Do you think something has to be a military campaign in order to draw parallels from military leadership? It's called an analogy. They aren't directly applicable. It's not that running a campaign in D&D is akin to a 5th century military campaign. That would be insane. But leadership and administration has some commonalities accross particular applications, and one of them is that when it comes to getting the job done, a certain degree of ruthlessness is required to assure that the job is done successfully. If that means punishing players, then you have to bite the bullet and do the thing that will see you through the day. If you can't see how my argument, which I summed up several posts ago as "you need to use the tools suitable to the job" and therefore not forswear any particular tool because you it ideologically distasteful. Because that means dancing around a problem instead of solving it. Sometimes a little aggression goes a long way into solving actual problems, where the "let's hold hands and sing" approach simply does not cut it.
That's my argument.
GMs are not obligated to "solve" every single problem. This is a hobby. There is no reason for a GM to pull their hair accomodating a player by treating them like a child using threats and timeouts when the GM can just kick the player out of the group. If anything, kicking is a far better solution than using threats and aggression.
It may just be because I run public pay-for-play games at my local game store; but I have always felt that booting should be the last resort. I have found that on some occasions just a short private reasonable talk is all that is needed to correct bad table behavior. But at other times the "questionable" player requires being hoist by their own petard to see just how their behavior is affecting the others at the table (a wake up call if you will). And then there are those that nothing works on them and they get the boot.
1) Like I said, if the come-uppance is within the rules of the game, the rules of setting and the events of the campaign, then it is fair.
2) "It is a right of nature to glut the soul with vengeance."
1) A character suffering the logical consequences of its actions is not punishment. Cooking up something special just because you don't like the player or the player's actions, is. And in my experience (my personal experience on both sides of the screen) doing so is excessive and doesn't help anyone become a better player. If you have a problem, tell the people you have a problem with. Be clear and communicative. "You annoy me, so your character is going to suffer to annoy you in return" is just petty.
2) With all due respect, that's a pretty ironic quote to justify punishing someone for being a selfish jerk. A DM is supposed to take care of the game for everyone at the table to enjoy, choosing to go out of your way to get your pound of flesh from one player seems like something a selfish jerk of a DM would do.
1) You're arguing sematics.
It's not the course of action, but the intent of those actions that make it punishment or coincidence. I don't agree that everyone is open to communication or reason. That's why our societies are facing their current challenges: the Enlightment has limited reach in terms of social penetration because the sort of person who says "I'm too tired to think, I just want to turn my brain off" aren't the sort of person to take on the immense mental burden of being a fully functional individual who thrives under freedom. Being free, rational and responsible for one's outcomes is hard and taxing and not everyone is willing to live with a permanent state of discomfort. I'm not judging those sorts of people, but they exist and aren't barred from public life.
2) It's not a selfish quote. Being a jerk or being unlikable is another issue, but roleplaying is a inherently group focused activity and need commitment from the whole group to see the success of the game as the responsibility of every member of the group. We all tolerate people who coast, but players who don't learn the rules, who don't do their "homework" are destructive elements. If everyone behaved like that, there could be no games.
That quote is a military speech and it ends with "I shall hurl the first spear at the foe. If any can stand at rest while Attila fights, he is a dead man. " One is either as commited to this project as I am, or will suffer my wrath. That was the message, and in that regard I feel that is a very apt message to this endeavour. A DM must commit to the quality of his game and those people who stand between them and their goal must be dealt with before they deal a fatal blow to the entire undertaking. I mean, that's the nature of leadership of any person who is truly responsible for the survival of any undertaking.
1) I think the difference is meaningful. Determining what happens as the consequence of what the party does is what the DM does. It's their core function. Determining what happens as the consequence of annoying the DM is not.
Also, I didn't say everyone's open to reason. What I'm saying is that if you're dealing with someone you have tried communicating fairly with and found it impossible to get through, picking on them from your tower of power behind the DM screen is very unlikely to be something they are open to just the same. At that point it's better to go your separate ways.
2) Nothing of what you're saying even implies an argument in favour of punishing players rather than trying literally anything else. D&D is not a military campaign. Moreover, a DM who commits to the quality of the game should know better than to get sidetracked in petty squabbles with one player.
1) The DM's role is more than arbitrating outcomes. They have to plan the scenario, prepare and plan for outcomes, set the schedule, decide upon rules and their enforcement and beyond all ensure group cohesion. They aren't only the arbiters of character fate, they are the manager of the game. That they have the power to eject people from the game, as you point out in their post, which is a statement that their powers are far and away more reaching than the average player.
2) And do you think that using that power to burn a player's investment of time doesn't constitute a punishment? You can't come down from your tower of power. The position is nothing but the tower of power. You come down, you leave the game. You have and advocate using unilaterally the ability to render a player's time as a complete and utter waste, if they don't fit your idea of reconcilable differences. That's punishment, no matter how you dress it up.
