I can think of is this.
You work in tech support. One manager focuses on you serving the customer and making sure things are fixed, sales happen but the people in that manager's team don't talk much about them, they're just part of the job, although a few people concentrate on them for bonus.
The other manager has a sales board and loves to talk about sales techniques and the amount you get in bonus for each one.
In both situations the job is identical but you FEEL like you're a salesperson in the latter. 4E felt like the latter, only sales is combat (duh).

I'd love the system in a computer game because I love complex character creation and loads of options, but in tabletop it's just not how my friends play.

And in regards to the player's handbook thing people commented on - I own it. My friends do not. They create their characters with me, because they're less invested in D&D than I am. This was again harder in 4th because all the options made it take ages.
It appears your problem is that you don't actually like D&D. Have you ever considered playing a game designed for your playing preferences? Reign owns bones and I think you might like it a lot.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

gradenko_2000 posted:

It's not anybody's fault. The DM does not have an absolute lockdown on the details of the world, and insistence on having so is part of the problem of "being a DM is just so much work".

Sometimes he does, in fact, have an absolute lockdown on details of the world? And it's not necessarily a good or bad thing, just the way some groups work, with the GM as narrator and the players in control of only their characters?

Even in the games I've played in where the GM relinquished absolute control, most of the PC's were lazy shits who did only the minimum amount of work necessary and left the remainder to the GM anyway.

golden bubble
Jun 3, 2011

yospos

Taear posted:

I love forgotten realms. Plus D&D is huge and well known, easier to get people to play with me.

At this point, you might as well play microlite20 and claim that it's a forgotten variant of D&D. Turns out, if you cut out the "tedious combat complexity", you can get D&D down to 16 pages of rules, and they're freely available as well. I'm sure you could convince your group that it actually is 1E D&D if they've never actually played 1E D&D.

Generic Octopus
Mar 27, 2010

Taear posted:

I love forgotten realms. Plus D&D is huge and well known, easier to get people to play with me.

You can use a setting in any system though if that's what you want, it's not like FR or Eberron or Dark Sun can't function without a D&D ruleset. It just sounded like getting your players to try something different wouldn't be too hard since you said they weren't as into it as you.

PurpleXVI posted:

Sometimes he does, in fact, have an absolute lockdown on details of the world? And it's not necessarily a good or bad thing, just the way some groups work, with the GM as narrator and the players in control of only their characters?

Even in the games I've played in where the GM relinquished absolute control, most of the PC's were lazy shits who did only the minimum amount of work necessary and left the remainder to the GM anyway.

Having players that uninterested in the game/world would be a nightmare for me to dm for. I would absolutely call that a Bad Thing.

Taear
Nov 26, 2004

Ask me about the shitty opinions I have about Paradox games!

Splicer posted:

It appears your problem is that you don't actually like D&D. Have you ever considered playing a game designed for your playing preferences? Reign owns bones and I think you might like it a lot.

I don't see how you get that from what I've said. There's a difference between very abilities heavy combat and the lighter combat of 5E that I enjoy.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

Generic Octopus posted:

Having players that uninterested in the game/world would be a nightmare for me to dm for. I would absolutely call that a Bad Thing.

You sound as though you've never experienced this. Have you actually played RPG's at any point or do you just talk about them? Because in my experience, players who're willing to contribute to the setting or background in any sense are maybe one in twenty, and that's being generous. The reason that being a GM is often stereotyped as hard, thankless work is that most players are lazy shits.

Generic Octopus
Mar 27, 2010
I guess I'm just not friends with lazy shits then.

Chernobyl Peace Prize
May 7, 2007

Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

I used to have more people in gaming groups like the ones Purple's describing, but I feel like that was a high school "we're bored so I guess we're doing this, now?" kinda thing. Meanwhile the people I game with nowadays, since we're all Olds with precious little free time, double the gently caress down on the stuff we ARE playing.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy

PurpleXVI posted:

Sometimes he does, in fact, have an absolute lockdown on details of the world? And it's not necessarily a good or bad thing, just the way some groups work, with the GM as narrator and the players in control of only their characters?

To be clear, in the example that I was responding to, the players want to drink elven wine, and then the DM shoots it down because he never explicitly said that that tavern makes elven wine.

