Playing D&D

That GM thread?

The problem with the "have you tried not playing D&D" is that people use it more often than not when playing a different system wouldn't solve anything.

Few problems discussed on this board can be solved just by switching systems, largely because at the end of the day, the system is actually only a small component to the game that's being run, and that switching systems just leads to a new veneer on the same old problems.

"Try X system" is not always bad advice, but it's not particularly helpful in a thread about problem players, or about story issues, or even alignment arguments, because even in the last case it's just a name (or a different name) for things you'll find in find in almost every other game. Even games "without" alignments still have degrees of morality to them or factions with codes of conduct, and most alignment arguments typically revolve around these two features of alignment.

Does D&D have flaws? Certainly, but most of these are remedied in far less time than it takes to learn a new system, and the idea that you should abandon a system just because something didn't work out is why we find a lot of people hopping through multiple systems hoping that a change of game will solve their problems.

Most of the whole problem with system discussion is that it's actually political in nature. Play X game or play Y game is a tactic to try to garner support for one game or dissuade people from playing another, and is largely dishonest in its lack of transparency. D&D becomes a target not because it's a bad game by any measure, but because it's popularity means people are less inclined to play other games.

As a person who has played his share of everything under the sun and now plays homebrews almost exclusively, I've really gotten tired of people claiming system superiority or inferiority when they're all just talking about the same inferior games just under different disguises.

If only they knew how amazing Duck in the Circle was.

Speech is formed by sounds, you cant make figures with it, retardo.

More like That Player. OP did literally nothing wrong.

This. I don't get why anyone would get annoyed by that, as a GM I love it when players come up with stuff for the campaign. They're basically doing my job and enjoying it :D

>one of the most cancerous new trends in roleplaying is letting players retcon the setting for mechanical advantage.

This. One of my players in Pathfinder just got sick of his current character so he's making a new one to show up and kill the old one. And he expects to get XP for it. he also made up random bullshit about the world that doesn't even exist, then got salty when I refused to change it to accommodate him. When I first started playing D&D, the DM wrote our character backstories for us. Our families, the towns were from, etc. His argument: you don't get to choose where you're from, or your upbringing. And it worked well. No edgelord backstories, no stupid-ass character motivations that got lost half the time, no faggots with no idea as to the tone of a fantasy setting, inserting anime bullcrap. I wouldn't agree with his method entirely but damn it sure worked in that case to improve the game.

>Blow up over literally fucking nothing
>Get mad at a player roleplaying well a character
Yeah, That GM thread it seems

Btw, I'm perma GM and I wish even half of my players were like that instead of number faggots who only care about what's written in their sheet

He was kinda right, and you seem like an absolute anti-fun DM.
But sometimes you and your players don't want to play the same game and if you knew that you should have prevented it from happening instead of throwing your childish tantrum. Who fucking cares if a historical battle never happened, it's just a way to roleplay his tactics. If you had let him, then told him afterwards to abide by your rules or not come back, you'd have been way less of a douchebag.

>He allows his players to roll, speak or even have ideas on their own
Go play videogames

Well despite you escalating the situation quickly, I agree with you. That's the same type of player who reveals he has a hidden skill because its part of his backstory but never came into play until now. Yeah uh huh.

But he does have a point. You do sound control freakish over this.

So, after getting told off on /pfg/ and /5eg/, you come to be told off a third time?

Your pasta is getting stale.

You are so fucking autistic.

>Player tries roleplaying.
>Not even looking for a mechanical advantage, just saying stuff that fits his character.
>"Nuh uh, no."
>Player tries recovering in character to save the game.
>"NUH UH NO!"
>Explains that he's just roleplaying.
>"Nuh uh, you're trying to fuck up my world."
>Says you're being a control freak.
>"Nuh uh, get the fuck out of my house."

Holy shit, user.

>Player roleplays
>Invents tactics in a fun way that has zero effect on the world the DM created
>DM gets mad and acts as a rude asshole because "you're trying to fuck up my world"
>Fuck up my world
>Literally a forgettable tactic in a battle you'll never hear about again
>Fuck. Up. My. World.
Seriously, you need anger management issues OP. Either that or roleplaying isn't for you.