3) Do you think something has to be a military campaign in order to draw parallels from military leadership? It's called an analogy. They aren't directly applicable. It's not that running a campaign in D&D is akin to a 5th century military campaign. That would be insane. But leadership and administration has some commonalities accross particular applications, and one of them is that when it comes to getting the job done, a certain degree of ruthlessness is required to assure that the job is done successfully. If that means punishing players, then you have to bite the bullet and do the thing that will see you through the day. If you can't see how my argument, which I summed up several posts ago as "you need to use the tools suitable to the job" and therefore not forswear any particular tool because you it ideologically distasteful. Because that means dancing around a problem instead of solving it. Sometimes a little aggression goes a long way into solving actual problems, where the "let's hold hands and sing" approach simply does not cut it.
1) Doesn't matter that it's not the only DM function; the relevant one here is that they do arbitrate outcomes.
2) If you think time spent playing D&D is invalidated by having to leave the group, you have a very different idea of what makes playing D&D valid than I do. The value of that time is how you got to spend it.
3) My argument is exactly that punishing a player in-game is unlikely to solve anything; hence, getting some petty in-game revenge is dancing around the problem. You might get some personal satisfaction out of it, but you won't solve the problem, fix the game or make the player better. Punishment is not a suitable tool for DMs.
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Do you think something has to be a military campaign in order to draw parallels from military leadership? It's called an analogy. They aren't directly applicable. It's not that running a campaign in D&D is akin to a 5th century military campaign. That would be insane. But leadership and administration has some commonalities accross particular applications, and one of them is that when it comes to getting the job done, a certain degree of ruthlessness is required to assure that the job is done successfully. If that means punishing players, then you have to bite the bullet and do the thing that will see you through the day. If you can't see how my argument, which I summed up several posts ago as "you need to use the tools suitable to the job" and therefore not forswear any particular tool because you it ideologically distasteful. Because that means dancing around a problem instead of solving it. Sometimes a little aggression goes a long way into solving actual problems, where the "let's hold hands and sing" approach simply does not cut it.
That's my argument.
GMs are not obligated to "solve" every single problem. This is a hobby. There is no reason for a GM to pull their hair accomodating a player by treating them like a child using threats and timeouts when the GM can just kick the player out of the group. If anything, kicking is a far better solution than using threats and aggression.
It may just be because I run public pay-for-play games at my local game store; but I have always felt that booting should be the last resort. I have found that on some occasions just a short private reasonable talk is all that is needed to correct bad table behavior. But at other times the "questionable" player requires being hoist by their own petard to see just how their behavior is affecting the others at the table (a wake up call if you will). And then there are those that nothing works on them and they get the boot.
Time and money are precious, and with money involved, that is even more of a reason to kick problem players out of the group sooner than later. Your players are paying you to GM and create fun, I do not think they are paying you so they can sit next to jerks and ********.
If the DM simply thrust him into that situation, then the player is being punished by a crap DM. If the player just made many terrible decisions that lead him to that point, then its a consequence of the story. There is a big difference and context matters.
Exactly. Merely adjudicating the outcomes of the players' decisions and actions doesn't constitute punishment, that's just running the game.
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Thank you all for making me see it from other points of view.
I see now that I looked at it the wrong way.
I did not expect so many comments.
Thank you,
A
Which (hardly surprisingly seeing the level of frankly insulting comments on this thread) was their last post on this forum.
OP, on the off chance that you come back and read this, it's not that you're a crap DM, it's that the situation you put together was a bad one. The only way you'll be a crap DM is if you don't learn from it - and it looks by your last post that you have!
The player's back story involved finding a lost loved one.
The DM responds by having them find that loved one being repeatedly murdered and resurrected and offered the chance to replace them so they can be freed.
Please note by this point that loved one is already dead, unless they're using a wish as long as that creature is raising them and killing them there's a chance to find someone who can revive them within the minute they have once they kill that creature.
Replacing them doesn't solve anything and punishing them for seeing through that idiotic situation doesn't help either the game nor that DM's reputation.
Here let me give you an alternative.
They find their loved one, they have actually turned evil and are serving the creature who kidnapped them perhaps it was all a ruse and they actually made a pact with that creature and your character has yet to recognise the truth behind their loved one.
I can understand the reaction to this.
I hope they read this and accept they just need to work this out properly next time.
1) Like I said, if the come-uppance is within the rules of the game, the rules of setting and the events of the campaign, then it is fair.
2) "It is a right of nature to glut the soul with vengeance."
1) A character suffering the logical consequences of its actions is not punishment. Cooking up something special just because you don't like the player or the player's actions, is. And in my experience (my personal experience on both sides of the screen) doing so is excessive and doesn't help anyone become a better player. If you have a problem, tell the people you have a problem with. Be clear and communicative. "You annoy me, so your character is going to suffer to annoy you in return" is just petty.
2) With all due respect, that's a pretty ironic quote to justify punishing someone for being a selfish jerk. A DM is supposed to take care of the game for everyone at the table to enjoy, choosing to go out of your way to get your pound of flesh from one player seems like something a selfish jerk of a DM would do.
1) You're arguing sematics.