Now, if the in-game universe doesn't have elves period, or if the absence of elven wine is somehow a critical aspect of the as-yet-undiscovered plot, I'd certainly understand the DM ruling on it, but otherwise, I really don't see why a DM needs to be the last word on every last possible aspect of the world unless it was explicitly clear with the group that that was the sort of game they were playing and that they're okay with it. A player shouldn't need permission from the DM to be able to tell that they're, I don't know, sitting on a bench rather than on an armchair.

Every game I've ever GM'ed I've let the players make declarations about the world they're inhabiting, up to and including the Rogue rolling a nat 20 on his Investigation check and me just outright asking him what he found.

PeterWeller
Apr 21, 2003

I told you that story so I could tell you this one.

Slimnoid posted:

At this point I think he's doing the latter, since virtually every post I see from him now is just OH MAN THE HOBBY IS HORRIBLE HERE LEMME TELL YOU WHY.

Like, Cirno. Dude. We get it. You can stop now.

I think staring into the darkness too long finally broke him.

Rannos22
Mar 30, 2011

Everything's the same as it always is.

PurpleXVI posted:

You sound as though you've never experienced this. Have you actually played RPG's at any point or do you just talk about them? Because in my experience, players who're willing to contribute to the setting or background in any sense are maybe one in twenty, and that's being generous. The reason that being a GM is often stereotyped as hard, thankless work is that most players are lazy shits.

I didn't realize the groups I play with were such an anomaly that almost everyone in it loves to add their own quirk to the setting and background. Are you sure that the problem with your group is "lazy players" and not "players that dislike playing d&d but are too polite to speak up"?

Guy A. Person
May 23, 2003

Some people just aren't that creative or have different goals when role playing. They would rather just interact with the world that's been created for them rather than spend time cooking up a backstory. I don't see anything super wrong with that.

I don't think that's what's being debated here; it's more about improvisation like Spectral Werewolf brought up. No DM can create a world that is fully realized right down to the last detail, so if one of your players says "I go into the bar to look for wenches" or "I go outside to pick a flower for the governess" the DM shouldn't immediately fire back with "there ARE NO flowers or wenches, I DECIDE what exists in this game world!"

thespaceinvader
Mar 30, 2011

The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

Taear posted:

I don't see how you get that from what I've said. There's a difference between very abilities heavy combat and the lighter combat of 5E that I enjoy.

'Combat is what happens between interesting stories'.

The D&D rules are like, 90% combat.

You do the maths.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

Rannos22 posted:

I didn't realize the groups I play with were such an anomaly that almost everyone in it loves to add their own quirk to the setting and background. Are you sure that the problem with your group is "lazy players" and not "players that dislike playing d&d but are too polite to speak up"?

Man, I have played everything, it's not just D&D. AFMBE, Exalted, D&D editions 2 through 5(with settings from Dark Sun through Planescape and Birthright, the Birthright game was about the only time I felt I got a group excited to do some writing, but that seemed more down to a lucky batch than anything about the setting), Mutant Future, oVamp, Alternity, Shadowrun, Lacuna, Reign, Godlike, Kult... I mean, yeah, if it was just that no one liked D&D, I could buy that. But it's not always the same group, it's not always the same system, I've even gone so far as to incentivize doing a bit of extra writing for the setting/character backgrounds with bonus XP, but I've never gotten more than 50% participation even with that.

In my experience the ones who do end up joining in the writing are often the ones who also end up GM'ing, the people who are routinely players just... either lack the imagination or lack the interest.

Gradenko: Of course, I'm entirely with you on the small details. If my players have no reason to assume that either elves or wine don't exist, sure, they can extrapolate that elven wine does, in fact, exist, and that they can order it. That won't draw a hissyfit from me or any sane GM. Stuff like "a natural 20 investigate lets you just come up with stuff," though, is a lot more down to groups themselves. In some games, I'd most certainly roll with it, but if I have a very distinct idea in my mind of what's going on(say the party's investigating a crime scene), then I'll take the narrative lead. I mostly bristled because you seemed to suggest that the former was the only civilized option.

Splicer
Oct 16, 2006

from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

Taear posted:

I don't see how you get that from what I've said. There's a difference between very abilities heavy combat and the lighter combat of 5E that I enjoy.
To use your analogy, D&D is a job where you perform tech support with substandard equipment, lovely wages, and no advancement prospects. The only reason to stay is the mad bank from their high percentage sales commissions. If you're not into sales, why the hell are you working there?

e: man, autocomplete is on a roll today

Splicer fucked around with this message at 19:06 on Mar 4, 2015

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!
Also, if you don't enjoy D&D, but your players do, maybe part of your dissatisfaction is that you and your player group have distinctly different tastes in games.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy

PurpleXVI posted:

I mostly bristled because you seemed to suggest that the former was the only civilized option.

