Are all DM's control freaks? [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

Talakeal

2014-09-27, 01:50 PM

enderlord99

2014-09-27, 01:58 PM

Yes, to a varying extent. Most of those rules are still stupid.

emeraldstreak

2014-09-27, 02:01 PM

As a DM, yes, we are. Don't get me wrong, I find all of your list ridiculous things to do, but I bet I have my own quirks.

snailgosh

2014-09-27, 02:02 PM

I have played under two GM's so far, one of them being my flatmate, and both happily had the players have the responsibility over their sheets, their numbers etc.

CarpeGuitarrem

2014-09-27, 02:05 PM

Goodness, no! The only rule I might insist on, generally, is "if you're going to check your phone, you need to leave the table just like you would for a bathroom break", because that's just a sort of courtesy to everyone else. (And digital devices can often be a distraction from the game.)

And I've run into a lot of GMs who don't have those sorts of bonkers behaviors.

I have the hypothesis that this might be more common in D&D with the "DM culture", but I only have vague reasons to think that.

Daishain

2014-09-27, 02:07 PM

Yes and no

You seem to have had a bad run of luck, those actions are well over the top for most DMs, and I for one would just walk straight out the door if forced to put up with half of the items on that list.

That stated, all DMs have their own weird little preferences. Most just aren't that intrusive or obnoxious.

Sartharina

2014-09-27, 02:20 PM

I find most of them not to be entirely unreasonable, and likely in place for good reason - I know I have 'roll dice a special way" to ensure they actually roll, and stay on the table somewhere easily visible. Color is useful for keeping things organized. Others are metagame solutions to things that can completely bog down/destroy a game if used in excess, and have a tendency to creep into excess if left unchecked.

blacklight101

2014-09-27, 02:22 PM

well I know my reaction to that ridiculousness would be: "Well, **** you." and I would just leave. I hope I don't have to deal with a DM like that any time soon. The worst we ever had was basically a threat against our way-too-meta player (she got out the MM a couple times) that she would dock HP until after the session, the rest of us thought it was fair of her.

And nobody tells us what kind of dice to use, they're our collections for a reason. [this goes for everybody, cause dice are awesome and I have a tendency to buy far too many of them] But, the blue ones roll better, what do you mean I have to use red?

hymer

2014-09-27, 02:24 PM

I think a lot of those could well have some merit.

-Telling players what color / style of dice to use and how to roll them.

I have rules like that. You have to roll openly, so rolls behind your PHB or with dice nobody can read are right out.

-Refusing to let players look at the on other player's character sheets (or describe their own to other players except in in character terms)

The whole group needs to be in on it, but if they are, this is a very valid way to go. It helps people to think about personality and story and less about mechanics. And the DM would be the obvious one to enforce this if it had been agreed upon. There may also be someone in the party masquerading as something their stats say they are not, or this is just to keep that option open.

-Refusing to let players take their character sheets home

I had a player who lost his character sheet every other session, and leveling up was done in-session. I took his sheet home with me towards the end. But there should be copies, obviously, especially in this digital age.

-Telling players where to sit

If there's a player who tries to peek behind the screen, or if you need a space clear at the table (I like to move out from behind the screen during big fights), you may need to control seating somewhat.

-Not letting players check their phones

Sounds like a perfectly reasonable table rule to me. People can ask for dispensations if they are expecting something important.

-Making players take actions without clearly specifying them first each time, for example insisting a player say "I full attack with my long sword and five levels of power attack" every turn despite them doing that consistently for the entire battle and even making players announce passive abilities like Sneak Attack.

I do the first part at times. When I have upwards of six players at the table, I don't need the added distraction of remembering their particular modus operandi or special tells. And I don't think "Full attack, power five" is too much to ask.

So is he right? If not what is up with these GMs? Is this normal, or am I merely getting a bad run of GMs like I have gotten a bad run of players in the past. Let me know what you think?

He is wrong (sweeping generalizations nearly always are). Some DMs, like all people, have their weird ways, and the usually closed club of a gaming group can be difficult to break into for outsiders. Right now, you're coming across a lot of groups that likely have a high turnover rate - those are the ones to need players most. I think you're having bad luck rather than seeing the real thing, but with the caveat that you may need to put up with a bit of oddity for the sake of getting a game. Some oddness actually has good reasons.

Totema

2014-09-27, 02:24 PM

The only "example" I actually agree with is the phone rule. Checking your phone extensively during a game: 1. Sucks you out of the game like nothing else, and 2. Is incredibly rude to other players and the DM. It's like being on a date, and your date is absolutely entrenched in his/her phone instead of actually interacting with you. Not cool.

Everything else, though, is out of line. A little of it seems like it might have good intentions (such as curbing metagaming) but really only succeeds in making the game unplayable.

Traab

2014-09-27, 02:35 PM

A lot of those I can see reasons for them existing, the dice one especially has been covered already. Its entirely possible the Dms you play with have encountered too many problem players so they made these rules to compensate. For example, he has dealt with too damn many rules lawyers or muchkins who want to argue chapter and verse of whatever book they are quoting from. By refusing to let them page through the rule books he is making sure he doesnt trigger another 3 hour argument over "well it depends on what your definition of the word "is" is." As they push for specific interpretations of the rules the dm doesnt want. This way the dm can say, "Dont care, this is how it works, lets move on."

However, arbitray rules changing and such sucks if the dm wont even explain why he doesnt allow this particular class or build. Unless of course its just a flat out overoptimized setup that would ruin the game he setup. But it still wouldnt hurt to say so.

BWR

2014-09-27, 02:40 PM

The amount of stuff you've had to put up with, Tal...
*shakes head in disbelief*

Some of those options I can see being put into place from bitter experience, even if they might be going a bit too far.
Some dice can be hard to read, and rolling in certain places can be hidden from other players. Problems with people honestly or 'honestly' misreading dice or otherwise cheating? Problems with dice falling on the floor or in the couch or sliding or landing unevenly? Make sure they have clearly labled dice and roll them where everyone can easily see the result.
You have problems with players constantly fiddling with their phones, burning game time, not paying attention? A blanket ban on phones is a lot easier than trying to set any other sort of limit because chances are it will just get out of hand again.
Players spending more time reading books than paying attention to the game, requiring everything to be said twice? Ban reading books.
People constantly coming late and ruining the fun for everyone else but manage to come on time when faced with an ultimatum? Xp penalties.
Tired of people never playing characters or being able to speak IC? Enforce IC speech.
Problem with players 'fixing' their character in downtime or being absent for a session? just leave all sheets with the GM (that's how my group has always done it - otherwise we would be arbitrarily short of manpower on a regular basis). And sadly, sometimes otherwise decent players cheat. Keep them on strict oversight and you can sometimes handle it.
Problems with players not saying clearly what they do so things become a muddle? Even worse, having some add situational modifiers like PA after they've seen their rolls (and other forms of cheating)? See above.
Arbitrarily changing rules mid-game - 'arbitrary' might not be how they see things. I've been on both sides of this for better or worse. You see a rule in action and decide you don't like it. What the DM feels is a bad or broken rule might not be what a player thinks is a bad or broken rule. Once the decision has been made, it should generally be abided by. Sometimes the rule change is, to your mind, unnecessary and limiting. However, the 'no explanation' bit doesn't exactly inspire trust in a player and I can't find any reason to excuse that.

The most important thing in any conflict of interest is communication. Understand exactly why the change is in place. Ask them 'why' and if you still disagree try to state your case as calmly and objectively as possible.