It's not the course of action, but the intent of those actions that make it punishment or coincidence. I don't agree that everyone is open to communication or reason. That's why our societies are facing their current challenges: the Enlightment has limited reach in terms of social penetration because the sort of person who says "I'm too tired to think, I just want to turn my brain off" aren't the sort of person to take on the immense mental burden of being a fully functional individual who thrives under freedom. Being free, rational and responsible for one's outcomes is hard and taxing and not everyone is willing to live with a permanent state of discomfort. I'm not judging those sorts of people, but they exist and aren't barred from public life.
2) It's not a selfish quote. Being a jerk or being unlikable is another issue, but roleplaying is a inherently group focused activity and need commitment from the whole group to see the success of the game as the responsibility of every member of the group. We all tolerate people who coast, but players who don't learn the rules, who don't do their "homework" are destructive elements. If everyone behaved like that, there could be no games.
That quote is a military speech and it ends with "I shall hurl the first spear at the foe. If any can stand at rest while Attila fights, he is a dead man. " One is either as commited to this project as I am, or will suffer my wrath. That was the message, and in that regard I feel that is a very apt message to this endeavour. A DM must commit to the quality of his game and those people who stand between them and their goal must be dealt with before they deal a fatal blow to the entire undertaking. I mean, that's the nature of leadership of any person who is truly responsible for the survival of any undertaking.
1) I think the difference is meaningful. Determining what happens as the consequence of what the party does is what the DM does. It's their core function. Determining what happens as the consequence of annoying the DM is not.
Also, I didn't say everyone's open to reason. What I'm saying is that if you're dealing with someone you have tried communicating fairly with and found it impossible to get through, picking on them from your tower of power behind the DM screen is very unlikely to be something they are open to just the same. At that point it's better to go your separate ways.
2) Nothing of what you're saying even implies an argument in favour of punishing players rather than trying literally anything else. D&D is not a military campaign. Moreover, a DM who commits to the quality of the game should know better than to get sidetracked in petty squabbles with one player.
1) The DM's role is more than arbitrating outcomes. They have to plan the scenario, prepare and plan for outcomes, set the schedule, decide upon rules and their enforcement and beyond all ensure group cohesion. They aren't only the arbiters of character fate, they are the manager of the game. That they have the power to eject people from the game, as you point out in their post, which is a statement that their powers are far and away more reaching than the average player.
2) And do you think that using that power to burn a player's investment of time doesn't constitute a punishment? You can't come down from your tower of power. The position is nothing but the tower of power. You come down, you leave the game. You have and advocate using unilaterally the ability to render a player's time as a complete and utter waste, if they don't fit your idea of reconcilable differences. That's punishment, no matter how you dress it up.
3) Do you think something has to be a military campaign in order to draw parallels from military leadership? It's called an analogy. They aren't directly applicable. It's not that running a campaign in D&D is akin to a 5th century military campaign. That would be insane. But leadership and administration has some commonalities accross particular applications, and one of them is that when it comes to getting the job done, a certain degree of ruthlessness is required to assure that the job is done successfully. If that means punishing players, then you have to bite the bullet and do the thing that will see you through the day. If you can't see how my argument, which I summed up several posts ago as "you need to use the tools suitable to the job" and therefore not forswear any particular tool because you it ideologically distasteful. Because that means dancing around a problem instead of solving it. Sometimes a little aggression goes a long way into solving actual problems, where the "let's hold hands and sing" approach simply does not cut it.
1) Doesn't matter that it's not the only DM function; the relevant one here is that they do arbitrate outcomes.
2) If you think time spent playing D&D is invalidated by having to leave the group, you have a very different idea of what makes playing D&D valid than I do. The value of that time is how you got to spend it.
3) My argument is exactly that punishing a player in-game is unlikely to solve anything; hence, getting some petty in-game revenge is dancing around the problem. You might get some personal satisfaction out of it, but you won't solve the problem, fix the game or make the player better. Punishment is not a suitable tool for DMs.
1) No, it's not. Punishment is not in the portfolio of managing outcomes. Therefore, to say that a DM should never punish is not talking about that capacity. Therefore, by mentioning that function is to a, enlarge the scope of their role within this conversation, b, as the topic of this conversation demonstrates that perhaps the opposite is true: that part of their capacity is unrelated to the matter at hand.
2) Yet events can colour experiences that came before and sour pleasant experiences. By making this point, you are doing so in the refutation that kicking someone out is a punishment. We might build models for fun, but having someone smash said model when you're halfway through might ruin your enjoyment of the experience. If someone deletes one's save games when you are halfway through, that too might ruin your enjoyment and precisely because your time investment isn't respected.
3) You've never seen the tactic work, therefore you've concluded that the tactic doesn't work. I haven't seen a black swan, ergo there are no black swans. Except "black swan" is a term exactly because there are black swans. This sort of thinking is demonstrably wrong and to employ it is to invite failure. You by fact don't know what you're talking about. At best, you're extrapolating from your own limited set of experiences, which I have indicated are not my set of experiences. If you can't see the world beyond yourself, then you have no business administrating for other people or making pronouncements of what they should or shouldn't do. Such a person can only see what they themselves should do, which is not a universal.
1) Like I said, if the come-uppance is within the rules of the game, the rules of setting and the events of the campaign, then it is fair.