That's cool, it was a mistake on my part to phrase it so definitively.



This thread when we talk about Next: :angel: :glomp: :yayclod:

This thread when we don't talk about Next: :supaburn: :argh: :flame:

Sounds like we all need to take 5

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib

ImpactVector posted:

I think you're maybe overstating the problem, because that's been the case for pretty much every gaming group I've ever had. Even in Dungeon World, just putting together a few fronts is more work than my players were expected to do between sessions (which was nothing). The difference is just magnified when you're running a heavier system.

PurpleXVI posted:

You sound as though you've never experienced this. Have you actually played RPG's at any point or do you just talk about them? Because in my experience, players who're willing to contribute to the setting or background in any sense are maybe one in twenty, and that's being generous. The reason that being a GM is often stereotyped as hard, thankless work is that most players are lazy shits.

Really? You think I'm overstating the problem when Purple's sentiment that "players are lazy shits" and that GMing is hard, thankless work is received wisdom? Christ, I can't imagine a less fun experience than sitting down to game with someone like that. If I ever got the impression that some dude offering to GM a game was doing so with this attitude in mind I would drop that game like a hot potato, gently caress a bunch of that noise.

My last face to face GM used to pull this poo poo on occasion too, complaining about how "GMing is so hard." This is the guy who would, with no prompting from the rest of us, get an idea in his head for a great campaign, write up pages and pages of setting material for us to read, and then drop the game two sessions later because he found out he didn't like that system after all. One time we had a whole session that was nothing but genuine collaborative worldbuilding, taking turns around the table adding setting details, even drawing up a map for a D&D game, which was pretty fun. Guess how long that campaign lasted?

And every now and then he'd have a bad day or whatever and he'd complain about how hard and thankless it was to GM and my response was always the same. "Well if it's that bad then you don't have to, y'know. No one here's going to think less of you if you say that you need a break. We've got board games, we can play Magic, all sorts of options for getting together and doing stuff." Then he'd come back with something about how it was hard but he still liked it so whatever, it's not like any of us at the table were ever unappreciative or "lazy shits" who just showed up to be spoonfed entertainment by this hardworking elfgame martyr or anything, so best I can figure it is sometimes he just wanted to bitch.

We did rotate GMs on occasion and I never heard anything similar from anyone else who did it. If they got tired of GMing they were just like "yeah, I'm gonna give this a break now."

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!
I never said that GM'ing was unfun(except on the occasions where I end up with players who don't show for sessions without warning me or the rest of the group first, or otherwise flake out, that's the sort of poo poo that can sour me on the whole business for a while), just that you can't really expect your players to help you with it. I enjoy GM'ing, I enjoy writing, I enjoy coming up with stuff, I enjoy chucking it at my players and seeing how they react, whether it's predictably or with novel, bizarre solutions. But I don't expect them to participate in the worldbuilding in any sense because every time I've tried it, with any system, across multiple groups of players with no recurring participants, it's just been the minority that had any interest in it whatsoever.

And the reason that a lot of people keep GM'ing, even when sometimes they'd rather not, is that they really love roleplaying games, and nothing else really brings the same stuff it does to the table. Not boardgames, not videogames, not cardgames or wargames. Sure, there's some crossover, but you never get quite the same mix of elements. And usually the person in a group who GM's is the only person willing to GM, so unless they pick it up, even when they don't have fun with it, no one else is going to.

Littlefinger
Oct 13, 2012

Slimnoid posted:

At this point I think he's doing the latter, since virtually every post I see from him now is just OH MAN THE HOBBY IS HORRIBLE HERE LEMME TELL YOU WHY.

Like, Cirno. Dude. We get it. You can stop now.
Yes, but every horrible element of the hobby is horrible in its own way, and we must know.

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib

PurpleXVI posted:

I never said that GM'ing was unfun(except on the occasions where I end up with players who don't show for sessions without warning me or the rest of the group first, or otherwise flake out, that's the sort of poo poo that can sour me on the whole business for a while), just that you can't really expect your players to help you with it.