>he refuses to break character and says to me (the DM) "oh of course it did, back in 1132 B.V., the great battle of Caruso, you can't tell me you don't remeber that?"
wait a minute, were you playing a DMPC?
holy shit, ahahahahahahahahahahah

who the fuck cares about some random battle ages ago that doesn't matter, was just used for fluff and will never come up again
fuck you, you're That GM

Yeah, there's no evidence that the guy was looking for an advantage. All he was doing was having his character compare the tactic they're using to a "historical example", literally all flavor.

The pasta is stale but it's still a good topic for discussion. One major difference between old school and newer rpg design is how they approach the setting. The old way of doing things was for the DM write everything beforehand and let players discover it, while the new is to let them in on creating the setting as they play.

In olr games when a character comes to a new town he asks "do I have friends here?" and the answer depends on the DM fiat. In new games there's most likely a specific game mechanic for introducing NPCs to the setting, and it's a question of a dice roll.

I much prefer the new way, because it eases GM burden and integrates the characters better into the game world.

>playing D&D

>When I first started playing D&D, the DM wrote our character backstories for us. Our families, the towns were from, etc. >His argument: you don't get to choose where you're from, or your upbringing.

I'm neither agreeing nor disagreeing but that's not an argument. His conclusion just restates the premise. It's circular.

Everytime i hear a story about d&d its about either a gm or player that tries to change the rules or lore into their favor. Why do people still play this?

refer to

Because of all the options it's the most accessible and popular.

Not that poster, but the argument is that you, literally you the human being, don't get to choose where you come from or your upbringing; so it should be for your characters.

Also, lying is something that happens, as are legends. You can, IRL have someone argue to place giant mirrors to burn down boats, but it doesn't mean it was actually used when they said.

I prefer somewhat amorphous settings where the GM has a general timeline of history and layout of geography but leaves things open enough that pretty much anything can be adapted to fit the existing narrative, so long as it isn't violating the tone of the setting.

Wicker soldiers used as decoys is great, because it works in even low-magic settings.

>plays role play game
>throws a tantrum when the players actually roleplay

I don't have a problem with the system but around me the only people playing D&D are either pre-teen munchkins or people who want to use 3.pf to make a doughnut steel half-orc/dragon/angel deity of paragon of the hill folk. Maybe this isn't a world wide endemic but my experience with the player base is that they're cancer.

Write a book; no one comes to a game to watch the GM jerk-it to his own world-building.

>one of the most cancerous new trends in roleplaying is letting players retcon the setting for mechanical advantage
But that didn't happen. The bard was able to make the illusions either way, he was just claiming that the tactic came from such and such a battle to stick to his character. There was no mechanical advantage at all to this.

True! GM should set up the history in broad strokes and the players can then fill in the details as they go. You could even accommodate something contrary to the accpted history by having it be a fabrication or the event being told from a different viewpoint. It's not like people see even the real history the same way everywhere.

You are a cunt OP. If you really told him to leave after something so insignificant, only because you were butthurt, they you are and idiot and a cunt. You ruined that session, don't blame anyone else, but yourself.

This is basically how I make characters, too. Broad strokes initially, details as you go.

True, isolate yourself and dedicate your time to wanking.

> He doesn't follow the "yes and" approach to improvisation

Settings are for storytelling.

You are only one person. There are only so many stories you personally can tell in your setting. When you invite others into the world you've constructed, you're inviting others to tell their own stories in that world. Every time you do that, you make the setting you've written become more real.

By all means, set boundaries. If someone tries to break the laws of magic you've written, or do something completely out of character, or something that offends your sensibilities, smack them down. You're the creator, after all. You're the god of that world.

But even God gave Man free will, and for a reason.

If your player wants to invent the Battle of Caruso in 1132 BV, let him. Maybe it wasn't as big as he says it was, and was effectively just a skirmish. Maybe he's remembering the name wrong, and Caruso was the name of the river, when it really took place in the city next to the river. And if it's truly, truly out of character and style for your world, maybe the bard was just making shit up to inspire his friends to go through with a shitty plan.

