Post by OP_Rob on Apr 23, 2015 20:54:56 GMT
Mostly finished article, needs reviewed and maybe help with a closing throught/line
Everyone has had at least one. The guy who tries so hard to cram your character into his own preconstructed world regardless of your character’s backstory or motivations. The dude who thinks he knows the rules so well yet throws a fit when you hit on an amazing build that will mess with their dungeon too much or give you an advantage. That one jerk who tells you roleplay isn’t that important and throws endless combat at you making you feel like you did nothing more than go to their house to do math for four hours and leave feeling more like you had a study group than a D&D session. That guy who doesn’t care how awesome or insightful your ideas are for playing the game and just flat tells you “No, you can’t do that.” every time you try something that doesn’t fit within the scope of their own structured world rather than give you a legitimate reason in game why something can’t or shouldn’t be done.
Clearly these examples could go on for hours, but why the rant fest? Everyone who has anything to do with D&D has had, or knows someone who has had, a awful DM. The goal here isn’t actually to tear down our awful DMs and make them upset. Some of them are honestly just baffled or clueless, but try none the less to bring something to the table every week. So just for a nice easy thought chain, lets address the examples brought up here as an icebreaker to the notion and see what we can do to lessen the scowl of the not so faceless god in the skies above the world in which we find our tireless adventuring party. Hopefully some of our DMs will read some of this and glean a bit of insight, and never mind this article will ultimately come out to read like a self help guide for the troubled dungeon master.
Thogar the Mighty Tipper of Cows and Minotaur might be an amazing concept for a character due to his backstory and motivations as far as the player who created him is concerned, but the rest of the party isn’t going to get it. Why would he tip cows in the first place? Don’t you know Minotaur aren’t related to cows, but horses? Who would think of such a thing and why? No one is going to sit at that table and understand why in the name of the greater and lesser deities this crazy person is running around looking for cows and minotaur to tip over when there is a perfectly good dungeon to be off pillaging for loot. Least of all will the DM get it, and that’s where one trap will lie. Most DMs will take a character concept they don’t get and simply tuck it away on a back burner never to be thought of again. What would they honestly do for it? Does this player want a medal for tipping cows and minotaur? Should this result in some sort of in game bonus or something? Are they after a rare item or some such to go with it? So it becomes inconsequential, and you end up with a player who feels very unfulfilled and unrewarded for the extreme amount of thought and work they put in to the whopping two or three sentence backstory they came up with regarding why Thogar is so obsessed with changing the horizontal orientation of large four legged creatures. This leads to frustration on both sides, and the DM is like to gloss over it any time the player states they go looking for cows in their free time. The answer to this? Don’t gloss. Work with your player outside of the game to find out what in the nine hells they expect out of this. If it’s reasonable, work it in. If it’s not, brainstorm with them to try to figure out what would be reasonable, then work that in. You don’t have to give anything of the game away or even tell them what you’ll do with it, just ask them probing questions until you find out what to do with it.
One of the worst potential attributes you can throw in to the combination of factors that make up a DM is the power nerd. Not to say that these guys are bad in general, just that sometimes you get a mind that is so preciseley detail oriented and capable of memorizing facts and figures for days that they have the entire rule book memorized after they read it literally cover to cover. This makes for quite the potential shouting match when Thogar reads only one section of the rule book and finds out all the bonuses he can get for tipping cows and minotaur, but never reads the rest of the book to find out if there are any other sections of it that might apply. Bonus to cow tipping! Sweet! The player will close the book and call it a day, then try it next game only to find out the DM can poke holes in this. Then the game is ruined, and this is why we can’t have anything nice. Friendships have ended over sillier things than D&D… right? Well, the idea here is that DMs should understand innately that their players aren’t going to read the rulebook. Nevermind that it structures the game. That’s now how the gamer brain works. Why would someone read for hours about a game before playing it? Most would not, they would just dive in to the game and reference the book on the fly when situations come up that they don’t know the answers to, and that’s why this conflict happens. The idea here is that it’s up to the DM to explain things as they can, before the game if possible, during if necessary, and coax their players into a soft landing if what they wanted to do isn’t actually doable or if they misinterpreted the rules, and then work with them to find a way to fix it. And if what they player wants to do actually is doable and completely allowable and it’s the DM who didn’t think of the fact that Thogar’s aptitude for creating horizontally challenging situations for the minotaur guarding the entrance to the cave and it will totally derail the entire scene, then just come up with a reason he can’t this time. Make them roll a perception check and find the minotaur are wearing Leg Bracers of Stability.