2) "It is a right of nature to glut the soul with vengeance."
1) A character suffering the logical consequences of its actions is not punishment. Cooking up something special just because you don't like the player or the player's actions, is. And in my experience (my personal experience on both sides of the screen) doing so is excessive and doesn't help anyone become a better player. If you have a problem, tell the people you have a problem with. Be clear and communicative. "You annoy me, so your character is going to suffer to annoy you in return" is just petty.
2) With all due respect, that's a pretty ironic quote to justify punishing someone for being a selfish jerk. A DM is supposed to take care of the game for everyone at the table to enjoy, choosing to go out of your way to get your pound of flesh from one player seems like something a selfish jerk of a DM would do.
1) You're arguing sematics.
It's not the course of action, but the intent of those actions that make it punishment or coincidence. I don't agree that everyone is open to communication or reason. That's why our societies are facing their current challenges: the Enlightment has limited reach in terms of social penetration because the sort of person who says "I'm too tired to think, I just want to turn my brain off" aren't the sort of person to take on the immense mental burden of being a fully functional individual who thrives under freedom. Being free, rational and responsible for one's outcomes is hard and taxing and not everyone is willing to live with a permanent state of discomfort. I'm not judging those sorts of people, but they exist and aren't barred from public life.
2) It's not a selfish quote. Being a jerk or being unlikable is another issue, but roleplaying is a inherently group focused activity and need commitment from the whole group to see the success of the game as the responsibility of every member of the group. We all tolerate people who coast, but players who don't learn the rules, who don't do their "homework" are destructive elements. If everyone behaved like that, there could be no games.
That quote is a military speech and it ends with "I shall hurl the first spear at the foe. If any can stand at rest while Attila fights, he is a dead man. " One is either as commited to this project as I am, or will suffer my wrath. That was the message, and in that regard I feel that is a very apt message to this endeavour. A DM must commit to the quality of his game and those people who stand between them and their goal must be dealt with before they deal a fatal blow to the entire undertaking. I mean, that's the nature of leadership of any person who is truly responsible for the survival of any undertaking.
1) I think the difference is meaningful. Determining what happens as the consequence of what the party does is what the DM does. It's their core function. Determining what happens as the consequence of annoying the DM is not.
Also, I didn't say everyone's open to reason. What I'm saying is that if you're dealing with someone you have tried communicating fairly with and found it impossible to get through, picking on them from your tower of power behind the DM screen is very unlikely to be something they are open to just the same. At that point it's better to go your separate ways.
2) Nothing of what you're saying even implies an argument in favour of punishing players rather than trying literally anything else. D&D is not a military campaign. Moreover, a DM who commits to the quality of the game should know better than to get sidetracked in petty squabbles with one player.
1) The DM's role is more than arbitrating outcomes. They have to plan the scenario, prepare and plan for outcomes, set the schedule, decide upon rules and their enforcement and beyond all ensure group cohesion. They aren't only the arbiters of character fate, they are the manager of the game. That they have the power to eject people from the game, as you point out in their post, which is a statement that their powers are far and away more reaching than the average player.
2) And do you think that using that power to burn a player's investment of time doesn't constitute a punishment? You can't come down from your tower of power. The position is nothing but the tower of power. You come down, you leave the game. You have and advocate using unilaterally the ability to render a player's time as a complete and utter waste, if they don't fit your idea of reconcilable differences. That's punishment, no matter how you dress it up.
3) Do you think something has to be a military campaign in order to draw parallels from military leadership? It's called an analogy. They aren't directly applicable. It's not that running a campaign in D&D is akin to a 5th century military campaign. That would be insane. But leadership and administration has some commonalities accross particular applications, and one of them is that when it comes to getting the job done, a certain degree of ruthlessness is required to assure that the job is done successfully. If that means punishing players, then you have to bite the bullet and do the thing that will see you through the day. If you can't see how my argument, which I summed up several posts ago as "you need to use the tools suitable to the job" and therefore not forswear any particular tool because you it ideologically distasteful. Because that means dancing around a problem instead of solving it. Sometimes a little aggression goes a long way into solving actual problems, where the "let's hold hands and sing" approach simply does not cut it.
1) Doesn't matter that it's not the only DM function; the relevant one here is that they do arbitrate outcomes.
2) If you think time spent playing D&D is invalidated by having to leave the group, you have a very different idea of what makes playing D&D valid than I do. The value of that time is how you got to spend it.
3) My argument is exactly that punishing a player in-game is unlikely to solve anything; hence, getting some petty in-game revenge is dancing around the problem. You might get some personal satisfaction out of it, but you won't solve the problem, fix the game or make the player better. Punishment is not a suitable tool for DMs.
1) No, it's not. Punishment is not in the portfolio of managing outcomes. Therefore, to say that a DM should never punish is not talking about that capacity. Therefore, by mentioning that function is to a, enlarge the scope of their role within this conversation, b, as the topic of this conversation demonstrates that perhaps the opposite is true: that part of their capacity is unrelated to the matter at hand.
