Interesting thread, though maybe poorly titled.
- Enforcing alignment in clear and definitive fashion
- Imposing an objective morality on paladins, such as disallowing prevarication for selfish gain, torture, baby- (including baby monster) killing and casual sex as inherently evil and/or chaotic
Abhorrent.
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Occasionally fudging die rolls, and reserving the right to roll behind a screen while requiring players to roll openly
Employing prominent NPCs/GMPCs
Taking control of PCs who refuse to role-play honestly when charmed, dominated, etc.
Perfectly acceptable, though the first is obviously a bit of a crutch (permissible but not advisable) and the second can easily cross the line to unacceptable.
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Not providing the "required"/desired magical paraphernalia on schedule
Refusal to permit evil (or even chaotic neutral) PCs
Disallowing classes that violate the campaign's established and specific tone
Laying the smack down, hard, on abusive meta-gaming
Requiring immersive role-play rather than simple recitation of mechanics
Retaining control over magical weapons, cohorts, mounts, animal companions, eidolons, etc.
Acceptable to a limited degree. In terms of the last one, I believe the GM should usually control intelligent magic items found in play, but should never control animal companions and eidolons, which come with the character and really are the player's property. Enforcing properly animalistic behavior once in a while is ok, however, when you have a player that's trying to be exploitative of his animal companion. Cohorts are a trickier issue...
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Disallowing (or even placing restrictions of any kind on) full casters
Essential, assuming game balance and/or your own sanity are important to you.
I did a game where the Wizards are the Bad Guys. Hard to play a wizard then, eh?Make.
It.
Work.
You are perfectly capable of this. No, it won't ruin your campaign. It will take probably five minutes for you to come up with a short, plausible, plot-hook-laden explanation for why the PC is who he is.
Yes, even if he's playing a wizard in a world where wizards are all bad guys.
Arguably the most famous, well-loved D&D character of all time is a drow in a setting where I can totally picture someone sitting behind the DM screen with a scowl saying, "No, you can't play a drow. All of the drow are Bad Guys."
Not everything works. I am running a law enforcement/military game. If you want to play a pirate or a conman or a gentleman thief or an anarchist, it isn't going to work. Those characters just don't fit in. If that is what you really want to play, you are best off finding a different GM who is running a campaign that fits your concept.
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I am not an actor and certainly don’t require others to be. To be honest, I don’t like it when the player and/or GM gets too far into the acting. It feels creepy to me.
I have to say, I have a little bit of a problem with this post. It's called a "role playing" game because you're supposed to play a role. It's in the title. This post is a bit like going to an acting class and then calling the people there liars or psychopaths for pretending to be someone they're not.
To those who read ElterAgo's post: Please don't be discouraged or worry that other people at the table are judging you this way if you're role playing your character, even if you're not very good at it. You're doing it right and doing what you're supposed to do. Keep at it!
We don't really discuss politics, but based off some of the back and forth we've had over various somewhat related topics I would say probably. I do have another group I game with where things may get a little uglier since we have hardcore liberals, conservatives, and libertarians all in that group!Out of curiosity, are all of your players about in the same area of the political spectrum? One of the big reasons I could never run an intrigue game, outside my own dislike of politics, is that my group is all over the political line. Inevitably the campaign would breach that "no religion, no politics" unwritten rule that keeps our friendships from being ripped to shreds.I could never do political intrigue games. I hate real-world politics too much, bringing that sort of thing into the game would make me unhappy as a player and is something I'd never consider as a GM. The closest I'd get would be a less-combat focused rendition of something like Curse of the Crimson Throne or Council of Thieves. More The Lies of Locke Lamora than Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.And I love political intrigue games! Running one right now actually and my players really enjoy it.I'd really be surprised to see a Pathfinder political intrigue game hit too many hot button political topics. While I game with people of various different political bents, none of them are monarchists. Few are heavily invested in mercantilist vs manorialist economic philosophies.
Political intrigue in most fantasy settings is going to be more about the line of succession and various factions scheming for power than anything that's going to trigger modern political debates.
We all agree that hereditary nobility is a lousy way to run things, but we'd run with it because that's the system and in character it's just the way things are.
Well, presuming you're running a standard pseudo-medieval Europe setting. Mine's not, and there are a mess of different political systems going on from monarchical to theocratic to electoral to meritocratic to all sorts of other things.