Exediron

2014-09-27, 03:58 PM

Only the good ones. :smallwink:

-telling players what color / style of dice to use and how to roll them. not reasonable, unless he has reasonable suspicions of cheating.
-dinging xp for showing up late or talking ooc tempting, but no; that's mixing in-character effects with ooc causes, which is usually a bad
-insisting all dialogue by ic and refusing to let players use mechanical terms grey area; this one has merits, but needs consensus.
-refusing to let players look at the on other player's character sheets (or describe their own to other players except in in character terms) completely agree.
-refusing to let players take their character sheets home i don't do it, but there is a good reason to.
-refusing to let players add up the numbers on their own character sheets see number 1.
-refusing to let the players look at the rule books (even their own) without permission going too far, but too much book-looking really clogs up a session.
-telling players where to sit unless it's for some logistical reason, such as if the party is split.
-not letting players check their phones god yes, more people need to have this one!
-arbitrarily banning basic character options without explanation 'without explanation' is the problem here.
-arbitrarily changing the rules mid game without explanation absolutely not.
-making players take actions without clearly specifying them first each time, for example insisting a player say "i full attack with my long sword and five levels of power attack" every turn despite them doing that consistently for the entire battle and even making players announce passive abilities like sneak attack. it's a bit pedantic, but i can imagine why he might. This probably means that particular dm had problems with a munchkin in the past.

... and why is the forum tweaking with my use of case?

sktarq

2014-09-27, 04:18 PM

-Telling players what color / style of dice to use and how to roll them. Beyond demanding that the DM can see the dice, they are clearly marked etc That seems a bit harsh. Unless maybe there are distraction issues-with dice that use fancy symbols for 1's or max's are mirrored etc as cross in some distraction boundary. Exception would be if members of the group all roll together and dice are being used to differentiate characters asking players to be consistent would make sense. (usually limited to initiative but who knows)
.

-Dinging XP for showing up late or talking OOC That's a pretty debatable issue-fine if worked out ahead of time. Only time it has ever come up for me was when the others players demanded it, feeling like others only showed up at the end but got XP for the whole adventure.

-Insisting all dialogue by IC and refusing to let players use mechanical terms There is a spectrum here. Banning game terms in IC speech does help drive immersion. Needs to be set up as a general rule early by general acclaim but the DM would be the natural one to enforce said rule.

-Refusing to let players look at the on other player's character sheets (or describe their own to other players except in in character terms) This can be damn useful for immersion. Also some players want to misrepresent what they are to the party and if the DM is going to support that then a blanket rule would be safest.

-Refusing to let players take their character sheets home Yeah having the DM keep the sheets does make sense to a lot of groups. Less loss, no cheating, there for reference when the DM is building an adventure. Also if a player doesn't make the game that week but reference needs to be made to their character sheet for whatever reason it is on hand. Personally I hold the master sheets and players are free to keep a copy for themselves if they wish.

-Refusing to let players add up the numbers on their own character sheets er...really that's a bit much

-Refusing to let the players look at the rule books (even their own) without permission only okay if its running up against a generally distraction rule.

-Telling players where to sit-As problem resolution fine, or in needing to keep things behind the screen would be fine. or even -within the general circle and not glaring at everyone from the corner type stuff I can see but usually no.

-Not letting players check their phones Yeah as part of the general distraction rule set.

-Arbitrarily banning basic character options without explanation If done before builds are due or especially if before they would be excepted then that's a rather common one and totally cool in my book. A highly morally grey campaign planed may warrant skipping over the Paladins. If they are playing a very magic poor world they may want to restrict the arcane spellcaster choices. If it involves something that will later be part of a dramatic reveal then keeping it mostly under wraps ahead of time makes sense. As long as such restriction are laid out VERY early its pretty kosher. However explanations should be given - even if it "There are plans for the ***** that that make it inappropriate for a PC"

-Arbitrarily changing the rules mid game without explanation That happens and frankly explanations should be given.

-Making players take actions without clearly specifying them first each time, for example insisting a player say "I full attack with my long sword and five levels of power attack" every turn despite them doing that consistently for the entire battle and even making players announce passive abilities like Sneak Attack. I'd say this would be overkill as a starting place. If there are issues of a history of challenges to such calls, or very large groups then I could see it as an attempted problem fix. But not a great place to start.

PrincessCupcake

2014-09-27, 04:55 PM

Yes, all DMs are control freaks. It's part of the job description. Some definitely take it too far though.

-Telling players what color / style of dice to use and how to roll them.
plausible but excessive. I ask all my players to make sure they can read their own dice and make sure they stay on the table. Comes out of players having hard to read dice and/or cheating.

-Dinging XP for showing up late or talking OOC
Odds are, this DM had one or more players whom once they got off topic were very hard to get back on, and another player who liked to show up an hour or more late. Again, it's a bit excessive but an acceptable last resort.

-Insisting all dialogue by IC and refusing to let players use mechanical terms
this one is outright silly.

-Refusing to let players look at the on other player's character sheets (or describe their own to other players except in in character terms)
uh......

-Refusing to let players take their character sheets home
They probably had a player who cheated

-Refusing to let players add up the numbers on their own character sheets
.............

-Refusing to let the players look at the rule books (even their own) without permission
Possibly follows a general "minimize distractions or arguing" thing

-Telling players where to sit
excessive

-Not letting players check their phones
this makes a fair bit of sense, especially with easily distracted players.

-Arbitrarily banning basic character options without explanation
"Without explanation" is what bugs me here

-Arbitrarily changing the rules mid game without explanation
Bad Dming

-Making players take actions without clearly specifying them first each time, for example insisting a player say "I full attack with my long sword and five levels of power attack" every turn despite them doing that consistently for the entire battle and even making players announce passive abilities like Sneak Attack.
Sometimes, this is to help players remember that they have abilities. Sometimes, it's done because the DM has a LOT of stuff to keep track of and needs the player to be clear.

Talakeal

2014-09-27, 05:27 PM

-Refusing to let players add up the numbers on their own character sheets
.............

And I am not talking about actually writing down the numbers (we aren't allowed to do that either), I mean checking the DM's math and pointing out "mistakes", of which there were many.

TheThan

2014-09-27, 05:51 PM

Refusing to let players take their character sheets home

I’ve done this. The players in question were actually pretty awful about keeping track of their character sheets, so after more than a few lost or misplaced character sheets, I decided to start collecting them so they would be there the next session.

-Not letting players check their phones

I’ve been tempted to do this, but I understand that life happens. So my policy is no internet unless you’re using it for the game. I’ve seen people fire up angry birds in the middle of a dnd session before, and that I dislike. If you’re going to play dnd, then play dnd, but if you’re not playing dnd, don’t pretend to. It’s rude and insulting the other players. That being said, if you have to take a call, answer a text or whatever, I’m fine with that. if things start getting out of hand, I’ll tighten down on it.

Telling players what color / style of dice to use and how to roll them.

Some dice are very hard to read, I require that I am able to see and read the dice for it to count.
I bought a set a beautiful translucent aquamarine dice, but after using them once I realized that they’re hard to read, so I don’t use them anymore.

Now I’m rather pro-Dm, so I tend to come down on the side of the Dm. that being said, we’re not all prickish about control. We want games to run smoothly with a minimum of interruptions and distractions. Most of the rules listed seem like they try to enforce that environment.

Giddonihah

2014-09-27, 06:00 PM

Those rules seem fine for some systems.. Like Paranoia. Otherwise they are a little over the top.

Thrudd

2014-09-27, 07:28 PM

-Telling players what color / style of dice to use and how to roll them.
making sure dice are rolled openly and can be read is the important thing. Depending on the table this might mean rolling them on a tray or in a box to keep them from flying off. Anything else seems excessive.

-Dinging XP for showing up late or talking OOC
Excessive to me, but depends on the game and the group. Depends on how XP is rewarded. Even groups that are serious about roleplaying IC usually have a provision for speaking OOC, like making a signal or announcing it first.