Yes, yes you can. We did it all the time, in pretty much every game we played. That's what I'm telling you, that this is an opinion born of dysfunctional game groups. It is not in fact the stone cold truth and if this is what you've come to believe then I'm genuinely sorry but you've been playing with lovely groups, not "the default." You've put up with bad gaming and then decided that that's how all gaming has to be. Like, I'm not trying to be patronizing here, but the situations were reversed...if you were a player talking about how lovely railroading GMs with their terrible DMPCs or sandbox games full of nothing except tedious table-rolling to see what monsters you encounter, would you be going "well I guess this is just what being a player in an RPG is about" or would you be going "man, this guy sucks?"

PurpleXVI posted:

And the reason that a lot of people keep GM'ing, even when sometimes they'd rather not, is that they really love roleplaying games, and nothing else really brings the same stuff it does to the table. Not boardgames, not videogames, not cardgames or wargames. Sure, there's some crossover, but you never get quite the same mix of elements. And usually the person in a group who GM's is the only person willing to GM, so unless they pick it up, even when they don't have fun with it, no one else is going to.

Again, if I ever got the impression that some guy who was like "hey, want to play a game, I'll GM" was doing so because they felt obligated to do so even if they weren't having fun then I would excuse myself the hell right out of that group and not look back. I don't want the guy volunteering to GM to be doing so because "if I don't do it nobody will," I don't want my collaborative funtimes social experience to have that cloud of "I'm doing this for you ungrateful, lazy fucks" hanging over it. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills, here.

dwarf74
Sep 2, 2012



Buglord
I put way more time into D&D than any of my players, but I see this as one of the perks of the position. :shrug:

Unless you're playing a totally collaborative game, I'd think this was normal.

PeterWeller
Apr 21, 2003

I told you that story so I could tell you this one.

Kai Tave posted:

Yes, yes you can. We did it all the time, in pretty much every game we played.

Yeah, just ask your players to take part in world building. We just started a homebrew space cowboys campaign (think Bebop and Firefly with big doses of cyberpunk and little doses of post-humanity). I gave my players a format and template for writing world descriptions, and they went wild, contributing a bunch of worlds, organizations, and hooks on which I can hang adventures. I still did a bunch of work myself, but like dwarf74, I think it's fun.

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

Number 1 Nerd Tear Farmer 2022.

Keep it up, champ.

Also you're a skeleton warrior now. Kree.
Unlockable Ben

PeterWeller posted:

Yeah, just ask your players to take part in world building. We just started a homebrew space cowboys campaign (think Bebop and Firefly with big doses of cyberpunk and little doses of post-humanity). I gave my players a format and template for writing world descriptions, and they went wild, contributing a bunch of worlds, organizations, and hooks on which I can hang adventures. I still did a bunch of work myself, but like dwarf74, I think it's fun.

My experience is that players are OK with helping build the world but complain if it hits on either challenge or verisimilitude.

The challenge issue is the problem of the min-maxing player who spends hours poring through the books making sure his character can trivially kill anything then complains he's bored because his character kills everything.

The verisimilitude issue came from a player, who is actually also our regular GM, who said "If we meet goblins in the swamp, I want to know they were always there." So any sort of adjustable worldbuilding broke his suspension of disbelief for whatever reason.

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

Help a hero out!
Speaking as someone who has DMed Dungeon World irl and 4e and Strike on Maptools/Roll20, it's a huge pain in the butt and I hate doing it. Making maps, cool monster abilities and encounters, and just having a bunch of personalities ready to slip into for various NPCs is pretty hard (or at the very least incredibly time consuming). As a player I and all the people I currently play with absolutely engage in worldbuilding because the group - DM and players alike - is great, but abstract "worldbuilding" is just so much more logistically simple that I seriously don't know how people here are saying that DMing isn't more difficult. Coming up with a backstory, personality, key figures, and abilities for a single character can result in some pretty meaty fiction, but you really only do the hard part once and then do little bits and pieces along the way, but as a DM I found myself constantly having to create new, interesting content every other week.