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I did a game where the Wizards are the Bad Guys. Hard to play a wizard then, eh?Make.
It.
Work.
You are perfectly capable of this. No, it won't ruin your campaign. It will take probably five minutes for you to come up with a short, plausible, plot-hook-laden explanation for why the PC is who he is.
Yes, even if he's playing a wizard in a world where wizards are all bad guys.
Arguably the most famous, well-loved D&D character of all time is a drow in a setting where I can totally picture someone sitting behind the DM screen with a scowl saying, "No, you can't play a drow. All of the drow are Bad Guys."
He's also arguably the most despised D&D character of all time for all the clones that people kept wanting to play.
I played in a game with no spell casters. Part of the plot was to free the goddess of magic and return magic to the world. I suppose if someone had wanted to play a wizard, we could have just handwaved that somehow.
It's always possible to come up with some lousy excuse to have any character concept anyone wants in the game. If nothing else you can fall back on the old "I fell through a portal". It doesn't mean it's a good idea in any particular game. There may be a reason I wanted wizards as bad guys and not as PCs. The other players may be completely on board with the idea and breaking it may hurt their fun too, not just my perfect little world.
Yep, when people want me to DM my homebrew, it's because they want to experience my homebrew. I will DM Golarion if they want to play whatever they want to play with no setting consideration (seeing as Golarion is the shining example of an "and the kitchen sink" setting with no real narrative voice, so to speak. You can do whatever with it, since it doesn't have a theme).
The last part is the biggest thing. If the DM and all of the other players, except one, want the game to have a certain feel, it isn't the DM being a dick, it's the DM defending the others' fun from one person who puts their own fun above everyone else's.
Yeah, sometimes the DM is just being a dick, but, in my experience, that usually isn't the case.
I used "sins" quite purposefully, in that I find, or have in the past found, all these methods wholly acceptable, but have seen each at one point or another derided here as immature, inconsiderate, insufficiently egalitarian, mean-spirited, inflexible, "abhorrent" (I particularly enjoyed that one), obsolescent, et al.
The desire, even need, to portray differing yet effective methodologies as not only less correct but in a way morally inferior is ... interesting.
Er. Talk about a bait and switch. You asked the question "which of these do you find abhorrent?" The only reason I, at least, used the word was because it was in the question! And now you're ridiculing the term?
I answered (as I'm sure others did) in what I thought was the spirit of the question. I assumed you were saying "let's all compare notes about our subjective preferences for playing methods and notice how varied the responses are." But now, unless I am misinterpreting you, you're casting yourself as a sort of above-it-all, morally superior observer whose game style transcends all limitations? I hope that I have misunderstood the spirit of your last post. Please tell me if I have.
I don't think it's fair minded of you to characterize all criticism of different methodologies as some kind of pathology. Do you really believe that every method of playing this game is equally effective? They're clearly not. Different methods are more or less effective at achieving different experiences of play. That's what people are usually really arguing about on these boards. What kind of experience does X, Y or Z lead to, and is that experience a desirable one? In arguments of that sort reasonable people can, as they say, disagree.
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And still it all boils back to; it's Tyrant GM! NOPE it's Entitlement Players! Do internet arguments ALWAYS have to demonize the other side?!
Let us peek at the reality of the situation:
NOT tyrant GM wants to run a game and tosses a few campaign ideas he wants to try out at his players. Lets say Pirate Game, Planewalking Holy Crusade, and Village Defenders. His NOT entitlement players look over the ideas and weigh that against their cool character concepts they want to run. They all get together and talk about who prefers which one and reach a consensus on the game that would please the group best. Perhaps they go with Village Defenders so Pete's catgirl ninja high school character is set aside till another time; as such a character wouldn't fit in a bog standard {I give a delicious cookie to the person who invented this term} farm village. Pete instead makes Trixie the village prankster. Because lets face it Pete just wants to play some cute girl with issues. He still ends up having fun as do the GM and all the players. After the passage of many months when the campaign ends. Perhaps the GM has been watching too much anime {can there be such a thing?} and decides to offer an animorph vs humans campaign as one of the options... at last a place for his catgirl ninja! Now he just has to sell his fellow players on the idea.
Hmmm... It occurs to me that internet play is very different.
Internet play is SO much more "me first" than group play.