-Insisting all dialogue by IC and refusing to let players use mechanical terms
For groups serious about IC dialogue, they would want you to make the OOC signal before you start talking about rules. I don't do this, but I know a lot of people do.

-Refusing to let players look at the on other player's character sheets (or describe their own to other players except in in character terms)
This makes sense, especially when players expect to be able to hide information from each other. This is also in-keeping with the serious IC roleplay group that wants little to no OOC talk.

-Refusing to let players take their character sheets home
An understandable strategy for preventing cheating, people losing sheets, and helping the DM prepare. However, there's no reason not to have multiple copies and let the player have one.

-Refusing to let players add up the numbers on their own character sheets
Don't understand that, but I would guess the group has a real problem with cheating (or with basic math skills, or both)

-Refusing to let the players look at the rule books (even their own) without permission
I agree with not letting players look through monster manuals and DMG in D&D. In games where there is only one book, I can see the GM wanting to make sure you are only looking at the player information section and not the GM section that has enemy stats and setting details that your character shouldn't have.

-Telling players where to sit
Only in a general sense, to make sure the DM info is out of view of the players. Anything beyond that seems excessive unless there's a really good reason (specific players who can't keep their hands off each other or are known to distract each other all the time)

-Not letting players check their phones
Excessive unless this has been a problem for the group in the past. It is really discourteous to always be looking at your phone during the game. Taking a call or answering a text from your family or SO once during the night is understandable. If your SO won't leave you alone the whole night and you're constantly getting calls or texts, this is a problem. If there's an issue at home, you shouldn't be playing, you should be at home.

-Arbitrarily banning basic character options without explanation
"I don't want this in my game/This doesn't exist in my game world" should be the only explanation needed. "Arbitrary" is really in the eye of the beholder. However, what is available and restricted should be made clear during character creation.

-Arbitrarily changing the rules mid game without explanation
If there are house rules, all the players should be aware of them. A new player entering an existing group might understandably create the situation where everyone else is aware of something and forgot to mention it before it came up in the game. The DM is under no obligation to debate decisions with you, but a simple "it's a house rule" should suffice.

-Making players take actions without clearly specifying them first each time, for example insisting a player say "I full attack with my long sword and five levels of power attack" every turn despite them doing that consistently for the entire battle and even making players announce passive abilities like Sneak Attack.

You should clearly announce what your character is doing. You should be able to say "I take the same actions as last round", but there's no reason the DM should assume that. I would let you say "I am doing X, unless I say otherwise".

Overall, it sounds like this group is trying to take the role playing seriously, or at least feels like in-character immersion and interaction is the most important thing. You may be used to folks who are more game-y.

icefractal

2014-09-27, 07:46 PM

Wow, sounds like you've had some terrible DMs. IME - no, not all DMs are like that or even close to it. The closest I've even seen to a controlling DM was a couple people who were very keen on going by the letter of the rules (and they followed that themselves also).

Personally, I would just laugh and walk away if a DM even busted out anything close to that list of rules. And I think most people I know would as well.

Recommendation - try PbP, if that's what the local scene is like.

sktarq

2014-09-27, 07:59 PM

-Telling players what color / style of dice to use and how to roll them.

I've been thinking about this more. And actually I'm okay with this as a general concept. I realize I and almost every other DM I've ever known does this so it is a matter of what the regulations he puts in place are.

Most of mine are left unsaid most of the time but I have quite a few...and its never come up as a point of DM being a control freak.

My 10 Rules when I'm the DM about dice and how to roll them in my games.

1) I must be able to easily read the roll. as a side effect this will ban some types of dice-any that are hard to read from poor contrast, being too translucent, using any other symbol than a numeral, poor separations of 6 and 9 or 1 and 10 types if applicable. Also it means that the dice must be in a place I can see or QUICKLY get to/have box easily passed to me in such a way as the dice are not disturbed. If this means that certain areas of the room are not appropriate places to sit-so be it. Though I try to take that into consideration in picking where to sit myself.

2) Only dice that end up in dice/roll box count. This is one of the only "spoken" rules. It is easy yes/no system that helps the game go faster. Leaning dice are rerolled unless it is obvious which number is up. Definition of obvious is left to the judgment of the roller but abuse will get judgement privileges revoked.

3) Dice rolls must happen quickly. I don't care if you milk a windup for drama on a big roll....but don't slow the game down by having to get up cross the room pick dice out of a bag... you get the idea. Also claiming you need specific die and not having them near instantly at hand is seriously frowned upon-as in you need your red d20 and have to dig in your dice bag for it when there are two perfectly functional d20's right there.

4) All the dice in a roll must be thrown together. This is for a mix of reasons of time and to prevent people from using later dice to reset poor outcomes while protecting good ones. If there are not enough dice of that type roll them all (note them down as necessary) clear the board and roll more until you have rolled all that you need.

5) The dice box should be empty when you throw your roll....basically other dice/stuff should not influence the roll.

6) Don't roll dice you don't need-

7) The die/dice must be free of the influence of the hand before they hit the table. To prevent a couple things. Firstly to prevents people from trickling dice down the fingers/pseudo placeing the dice etc. Secondly from preventing "slam rolling" where you take the dice in a cupped hand and turn the hand down onto a surface, then remove the hand to reveal the result. I dislike this as it ends up resulting oddly placed dice in weird stacks more often than other techniques and also has a tendency to get quite vigorous at times which has a history of upsetting things on the table, breaking things, moving minis/tokens, spilling drinks, and causing other disruptions to play.

8) Minimize trans-box ballistic dice. Basically don't roll in such a way that dice flying out of the box that we have to chase down and pull re rolls. I think it is rude, especially as other players will often have to be pulled in to recover and or search for them. Basically this bans "fastballs" of throwing the dice so hard as to cause them to carom right back out or the "high rain" of holding your arm up at full extension and letting the dice fall so they bounce out.

9) Any compound rolls. Where either several players are rolling individual rolls at the same time or sequential rolls are being rolled together (to hit and damage for example) different colour dice must be used, which dice mean what should be kept standard as much as possible both between rolls and between players.

10) If the above are problematic, the player can ask for the DM to roll on their behalf-including PvP situations. The players can ask to roll themselves whenever they want as long as it doesn't slow up the game and exceptions can be made for dramatic moments at the like.

Basically Keep it in the box and whatever I think is necessary to be fair, don't disrupt, and don't slow the game down.

-Telling players where to sit
I'm actually going to expand on my above answer with this with three stories of why I think it is okay for DM's to exercise some degree of control of seating.
Story one-I was another player in this game
Basically we were playing a five-six persan game back in 2e D&D. All but one of us sat around a dining room table while one player sat off in an easy chair. The DM used a lot of maps, handouts etc. This caused people to always have to get up and pass him things, The DM would have to explain visuals twice, pause when he fetched extra dice, etc. It also reinforced a very ...individualistic .... take to his character viewpoint. It put a psychological distance between him and the rest of the party and his character that led to him being rather argumentative. When the DM eventually put his foot down and made the player sit with the rest of us that behavior massively diminished. Also it acted as a time sink
I usually gamed with most of this group but couldn't for this 3.5 D&D game but couldn't this time so got an earful from several sources that confirmed each other.
Basically similar to the above in that one player sat away from the others though it started with two of them away from the main table sitting together (the other player dropping out before this came to a head). Not being able to quickly get out of his bean bag chair to move his mini or see the combat map his description of what he wanted to do got him in trouble, challenge to setting off traps, when flanking rules applied (esp against him). Eventually the DM made him sit elsewhere.
This last one is totally secondhand from a single source but is still significant
There was a male player who kept finding ways to "accidentally" touch another player who just "happened" to be female. Needless to say this made her uncomfortable and the DM forcibly separated their seating arrangement in order to protect her experience.
So yeah, Part of the DM's job is regulate things that are being disruptive to the game and if seating is somehow being disruptive to the game then he or she is well within his rights to regulate it.