2) Yet events can colour experiences that came before and sour pleasant experiences. By making this point, you are doing so in the refutation that kicking someone out is a punishment. We might build models for fun, but having someone smash said model when you're halfway through might ruin your enjoyment of the experience. If someone deletes one's save games when you are halfway through, that too might ruin your enjoyment and precisely because your time investment isn't respected.
3) You've never seen the tactic work, therefore you've concluded that the tactic doesn't work. I haven't seen a black swan, ergo there are no black swans. Except "black swan" is a term exactly because there are black swans. This sort of thinking is demonstrably wrong and to employ it is to invite failure. You by fact don't know what you're talking about. At best, you're extrapolating from your own limited set of experiences, which I have indicated are not my set of experiences. If you can't see the world beyond yourself, then you have no business administrating for other people or making pronouncements of what they should or shouldn't do. Such a person can only see what they themselves should do, which is not a universal.
1) The fact that they're not the same, which you apparently agree with, shows I'm not arguing semantics when pointing out they're not the same. Setting up outcomes to serve as comeuppance, punishment, a lesson to be learned, however you want to see it, is not the same as adjudicating what happens as part of running the game.
2) Smashing a model destroys the physical item you paid for. Deleting save files forces you to replay the game from the start if you want to finish it. Playing a D&D campaign and getting barred from completing it is different - none of your belongings got destroyed and as you can't finish it, you're not forced to replay anything (which wouldn't be possible in the first place). Moreover, the intent of removing someone is - presumably, unless you're being a dick - not to punish someone; it's to preserve the ongoing game and the enjoyment of everyone else involved or, in the worst case scenario where the game is ended period, not to waste your time any more. Deliberate punishment is, well, deliberate punishment.
3) I've concluded that the tactic is unlikely to work, not that it can't work, and that it's likely to be counterproductive. That, together with the more reasonable alternatives available, is more than enough reason not to engage in such behaviour especially since it's not just your own time and enjoyment you're messing with.
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1) The fact that they're not the same, which you apparently agree with, shows I'm not arguing semantics when pointing out they're not the same. Setting up outcomes to serve as comeuppance, punishment, a lesson to be learned, however you want to see it, is not the same as adjudicating what happens as part of running the game.
2) Smashing a model destroys the physical item you paid for. Deleting save files forces you to replay the game from the start if you want to finish it. Playing a D&D campaign and getting barred from completing it is different - none of your belongings got destroyed and as you can't finish it, you're not forced to replay anything (which wouldn't be possible in the first place). Moreover, the intent of removing someone is - presumably, unless you're being a dick - not to punish someone; it's to preserve the ongoing game and the enjoyment of everyone else involved or, in the worst case scenario where the game is ended period, not to waste your time any more. Deliberate punishment is, well, deliberate punishment.
3) I've concluded that the tactic is unlikely to work, not that it can't work, and that it's likely to be counterproductive. That, together with the more reasonable alternatives available, is more than enough reason not to engage in such behaviour especially since it's not just your own time and enjoyment you're messing with.
1) They aren't the same. Doesn't mean one can't inform the other and doesn't mean that one can't be used in service of the other. In fact, if they were completely unrelated, we probably wouldn't group them together under the same person. That sort of common structural social configuration probably indicates they are connected in some way. But if your whole point is to point out they're different, then your pointing out the DM's duties as an arbiter is pointless and non-constructive to the conversation. You're talking about something that, in your own terms, is unrelated to the matter at hand.
2) None of your belongings get destroyed in the destruction of data, a nonphysical entity either. You can justify the action any way you want, but the end result is that you're wasting someone's time investment and hard work because, in this example, you don't think they can fit. It's a unilateral decision against the victim's consent. You don't need to see this as punishment, but that doesn't mean it isn't. It just means you have an aversion to certain words. Undeliberately ejecting a player from the game would be a sight to see.
3) I've concluded the opposite. I feel this statement directly ignores the very real possibility of non-reasonable players who cause problems and the fact that removing a player from a game is a deliberate punishment and, in fact, a much harsher punishment than I would even advocate as a person who believes DMs should be able to use any tool that is available to them.
You've dogmatically decided a course of action before even investigating the problem. This is wrong because it ignores reality in favour of an ossified philosophy, which may or may not be applicable.
The issue is that the GM does not have the authority to decide to force a person to change their behavior. Attempting to punish someone for the way that they roleplay is not appropriate. Booting a player from a game is a declaration that you don't want to keep playing with them, they're free to keep doing whatever they're doing, but they have to find somewhere else to do it. That's the difference.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
The problem is that this DM is not writing a book, they are running a game.
If he has no players he can't run his game, now can he?
The opening statement if accurate fails to understand why should the Player continue playing if that DM seems to be unable to run their game properly?
Did the player ASK for this so they can change characters?
It doesn't sound like that, it sounds like that DM has no idea how to handle that backstory and should have asked for more details as they're playing to flesh out their plan.
1) The fact that they're not the same, which you apparently agree with, shows I'm not arguing semantics when pointing out they're not the same. Setting up outcomes to serve as comeuppance, punishment, a lesson to be learned, however you want to see it, is not the same as adjudicating what happens as part of running the game.
