People post what they think are good ideas. They usually want people to like them and explain just how to implement them. Sadly, not all ideas are good. The kindest thing to do is say "That's not going to work, it breaks the rules, or the theme of the game."
I spend far too much of my time telling people, in detail, why a bad idea is bad. At best, I get ignored, at worst, I start off a bunch of thread drift.
Honestly, it's the drift that's the problem. If you look at the format of, say, Reddit, you can easily go on these long digressions without really disrupting the main thread because they're contained within sub-threads. But it doesn't really work like that on regular forums.
In theory, it doesn't matter if someone puts out an unhelpful reply -- you can just put out a helpful one and ignore them, and if there's some need for community consensus, the voting system will handle it. In theory.
But it's hard to make the call of like, just letting somebody's bad opinion go. Just letting it sit there uncontested, or, even worse, letting their rebuttal to your own rebuttal sit uncontested. Then it looks like you lost. Once you start the drift, the pressure to increase the drift rises. I fall prey to it myself, so it's not like I'm condemning anyone, but I kind of am.
I guess it's probably just an inevitable side effect of the format. You gotta make peace with it or leave. I mean, on a personal level you can be mindful and refuse to derail, but you can't stop other people from doing it.
When the question is "Will X work", an answer of "No, and here's why" is perfectly useful. If the question is "how can I make X work", that would be different.
But it's hard to make the call of like, just letting somebody's bad opinion go. Just letting it sit there uncontested, or, even worse, letting their rebuttal to your own rebuttal sit uncontested. Then it looks like you lost. Once you start the drift, the pressure to increase the drift rises. I fall prey to it myself, so it's not like I'm condemning anyone, but I kind of am.
I guess it's probably just an inevitable side effect of the format. You gotta make peace with it or leave. I mean, on a personal level you can be mindful and refuse to derail, but you can't stop other people from doing it.
Last word on the thread isn't necessarily the winner. Someone may be purporting to refute you, but the long tail of the audience can read everything extant and the most voluminous poster isn't necessarily correct. Words can stand on their own. Also, people have a right to disagree with you, especially within a largely anonymized internet discourse. I mean it's not like the person who wins the most arguments or has the most interlocutors give up contesting them gets a free legendary bundle or a badge. There are really no stakes. If you feel your comments are being bad faith antagonized, unless you feeling like sporting your "opponent" sometimes it's best just to say your piece and leave. I regularly leave threads, actually skim and blink at thread going on for weeks after I feel they've played out, watching folks basically refusing to agree to disagree. Relatedly I think there should be an ability for an OP to "asked and answered" lock their own thread to prevent what's more often than not a good question get dithered into bloviating oblivion by folks rhetorically beating each other up over points that are tangential to the thrust of the topic, to put some rapier wit reference in there.
As for the OP. I think presuming validation or encouragement makes a lot of presumptions as to someone's "genius." Truthfully, if you're really doing something truly innovative and pushing against the grain, you are going to get pushback no matter what you're doing in any aspect of life, so maybe getting used to the experience in a TTRPG discussion place is actually good for the poster.
Reminds me I owe Pavillionaire a response to their Star Trek thread dumped in the kitchen.
Usually in threads that address HP, AC, Armor, alternate ways to calculate damage.
Some people (I think some of those in this thread) take offense at my response of "play something else".
The threads often start with I want to change HP and AC and X Y Z. And yes rather then going into a long detailed explanation of why it isn't a good idea, I just say play something that already has those mechanics, resulting in the OP being offended and sometimes me getting reported.
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
OP: I would like to do a thing. Can you recommend a way for me to do the thing?
Replies: You should not do the thing.
When those threads come up and people dogpile, honestly, I just get excaserbated. I love megathreads as much as the next guy, but sometimes its just a four post question/answer and you're done.
There's a lot of off topic on this forum. A LOT of off topic, and honestly, I understand that. Forum conversations evolve and change. I don't find it constructive in the slightest when it starts from a negative point of view to the OP and then continues in a way without every addressing the OP. I'm not saying a contrary position either, I mean just a pure negative one. Saying "Don't do that" isn't constructive. Continuing on the negative tangents without first validating why a person might feel what they feel or getting understanding of a situation before popping off is extremely important. If the OP is asking for something and you don't have anything to add? Don't ****ing post. If post 37 really grinds your gears but it started from a negative tangent on post 12 from something not even related to the thread, report for off topic and move on.