Actually I think that can be applied to a lot of those rules. If it is a problem then those rules would be an okay fix but assuming those will be problem isn't really a good thing.

neonchameleon

2014-09-27, 08:15 PM

here is a list of some examples I am talking about:

-Telling players what color / style of dice to use and how to roll them.
-Dinging XP for showing up late or talking OOC
-Insisting all dialogue by IC and refusing to let players use mechanical terms
-Refusing to let players look at the on other player's character sheets (or describe their own to other players except in in character terms)
-Refusing to let players take their character sheets home
-Refusing to let players add up the numbers on their own character sheets
-Refusing to let the players look at the rule books (even their own) without permission
-Telling players where to sit
-Not letting players check their phones
-Arbitrarily banning basic character options without explanation
-Arbitrarily changing the rules mid game without explanation
-Making players take actions without clearly specifying them first each time, for example insisting a player say "I full attack with my long sword and five levels of power attack" every turn despite them doing that consistently for the entire battle and even making players announce passive abilities like Sneak Attack.

Yeeesh (other than on the phones point).

When I asked one of my friends about this he simply told me that the only people who would ever put forth the effort to actually run a long term game are people who are starved for attention / control in their life and therefore use the gaming table as a place to get as much of those things as possible.

Not all DMs are control freaks. People who are control freaks tend to DM. You say you're easy going - and you DM.

But this is worst for 3.0 and 3.5 as they are immensely high prep games, so only people who want to put in that level of work are going to DM. Meaning that an even greater proportion are control freaks. (Pathfinder is better that way because of all the APs).

jedipotter

2014-09-27, 10:11 PM

So is he right? If not what is up with these GMs? Is this normal, or am I merely getting a bad run of GMs like I have gotten a bad run of players in the past. Let me know what you think?

It is a bit more accurate to say all DM's are controllers. That is people that like to have things set up and in control. And control is not a bad thing in a social activity. If just one person takes control, then a social activity can be much more fun and over all better for all. Take a pot luck dinner....you could just sit back and say ''bring whatever'' or you can take a couple minutes to ask people what they will bring and make sure there is not too much over lap and a good variety. That is taking control.

I do almost everything on your list. Except the dice one and the math one.

Just take the phone one. Sure the DM can ask ''pretty please with sugar on top'' that people not use phones during the game. But not everyone can put down the phone. And someone using their phone disrupts the whole game. So it is goo for the DM to step up and take control here. My rule is phone goes in one basket, battery goes in the other.

Or take the seat one. Ok, some people just can't control themselves. You put Mike next to Andy and they will goof off and ruin the game for everyone(including themselves). But if you seat Sally between then...they act like normal people and play the game. And often I'll have a new player sit next to me too

And the ''arbitrary'' stuff is just silly. I don't like the Tome of Battle, it will not be used in my game. I don't need to have a discussion about it or give the players a 10,000 word reason why.

cougon

2014-09-27, 11:10 PM

I would like to comment on the "telling players where to sit" point. I tend to do this for a couple of players, but for reasons that haven't been mentioned yet. I have one player who talks loudly and if he sits next to me, then he has a tendency to drown out other players. I ask him to sit at the far end of the table from me. I can still hear him just fine and other players can be better heard and get their fair share of time from me. Similarly, I have a player who is fairly quiet and withdrawn. If I don't seat her next to me, then she has a really hard time getting heard and getting my attention when she wants to say or do something. I do this seating to better allow everyone to contribute without being drowned out by others.

Talakeal

2014-09-27, 11:19 PM

I am not necessarily talking about when it is distracting, I mean period. For example, my current DM doesn't want me to look at rulebooks / the internet when I am creating or leveling up a character before or after the session.

I have, on occasion, asked a player who was constantly texting / playing games on their phone or laying down on the coach in the next room if they could please come participate in the game, but I always phrase it as a request, not as a rule / demand.

Mr Beer

2014-09-27, 11:37 PM

I am not necessarily talking about when it is distracting, I mean period. For example, my current DM doesn't want me to look at rulebooks / the internet when I am creating or leveling up a character before or after the session.

LOL, that's adorable. I might tell the GM to find another player, alternatively be all like 'Sure GM, I promise not to look at any rulebooks when levelling' and then look at the rule books.

jedipotter

2014-09-27, 11:44 PM

I am not necessarily talking about when it is distracting, I mean period. For example, my current DM doesn't want me to look at rulebooks / the internet when I am creating or leveling up a character before or after the session.

I'm big on no rule books during play. Some times I'll try and go book, by book, but too many books have too much information in them. So the easy way is just no books, no internet.

The big bad here is a single player trying to look up something they kind sorta remember reading somewhere. Some players can waste a whole game doing this, and disrupt the game for everyone.

And the ''don't look at the rules'' is very Old School.....only if games could be like that again. Often this DM type uses the secret rules to ''ban stuff''. If the player does not know something exists, it is ''banned''.

I have, on occasion, asked a player who was constantly texting / playing games on their phone or laying down on the coach in the next room if they could please come participate in the game, but I always phrase it as a request, not as a rule / demand.

This can get very disruptive. ''Asking'' every couple of minutes ''hey can you put down the phone and play'' gets very tiring and annoying. So you have to make it a rule for some people. And that is just if they keep it to themselves, as they can ''find a cool you tube video'' every other minute to share with the group.

So sure ''asking'' is great, if your fine with doing it 50-100 times a game and being mostly ignored. Or you can make it a rule and never have to ''ask'' again.

I ''ask'' that if someone comes to my house to play D&D, that they.......come to my house and play D&D. If they want to do anything else, I'll just tell them to leave.

Remmirath

2014-09-27, 11:52 PM

Control freaks? No, surely not. Most are, however, looking to control the session in some way, since that is part of their function. I tend to be a fairly rules-light sort of GM, personally; I first attempt to just let people use their common sense, but unfortunately this doesn't always work, and then you need rules. I tend to assume that GMs who have a large number of rules fall into two general categories: those who have had lots of problem players in the past, or those who are really lawful types. It sounds to me like about half of the examples (that I disagree with at all) probably come of past problem players, and the other half probably come of people who just like a lot of rules. Any rules.

All right, rule by rule:

(:smallfurious: = I disagree with this entirely; :smallmad: = I think this is a bad idea but can see where they are coming from; :smallannoyed: = I'm neutral on this one; :smallsmile: = this is fine in my opinion; :smallbiggrin: = I actively endorse this one)

-Telling players what color / style of dice to use and how to roll them.
:smallfurious: That's ridiculous, in my opinion. The only "how to roll them" there should be is "don't cheat", and aside from a few specific cases (such as "please don't use metal dice on this table, it will damage it"), there is no reason to specify the style of dice to use.

-Dinging XP for showing up late or talking OOC
:smallmad: I don't agree with this -- it's punishing out of character behaviour in character, and I don't believe that adds up quite right -- but rewarding good roleplaying is perfectly acceptable, and if one shows up egregiously late it can be trying. I can see where they would be coming from on it, but I don't believe it's the correct solution to the problem this GM was likely having.

-Insisting all dialogue by IC and refusing to let players use mechanical terms
:smallsmile:/:smallannoyed: Dialogue really ought to be in character. That's sort of the point to roleplaying instead of playing a board or war game, at least how I see it. I've no problem with the players hobnobbing out of character occasionally, but I would say that the majority of a roleplaying session should be taken up with roleplaying. As for mechanical terms, I'm fine with using them if there's no other reasonable way to go about it, but sometimes it can be a bit silly (one probably shouldn't say, in character, "I'm going to see if I can make my save!" for instance). Obviously there's no reason not to use them out of character, and it would be strange not to let people do so.