2) Smashing a model destroys the physical item you paid for. Deleting save files forces you to replay the game from the start if you want to finish it. Playing a D&D campaign and getting barred from completing it is different - none of your belongings got destroyed and as you can't finish it, you're not forced to replay anything (which wouldn't be possible in the first place). Moreover, the intent of removing someone is - presumably, unless you're being a dick - not to punish someone; it's to preserve the ongoing game and the enjoyment of everyone else involved or, in the worst case scenario where the game is ended period, not to waste your time any more. Deliberate punishment is, well, deliberate punishment.
3) I've concluded that the tactic is unlikely to work, not that it can't work, and that it's likely to be counterproductive. That, together with the more reasonable alternatives available, is more than enough reason not to engage in such behaviour especially since it's not just your own time and enjoyment you're messing with.
1) They aren't the same. Doesn't mean one can't inform the other and doesn't mean that one can't be used in service of the other. In fact, if they were completely unrelated, we probably wouldn't group them together under the same person. That sort of common structural social configuration probably indicates they are connected in some way. But if your whole point is to point out they're different, then your pointing out the DM's duties as an arbiter is pointless and non-constructive to the conversation. You're talking about something that, in your own terms, is unrelated to the matter at hand.
2) None of your belongings get destroyed in the destruction of data, a nonphysical entity either. You can justify the action any way you want, but the end result is that you're wasting someone's time investment and hard work because, in this example, you don't think they can fit. It's a unilateral decision against the victim's consent. You don't need to see this as punishment, but that doesn't mean it isn't. It just means you have an aversion to certain words. Undeliberately ejecting a player from the game would be a sight to see.
3) I've concluded the opposite. I feel this statement directly ignores the very real possibility of non-reasonable players who cause problems and the fact that removing a player from a game is a deliberate punishment and, in fact, a much harsher punishment than I would even advocate as a person who believes DMs should be able to use any tool that is available to them.
4) You've dogmatically decided a course of action before even investigating the problem. This is wrong because it ignores reality in favour of an ossified philosophy, which may or may not be applicable.
1) My point is that I'm not arguing semantics, despite that being your claim. The fact that punishment and merely adjudicating outcomes are different things is what shows it's not a matter of semantics. Punishment through in-game actions or banning someone from the game can be done by players as well as the DM, by the way - your "common structural social configuration" is off the mark.
2) Not unilateral, at least it wouldn't be at my table. If it concerns the game it's for the DM to adjudicate, if it concerns the group it's for the whole group to adjudicate. If I am the DM in this scenario and felt I couldn't run a game with one of the players at the table but the majority of the group prefers for that player to stay, then that player can stay (though I'd be leaving).
3) Clearly I'm not ignoring the "very real possibility of non-reasonable players who cause problems" if I'm making suggestions about how to deal with such players. I certainly disagree that removing a player from a game is a deliberate punishment: if that player takes it as such, which is their right, it's still incidental rather than deliberate; the goal is not to punish that player but to act in the best interest of the game and of the group as a whole.
4) Which course of action would that be?
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3) I've concluded the opposite. I feel this statement directly ignores the very real possibility of non-reasonable players who cause problems and the fact that removing a player from a game is a deliberate punishment and, in fact, a much harsher punishment than I would even advocate as a person who believes DMs should be able to use any tool that is available to them.
I guess removing a player is technically a punishment from the view of the offending player, but keeping the offending player would be an even bigger punishment for the GM and players. No D&D is better than bad D&D, and forcing yourself and others at the table to play with problematic individuals is harsher and crueler than just simply kicking the problem out.
If the GM already gave the offender a chance to reform with a few verbal warnings and reminders, there is no need for the GM to continue to keep the offender and try to improve their behavior with sticks and threats. It is a waste of the GM's and other players' time.
If what was posted initially is accurate the DM would have been better off stating they don't want them to continue playing rather than pulling that rubbish!
Unless the player asked them to conclude this, what was posted is clearly due to the DM having problems and NOT the player!
Has something else been posted that I haven't seen to explain WHY they did this, because I don't understand why you're defending that!
If what was posted initially is accurate the DM would have been better off stating they don't want them to continue playing rather than pulling that rubbish!
Unless the player asked them to conclude this, what was posted is clearly due to the DM having problems and NOT the player!
Has something else been posted that I haven't seen to explain WHY they did this, because I don't understand why you're defending that!
This thread has long ran its course. The original poster even came in and said they understood. I would just drop it.
If you behave and kept your humanity steady, you dont get negative flaws added. If you lost humanity, you get one flaw each time, to a max of 5 times.
You roll for a flaw or choose one minor, then add more major flaw after 3 point lost. Makes it a bit more challenging and people tend to do good a bit better so they dont lose to much humanity.
So if a player dont follow his alignment or belief, that can be applied.
But putting player in a no win option is not really cool, maybe losing things but not losing a player, unless there a way around he can get saved.
One of my players has written a background story in which she sets off to find her beloved who was kidnapped by an evil creature.
According to the story he was her greatest love. A soulmate.