On the internet the GM doesn't usually give ideas... he simply states "I am running Planewalking Holy Crusade" There is no other option. He sets his player and character restrictions without consulting anyone else usually. And then he recruits players from the hundreds out there looking for a game. He picks and chooses from the players and characters he likes and feels will fit best and then runs his game.
The players likewise are free to develop ANY concept they desire to run as. Then they can shop from the dozens of games that are starting up to find a fit for their own play style or character concept.
There is a bit of a pecking order in this environment however. If you become known as a good GM or a good player you command far greater respect and opportunity than noobs or bad players/GMs. This translates into game invites from better GMs or good players lining up to run in any game with your name on it.
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So which is it, restricting players or kitchen skink?You act like the answer is black and white, all or nothing.
Very little in the world works in this fashion. Certainly not running a campaign.
In the original example it is. The commenter said they do not place any restrictions on character creation, which is very kitchen sink, then said they restrict the campaign and don't play kitchen sink. So which is it?
Now if the commenter had said that they establish a campaign idea as a group to give everybody a say in what kind of character they want to run, and then require everybody to stick to the established theme that would make more sense. It is minimally restrictive yet definitely not kitchen sink. It is probably closest to how most groups described above work. GM proposes an idea, the group throws in their two cents, GM and players work out what will be allowable, parameters for the campaign/game are set, everybody sticks to the parameters and everybody has fun. That has subtle shades of gray.
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I fail to see how...Reading any one of those 52 other threads would probably answer that for you.
I guess I should have stuck with this tack rather than ride the derail to crazytown again.
In the original example it is. The commenter said they do not place any restrictions on character creation, which is very kitchen sink, then said they restrict the campaign and don't play kitchen sink. So which is it?
Which commenter? And how do you define 'kitchen sink' in reference to settings?
Because my definition is 'everything is in'. In the posts you responded to, I said that 'only what the players want to play is in'. So, the setting is restricted, but the players are not.
So yes, it is a restricted setting.
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Actually it was the opposite everyone was trying to play a drow elf and tsr kept saying no, until they realized the monetary error of their ways!I did a game where the Wizards are the Bad Guys. Hard to play a wizard then, eh?Arguably the most famous, well-loved D&D character of all time is a drow in a setting where I can totally picture someone sitting behind the DM screen with a scowl saying, "No, you can't play a drow. All of the drow are Bad Guys."
I hated the drow as a concept before that one particular elf that I will not name was created. Evil does not look stereotypically evil. It is not black skinned and/or ugly. True evil is always bright, shiny, and alluring. It is cloaked in the trappings of all that is best for people. It hides in plain sight, not even realizing itself that it is evil.
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Evil does not look stereotypically evil. It is not black skinned and/or ugly. True evil is always bright, shiny, and alluring. It is cloaked in the trappings of all that is best for people. It hides in plain sight, not even realizing itself that it is evil.
You must have a real issue with fiends then.
Actually it was the opposite everyone was trying to play a drow elf and tsr kept saying no, until they realized the monetary error of their ways!I did a game where the Wizards are the Bad Guys. Hard to play a wizard then, eh?Arguably the most famous, well-loved D&D character of all time is a drow in a setting where I can totally picture someone sitting behind the DM screen with a scowl saying, "No, you can't play a drow. All of the drow are Bad Guys."
Actually, playing a drow in a party would still have been bad, not that Drizzt was a solo for much of his adventuring life.
It's one thing to want to play a drow, and have fun with being hunted, hated and shunned- it's another to FORCE the rest of your party to be hunted, hated and shunned. It's damn selfish is what it is.
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Evil does not look stereotypically evil. It is not black skinned and/or ugly. True evil is always bright, shiny, and alluring. It is cloaked in the trappings of all that is best for people. It hides in plain sight, not even realizing itself that it is evil.You must have a real issue with fiends then.
Some of them are extremely alluring and highly adept at corrupting from within.
Some of them are extremely alluring and highly adept at corrupting from within.Evil does not look stereotypically evil. It is not black skinned and/or ugly. True evil is always bright, shiny, and alluring. It is cloaked in the trappings of all that is best for people. It hides in plain sight, not even realizing itself that it is evil.You must have a real issue with fiends then.
A small minority, yes. Highly at odds with US's claim of "true evil is ALWAYS".