Roleplay is a funny thing. Some groups want to show up in full costumes and not speak out of character the entire night unless they absolutely have to. Some people won’t even speak in character because it’s embarrassing. Most opt for a middle ground somewhere between. No matter what happens though, it will be the DM who does 90% or more of the roleplaying. It’s just a fact of the game, since the DM is, for all intents and purposes, playing all the characters at once except for the player’s characters.Thogar might show up to the game wearing a Conan costume he got from his brother who wore it last halloween while the DM was just expecting to talk out of character the whole night, but the important thing is to remember everyone is there to have fun. Let Thogar shout and thump his chest if that’s what he wants, so long as it doesn’t disrupt the group as a whole. More importantly, the group together should decide on the amount of roleplay they all expect before the game even starts.
There is no faster way to derail a game than by a simple two letter word. Many players spend their hours dreaming up the perfect moments for their characters in any game, and in a regular video game it’s pretty easy to think of because you have an entire world structure you can see and know what you can do. In a game power only by your imagination, a scene can be imagined five different ways by five different people, and you can run in to problems when Thogar thinks how perfect it would be to lead a cow up on top of a church tower and tip it over a rail to land on a market table below, thus launching the goods seasaw style into the air for their waiting party to catch, thus earning them that magical artifact that will open the last room in the dungeon they can’t reach. This will make perfect sense in Thogar’s mind, but when the DM says “No, you can’t do that.” because they wanted the interaction with the shopkeeper to be more pronounced due to some plot reason, Thogar isn’t going to go “Oh, cool.” he’s going to throw a fit. Why can’t he lead a cow up the church tower stairs? It will physically fit. Just need some wheat or something to lead the cow. It’ll work. What? No? Why not? “Because I said no” isn’t a reason! The yelling will commence, and things will get ugly, and someone is like to end up with a soda in their face. The key here is story guidance. Maybe there isn’t time, the party promised to retrieve the magic item in that dungeon room by midnight, and dusk is already setting in. Locating a pasture and getting wheat to lead the cow ponderously around the town will take hours. Shutting down a player out of hand is the quickest way to cause a shouting match. Which might be all well and fun if you like to fight. No one ever said games were all just harmless fun.
By OP_Rob
robtheopgamer@gmail.com
robtheopgamer@youtube.com
robtheopgamer@facebook.com
robtheopgamer@twitter.com
Everyone has had at least one. The guy who tries so hard to cram your character into his own preconstructed world regardless of your character’s backstory or motivations. The dude who thinks he knows the rules so well yet throws a fit when you hit on an amazing build that will mess with their dungeon too much or give you an advantage. That one jerk who tells you roleplay isn’t that important and throws endless combat at you making you feel like you did nothing more than go to their house to do math for four hours and leave feeling more like you had a study group than a D&D session. That guy who doesn’t care how awesome or insightful your ideas are for playing the game and just flat tells you “No, you can’t do that.” every time you try something that doesn’t fit within the scope of their own structured world rather than give you a legitimate reason in game why something can’t or shouldn’t be done.
Clearly these examples could go on for hours, but why the rant fest? Everyone who has anything to do with D&D has had, or knows someone who has had, a awful DM. The goal here isn’t actually to tear down our awful DMs and make them upset. Some of them are honestly just baffled or clueless, but try none the less to bring something to the table every week. So just for a nice easy thought chain, lets address the examples brought up here as an icebreaker to the notion and see what we can do to lessen the scowl of the not so faceless god in the skies above the world in which we find our tireless adventuring party. Hopefully some of our DMs will read some of this and glean a bit of insight, and never mind this article will ultimately come out to read like a self help guide for the troubled dungeon master.
Thogar the Mighty Tipper of Cows and Minotaur might be an amazing concept for a character due to his backstory and motivations as far as the player who created him is concerned, but the rest of the party isn’t going to get it. Why would he tip cows in the first place? Don’t you know Minotaur aren’t related to cows, but horses? Who would think of such a thing and why? No one is going to sit at that table and understand why in the name of the greater and lesser deities this crazy person is running around looking for cows and minotaur to tip over when there is a perfectly good dungeon to be off pillaging for loot. Least of all will the DM get it, and that’s where one trap will lie. Most DMs will take a character concept they don’t get and simply tuck it away on a back burner never to be thought of again. What would they honestly do for it? Does this player want a medal for tipping cows and minotaur? Should this result in some sort of in game bonus or something? Are they after a rare item or some such to go with it? So it becomes inconsequential, and you end up with a player who feels very unfulfilled and unrewarded for the extreme amount of thought and work they put in to the whopping two or three sentence backstory they came up with regarding why Thogar is so obsessed with changing the horizontal orientation of large four legged creatures. This leads to frustration on both sides, and the DM is like to gloss over it any time the player states they go looking for cows in their free time. The answer to this? Don’t gloss. Work with your player outside of the game to find out what in the nine hells they expect out of this. If it’s reasonable, work it in. If it’s not, brainstorm with them to try to figure out what would be reasonable, then work that in. You don’t have to give anything of the game away or even tell them what you’ll do with it, just ask them probing questions until you find out what to do with it.