The basics of the way the human brain works is that people don't listen to someone when they are asking a question to understand what they are trying to say, but rather listen with the intent to answer a question. It's a funny psychology thing, but generally speaking, the human brain is actually not capable of simply listening and absorbing information and then addressing that information directly, it's actually a learned skill that requires you to overcome the natural way your brain works. It's in particularly difficult to do in writing where "meaning" is often translated.
This is honestly the most important part of forum discussion too. Nuance is so important and so easy to lose over text. Listening and responding appropriately but at the same time with a bit of empathy and compassion, and realizing no one is asking "you" to get on your hands and knees and beg for information/forgiveness/pity, but trying to bring it from a more informative mindset, instead of a "YOU HAVE TO DO IT THIS WAY" mindset.
I'll be real, when I did the forum survey, my response was "I think the forums are toxic and I don't see myself posting there much". The main reason is because of threads/responses like the ones I outlined.
I was definitely tempted to reply to this one, because the DM was asking about violating player agency, which to me is a cardinal sin and can, I believe, actually harm a person psychologically, and potentially goes outside the bounds of, "It's just a game." However, someone had already posted pretty much that, so I didn't dogpile. I don't mind if one person adds the comment that they recommend not doing that. The like button is there for anyone who agrees.
Agree on this one. The question was how do I deal with this player, not is the player in the wrong. The appropriate response was, "Talk to them," not, "Just put up with it," although another appropriate response would have been a compromise where everybody gets what they want.
Simply going to point out that the answer to virtually all the "how do I deal with this tension/mistake/weirdness at my table?" threads of the sort Spidey outlines is "have an adult conversation with the people involved, and if that doesn't work part amicably and move on."
Like, seriously. You could copy-paste a short paragraph detailing "Adult Conversation" from a sticky'd post into virtually all such threads and then lock them. One question, one answer, lock the thread, and then move on. Eighty percent of discussion in the forums would cease overnight and a great deal of detail and possibly useful debate would disappear, but the folks who just want one answer for one question and an absolute minimum of posting would get exactly that.
I started with an, I think, reasonably framed "why would you expect this outcome?" query in that thread, but as soon as I saw someone else (not the thread owner) advocating punishing players and/or taking them down a peg I had to push back hard against that. That's IMO absolutely horrible advice.
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It's also about the utility of discussion forums in general. If the purpose of every thread was just answering OP's question, one to four replies before being closed would be appropriate. If you prefer that format, you can browse sites like Quora or Stack Overflow.
But in a discussion forum, a thread isn't just meant to benefit the OP. It is a place where we can all discuss the issue, make points and counterpoints, and share our perspectives. Just because it sometimes turns toxic doesn't mean that discussion itself is a bad thing. In this format, the people contributing stand to benefit at least as much as the OP - and that potential is there even when the conversation drifts. That's just how forums work.
I have started very few threads myself, and the majority of those got 1-2 replies. Most of the value I get from this site is participating in these discussions. Even when a thread goes off the rails, it's honestly very rare that it's just two entrenched sides screaming that the other is wrong. There is nearly always an honest and genuine attempt to share perspective and the reasoning or logic that got them there. To me, the value of that is way more related to how interested I am in the topic and much less about how relevant it is to the OP.
Of course, OP should get an answer. Most do early on. After that, it's not a bad thing that the thread serves as a place of discussion related to the topic.
I agree that the purpose of the forum is more than just Q&A, and that longer threads are good - I enjoy reading some of them.
I would like to ask this of people contributing, though:
Please don't dogpile. Like other forums, there is a tendency to jump in on the OP. We all want to say our bit, but it's not nice for someone to come back to a thread to find three pages of variations on "You're wrong". It's not productive either, they'll just close off. That's nktnthe same as a back forth between a few posters discussing things among themselves, mind.
Please read what's actually being said, and don't jump to conclusions. Sometimes we read what we want to read into things and that doesn't help.
If what you have to say has already been said, consider just leaving it be.
Be aware that you rarely know enough to actually know what's really going on.
I know that I'm not perfect, and I've probably violated those rules in the short time that I've been here. But still, I think they're good ones. Discussion is great and can bring things to light that wouldn't have simply from the prompts given by the OP alone. However, if the OP is going to listen, they'll listen to the first post that mentions something. After that, it's not so helpful, I feel
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
That's a poor representation of this thread, and frankly I don't think you're aware of some of the content in that thread that disappeared pretty quickly, or maybe you're not aware it disappeared. If you read the thread, you'd see the OP actually validated the folks, at least some of them, you seem to think were persecuting. The fact that the thread got derailed by some "DM authority is absolute" types (I guess we call them power DMs?) and some very outmoded (and bizarre) treatise on the psychology of conditioning through "discipline" is actually a case in point where I think OPs should have a "asked and answered" lock privilege to prevent the usual hot air from blowing up the conversation's constructive origins.