When she finally found him he was killed in a horrible and agonizing way and resurrected over and over again in front of her by that same creature.
She asked him to stop and the creature agreed on one condition, she will take her loved one's place.
She refused and as a result sacrificing him.
I feel, that the player did not play according to her backstory that she wrote.
I also feel that this cannot go unpunished.
Am I mistaken to think/feel that?
How would you handle this player?
Thank you.
A
This could be a great hook for later. The player refused to sacrifice herself for her soulmate. This could be a great arc for that player. Why did she say no? Was she too scared? Did she think it was a trap to get her into the cycle of torture as well? Does she feel like by saying no she can eventually free him from the torture?
As for you punishing a player, that worries me....
It may just be because I run public pay-for-play games at my local game store; but I have always felt that booting should be the last resort.
I have found that on some occasions just a short private reasonable talk is all that is needed to correct bad table behavior. But at other times the "questionable" player requires being hoist by their own petard to see just how their behavior is affecting the others at the table (a wake up call if you will). And then there are those that nothing works on them and they get the boot.
1) Doesn't matter that it's not the only DM function; the relevant one here is that they do arbitrate outcomes.
2) If you think time spent playing D&D is invalidated by having to leave the group, you have a very different idea of what makes playing D&D valid than I do. The value of that time is how you got to spend it.
3) My argument is exactly that punishing a player in-game is unlikely to solve anything; hence, getting some petty in-game revenge is dancing around the problem. You might get some personal satisfaction out of it, but you won't solve the problem, fix the game or make the player better. Punishment is not a suitable tool for DMs.
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Time and money are precious, and with money involved, that is even more of a reason to kick problem players out of the group sooner than later. Your players are paying you to GM and create fun, I do not think they are paying you so they can sit next to jerks and ********.
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Exactly. Merely adjudicating the outcomes of the players' decisions and actions doesn't constitute punishment, that's just running the game.
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Everyone's really laying into the DM, I've seen several instances of people directly saying "You're a crap DM". This is hardly constructive criticism.
May I draw all your attentions to:
Which (hardly surprisingly seeing the level of frankly insulting comments on this thread) was their last post on this forum.
OP, on the off chance that you come back and read this, it's not that you're a crap DM, it's that the situation you put together was a bad one. The only way you'll be a crap DM is if you don't learn from it - and it looks by your last post that you have!
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Just so i understand this properly.
The player's back story involved finding a lost loved one.
The DM responds by having them find that loved one being repeatedly murdered and resurrected and offered the chance to replace them so they can be freed.
Please note by this point that loved one is already dead, unless they're using a wish as long as that creature is raising them and killing them there's a chance to find someone who can revive them within the minute they have once they kill that creature.
Replacing them doesn't solve anything and punishing them for seeing through that idiotic situation doesn't help either the game nor that DM's reputation.
Here let me give you an alternative.
They find their loved one, they have actually turned evil and are serving the creature who kidnapped them perhaps it was all a ruse and they actually made a pact with that creature and your character has yet to recognise the truth behind their loved one.
I can understand the reaction to this.
I hope they read this and accept they just need to work this out properly next time.
1) No, it's not. Punishment is not in the portfolio of managing outcomes. Therefore, to say that a DM should never punish is not talking about that capacity. Therefore, by mentioning that function is to a, enlarge the scope of their role within this conversation, b, as the topic of this conversation demonstrates that perhaps the opposite is true: that part of their capacity is unrelated to the matter at hand.
2) Yet events can colour experiences that came before and sour pleasant experiences. By making this point, you are doing so in the refutation that kicking someone out is a punishment. We might build models for fun, but having someone smash said model when you're halfway through might ruin your enjoyment of the experience. If someone deletes one's save games when you are halfway through, that too might ruin your enjoyment and precisely because your time investment isn't respected.
3) You've never seen the tactic work, therefore you've concluded that the tactic doesn't work. I haven't seen a black swan, ergo there are no black swans. Except "black swan" is a term exactly because there are black swans. This sort of thinking is demonstrably wrong and to employ it is to invite failure. You by fact don't know what you're talking about. At best, you're extrapolating from your own limited set of experiences, which I have indicated are not my set of experiences. If you can't see the world beyond yourself, then you have no business administrating for other people or making pronouncements of what they should or shouldn't do. Such a person can only see what they themselves should do, which is not a universal.
1) The fact that they're not the same, which you apparently agree with, shows I'm not arguing semantics when pointing out they're not the same. Setting up outcomes to serve as comeuppance, punishment, a lesson to be learned, however you want to see it, is not the same as adjudicating what happens as part of running the game.
2) Smashing a model destroys the physical item you paid for. Deleting save files forces you to replay the game from the start if you want to finish it. Playing a D&D campaign and getting barred from completing it is different - none of your belongings got destroyed and as you can't finish it, you're not forced to replay anything (which wouldn't be possible in the first place). Moreover, the intent of removing someone is - presumably, unless you're being a dick - not to punish someone; it's to preserve the ongoing game and the enjoyment of everyone else involved or, in the worst case scenario where the game is ended period, not to waste your time any more. Deliberate punishment is, well, deliberate punishment.