-Refusing to let players look at the on other player's character sheets (or describe their own to other players except in in character terms)
:smallsmile: I don't have a problem with this, but I also don't typically keep people from doing with it. There can be good reasons to restrict it. If your players are not good with separating player and character knowledge, it's actively a good idea.

-Refusing to let players take their character sheets home
:smallannoyed: I've seen groups that have good reason to do this. If some players, or many of the players, have frequently taken their sheets home and lost them, a general policy of keeping the sheets can make sense. In those groups, however, they've generally let players that they know will keep a hold of their sheets take them home anyhow (although it is of course in better taste to discuss this out of the presence of those who can't keep track of them). If that's not the deal, though, I don't think it's warranted -- unless possibly the GM feels that they need copies of the sheets on hand to help them get the appropriate amount of challenge in encounters, but I would in that case simply jot down the relevant information from the character sheets and not keep the sheets.

-Refusing to let players add up the numbers on their own character sheets
:smallfurious: Not acceptable, in my opinion. Your character sheet is, well, your character sheet. If I get suspicious about something, I might look at it and check the math -- but I'll surely never keep a player from writing on their own sheet.

-Refusing to let the players look at the rule books (even their own) without permission
:smallfurious: Definitely not acceptable if they are not letting people even look at the books to level up. Keeping the sorts of players who pull out their Monster Manuals at every single encounter, from doing that, sure, and excessive searching for rules is something that bothers me -- but if the player is new, I'm fine with letting them look things up. If they're not new, yeah, they shouldn't be looking through books in the middle of the game more than every now and again. It's a bit disruptive. But banning it even when levelling? No. I may not need the book to level my characters, but I certainly won't keep others from using it. That's just counter productive.

-Telling players where to sit
:smallmad: I could see some circumstances under which it could be reasonable, but those are not the norm. I'd generally say it's not a good thing. I'm assuming that it goes beyond telling them what table the game is at or what grouping of furniture you're using, of course. Having everybody sit within easy hearing distance is entirely reasonable. Some specific people, at some times, might be less annoying when not sitting next to each other... that can happen. Telling everybody where to sit is likely to not be reasonable, though.

-Not letting players check their phones
:smallbiggrin: Completely acceptable, and indeed preferable. Within reason, of course. My general belief on this is that people should be allowed to check their phones only for actual phone calls, and if they must take a phone call (as in, if it is in fact important), they excuse themselves and go out of the room. Phone usage is highly disruptive. Playing cell phone games or checking social sites and what is right out. If that's what you want to be doing with your time, don't bother pretending you want to be playing in the game -- you clearly don't, and are free to leave it.

-Arbitrarily banning basic character options without explanation
:smallmad:/if explained, :smallsmile: They should be explained, certainly, but there's nothing inherently wrong with banning character options... and people's idea of "basic" differs (unless, of course, you're talking "play a human" or "play a cleric", for example). There are few things that I will ban outright in my games, because I do generally believe that I can work around whatever a player wants to do, but there are some. A few books really do not fit in mechanically with others, and if I don't like the mechanics of that book, I'm going to be banning it. (Yes, this does include Tome of Battle.) I will, however, always be happy to explain why these things are banned, if players want to know, and I'll help them get the closest they can to what they wanted from what was banned. If they are that unhappy that I banned those few books that I do, chances are they'll be better off in a different group anyhow.

-Arbitrarily changing the rules mid game without explanation
:smallfurious: Certainly bad form. If a house rule is enacted mid-game, I feel that it should be agreed upon by all in the group, and house rules should always be made available to players. House rule changes should not be arbitrary, and unless they were in place prior to a person joining a group, should not be made without the consent of all in the group.

Exception: The players are bogged down in a rules argument, and it's not getting anywhere. Ruling that we'll do X for now and then look it up/decide for certain later makes sense then. Ideally one does not get a rules dispute in the first place, of course, but those tend to suck the life out of a game when they happen, so they need to be stopped one way or another. The other option is pausing until it can be settled, and depending on frequency of play and length of sessions, that might not really be an option. There are still usually better ways to handle this, but I can see it in that case.

-Making players take actions without clearly specifying them first each time, for example insisting a player say "I full attack with my long sword and five levels of power attack" every turn despite them doing that consistently for the entire battle and even making players announce passive abilities like Sneak Attack.
:smallannoyed: Annoying. I would not do it, that's for sure. I generally only ask that people go into that level of detail if they are doing something out of the ordinary. If you have large numbers of players, and certainly large numbers of characters to a player, this would really bog down. Not horrible, though, mostly just a time waster.

Talakeal

2014-09-28, 12:30 AM

It is a bit more accurate to say all DM's are controllers. That is people that like to have things set up and in control. And control is not a bad thing in a social activity. If just one person takes control, then a social activity can be much more fun and over all better for all. Take a pot luck dinner....you could just sit back and say ''bring whatever'' or you can take a couple minutes to ask people what they will bring and make sure there is not too much over lap and a good variety. That is taking control.

I do almost everything on your list. Except the dice one and the math one.

Just take the phone one. Sure the DM can ask ''pretty please with sugar on top'' that people not use phones during the game. But not everyone can put down the phone. And someone using their phone disrupts the whole game. So it is goo for the DM to step up and take control here. My rule is phone goes in one basket, battery goes in the other.

Or take the seat one. Ok, some people just can't control themselves. You put Mike next to Andy and they will goof off and ruin the game for everyone(including themselves). But if you seat Sally between then...they act like normal people and play the game. And often I'll have a new player sit next to me too

And the ''arbitrary'' stuff is just silly. I don't like the Tome of Battle, it will not be used in my game. I don't need to have a discussion about it or give the players a 10,000 word reason why.

Thats messed up. I have never seen anyone enforce all (or even most) of the things on the list at the same time, and certainly not taken to the same level as you. Do people actually put up with that? I put up with a lot of crap for gaming, but if someone told me they were actually taking my phone away from me or refused to even explain their behavior I would be out the door so fast the neighbors would think the place was on fire nd leaving a trail of colorful language behind me.

jedipotter

2014-09-28, 01:25 AM

Thats messed up. I have never seen anyone enforce all (or even most) of the things on the list at the same time, and certainly not taken to the same level as you. Do people actually put up with that? I put up with a lot of crap for gaming, but if someone told me they were actually taking my phone away from me or refused to even explain their behavior I would be out the door so fast the neighbors would think the place was on fire nd leaving a trail of colorful language behind me.

Why would people need to ''put up with it''? It is not such a big deal. A normal person can be just fine without having or using their phone for five hours. Most players are fine with the rule as they want to play too.

And explain what behavior? The ''arbitrary '' stuff? What exactly is to explain there? I''l ban stuff I don't like, no big deal there. Do you feel you need an explanation for ''I don't like''? I guess we could waste time talking about it. You'd say you like it, I'd say I don't and we'd just be wasting time.

And ''arbitrary'' rule changes, well we could fill threads with this stuff. I go with ''the DM's say is final'', if you don't like it leave. I'll never understand the type of game like the DM says ''the arrow misses'' and then the player demands to know why rules-wise. You'd spend more time second guessing the DM then playing the game, so why bother?

SgtCarnage92

2014-09-28, 02:12 AM

To answer the control freak question. Yes and no. The GM has to be something of a control freak, however a lot of newer GMs run into problems regarding "rule 0" and end up using the game as if they are the god of their own little world, instead of just focusing on creating an awesome experience. Good GMs will grow out of this trap, hopefully sooner rather than later. The best GMs are the ones who make an experience that's good enough that it doesn't require a bunch of house rules to run smoothly and if they do have house rules, they're agreed upon by the group as a whole.

-Telling players what color / style of dice to use and how to roll them.

I understand this one, which is why I now make a point of only getting easy to read dice (if I intend to play with them). I don't actively enforce it with my players but they know that I like readable dice and they're generally pretty good about it. I also only accept rolls made in the open.