As one of the posters who posted what I feel was constructive guidance, firm guidance sure, I don't appreciate your broad brushstroking of it as part of a rough shod exercise in pattern creation. In my perspective, and I imagine others who read it too, it diminishes the credibility I'd grant to your representation of the other examples in your post.
When you all caps WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS. Or better WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS? Make sure they actually did. Or recognize that there was actually a lot of community effort at policing what was problematic or toxic contributions (though per the rules, the community is supposed to defer in such instances).
In that particular thread the OP was suggesting punishing a player for playing D&D. In instances like that, a response of “WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!?” Is (IMO) exceedingly helpful to help the OP realize what an outright shitty thing it would be to punish a player like that. It’s a wake up call to someone who feels so entitled that they think they have the right to punish a player. If the DM changes the PC’s alignment to reflect the decision that’s one thing, but actively punishing a player is 🐴💩.
Unfortunately we live in the age of the “drama generation” in which people feel attacked if someone tells them they made a mistake. Punishing your players is a mistake. Being told it’s a mistake is helpful. Saying people are attacking you for pointing out your mistake is 🐴💩.
PS- Sometimes the advice of “that would be a wangrod thing to do, don’t be a wangrod” is the most helpful advice we need to hear.
In that particular thread the OP was suggesting punishing a player for playing D&D. In instances like that, a response of “WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!?” Is (IMO) exceedingly helpful to help the OP realize what an outright shitty thing it would be to punish a player like that. It’s a wake up call to someone who feels so entitled that they think they have the right to punish a player. If the DM changes the PC’s alignment to reflect the decision that’s one thing, but actively punishing a player is 🐴💩.
Unfortunately we live in the age of the “drama generation” in which people feel attacked if someone tells them they made a mistake. Punishing your players is a mistake. Being told it’s a mistake is helpful. Saying people are attacking you for pointing out your mistake is 🐴💩.
PS- Sometimes the advice of “that would be a wangrod thing to do, don’t be a wangrod” is the most helpful advice we need to hear.
I am in total agreement. I was baffled in that thread that people would suggest punishing a player, and presumably hadn't actually read what the OP had done to the player.
Sometimes the right response is "You're asking an irrelevant question." The thread on "should I punish a player" is a good example of this. If someone says "Should I burn my hand for 20 minutes or 30 minutes?" the answer is "Don't burn your hand," not a direct response to the question.
This is obviously a very different scenario to someone saying "Help balance my custom feat" and getting the response "don't make that feat."
I started with an, I think, reasonably framed "why would you expect this outcome?" query in that thread, but as soon as I saw someone else (not the thread owner) advocating punishing players and/or taking them down a peg I had to push back hard against that. That's IMO absolutely horrible advice.
It was never meant to be a specific callout against anyone.
That's a poor representation of this thread, and frankly I don't think you're aware of some of the content in that thread that disappeared pretty quickly, or maybe you're not aware it disappeared. If you read the thread, you'd see the OP actually validated the folks, at least some of them, you seem to think were persecuting. The fact that the thread got derailed by some "DM authority is absolute" types (I guess we call them power DMs?) and some very outmoded (and bizarre) treatise on the psychology of conditioning through "discipline" is actually a case in point where I think OPs should have a "asked and answered" lock privilege to prevent the usual hot air from blowing up the conversation's constructive origins.
As one of the posters who posted what I feel was constructive guidance, firm guidance sure, I don't appreciate your broad brushstroking of it as part of a rough shod exercise in pattern creation. In my perspective, and I imagine others who read it too, it diminishes the credibility I'd grant to your representation of the other examples in your post.
When you all caps WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS. Or better WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS? Make sure they actually did. Or recognize that there was actually a lot of community effort at policing what was problematic or toxic contributions (though per the rules, the community is supposed to defer in such instances).
If you feel personally attacked, that wasn't the point. That being said, I do think there are two absolutely fantastic callouts. That you don't appreciate broad brushstrokes, and that the community typically polices things in ways that run afoul of the rules.