People are right that it's insanely lovely to shut down players who want to engage in worldbuilding, but it really sounds weird to say that DMing isn't "hard work." During the session itself? Not so much, players can and should have a great deal of narrative control. But between sessions DMing is absolutely more work because you have to translate ideas to mechanics. Being a player is seriously getting to be the Ideas Guy 24/7 - It isn't lazy because coming up with good ideas takes effort, but the DM has to do that and actually figure out how to make it fun to engage with on a mechanical level. I don't remember ever having to do that as a player.

dwarf74
Sep 2, 2012



Buglord

hyphz posted:

The verisimilitude issue came from a player, who is actually also our regular GM, who said "If we meet goblins in the swamp, I want to know they were always there." So any sort of adjustable worldbuilding broke his suspension of disbelief for whatever reason.
Does he also insist no war veterans ever came home missing limbs, since amputation isn't a possible result of D&D combat?

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy

Countblanc posted:

But between sessions DMing is absolutely more work because you have to translate ideas to mechanics. Being a player is seriously getting to be the Ideas Guy 24/7 - It isn't lazy because coming up with good ideas takes effort, but the DM has to do that and actually figure out how to make it fun to engage with on a mechanical level. I don't remember ever having to do that as a player.

You've hit upon a very important point. It's pretty easy to conjure up a town whose muse has been kidnapped. And then the swamp that she's been taken to. And the lizardmen that have kidnapped her.

Right up until you get to the point where the party decides to fight the Lizardmen and all of a sudden you have to draw a tactical map of the swamp and you have to stat out the lizardmen warriors and bowmen and shaman.

Which circles us back to one of the earlier posts in this discussion where DMing in D&D is "hard work" partially because you have to do so much wrangling during the imagination-to-mechanics conversion. If I needed to come up with a band of Lizardmen in DW I could almost do it on the fly. If I needed to come up with a band of Lizardmen in 4e it might take me a little longer, but the monster math guidelines are so well done that you could hash something out in 5 mins, 10 tops.

And then you get to 5e and it's just pure ugh unless you reskin something from the MM.

Generic Octopus
Mar 27, 2010
Speaking as someone who has also DMed DW and 4e, I'm sorry you found it difficult and a pain; my experience was the opposite. DW especially it was really easy to just make stuff up on the spot, from monsters to npcs to villages to dungeons. With 4e it was a little harder at first 'cause I tried to keep a strict encounter budget & plan the encounters out but eventually just got used to making things up as I went. Most of my "planning" was daydreaming while walking/eating/working out/whatever about what would be neat to toss in.

It sounds like it's just a difference of opinion on what people are considering "hard" or "difficult," dming for me was mostly improv and was fairly trivial. If you hate doing it though, you should probably let the table know and/or stop putting so much time into it outside the actual game, because if it's not fun for you there's not much point.

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

hyphz posted:

The verisimilitude issue came from a player, who is actually also our regular GM, who said "If we meet goblins in the swamp, I want to know they were always there." So any sort of adjustable worldbuilding broke his suspension of disbelief for whatever reason.

Did you tell him that goblins are nomadic opportunists, or was he too busy counting specifically red cars by that point?

PeterWeller
Apr 21, 2003

I told you that story so I could tell you this one.

hyphz posted:

My experience is that players are OK with helping build the world but complain if it hits on either challenge or verisimilitude.

The challenge issue is the problem of the min-maxing player who spends hours poring through the books making sure his character can trivially kill anything then complains he's bored because his character kills everything.

The verisimilitude issue came from a player, who is actually also our regular GM, who said "If we meet goblins in the swamp, I want to know they were always there." So any sort of adjustable worldbuilding broke his suspension of disbelief for whatever reason.

Neither of these sound like issues with world building or player motivation to build worlds. The min-maxer is going to min-max in any system that allows it regardless of whether or not he or she is involved in writing fluff. The second situation sounds like an opportunity to collaboratively build the world.

ProfessorCirno
Feb 17, 2011

The strongest! The smartest!
The rightest!

dwarf74 posted:

I dunno man. Calling Tarnowski one of 5e's "creators" is about on the same level as ranting about how swine are destroying gaming. :) He's terrible, but let's keep perspective, here.

He's been trumpeting since the game came out that it's his glorious edition and proof that he was right about everything. Mearls went out of his way to shield Zak S from criticism and accusations of abuse and harrasment. Like come on, Mearls very much wanted this to be in part "their edition."

The phrase is not "lie with dogs and, well, whatever man, I'm sure it's fine, no lasting issues, you know?"