One of the worst potential attributes you can throw in to the combination of factors that make up a DM is the power nerd. Not to say that these guys are bad in general, just that sometimes you get a mind that is so preciseley detail oriented and capable of memorizing facts and figures for days that they have the entire rule book memorized after they read it literally cover to cover. This makes for quite the potential shouting match when Thogar reads only one section of the rule book and finds out all the bonuses he can get for tipping cows and minotaur, but never reads the rest of the book to find out if there are any other sections of it that might apply. Bonus to cow tipping! Sweet! The player will close the book and call it a day, then try it next game only to find out the DM can poke holes in this. Then the game is ruined, and this is why we can’t have anything nice. Friendships have ended over sillier things than D&D… right? Well, the idea here is that DMs should understand innately that their players aren’t going to read the rulebook. Nevermind that it structures the game. That’s now how the gamer brain works. Why would someone read for hours about a game before playing it? Most would not, they would just dive in to the game and reference the book on the fly when situations come up that they don’t know the answers to, and that’s why this conflict happens. The idea here is that it’s up to the DM to explain things as they can, before the game if possible, during if necessary, and coax their players into a soft landing if what they wanted to do isn’t actually doable or if they misinterpreted the rules, and then work with them to find a way to fix it. And if what they player wants to do actually is doable and completely allowable and it’s the DM who didn’t think of the fact that Thogar’s aptitude for creating horizontally challenging situations for the minotaur guarding the entrance to the cave and it will totally derail the entire scene, then just come up with a reason he can’t this time. Make them roll a perception check and find the minotaur are wearing Leg Bracers of Stability.
Roleplay is a funny thing. Some groups want to show up in full costumes and not speak out of character the entire night unless they absolutely have to. Some people won’t even speak in character because it’s embarrassing. Most opt for a middle ground somewhere between. No matter what happens though, it will be the DM who does 90% or more of the roleplaying. It’s just a fact of the game, since the DM is, for all intents and purposes, playing all the characters at once except for the player’s characters.Thogar might show up to the game wearing a Conan costume he got from his brother who wore it last halloween while the DM was just expecting to talk out of character the whole night, but the important thing is to remember everyone is there to have fun. Let Thogar shout and thump his chest if that’s what he wants, so long as it doesn’t disrupt the group as a whole. More importantly, the group together should decide on the amount of roleplay they all expect before the game even starts.
There is no faster way to derail a game than by a simple two letter word. Many players spend their hours dreaming up the perfect moments for their characters in any game, and in a regular video game it’s pretty easy to think of because you have an entire world structure you can see and know what you can do. In a game power only by your imagination, a scene can be imagined five different ways by five different people, and you can run in to problems when Thogar thinks how perfect it would be to lead a cow up on top of a church tower and tip it over a rail to land on a market table below, thus launching the goods seasaw style into the air for their waiting party to catch, thus earning them that magical artifact that will open the last room in the dungeon they can’t reach. This will make perfect sense in Thogar’s mind, but when the DM says “No, you can’t do that.” because they wanted the interaction with the shopkeeper to be more pronounced due to some plot reason, Thogar isn’t going to go “Oh, cool.” he’s going to throw a fit. Why can’t he lead a cow up the church tower stairs? It will physically fit. Just need some wheat or something to lead the cow. It’ll work. What? No? Why not? “Because I said no” isn’t a reason! The yelling will commence, and things will get ugly, and someone is like to end up with a soda in their face. The key here is story guidance. Maybe there isn’t time, the party promised to retrieve the magic item in that dungeon room by midnight, and dusk is already setting in. Locating a pasture and getting wheat to lead the cow ponderously around the town will take hours. Shutting down a player out of hand is the quickest way to cause a shouting match. Which might be all well and fun if you like to fight. No one ever said games were all just harmless fun.
By OP_Rob
robtheopgamer@gmail.com
robtheopgamer@youtube.com
robtheopgamer@facebook.com
robtheopgamer@twitter.com
