I'm officially renaming this thread "The Dumpling Incident"
I am the "he" component of the couple in question. My name is Kevin. My wife's name is Desi. Hi!
First things first. We didn't walk out because of the pig.
Now, here's the deal with the pig (named Dumpling): Although she's slowing coming around to playing RPG's on her own, Desi started playing, and mostly still does play, just to humor her gamer husband. I'm sure you have seen the type before. We mostly only play together at conventions. My wife having fun is /required/ for her to play with me at conventions, and consequently what it takes for me to be able to play PFS at conventions, and so on. This rule trumps every rule in every book and guide Paizo publishes. Period. End of story.
Fluff stuff like a pig as her cavalier's mount is what it takes for my wife to have fun playing RPG's. She was /really/ in love with this particular idea, which was approved by the GM of the first mod she played this character. "Can I have a pig?" "Sure." At the end of the con, while waiting for our turn at the final paint-and-take, I have a video interview with her where she said her highlight for the convention was, "Charge! Snort, snort, snort." You will pry this pig from her character's cold dead hands, is what I'm saying. And I wouldn't want to try. She's so cute when she's having fun and it takes so little to make her happy.
In our home campaign (still Savage Tide actually) there was a magical mishap I used as an opportunity to have her character's skin turn purple. She loves purple. She was delighted. So much so that in the aforementioned paint-and-take she was excited to find a mini to use as her character in our home campaign and plaster it with purple paint. It has zero game impact, but HUGE impact on player satisfaction. It's exactly the kind of tweak a good GM loves to grant.
If you need a RULES justification for accepting it I will refer back to:
Mark Garringer aka Zizazat wrote:
I also come down slightly on the just have fun side, however, to Chris' point, it is breaking a pretty obvious rule. Namely:
APG, pg. 34 wrote:
A Small cavalier can select a pony or wolf, but can also select a boar or a dog if he is at least 4th level. The GM might approve other animals as suitable mounts.
The bold is my emphasis and I interpret as leaving the matter in the hands of the GM's discretion, and as such is not breaking the rules at all. Since the pig is, in terms of game mechanics, less than a wolf or a pony (not to mention much less than a boar), but still suitable for riding in a fantasy environment, especially for a gnome ... this should have been a non-issue, which it hasn't been for any of the five previous GM's who ran with it when Daisy (the gnome) was introduced at the table.
If that still doesn't satisfy you, then as was also pointed out, she could just as easily have bought the pig and trained it. The limitation of which animals can be used are just part of the Mount class feature of the cavalier class, not of the rules as a whole. There's nothing in the rules that says that no character can under no circumstances ride a pig, is there?
If that /still/ doesn't satisfy you, then what's the harm in reskinning, really? We're not playing a tournament game here. It's not competitive. If it has negligible impact on the power level of the character (or, as in this case, where it would actually fix a companion nerfed in the interest of flavor) what is the harm? How does that compare to the impact on player fun? How do you weigh the two? For me the answer is clear. You let the player have their fun.
I only told the GM that it was a pig with dog (I should have said wolf) stats because from the tone he was setting from the outset I could tell he might be a stickler and might need a justification to allow it. It didn't occur to me that he would go so far as to not allow the pig-shaped-dog with a wink and a nod, even given what little I know about the module. A pony or a wolf wouldn't have been any better, and treating the pig as a dog behind the screen would have been fine. A cavalier needs a mount. Period. Any cavalier that shows up to Frostfur Captives is going to have issues. Period. Cavaliers are already difficult to play, are hindered really, in PFS. Why do you have to make it harder still by being such an extreme stickler for the most severe interpretation of the rules? Or, in the case of reskinning, rules that aren't even real rules?
WHY WE LEFT
No, we didn't leave the table because of the pig.
We left, honestly, because we could tell that we were not going to have fun playing at this GM's table. From the moment we sat down we started getting lectures (word used advisedly) about the proper way of filling out the 3x5 cards he provided, asking for every spell we had to be listed on the back of the card for instance. That's where the animal companion's tricks thing came into play: they had to be listed on the card too. It was trained for general purpose, combat (which comes automatically with Mount class feature) and she hadn't given it any bonus tricks because she never used her pig that way. She never used it to attack, defend, or anything, either. She just always used it to charge, and ride. That's it. She's getting better, but doesn't know the rules thoroughly and forcing too much on her makes the game less fun: see the #1 rule above all else from the beginning of this post for more details.
But he gave us a stern talking to about even how our names appeared on the 3x5 card, that if we didn't readily answer to our character names then we were to instead put our real names because he didn't want to have to repeat himself when he called on us.
Not unreasonable requests, if a bit extreme and more than any previous GM in all my experience at gaming has ever required -- but the tone and insistence on every little thing being just so was really off-putting.
We literally had to sit through a half hour of rigorous player training and paperwork before we could get started.
THEN, he was offended that we were looking at our iPads instead of at him. We got done with our paperwork, whispered to each other to make sure we wanted to go on even without the pig (which she was willing to do), and got the /look/ from the GM. I looked him in the eye, said we were ready, and we're listening, go ahead. He just kept giving us the /look/. I eventually glanced up at him again to see why he was quiet and nothing was happing, and he'd just been looking at us and then said, "I"m waiting," and gave a significant look again at our iPads. Mind you, the rest of the players at the table were looking at their character sheets and looking through books. But it was us with our iPads that seemed to be the problem.
THEN, when I again insisted that despite looking at our iPads we really were capable of following what was going on if he would just go ahead and begin, he did begin. It was, and I wish I could say this more gently, a conspicuously drab presentation. A purely mechanical recitation. It was the kind of beginning that makes people look at each other and say, "Oh boy, it's going to be a long day."
The final straw was once we had gotten through the introduction and it was time for us to act, the GM broke the cardinal rule of DM'ing. He directed player action. At first he kept saying, "I strongly advise against that," and "you shouldn't do that," and finally, "you can't do that." We wanted to address the problem of the captive goblins not liking dogs of a dog-sled by tying them up and stuffing them in sacks and put them on the dog sled. We were told in so many words that wasn't going to happen.
I can put up with a lot. Desi was willing to put up with a lot for me. But we thought that we're at this big, wonderful convention, it's the last day, and we don't have to sit and suffer through this if we don't want. So we made up an excuse and left. No hard feelings. It's not necessarily that he isn't a good GM, just not good for us. No harm done, and we had five really great experiences with other GM's at the convention.
It worked out fine for us. We went back to the room and finished packing so we wouldn't have to rush later, went back to the dealer hall for the last bit of our shopping, went and played some D&D Miniatures League (and I won a new mini), went around and took pictures in front of all the big sculptures, and then did paint-and-take. It was a wonderful conclusion to our convention.
A FINAL THOUGHT
I appreciate all the GM's, good and bad, who volunteer to judge games at a convention. Without you we wouldn't be able to play at all, I know that. I know it's not easy dealing with the grab-bag of players at every new table. I have nothing against how this GM runs his games, per se. Maybe he isn't so strict outside the convention environment, either. It's hardly fair to judge a GM on convention play alone. As it was the last slot of a long con, maybe he was just tired. I choose not to apply such judgements to this GM that go further than this one experience.
But just as much as GM's have say over what happens at their tables please realize that players have a say in who they choose to play with. We have a choice when we sit down at a table -- to stay or go. This is a good example. If you don't let my wife have the pig, we can just get up and go, and the next GM will. Daisy the gnome cavalier will go on the Frostfur Captives adventure with her pig Dumpling, eventually, even if I have to GM it.