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Evil does not look stereotypically evil. It is not black skinned and/or ugly. True evil is always bright, shiny, and alluring. It is cloaked in the trappings of all that is best for people. It hides in plain sight, not even realizing itself that it is evil.You must have a real issue with fiends then.
Succubi and Incubi look incredibly alluring; and most fiends are shapeshifters or have enough magic to conceal their twisted forms. They make sense.
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We'll have to agree to disagree.
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Actually it was the opposite everyone was trying to play a drow elf and tsr kept saying no, until they realized the monetary error of their ways!I did a game where the Wizards are the Bad Guys. Hard to play a wizard then, eh?Arguably the most famous, well-loved D&D character of all time is a drow in a setting where I can totally picture someone sitting behind the DM screen with a scowl saying, "No, you can't play a drow. All of the drow are Bad Guys."Actually, playing a drow in a party would still have been bad, not that Drizzt was a solo for much of his adventuring life.
It's one thing to want to play a drow, and have fun with being hunted, hated and shunned- it's another to FORCE the rest of your party to be hunted, hated and shunned. It's damn selfish is what it is.
And worse to badger your GM into letting you play one when the game precludes any of the actual drawbacks of being a drow. Our party rogue is always insisting, "But I'm chaotic good!" He's still a drow and should still be treated as one by every elf within 10,000 kilometers of Sandpoint. But that would derail the game we're in; so the GM gave in and the drow rogue who's background story has him being the son of a famous drow ranger that uses two katana is being treated like any other elf (but with drow super powers).
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Do internet arguments ALWAYS have to demonize the other side?!
Yes!
And anyone who disagrees with me is a doo-doo head. Shades of grey are for suckers! :)
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A small minority, yes. Highly at odds with US's claim of "true evil is ALWAYS".Some of them are extremely alluring and highly adept at corrupting from within.Evil does not look stereotypically evil. It is not black skinned and/or ugly. True evil is always bright, shiny, and alluring. It is cloaked in the trappings of all that is best for people. It hides in plain sight, not even realizing itself that it is evil.You must have a real issue with fiends then.
Point taken. Power is not necessarily pretty, but it is usually alluring.
Point taken. Power is not necessarily pretty, but it is usually alluring.A small minority, yes. Highly at odds with US's claim of "true evil is ALWAYS".Some of them are extremely alluring and highly adept at corrupting from within.Evil does not look stereotypically evil. It is not black skinned and/or ugly. True evil is always bright, shiny, and alluring. It is cloaked in the trappings of all that is best for people. It hides in plain sight, not even realizing itself that it is evil.You must have a real issue with fiends then.
On that we can agree. But as this is likely to spiral into yet another complaint about how it's actually easier to be good (though it's even easier to be neutral) in D&D/PF and how being evil usually requires more effort (at least mechanically, but quite often via RP too), and that's fairly off-topic for this thread, I'll leave it alone >_>
Blatant evil is ineffective evil.
Sure, some people just don't care, but most people won't consciously set out to do evil. Or at least they won't be forthright about it. They have to be able to rationalize what they're doing.
As far as fiends...I think there are some serious logical problems with demons. Devils I can definitely see, but pure, unreasoning hatred and chaos? It would eat itself almost overnight. It's just one of those things you have to look past...sorta like castles in a world with relatively common* flight and invisibility.
* Relatively common in this case meaning "according to the demographic guidelines in the CRB."
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...But as this is likely to spiral into yet another complaint about how it's actually easier to be good (though it's even easier to be neutral) in D&D/PF and how being evil usually requires more effort (at least mechanically, but quite often via RP too), and that's fairly off-topic for this thread, I'll leave it alone >_>
I don't know about how easy it is to play whatever alignment one might chose; but yeah that's a totally different topic. Though at this point it might be a more interesting one since this one seems to have bogged down in minutia. It seems to me that most of us are well into spitting hairs on the finer points.
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Do internet arguments ALWAYS have to demonize the other side?!Yes!
And anyone who disagrees with me is a doo-doo head. Shades of grey are for suckers! :)
/Sob
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...But as this is likely to spiral into yet another complaint about how it's actually easier to be good (though it's even easier to be neutral) in D&D/PF and how being evil usually requires more effort (at least mechanically, but quite often via RP too), and that's fairly off-topic for this thread, I'll leave it alone >_>I don't know about how easy it is to play whatever alignment one might chose; but yeah that's a totally different topic. Though at this point it might be a more interesting one since this one seems to have bogged down in minutia. It seems to me that most of us are well into spitting hairs on the finer points.