-Dinging XP for showing up late or talking OOC

Both common problems that have better solutions. OOC talking is a really hard one but can be solved with taking steps to increase engagement with everyone at the table. Being late isn't a problem unless it's chronic and then it's handled on a case by case basis.

-Insisting all dialogue by IC and refusing to let players use mechanical terms

Idealistic and impossible. IC conversation should avoid systemic information (AC, BAB, ect) for good rollplaying, but mechanical terms should be allowed at the "game" level but not character level (if that makes sense).

-Refusing to let players look at the on other player's character sheets (or describe their own to other players except in in character terms)

Can be fun if the party agrees to it but ultimately it's up to them how open they want to be with their sheets. This one I leave purely to player preference either as an individual or group.

-Refusing to let players take their character sheets home

Players are responsible for their sheets. However I ask them to give me an up-to-date copy that I can use as a personal reference when creating things. If they lose a sheet the character is considered "retired" unless we can recover it otherwise. I always offer to keep sheets if players don't want to risk losing them.

-Refusing to let players add up the numbers on their own character sheets

I have enough math I have to do as a GM, I don't need more. I'll do a quick once over during character approval and when they level up just to make sure they're no errors. I let players police themselves with HP and spells.

-Refusing to let the players look at the rule books (even their own) without permission

A good player shouldn't need to look at their book during a meet unless they're leveling or preparing spells, but as an enforced rule it seems a little extreme. Offering advice for character bookkeeping is a better solution once you identify why they're always using the book.

-Telling players where to sit

Some people are great players but can't sit next to each other or they just feed off of each other and make things worse. I won't demand they don't sit together but I will ask them politely to move if they're being disruptive. Otherwise, sit where you're comfy and can see the table.

-Not letting players check their phones

If the phone isn't a constant distraction for you or another player then I don't particularly care. I do ask that you step away to take phone calls however.

-Arbitrarily banning basic character options without explanation

If you can't explain it then you shouldn't be doing it, and it should be discussed with the party as a whole as to why a particular option isn't allowed. Having strong lines of communication before the campaign even starts can save a lot of these headaches.

-Arbitrarily changing the rules mid game without explanation

Abusing "rule 0" shall not be tolerated.

-Making players take actions without clearly specifying them first each time, for example insisting a player say "I full attack with my long sword and five levels of power attack" every turn despite them doing that consistently for the entire battle and even making players announce passive abilities like Sneak Attack.

I assume everything is it's most basic unless told otherwise. If someone says they attack, I assume it's a normal attack unless specified otherwise. If you do something every round (ie power attack), I'll usually ask a confirmation question just to make sure.

Most of these guys sound like new GMs or GMs who have never been a player. It's a collaborative experience and should be treated as such. Social agreements between friends are much more effective than house rules anyway.

The Insanity

2014-09-28, 02:29 AM

So is he right?
No.

It must have something to do with the place you live in, because it's kinda messed up how many issues you have with RPG gamers, Talakeal. :smalleek:

Curbstomp

2014-09-28, 02:47 AM

Something in the water. :smalltongue:

Sith_Happens

2014-09-28, 03:02 AM

The amount of stuff you've had to put up with, Tal...
*shakes head in disbelief*

No.

It must have something to do with the place you live in, because it's kinda messed up how many issues you have with RPG gamers, Talakeal. :smalleek:

Something in the water. :smalltongue:

Note to self: Do not, under any circumstances, attempt to play tabletop games in New Mexico.

Talakeal

2014-09-28, 03:49 AM

Note to self: Do not, under any circumstances, attempt to play tabletop games in New Mexico.

To be fair, the vast majority of my bad gaming experiances happened over a thousand miles from here.

Sith_Happens

2014-09-28, 04:03 AM

To be fair, the vast majority of my bad gaming experiances happened over a thousand miles from here.

Ah. Well, if you could be more specific I'll modify my note accordingly.:smalltongue:

Delusion

2014-09-28, 04:14 AM

The only rule regarding dice that I have is that if the dice rolls of the table you reroll it.

NichG

2014-09-28, 04:21 AM

Talakeal, have you considered that maybe there's something to what they're doing? You've had very bad luck with players acting out, and it sounds like you have a very low tolerance for people exerting control over the social dynamic of the game from the DM chair. But that kind of thing is often done to keep problem players in check - that cellphone rule is likely because the DM has had games fall apart or just generally suck due to a few people getting distracted and then everyone getting bored with things taking forever. The dice rule may be because one player was cheating and the DM made it a blanket rule for the sake of fairness and to not obviously single out the one player. The rule about pedantically stating each detail of an action might have been because a player was constantly taking things back 'oh, its got a power that destroys the weapon used to attack it? well I never said I was using my sword.'

So maybe this is actually something to learn from, especially if you find that all these DMs are successfully running games without the kinds of problems you've run into.

emeraldstreak

2014-09-28, 06:31 AM

The only rule regarding dice that I have is that if the dice rolls of the table you reroll it.

No natural 20s under the sofa? Harsh.

Reathin

2014-09-28, 11:02 AM

You've had...quite the list of DMs, it would seem. While every one is different and has varying strengths and weaknesses, in my experience, no, your results are not typical of DMs. Every DM I've ever played with (as well as the games I've DMed myself) has been very relaxed about just about everything you wrote there (though we were doing our best to be consistent) and we've had great stories come out of it. Only one DM (actaully ST, since it was an Exalted game) was anywhere near this bad and that was mostly due to a number of enormous misconceptions about the mechanical balance of the game and a degree of sheer stubbornness. Wasn't personal there though, so I try to cut a bit of slack.

You'll find control freaks among DMs just as much as any position with more authority than a kindergardener, but that's life. There are better ones out there.

Mastikator

2014-09-28, 12:31 PM

-Telling players what color / style of dice to use and how to roll them. Seems fine, I don't know how many times I've seen someone roll dice so it falls under the sofa, now we all have to stand up and move the sofa to reach it
-Dinging XP for showing up late or talking OOC If you show up so late that you had less play time, then less exp is reasonable, if you give Roleplay exp then talking OOC means you get less roleplay exp. Both are fine imo
-Insisting all dialogue by IC and refusing to let players use mechanical terms Sounds like he wants a highest (outside of larping) level of roleplay immersion, which is a matter of taste. If there's a strong clash in taste then that's a problem, but it doesn't mean that anyone is wrong or right.
-Refusing to let players look at the on other player's character sheets (or describe their own to other players except in in character terms) Same as above
-Refusing to let players take their character sheets home Reasonable, players might lose the sheet or forget to bring it, it's not uncommon
-Refusing to let players add up the numbers on their own character sheets Seems weird, the DM could just double check anything. He might have had problems with cheaters I suppose
-Refusing to let the players look at the rule books (even their own) without permission Not wanting players to metagame is a matter of taste
-Telling players where to sit ok that's weird
-Not letting players check their phones Good. It's rude to check your phone
-Arbitrarily banning basic character options without explanation Withholding the reason why an option is banned seems weird
-Arbitrarily changing the rules mid game without explanation That's outright bad DMing, players deserve consistency from their DM.
-Making players take actions without clearly specifying them first each time, for example insisting a player say "I full attack with my long sword and five levels of power attack" every turn despite them doing that consistently for the entire battle and even making players announce passive abilities like Sneak Attack. Asking players to say what they do in full is not asking much

Seriously, I feel like any day now I am going to find a DM who makes me raise my hand to ask a question or get a hall pass to use the bathroom.

When I asked one of my friends about this he simply told me that the only people who would ever put forth the effort to actually run a long term game are people who are starved for attention / control in their life and therefore use the gaming table as a place to get as much of those things as possible.
I protested and said that I am very lax when it comes to structure. I put up with behavior that would get people shot in the old west, as anyone who has followed my threads for a long time probably knows, and was told that I am a special case as, since I primarily play homebrew systems I wrote myself, I get plenty of attention and control simply through the act of having players performing an activity I created and therefore don't need to grasp for power.