But if you want to go beyond that it's the same sentiment I see in ENWorld. Or the Wizards forums. "The DM is god and the players better not ever disagree or cross them." Come on, Mearls literally called out "player entitlement" as something 5e is meant to fight against - like, literally used the word "entitlement." The insanity of RPGSite is a convenient (and hilarious) example of the issues surrounding the frankly toxic attitude towards DMing, but is hardly the only one. There's been no small number of people asking how to punish players who do things the DM doesn't like without the DM ever actually telling them they did something wrong. There's been no small number of cases where you can easily find DMs whining or being angry that their players took the initiative in a way they didn't approve of. There's been no small number of DMs making long screeds about how difficult their job is and thus how they deserve more accolades and more attention then their puny players.

D&D has always had an imbalance between players and DMs, and I don't exactly think it's super weird for me to say that plenty of people took that way too far and are now extremely toxic about it. And I don't exactly think it's super weird for me to point out that 5e is catering to them when Mearls co-ops their language and when it largely happens on the forums he personally visited or hired from. For gently caress's sake we literally just talked about how many articles have been coming out about how important and hard DMing is and how you should give them gifts and do anything you can for them.

PeterWeller
Apr 21, 2003

I told you that story so I could tell you this one.

ProfessorCirno posted:

He's been trumpeting since the game came out that it's his glorious edition and proof that he was right about everything.

But he's a blowhard, so of course he's going to trumpet himself no matter how insignificant his input.

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

Number 1 Nerd Tear Farmer 2022.

Keep it up, champ.

Also you're a skeleton warrior now. Kree.
Unlockable Ben

PeterWeller posted:

Neither of these sound like issues with world building or player motivation to build worlds. The min-maxer is going to min-max in any system that allows it regardless of whether or not he or she is involved in writing fluff.

Sure, but the point is that the player isn't interested in making a game they enjoy. He spent hours designing a character to kill everything then announced that wasn't what he wanted. If you give them the chance to world-build they'll make a world that's as easy as possible for themselves then complain about that.

quote:

The second situation sounds like an opportunity to collaboratively build the world.

I'm not sure I get the reference to "specifically red cars", but the issue is that a flexible world - while beloved of "progressive" gamers - is also a sign of some of the very worst kinds of railroading ("no matter where the PCs go they meet the goblins", "no matter which order the PCs search the three caves in, the diamond is always in the third one they visit") which can just be dissatisfying to play.

Generic Octopus
Mar 27, 2010

hyphz posted:

the issue is that a flexible world is also a sign of some of the very worst kinds of railroading which can just be dissatisfying to play.

What you're describing isn't a flexible world/sandbox environment though, it's an illusion of such. Like, you're describing a dm who is basically ignoring player input while carrying out his own plans anyway, just hiding it instead of being openly authoritarian, which is obviously bad and not what anyone is advocating.

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

Number 1 Nerd Tear Farmer 2022.

Keep it up, champ.

Also you're a skeleton warrior now. Kree.
Unlockable Ben

Generic Octopus posted:

What you're describing isn't a flexible world/sandbox environment though, it's an illusion of such. Like, you're describing a dm who is basically ignoring player input while carrying out his own plans anyway, just hiding it instead of being openly authoritarian, which is obviously bad and not what anyone is advocating.

From the POV of the players it can look pretty much the same, though, only sillier. Like, if the players are getting bored of a particular investigation so you quickly throw in a clue to end it? The players are easily going to work out that the investigation ended just because they were bored, and that could easily ruin their experience of the next one.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

ProfessorCirno posted:

D&D has always had an imbalance between players and DMs, and I don't exactly think it's super weird for me to say that plenty of people took that way too far and are now extremely toxic about it. And I don't exactly think it's super weird for me to point out that 5e is catering to them when Mearls co-ops their language and when it largely happens on the forums he personally visited or hired from. For gently caress's sake we literally just talked about how many articles have been coming out about how important and hard DMing is and how you should give them gifts and do anything you can for them.

What's funny is it's always been exactly the opposite in my long-running groups. The GM is the host, and while everyone pitches in for potluck stuff and all, often it's therefore the GM's responsibility to provide dinner or otherwise help entertain his/her guests during the game.

Generic Octopus
Mar 27, 2010
If they're bored with the investigation and want it to be over...what's the problem with ending the investigation and having it be over? It could ruin the experience of the next boring investigation? I'm not sure I get it.

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Splicer
Oct 16, 2006

from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸
Being the GM is fun, in some cases more fun than playing as not the GM. Being the GM requires more effort than playing as not the GM. Both of these things can be true at the same time.

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