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/SobDo internet arguments ALWAYS have to demonize the other side?!Yes!
And anyone who disagrees with me is a doo-doo head. Shades of grey are for suckers! :)
*bottles tears*
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Actually it was the opposite everyone was trying to play a drow elf and tsr kept saying no, until they realized the monetary error of their ways!I did a game where the Wizards are the Bad Guys. Hard to play a wizard then, eh?Arguably the most famous, well-loved D&D character of all time is a drow in a setting where I can totally picture someone sitting behind the DM screen with a scowl saying, "No, you can't play a drow. All of the drow are Bad Guys."Actually, playing a drow in a party would still have been bad, not that Drizzt was a solo for much of his adventuring life.
It's one thing to want to play a drow, and have fun with being hunted, hated and shunned- it's another to FORCE the rest of your party to be hunted, hated and shunned. It's damn selfish is what it is.
And this goes for anything along that lines -- I'd think long and hard before being something that is going to be disruptive before I rolled it up and I'd certainly talk to the GM and other players. Not everyone has fun the same way, and while being a primordial ooze who eats buildings might sound keen to you, the rest of the party isn't always interested in having to clean up and/or pay for your messes.
As far as "most famous well-loved" .. No? I mean, famous sure. Well-loved? I seriously question that. Beyond that, Drizzt is a book character and didn't have to deal with other people at the table or a GM that may not like drow.
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He's also arguably the most despised D&D character of all time for all the clones that people kept wanting to play.
Oh no. He became too popular.
I played in a game with no spell casters. Part of the plot was to free the goddess of magic and return magic to the world. I suppose if someone had wanted to play a wizard, we could have just handwaved that somehow.
You're looking at this like it's a chore and that the only solution doesn't add anything to the game's story. That's the wrong way of looking at it.
What you had before your player came along was a world where the goddess of magic was trapped and magic along with her.
Now you have a world where the goddess of magic is trapped, and almost all magic gone. But now you have a lone individual capable of using magic, on a quest to free the goddess of magic. This raises all kinds of cool questions! Why does he have access to magic? What is his connection to the trapped goddess? What is his motivation for freeing magic when keeping it to himself makes him uniquely powerful? Is there another, heretofore unknown source of magic in the world? Is it a competing source of magic?
I mean come on! That's plot hooks for miles!
It's always possible to come up with some lousy excuse to have any character concept anyone wants in the game. If nothing else you can fall back on the old "I fell through a portal". It doesn't mean it's a good idea in any particular game. There may be a reason I wanted wizards as bad guys and not as PCs. The other players may be completely on board with the idea and breaking it may hurt their fun too, not just my perfect little world.
Don't come up with lousy excuses. Come up with interesting explanations!
Did the goddess of magic secret away a bit of her power before she was imprisoned, that the party wizard stumbled upon? Is there a shadow war between two sources of magic, and one of them has imprisoned the other (and is secretly manipulating the party wizard into thinking he is the goddess' chosen champion)? Has the universe itself seen fit to correct the cosmic imbalance created by magic's absence by instilling a spark of arcane energy in a hapless human?
There is material here, man.
Is literally any character concept going to be workable in a given setting? No, of course not. Some are so far beyond the pale as to be unmanageable. But your scenario here is a prime example of a concept that is totally workable (not to mention loads more interesting than your typical character concept) but that a DM wasn't willing to work with at all.
When I say "Make it work," I'm not saying that you have to either make it work or give up on the game entirely. I'm saying that you ought to make a genuine, concerted effort to carve out a place for that concept in your world, and that a lot of what I'm seeing here is DMs making excuses for why they shouldn't have to even do that.
One of the measures of a DM's strength (in my eyes) is how often he can take a situation where other DMs might say, "No," and turn it into a situation where he can instead say, "Yes, but..."
Save in a persistent campaign world ... It doesn't work that way. Four to six, then four to six more, then ...
Yeah what a chore that would be to come up with a couple of new twists on your setting a couple times a year!