To answer your question, OP, this is largely the result of decades worth of liberalism and academic "critical theory" interfering with design philosophy in RPGs. As far back as the Storyteller system's spawning, there's been a subtly encroaching philosophy that giving one person at the table complete control of the world and its reactivity (i.e., the GMs responsibility) creates an imbalanced power dynamic within the social group itself. Not the game, mind you - this whole idea of players re-writing the world is rooted in armchair sociology that thinks your social circle itself is privileging the GM to lord power over the rest of you.

This is why, generally speaking, OSR players tend to skew conservative and narrativist players tend to skew leftist: it's because narrativist game design is inescapably rooted in a leftist desire to "equalize" the social dynamics of your play group whether you like it or not. The nearly direct correlation between game developers whose products include mechanics for players declaring new aspects of the world on the fly or advise rewarding "plot points"/"fate points"/"bennies" to online personas that whine about politics in public forums is not coincidental, in this sense.

This is also why you should be cautious of PCs with extensively detailed histories before play begins: whether intentional or not, it's an attempt to exert direct control on your setting beyond what is typically expected of a player, and is usually indicative of other ideological entitlements towards how much a game should bend to "accomdiate" player expectations during play.

You have to go back.

Oh. That you. Whoops

This man has had too many vaccines in his life. Pray the autism away from him, Veeky Forums.

> He doesn't follow the "yes and" approach to improvisation
>If your player wants to invent the Battle of Caruso in 1132 BV, let him. Maybe it wasn't as big as he says it was, and was effectively just a skirmish. Maybe he's remembering the name wrong, and Caruso was the name of the river, when it really took place in the city next to the river. And if it's truly, truly out of character and style for your world, maybe the bard was just making shit up to inspire his friends to go through with a shitty plan.

Fucking this. What I usually do when the shit my players make up in this kind of situation is, if it provides an advantage, make them roll how true it is. Usually they're okay with that and it's pretty fun when they fail

>Player take the role of a marchant NPC in the street because his character died
>See the PC fight against stupid villain #37
>"Let me pass ! I have an unbreakable net !"
>"Make an unbreakableness roll"
>*Rolls*
>Fails
>"The net breaks as bystanders stare in bewilderment"
>"Let me pass ! This chair is made of massive oak !"

so tell me OP, what would you do if the character simply lied and said it anyway? How would the other characters even know?

>so it should be for your characters.
Why?
And in the same line, history isn't dictated by a GM, is dictated by the people, so fuck GM worldbuilding, players say what happens, happened and will happen.

Not sure if this is a troll, but I actually agree.

Rise of narratavist systems have seemed to spread the idea that this it's a good behavior, to be encouraged. "It doesn't it the batching and let's everyone have the fun of words building!"

That's fine if everyone agreed to that sorry if thing ahead of time. And the GM deliberately left the world open for stuff like that.

But if that's not the case then the player is stepping on GM agency the same way a a gm would in player agency via a railroading.

He's right, though.

Let me borrow her for a week.

So what you're saying is that you like being a little autocrat that dictates everything to your group of players.

So, you're aware that you're just making baseless broad statements when your real problem is ultimately unrelated to what you're complaining about, aside from personal conjecture on your part?

I mean, it's nice of you to tear apart your own credibility by yourself, but to do so in an attempt to justify your shitposting? For shame.

Can you tell me what game you play? I'd like to go ahead and use my personal experience with you to label the player base as senseless whiners.

Then again rpgs are an interactive medium, and it misses the point if the players are reduced just to passively consuming the material GM comes up with (and also harder for the GM too for having to bear most of the burden of making the game happen).

>narrative systems are a liberal conspiracy to force equality on your group
Jesus Christ this is Alex Jones level of conspiracy theory

OP is a colossal faggot.

It's fine if related to the characters backstory/family and discussed with the gm first but making up shit on the spot to gain an advantage isnt. He could have rolled history to remember details of any decoys in previous battles. It's what the skills are there for.

> OSR players tend to skew conservative and narrativist players tend to skew leftist

...that's quite strange, now that I think about it.

How do you explain the art weirdo OSR guys, like your man who made pic-related? They seem quite leftist

I love player characters making up their own stuff in the story because it's one thing less for me to figure out, they can usually come up with far better stuff than I could've done for them, and they're having fun doing so.