In that particular thread the OP was suggesting punishing a player for playing D&D. In instances like that, a response of “WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!?” Is (IMO) exceedingly helpful to help the OP realize what an outright shitty thing it would be to punish a player like that. It’s a wake up call to someone who feels so entitled that they think they have the right to punish a player. If the DM changes the PC’s alignment to reflect the decision that’s one thing, but actively punishing a player is 🐴💩.
Unfortunately we live in the age of the “drama generation” in which people feel attacked if someone tells them they made a mistake. Punishing your players is a mistake. Being told it’s a mistake is helpful. Saying people are attacking you for pointing out your mistake is 🐴💩.
PS- Sometimes the advice of “that would be a wangrod thing to do, don’t be a wangrod” is the most helpful advice we need to hear.
It's not a drama generation thing, it's a phrasing thing. There are better ways to speak to it. That's all my intent was, to call it out and I think it speaks volumes when I go "Hey, maybe there are better ways to say it, the kneejerk is to go "We did nothing wrong, maybe you didn't read everything, how dare you". The same broad brushstrokes that happen in those threads.
I started with an, I think, reasonably framed "why would you expect this outcome?" query in that thread, but as soon as I saw someone else (not the thread owner) advocating punishing players and/or taking them down a peg I had to push back hard against that. That's IMO absolutely horrible advice.
It was never meant to be a specific callout against anyone.
I didn't take it as such, no worries. My point was more that as soon as an answer in the thread started focusing on punishment as a solution it was bound to escalate and the OP got caught up in that. There were answers to the effect of "this is bad" before that, but most of them were fairly reasonable in tone (in my opinion).
I get the sentiment of people ending up missing the point of the post altogether and be caught on specific discussions (That, although connected, don't provide any solutions), it is annoying, but, honestly, innately human. People just like to talk about their opinions and sometimes the subject end up being more important to them than actually providing a solution.
I don't remember the actual quote, but there is a philosopher that said something a long the lines of: "The critique is easy, because it lays on the surface of the problem. The solution, on the other hand, is difficult, because it lies in the depths of the problem"
Don't expect that to change any time soon.
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People post what they think are good ideas. They usually want people to like them and explain just how to implement them. Sadly, not all ideas are good. The kindest thing to do is say "That's not going to work, it breaks the rules, or the theme of the game."
I spend far too much of my time telling people, in detail, why a bad idea is bad. At best, I get ignored, at worst, I start off a bunch of thread drift.
<Insert clever signature here>
Honestly, it's the drift that's the problem. If you look at the format of, say, Reddit, you can easily go on these long digressions without really disrupting the main thread because they're contained within sub-threads. But it doesn't really work like that on regular forums.
In theory, it doesn't matter if someone puts out an unhelpful reply -- you can just put out a helpful one and ignore them, and if there's some need for community consensus, the voting system will handle it. In theory.
But it's hard to make the call of like, just letting somebody's bad opinion go. Just letting it sit there uncontested, or, even worse, letting their rebuttal to your own rebuttal sit uncontested. Then it looks like you lost. Once you start the drift, the pressure to increase the drift rises. I fall prey to it myself, so it's not like I'm condemning anyone, but I kind of am.
I guess it's probably just an inevitable side effect of the format. You gotta make peace with it or leave. I mean, on a personal level you can be mindful and refuse to derail, but you can't stop other people from doing it.
When the question is "Will X work", an answer of "No, and here's why" is perfectly useful. If the question is "how can I make X work", that would be different.
Last word on the thread isn't necessarily the winner. Someone may be purporting to refute you, but the long tail of the audience can read everything extant and the most voluminous poster isn't necessarily correct. Words can stand on their own. Also, people have a right to disagree with you, especially within a largely anonymized internet discourse. I mean it's not like the person who wins the most arguments or has the most interlocutors give up contesting them gets a free legendary bundle or a badge. There are really no stakes. If you feel your comments are being bad faith antagonized, unless you feeling like sporting your "opponent" sometimes it's best just to say your piece and leave. I regularly leave threads, actually skim and blink at thread going on for weeks after I feel they've played out, watching folks basically refusing to agree to disagree. Relatedly I think there should be an ability for an OP to "asked and answered" lock their own thread to prevent what's more often than not a good question get dithered into bloviating oblivion by folks rhetorically beating each other up over points that are tangential to the thrust of the topic, to put some rapier wit reference in there.
As for the OP. I think presuming validation or encouragement makes a lot of presumptions as to someone's "genius." Truthfully, if you're really doing something truly innovative and pushing against the grain, you are going to get pushback no matter what you're doing in any aspect of life, so maybe getting used to the experience in a TTRPG discussion place is actually good for the poster.