3) I've concluded that the tactic is unlikely to work, not that it can't work, and that it's likely to be counterproductive. That, together with the more reasonable alternatives available, is more than enough reason not to engage in such behaviour especially since it's not just your own time and enjoyment you're messing with.
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1) They aren't the same. Doesn't mean one can't inform the other and doesn't mean that one can't be used in service of the other. In fact, if they were completely unrelated, we probably wouldn't group them together under the same person. That sort of common structural social configuration probably indicates they are connected in some way. But if your whole point is to point out they're different, then your pointing out the DM's duties as an arbiter is pointless and non-constructive to the conversation. You're talking about something that, in your own terms, is unrelated to the matter at hand.
2) None of your belongings get destroyed in the destruction of data, a nonphysical entity either. You can justify the action any way you want, but the end result is that you're wasting someone's time investment and hard work because, in this example, you don't think they can fit. It's a unilateral decision against the victim's consent. You don't need to see this as punishment, but that doesn't mean it isn't. It just means you have an aversion to certain words. Undeliberately ejecting a player from the game would be a sight to see.
3) I've concluded the opposite. I feel this statement directly ignores the very real possibility of non-reasonable players who cause problems and the fact that removing a player from a game is a deliberate punishment and, in fact, a much harsher punishment than I would even advocate as a person who believes DMs should be able to use any tool that is available to them.
You've dogmatically decided a course of action before even investigating the problem. This is wrong because it ignores reality in favour of an ossified philosophy, which may or may not be applicable.
The issue is that the GM does not have the authority to decide to force a person to change their behavior. Attempting to punish someone for the way that they roleplay is not appropriate. Booting a player from a game is a declaration that you don't want to keep playing with them, they're free to keep doing whatever they're doing, but they have to find somewhere else to do it. That's the difference.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
The problem is that this DM is not writing a book, they are running a game.
If he has no players he can't run his game, now can he?
The opening statement if accurate fails to understand why should the Player continue playing if that DM seems to be unable to run their game properly?
Did the player ASK for this so they can change characters?
It doesn't sound like that, it sounds like that DM has no idea how to handle that backstory and should have asked for more details as they're playing to flesh out their plan.
1) My point is that I'm not arguing semantics, despite that being your claim. The fact that punishment and merely adjudicating outcomes are different things is what shows it's not a matter of semantics. Punishment through in-game actions or banning someone from the game can be done by players as well as the DM, by the way - your "common structural social configuration" is off the mark.
2) Not unilateral, at least it wouldn't be at my table. If it concerns the game it's for the DM to adjudicate, if it concerns the group it's for the whole group to adjudicate. If I am the DM in this scenario and felt I couldn't run a game with one of the players at the table but the majority of the group prefers for that player to stay, then that player can stay (though I'd be leaving).
3) Clearly I'm not ignoring the "very real possibility of non-reasonable players who cause problems" if I'm making suggestions about how to deal with such players. I certainly disagree that removing a player from a game is a deliberate punishment: if that player takes it as such, which is their right, it's still incidental rather than deliberate; the goal is not to punish that player but to act in the best interest of the game and of the group as a whole.
4) Which course of action would that be?
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I guess removing a player is technically a punishment from the view of the offending player, but keeping the offending player would be an even bigger punishment for the GM and players. No D&D is better than bad D&D, and forcing yourself and others at the table to play with problematic individuals is harsher and crueler than just simply kicking the problem out.
If the GM already gave the offender a chance to reform with a few verbal warnings and reminders, there is no need for the GM to continue to keep the offender and try to improve their behavior with sticks and threats. It is a waste of the GM's and other players' time.
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Reform what precisely?
If what was posted initially is accurate the DM would have been better off stating they don't want them to continue playing rather than pulling that rubbish!
Unless the player asked them to conclude this, what was posted is clearly due to the DM having problems and NOT the player!
Has something else been posted that I haven't seen to explain WHY they did this, because I don't understand why you're defending that!
This thread has long ran its course. The original poster even came in and said they understood. I would just drop it.
I liked one option from vampire, adding humanity.
If you behave and kept your humanity steady, you dont get negative flaws added. If you lost humanity, you get one flaw each time, to a max of 5 times.
You roll for a flaw or choose one minor, then add more major flaw after 3 point lost. Makes it a bit more challenging and people tend to do good a bit better so they dont lose to much humanity.
So if a player dont follow his alignment or belief, that can be applied.
But putting player in a no win option is not really cool, maybe losing things but not losing a player, unless there a way around he can get saved.
No mortal could atone Ishan's betrayal. Redemption required him to become something else.
This could be a great hook for later. The player refused to sacrifice herself for her soulmate. This could be a great arc for that player. Why did she say no? Was she too scared? Did she think it was a trap to get her into the cycle of torture as well? Does she feel like by saying no she can eventually free him from the torture?
As for you punishing a player, that worries me....
Yes.
More than half of marriages end in divorce.
The person you thought you would love forever, isn’t.
Its their character, their story. Who are you to punish them for writing it?