There are games - operative word here "game" - where such a thing isn't relevant because the players just go down to the dungeons to kill things and loot, but outside of those instances, I cannot comprehend the kind of imbecilic control-freaky faggotry that some of the DMs in this thread exhibit.

I'm fine with having players have a hand in worlds building, but that should happen before the game even starts.

I wish my players would help define the setting and bring the world to life. Instead they just stare at me whenever I ask them where they are from. OP is like a turbo faggot with women just throwing themselves at him.

They were already using decoys. The bit about the battle of Caruso seems to be just roleplaying for flavor.

>stepping on GM agency
But it's really not. GM is a director and adjudicator, but the setting is free for all who take part of the game. Players get to make their characters after all, and that includes people they know and places they've been.

While pseudointellectual philosophies are always fun, it's actually just about letting players do stuf like that while the GM still has the final word having literally no downsides. It does have plenty of upsides, though, such as making use of cool ideas players have, encouraging attachment to the setting and campaign and rewarding creativity in small ways.

Fuck, I hate it when people completely shit on the established lore. I'm sure that the battle of Caruso was an important defeat, one that changed history and has large ramifications to the current party/situation.

You posted this in another thread before. I probably would have allowed and encouraged that sort of creativity. To make it fit your world better you could have made the battle he was referring to something way more small scale and inconsequential to the grand scheme of things in your world. It could have been a tactic that he picked up reading some niche history books. Guy had to be pretty engaged in your game to want to play a character like that in the first place.

But he's not gaining advantage for free, he's paying for it by adding to the game setting and making it richer. The GM is free to give out situational bonuses you know? Same thing here, with the extra benefit of a little enjoybale story.

You were in the wrong here mate, sorry to say. Your player was doing a good job of improvisation and role-playing and you shut him down because it didn't fit your autistic worldview

I think the idea of a character referencing historical battles for tactics is awesome and im totally gunna steal that.

I think how you should have handled this OP was not have him reference a battle that diddnt exist but let him use his knowledge of tactics learned from history to do that.
Because those decoys were a good idea and just because you weren't ready to RP outside of your super special setting doesnt mean they're a bad player.

>borrow
No. You can rent at 3k an hour though. >This is also why you should be cautious of PCs with extensively detailed histories before play begins: whether intentional or not, it's an attempt to exert direct control on your setting beyond what is typically expected of a player, and is usually indicative of other ideological entitlements towards how much a game should bend to "accomdiate" player expectations during play.
I was kinda with you up till this point.

I would just said that his character made that battle up, it's not like it makes any diffrence if he made up the battle or not if the manuver was real.

I love both narrative and OSR, depending on what I feel like at any given moment and what my friends and fellow players/DMs would like to do.

What does it say of me, politically speaking? Or could it be that trying to fit someone's political views on what kind of entertainment they prefer is a whole bunch of bullshit?

That's ignorant to the fact that GMs have been fully capable of fulfilling their end of world creation and management without narrativist mechanics for decades. Players are far from "passive consumers" in a setup that lets them interact with the world with the degree of freedom that rpgs allow for. That one party "interacts" and another "creates" isn't imbalance - it's just different roles, and skewing the two devalues both.

>autocrat
Your speed in attributing political connotations to the social dynamics of the completely apolitical setups of a traditional gaming group is proving my point for me, so thank you.

>Alex Jones
Uh oh! I hope the next part of your plan isn't publicly defaming me until I lose custody of my children and then celebrating my inability to see my own kids anymore online. It would sure be weird to see somebody claiming the moral high ground while laughing about their media campaign to strip a man of fatherhood, so its a good thing that's not something that would ever happen.

Where we disagree is that the world building should be a continuous process, it just doesn't stop the instant game starts. The GM of course retains the final say as the curator, but as a general rule it shouldn't matter where and when the addition to the world comes from.