Reminds me I owe Pavillionaire a response to their Star Trek thread dumped in the kitchen.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I am totally guilty of saying don't do it.
Usually in threads that address HP, AC, Armor, alternate ways to calculate damage.
Some people (I think some of those in this thread) take offense at my response of "play something else".
The threads often start with I want to change HP and AC and X Y Z. And yes rather then going into a long detailed explanation of why it isn't a good idea, I just say play something that already has those mechanics, resulting in the OP being offended and sometimes me getting reported.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
When those threads come up and people dogpile, honestly, I just get excaserbated. I love megathreads as much as the next guy, but sometimes its just a four post question/answer and you're done.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/general-discussion/118815-how-to-handle-a-player-for-not-playing-according - Everyone came into this thread and just shit on the OP and told him he was a bad DM. Instead of guiding and answering his questions, most opened up with WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/general-discussion/118108-am-i-in-the-wrong - Eventually the OP clarifies his post, but the initial gutcheck reaction was just to go "Why did you do this, it seems selfish as ****" instead of answering the questions.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/general-discussion/116742-player-playing-music-in-the-middle-of-the-game?page=2 - Gets into a dogpile about music and derails completely.
There's a lot of off topic on this forum. A LOT of off topic, and honestly, I understand that. Forum conversations evolve and change. I don't find it constructive in the slightest when it starts from a negative point of view to the OP and then continues in a way without every addressing the OP. I'm not saying a contrary position either, I mean just a pure negative one. Saying "Don't do that" isn't constructive. Continuing on the negative tangents without first validating why a person might feel what they feel or getting understanding of a situation before popping off is extremely important. If the OP is asking for something and you don't have anything to add? Don't ****ing post. If post 37 really grinds your gears but it started from a negative tangent on post 12 from something not even related to the thread, report for off topic and move on.
This is honestly the most important part of forum discussion too. Nuance is so important and so easy to lose over text. Listening and responding appropriately but at the same time with a bit of empathy and compassion, and realizing no one is asking "you" to get on your hands and knees and beg for information/forgiveness/pity, but trying to bring it from a more informative mindset, instead of a "YOU HAVE TO DO IT THIS WAY" mindset.
I'll be real, when I did the forum survey, my response was "I think the forums are toxic and I don't see myself posting there much". The main reason is because of threads/responses like the ones I outlined.
I was definitely tempted to reply to this one, because the DM was asking about violating player agency, which to me is a cardinal sin and can, I believe, actually harm a person psychologically, and potentially goes outside the bounds of, "It's just a game." However, someone had already posted pretty much that, so I didn't dogpile. I don't mind if one person adds the comment that they recommend not doing that. The like button is there for anyone who agrees.
In this case the question is, "Am I in the wrong?" so it's totally appropriate to answer, "You're wrong. Don't do that."
Agree on this one. The question was how do I deal with this player, not is the player in the wrong. The appropriate response was, "Talk to them," not, "Just put up with it," although another appropriate response would have been a compromise where everybody gets what they want.
Simply going to point out that the answer to virtually all the "how do I deal with this tension/mistake/weirdness at my table?" threads of the sort Spidey outlines is "have an adult conversation with the people involved, and if that doesn't work part amicably and move on."
Like, seriously. You could copy-paste a short paragraph detailing "Adult Conversation" from a sticky'd post into virtually all such threads and then lock them. One question, one answer, lock the thread, and then move on. Eighty percent of discussion in the forums would cease overnight and a great deal of detail and possibly useful debate would disappear, but the folks who just want one answer for one question and an absolute minimum of posting would get exactly that.
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I started with an, I think, reasonably framed "why would you expect this outcome?" query in that thread, but as soon as I saw someone else (not the thread owner) advocating punishing players and/or taking them down a peg I had to push back hard against that. That's IMO absolutely horrible advice.
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It's also about the utility of discussion forums in general. If the purpose of every thread was just answering OP's question, one to four replies before being closed would be appropriate. If you prefer that format, you can browse sites like Quora or Stack Overflow.
But in a discussion forum, a thread isn't just meant to benefit the OP. It is a place where we can all discuss the issue, make points and counterpoints, and share our perspectives. Just because it sometimes turns toxic doesn't mean that discussion itself is a bad thing. In this format, the people contributing stand to benefit at least as much as the OP - and that potential is there even when the conversation drifts. That's just how forums work.