So is he right? If not what is up with these GMs? Is this normal, or am I merely getting a bad run of GMs like I have gotten a bad run of players in the past. Let me know what you think?

But your friend is wrong though. It can be very disheartening to be asked to pour your soul into DMing and then have the players treat it like toiletpaper. Demanding that the players treat the game with respect is not being a control freak, even if it feels like it from a players perspective.

Talakeal

2014-09-28, 12:51 PM

Why would people need to ''put up with it''? It is not such a big deal. A normal person can be just fine without having or using their phone for five hours. Most players are fine with the rule as they want to play too.

And explain what behavior? The ''arbitrary '' stuff? What exactly is to explain there? I''l ban stuff I don't like, no big deal there. Do you feel you need an explanation for ''I don't like''? I guess we could waste time talking about it. You'd say you like it, I'd say I don't and we'd just be wasting time.

And ''arbitrary'' rule changes, well we could fill threads with this stuff. I go with ''the DM's say is final'', if you don't like it leave. I'll never understand the type of game like the DM says ''the arrow misses'' and then the player demands to know why rules-wise. You'd spend more time second guessing the DM then playing the game, so why bother?

Its easy for most people to go five hours without using their phone, heck I go most days without looking at it save for the clock. However, if someone is trying to get ahold of me during an emergency then yes, going five hours without my phone is going to be a huge deal.

But mostly, it is just about treating fellow human beings with some level of respect. I am not going to allow my property to be confiscated and dismantled by someone as a tax for entering their house, nor do I think it reasonable to put my own fun above everyone else's. I am curious, do you actually game with people who are your friends outside of the game? And do you always host the game? How would you function if you had to play in someone else's house where you couldn't just banish people who don't go along?

Talakeal, have you considered that maybe there's something to what they're doing? You've had very bad luck with players acting out, and it sounds like you have a very low tolerance for people exerting control over the social dynamic of the game from the DM chair. But that kind of thing is often done to keep problem players in check - that cellphone rule is likely because the DM has had games fall apart or just generally suck due to a few people getting distracted and then everyone getting bored with things taking forever. The dice rule may be because one player was cheating and the DM made it a blanket rule for the sake of fairness and to not obviously single out the one player. The rule about pedantically stating each detail of an action might have been because a player was constantly taking things back 'oh, its got a power that destroys the weapon used to attack it? well I never said I was using my sword.'

So maybe this is actually something to learn from, especially if you find that all these DMs are successfully running games without the kinds of problems you've run into.

Yes, I have thought about it. The thing is, the behaviors that are actually problems in my game are not the kind of things that rules like this would solve.
It saddens me to think that the only way to get people to behave like adults is to treat them like children. I remember a quote from an authoritarian manual of some sort that states "It is important to ruthlessly enforce pointless rules so that people become conditioned not to break the important ones." And while it may work, that is not the sort of systemic psychological conditioning I would want to impose on my friends for the sake of a game.
Frankly, I can't imagine they wouldn't just leave / kick me out of the group if I tried at this point. The only reason I put up with a lot of the stuff on my list is because I am an outsider coming into an established group and feel that it isn't my place to try and get a bunch of strangers to change their ways on my account.

Sartharina

2014-09-28, 02:07 PM

I wonder how many of his former players would consider Talakeal as a Control Freak DM.

Raine_Sage

2014-09-28, 02:15 PM

As a big long list that certainly looks incredibly excessive. As rules spread out across several different DMs it seems a little more manageable. Especially when you consider the experiences they may have had that created those rules. While your problem players are worse than most, they're definitely not the only problem players out there. And while you enacting rules may not have helped your specific situation, milder problem players often respond well to a little more structure in the game.

Hell I recently had to enact a rule like these myself in an EP game. Namely I have one player who will not stop modifying his character before game start. Like 10 or 20 different revisions, always manages to turn whatever concept he has into a hyper aggressive gun nut. And it was bothering my other players because they usually try and figure out backstory together and suddenly they have to rewrite all of /their/ characters to account for one person's constant changes.

So I set down a blanket rule. You get two free redos for character creation. Any further changes have to be gm approved. And to prevent the problem player from having their feelings hurt about being "singled out" I had to extend this rule to the rest of the table as well. It seems like such a small thing and no one had a problem with it when I announced it. Because they all know me and trust me not to be a **** about it. I can see how someone coming in totally new to the game and who did not know me personally might chafe a little, but trust kind of goes both ways you know? If they can trust me not to be an ******* gm then I can generally trust them not to be an ******* player.

TheThan

2014-09-28, 03:12 PM

I ''ask'' that if someone comes to my house to play D&D, that they.......come to my house and play D&D. If they want to do anything else, I'll just tell them to leave.

This is a perfectly reasonable perspective.

If someone doesn’t want to play, they shouldn’t show up to play. If you can spend that much time on your phone, you call or text and simply say that your not feeling like dnd that day and that you’re not going to show and be a distraction to the others.

If someone is having a problem with not being interested in what’s happening at the table, either he should bring up the issue with the DM, or the Dm should have perception enough notice and bring it up with the player. either way, the Dm and the player should be working together to solve the problem and make things work out better for both of them.

Talakeal

2014-09-28, 03:30 PM

This is a perfectly reasonable perspective.

If someone doesn’t want to play, they shouldn’t show up to play. If you can spend that much time on your phone, you call or text and simply say that your not feeling like dnd that day and that you’re not going to show and be a distraction to the others.

If someone is having a problem with not being interested in what’s happening at the table, either he should bring up the issue with the DM, or the Dm should have perception enough notice and bring it up with the player. either way, the Dm and the player should be working together to solve the problem and make things work out better for both of them.

I agree that someone should not be talking or texting during the game, and if someone is doing it I am going to firmly request they stop, and I have never had anyone refuse to comply in the past.

What I don't agree with is that I have the right to order around my friends or demand they leave if they don't cater to my demands. Likewise, I don't see anything wrong with taking a few seconds to answer a call or check a message to see if it is urgent, as that is no more disruptive than getting a drink of water or using the bathroom, which (I hope) no DMs demand their players refrain from.

icefractal

2014-09-28, 05:08 PM

With the phone thing, it's not the "not making phone calls" that's the problem. I don't think I've ever fiddled with my phone during a game, and normal messages can wait until afterwards to reply. It's the "not being able to receive messages, including important ones" that's the problem. If anyone thinks I'd even consider placing their game above a family/friend emergency, they are completely delusional.

A lot of these also have a very authoritarian stance, which is completely alien to the groups I've been in. We're friends engaging in a leisure activity, there is no "boss" there. The GM has a different role than the players have, absolutely. That doesn't extend outside actual gameplay.

I wonder if the fact that, in my groups, the GM and Host are seldom the same person is a factor. The host can make rules about many aspects of behavior (although abusing this will generally result in not having guests any more). It seems like some of the people Talakeal's played with have had both designations and maybe got a bit "drunk with power".

Bulhakov

2014-09-28, 06:29 PM

I'm guessing you've just had a bad run of DMs, but my experience might be skewed because I've always played with close friends and never tried a pick-up group arranged online or at a game shop. Possibly people who decide to DM for groups like that have some other character traits.

As for my own level of control as a DM:

- I've never had a player take out their phone during game time (but we do take frequent breaks from the game for bathroom/phone/internet/kitchen use). If one did, I'd probably ask them to hold off till the next break or propose taking a break now.

- I've never collected character sheets, but I do keep copies (as I've had players lose/forget them a few times)

- All houserules/limitations are discussed before playing and always unanimously agreed upon (usually a short explanation suffices).