>playing comes up with a cool personality trait for his PC
>can make up cool ad-lib shit on the fly, enriching the setting and increasing the player's enjoyment and connection to the game world
>REEE DON'T TOUCH MUH SPESHUL SETTING
>ruin everything for everyone with your autism

this may be bait, but boy, does it make me mad

>No. You can rent at 3k an hour though
what, is her pussy plated in solid gold?
No piece of ass is worth that.

haha I saw that post too
very funny op
haha

>He's a DM
>He puts his oh-see donut steel setting over the game
>He thinks this is okay

>bennies
why do people not know this is drug slang for horse tranquilizers?

>this annoys me

Why the fuck would this annoy you? The guy's well into the game, enjoys it and enjoys your DMing, and wants to contribute to it as well as he can. What kind of a faggot could be anything less than delighted by such enthusiasm, let alone downright annoyed?

This. Any other considerations aside, there sure as hell are times when something the GM didn't even think of becomes relevant as the campaign progresses. Some world-building almost inevitably takes place during the campaign.

shes hot. where did you find the pic?

>but the setting is free for all who take part of the game.
No. I couldn't disagree more. The setting is everything in the GM's purview, from locations to history to NPCs.

Changing the history of the song isn't any different than changing NPCs or other major aspects of the game in any way except scale.
>I decided that x event happened
Isn't different than
>I decided that the dragon was a myth, so we don't have to fight it.

I don't know enough to judge your politics based on your gaming habits. However, your post tells me that you're either too thick to understand that "tends to skew" isn't an absolute or have decided to deliberately misread a post to make a smug point about it, which gives me certain suspicions either way.

>Or could it be that trying to fit someone's political views on what kind of entertainment they prefer is a whole bunch of bullshit?
Someone's enjoyment of media? Sure. The deliberate and inherently politicized choices someone makes when they create media? Absolutely not.

It's not a matter of capability but of convenience. The new way of doing things is just better with little downsides to it. The setting becomes richer with the GM doing less work, everybody wins.

>The deliberate and inherently politicized choices someone makes when they create media?

It's entirely possible to create fictional works without letting your real-life politics leak into it, all the more so when you're just playing a game and only really created a character and perhaps a bit of their history, instead of the entire world around them let alone the ruleset you're using.

That's stupid. My group plays exclusively narrativist games, because they are objectively superior AND we're all conservative (and in two cases, reactionary) af.

But you're too much of a cuck to realize this. Go back to listening to Fox News and jacking off to OSR "funnel."

my guess that this is bait.
there are a1000 and 1 different ways to approach this better than OP did and it's littered with little hints that he's just trying to make people angry.

>constantly plans tactics and refers to battles where they used certain maneuvers
>this annoys me but I have a list of famous battles for him to draw on and i tell him some (usually passing notes) to keep it true to the setting

translation wahh a player RP'd too good so I had to put in more work

the player came up with a random battle on the fly and the DM spazzed out. fuck the character could have bene bullshitting to boost troop moral but DM had to have an autism fit.

the OP is baiting, anyone who agrees with him should be ban from RPG's and shot on sight if seen with one.

in my book the player in OP's story is one I'd pray to have in my game rather than these retarded blank slate murder hobo's that get annoyed when you ask them to roll play for something.

>proving your point
I was simply going through with the rest of your point for you. If you want to align political ideologies with how you set up your games, your preferences must clearly mark you as a little autocrat.

>Isn't different than
Yes, it's very
The difference between [insert someone world wide famous] don't existing (Trump for example) as a minor battle that almost no one might have heard of it happening is not the same.

user is adding something insignificant, you're removing a present threat.

That slippery slope is at such an angle is almost as obtuse as you.

It can be a continuing process but I think the where and when do matter. Setting changes need to be considered and evaluated.

There isn't really time to think about and implement anything more than very minor changes during a game.

One of my current GMs and I have done a lot of collaborative world building, but it was all between games.

>The setting is everything in the GM's purview
Okay, I get that's how you see it, but what I don't get is what's the benefit of keeping the setting solely as the GM's purview? Why not crowdsource it instead and use what works?

Then don't use the word 'literally', dipshit!

So you both admit it's purely a matter of scale?

Should GMs be aloud to make changes to your character's background or personality as long as they're minor?

>Should GMs be aloud to make changes to your character's background or personality as long as they're minor?

Uh... yeah?

Sure, but the example in OP was most definitely a minor thing.