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If it's just a twist it's not a problem. Adding in cat people, lizard folk, Tieflings, etcetera, isn't "adding a couple new twists"
Sure it is. In fact, adding a new fantasy race to an existing fantasy game world is one of the easiest changes to make!
On the other hand, why couldn't those players try "a couple new twists" on the type of character they like to run and play something which can conceivably exist with the colors already on the pallete, even if combined in new ways?
Have you read this thread?
Players do this. All the time. In fact, it's becoming so standard for players to do this that it's seen as imposing on the DM when someone suggests it go the other way.
This is what the conversation we're having looks like:
A: "9 times out of 10, when a player's character concept bumps up against a DM's setting concept, the player is the one forced to change his concept. We think that should probably be evened out so that both parties are accustomed to compromising."
B: "But changing a game world is hard!"
A: "No, it's not. Especially when the change is largely additive. You probably only have to make a minor change. It's certainly easier than coming up with an entirely new character concept."
B: "Why can't the players just fit themselves into the campaign world?"
A: "They can. And do. 9 times out of 10."
Hopefully you can see why this is becoming frustrating.
Nine times out of ten the player can either get their concept or something so close as to make little difference, so long as they aren't for some reason specifically seeking to break through the limits that were already in place for the campaign when it was selected. And the number of character concepts that are absolutely desperately reliant upon being a specific race and only a specific race are vanishingly small. Most of them can be fulfilled thematically in other ways. Usually, nine out of ten, race isn't so crucial to the concept that if you don't get that race you have to start over.
Similarly, nine of of ten times (actually, probably far more often than that) adding a race to a campaign setting isn't so massive a change that the whole setting has to be thrown out for being overly generic.
But none of this is the point.
We're not talking about the nine times out of ten where the character's concept works just fine and there is no conflict. We're talking about the one time out of ten where the character's concept and the DM's setting are not in harmonious agreement, and what happens next.
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Just want to point out that "players play what they want" =/= "generic kitchen sink." You can play a very highly-restrictive campaign, and still have players with free choice in their characters. All you need to do is match the restrictions to the group preference.
If you had a "no dwarves!" campaign theme in mind, and two of the three players indicate they want to play dwarves (BTW, this has actually happened to me on two separate occasions), then that restriction isn't really a good one for that particular group -- but any number of others might be. If I end up with two dwarven fighters, an elf wizard, and a human cleric, the players and I can still agree to restrict the campaign to "no Small races, no Furries, no evil characters, no rogues or bards, no gunslingers, etc., etc., etc."
I couldn't agree more. When I started talking to my players about our current game I had some rough ideas in mind. I knew:
1) the city where most of the game takes place has been under recent occupation by a Demi-human army.
2) a hidden portal between planes would be discovered and would lead to contact with a new race.
3) weak post-occupation government would be heavily directed by factions within the city.
So I asked my players what they wanted to play and said that I would like one person to volunteer to play a "lost soul" type character who would be the only one of their kind.
I got a human fighter/bard who is the captain of a relief force from another city.
A human zen archer who is the son of the quarry master, one of the only city inhabitants to prosper under the occupation so he is seen with distrust (collaborator) but is also a major player in the quarryman's guild.
An elf time oracle who was from the same city as the captain, except 200 years in the past. Long before the occupation or the war. His new wife was pregnant when the explosion caused him to be pulled into the future.
An elf wizard who is an apprentice at the only remaining institution of magic in the city. The Elven school of illusions and wards. This group is known for amazing spectacles it creates using illusion magic. They are also quite adept at slipping ideas into the spectators minds who willingly let their guard down to experience the full range of the show. (Suggestion/Trid entertainment)
A fetchling rogue thief working his way up through the Zin Beltza, a black market trading guild and thieves guild.
So I took those races and factions and inserted them into my own framework. No one wanted to play a dwarf so the dwarves became the occupying army. The one off character wanted to play a fetchling so the rift in the portal leads to the shadow plane. The factions they created play well in a power struggle plus I added a religious faction because they didn't offer one.
The major events of the world will proceede no matter what they do. There are somethings beyond their control. But how they choose to handle those things and in what order, and the way their influence in the factions create political opportunities are all open to them. So it is a sandbox (as opposed to a theme park, or railroad) but there very much is a defined story and plot. It's just that the players are collectively telling the story with me. I'm not driving the bus, we are all rowing the boat.