I have started very few threads myself, and the majority of those got 1-2 replies. Most of the value I get from this site is participating in these discussions. Even when a thread goes off the rails, it's honestly very rare that it's just two entrenched sides screaming that the other is wrong. There is nearly always an honest and genuine attempt to share perspective and the reasoning or logic that got them there. To me, the value of that is way more related to how interested I am in the topic and much less about how relevant it is to the OP.
Of course, OP should get an answer. Most do early on. After that, it's not a bad thing that the thread serves as a place of discussion related to the topic.
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(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
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(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
I agree that the purpose of the forum is more than just Q&A, and that longer threads are good - I enjoy reading some of them.
I would like to ask this of people contributing, though:
I know that I'm not perfect, and I've probably violated those rules in the short time that I've been here. But still, I think they're good ones. Discussion is great and can bring things to light that wouldn't have simply from the prompts given by the OP alone. However, if the OP is going to listen, they'll listen to the first post that mentions something. After that, it's not so helpful, I feel
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
That's a poor representation of this thread, and frankly I don't think you're aware of some of the content in that thread that disappeared pretty quickly, or maybe you're not aware it disappeared. If you read the thread, you'd see the OP actually validated the folks, at least some of them, you seem to think were persecuting. The fact that the thread got derailed by some "DM authority is absolute" types (I guess we call them power DMs?) and some very outmoded (and bizarre) treatise on the psychology of conditioning through "discipline" is actually a case in point where I think OPs should have a "asked and answered" lock privilege to prevent the usual hot air from blowing up the conversation's constructive origins.
As one of the posters who posted what I feel was constructive guidance, firm guidance sure, I don't appreciate your broad brushstroking of it as part of a rough shod exercise in pattern creation. In my perspective, and I imagine others who read it too, it diminishes the credibility I'd grant to your representation of the other examples in your post.
When you all caps WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS. Or better WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS? Make sure they actually did. Or recognize that there was actually a lot of community effort at policing what was problematic or toxic contributions (though per the rules, the community is supposed to defer in such instances).
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
In that particular thread the OP was suggesting punishing a player for playing D&D. In instances like that, a response of “WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!?” Is (IMO) exceedingly helpful to help the OP realize what an outright shitty thing it would be to punish a player like that. It’s a wake up call to someone who feels so entitled that they think they have the right to punish a player. If the DM changes the PC’s alignment to reflect the decision that’s one thing, but actively punishing a player is 🐴💩.
Unfortunately we live in the age of the “drama generation” in which people feel attacked if someone tells them they made a mistake. Punishing your players is a mistake. Being told it’s a mistake is helpful. Saying people are attacking you for pointing out your mistake is 🐴💩.
PS- Sometimes the advice of “that would be a wangrod thing to do, don’t be a wangrod” is the most helpful advice we need to hear.
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I am in total agreement. I was baffled in that thread that people would suggest punishing a player, and presumably hadn't actually read what the OP had done to the player.
Sometimes the right response is "You're asking an irrelevant question." The thread on "should I punish a player" is a good example of this. If someone says "Should I burn my hand for 20 minutes or 30 minutes?" the answer is "Don't burn your hand," not a direct response to the question.
This is obviously a very different scenario to someone saying "Help balance my custom feat" and getting the response "don't make that feat."
It was never meant to be a specific callout against anyone.
If you feel personally attacked, that wasn't the point. That being said, I do think there are two absolutely fantastic callouts. That you don't appreciate broad brushstrokes, and that the community typically polices things in ways that run afoul of the rules.
It's not a drama generation thing, it's a phrasing thing. There are better ways to speak to it. That's all my intent was, to call it out and I think it speaks volumes when I go "Hey, maybe there are better ways to say it, the kneejerk is to go "We did nothing wrong, maybe you didn't read everything, how dare you". The same broad brushstrokes that happen in those threads.
I didn't take it as such, no worries. My point was more that as soon as an answer in the thread started focusing on punishment as a solution it was bound to escalate and the OP got caught up in that. There were answers to the effect of "this is bad" before that, but most of them were fairly reasonable in tone (in my opinion).
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I get the sentiment of people ending up missing the point of the post altogether and be caught on specific discussions (That, although connected, don't provide any solutions), it is annoying, but, honestly, innately human. People just like to talk about their opinions and sometimes the subject end up being more important to them than actually providing a solution.
I don't remember the actual quote, but there is a philosopher that said something a long the lines of: "The critique is easy, because it lays on the surface of the problem. The solution, on the other hand, is difficult, because it lies in the depths of the problem"
Don't expect that to change any time soon.