Stella

2014-09-28, 08:34 PM

I haven't DMed in a while, but when I did I had some basic rules which touched on several of your points below. All of them were developed over time and were intended to be solutions to problems which were disruptive to gameplay in some degree, small or large, and were not intended as any kind of means of exerting "control freak" levels of power over the players themselves.

[...] here is a list of some examples I am talking about:

-Telling players what color / style of dice to use and how to roll them.
I use a battle mat and miniatures. Dice are rolled in a small box. I used the top of an old Champions box, it is the same size as a DND book and has fairly shallow sides. This prevented the dice from knocking around the minis and costing time to reset them and the possibility of not being able to reset them accurately.

I do insist on dice with easily readable faces. I don't care for the tie-dye die with the cutouts for numbers which are not colored in, or are colored in with the same color as one of the tie-die colors. Or the teeny tiny D6 which can't be read unless you lean over and squint. This speeds play as I don't need to ask what was rolled, I can just see it. And although the players I play with are all mature and cheating has never been an issue, if the other player can see the die rolls it helps to keep them engaged a bit even when it isn't their turn to act.

I also ask that the entire table uses the same conventions for dice. I'm not going to be forced to remember that player 1 uses red, yellow, and green for their iterative attacks, while player 2 wants to use green, yellow, and red. This again saves time.

-Dinging XP for showing up late or talking OOC
I don't see anything wrong with this, as long as it isn't the culture of the entire group. One player should not share the same rewards as the others if they are either disruptive or semi-absentee.

-Insisting all dialogue by IC and refusing to let players use mechanical terms
IC talk should be encouraged, but this is a game with it's own language and terms, just like any other pursuit. Banning OOC talk regarding game terms cannot speed play.

-Refusing to let players look at the on other player's character sheets (or describe their own to other players except in in character terms)
I've never done this, but no player should be able to insist on seeing another players character sheet. Sharing this information is entirely voluntary.

-Refusing to let players take their character sheets home
I've never had an issue with people losing their character sheets, but I do ask for a copy for myself for planning purposes.

-Refusing to let players add up the numbers on their own character sheets
I'd be curious to hear just what rationale there could possibly be for this. I insist on the reverse: I should not have to know their character backwards and forwards. I want the player to look at their To Hit roll and tell me "A 12, plus my BAB and STR bonus of 6, minus 3 for my standard Power Attack, and plus 2 for the Bard's song. I hit AC 17." The same applies to skill use. I want the player to add in their Elven bonus to Listen, Search, and Spot checks. If they don't, they are going to lose that bonus, because I can't have the work of remembering the racial and skill point modifiers of the entire table of players placed on me. Knowing their character is the players job, and if anything the reverse is where I've had issues both as a DM and as a player, when a player has to ask what kind of die to roll and what kind of modifiers to apply over and over again.

This also plays to the use of game terms during play. If rolling To Hit or a skill check has to be entirely IC, then the player would have to roll and then the DM would have to do everything else. That cannot help but slow play down significantly.

-Refusing to let the players look at the rule books (even their own) without permission
I don't see any good reason for this. If a player was only using it to call out challenges to the DMs knowledge of the rules it could be disruptive, I suppose. Or if they were reading the book rather than concluding their character's action. My table rule when I DM is that play must go on, and that players can make a list of things they think I should be handling differently and that I'll look them over in between sessions. But I will adjust on the fly if a player points out something I've missed which I can agree with without having to make it a 10 minute pause to reference the rules.

-Telling players where to sit
I've never done this. But I had a DM once who thought that initiative rolls were unnecessary/a waste of time and used his own system (basically dex mod plus feat mods, dex decided ties, and I think he had some racial mods also) and asked players to sit in "initiative order" according to his house rules. It made play faster because he always knew who to go to first and then around the table from there.

-Not letting players check their phones
As others have said, no game is more important than being able to respond to a potential family or other emergency or urgent matter. So banning phone use is unreasonable. That said, checking who is calling you doesn't mean you need to answer it in most cases. Nor do you need to respond to the typical text until the game session is over.

-Arbitrarily banning basic character options without explanation
The "without explanation" part is a problem. If done in advance and communicated, this is fine. If done in the middle of a session, I personally hate this because it is almost always a knee jerk reaction with little real thought applied. If done in between sessions where some more time can be given to the decision, and especially if the DM involves the effected players in the process, this is ok.

-Arbitrarily changing the rules mid game without explanation
Again, the "without explanation" part is a problem. Mid session, or mid game/campaign? See above.

-Making players take actions without clearly specifying them first each time, for example insisting a player say "I full attack with my long sword and five levels of power attack" every turn despite them doing that consistently for the entire battle and even making players announce passive abilities like Sneak Attack.
It's not unreasonable to ask players to detail exactly what they are doing. That is a part of playing the game, knowing the game terms, and knowing your own character enough to assist the DM in resolving your character's actions. But if a player consistently uses the same amount of Power Attack, for example, I'm happy to let them set it as a "default" once I'm familiar enough with their play habits.

So is he right? If not what is up with these GMs? Is this normal, or am I merely getting a bad run of GMs like I have gotten a bad run of players in the past. Let me know what you think?
Context is everything, so what you've listed could be innocuous or outrageous, depending on the context. "Die rolls only count in the box. And please roll in such a way that they don't bounce out and hit the minis" is not exactly a dictatorial exercise of power, after all. Unless the box isn't placed conveniently or some other mitigating circumstance makes it more clear that it actually is, I guess.

Talakeal

2014-09-28, 08:41 PM

Most of these guys sound like new GMs or GMs who have never been a player. It's a collaborative experience and should be treated as such. Social agreements between friends are much more effective than house rules anyway.

Actually in my experience it is the older crowd who are the worst. Maybe it is because there is a bigger age difference between them and the players so they feel they need to be an "adult" around the children, or because they learned to play in the old school days of "the DM is all powerful and the rules are just a crutch for the weak!" Whether or not this era ever actually existed I can't say, but there do seem to be a lot of older game masters who act like Weird Pete from Knights of the Dinner Table.

I wonder how many of his former players would consider Talakeal as a Control Freak DM.

My very first real campaign was played after school in 7th grade and the DM was one of our teachers. He frequently had to act like a bit of a disciplinarian and didn't treat us with too much more leeway than when we his students in class. When I first tried DMing on my own I tried being the same way, handing out demerits and docking XP for complaining or being disruptive, but it never really worked. Normally players would just call my bluff, give me the finger, or walk out of the game when I tried it and I quickly re-evaluated the situation. We are all friends playing a game, these people are equals, they are not my subordinates, students, or subjects, and I should not treat them like they are.

Sartharina

2014-09-28, 08:50 PM

[QUOTE=icefractal;18178180My very first real campaign was played after school in 7th grade and the DM was one of our teachers. He frequently had to act like a bit of a disciplinarian and didn't treat us with too much more leeway than when we his students in class. When I first tried DMing on my own I tried being the same way, handing out demerits and docking XP for complaining or being disruptive, but it never really worked. Normally players would just call my bluff, give me the finger, or walk out of the game when I tried it and I quickly re-evaluated the situation. We are all friends playing a game, these people are equals, they are not my subordinates, students, or subjects, and I should not treat them like they are.[/QUOTE]

You are the same person on this board who's problems with players is absolutely legendary now, with most questions having been "Why are you still playing with this group?" (Until it ultimately disbanded), right?

valadil

2014-09-28, 09:01 PM

GMs are the host and the referee. They present the rules and they tell the story. Of course the GM is going to be the authority figure at the table as well as the person whose motivation is to keep the game running. Managing the game table is the GM's responsibility and doing so requires behavior akin to that of a control freak.

I don't think all GMs have control freak as a personality trait though. Plenty of us are laid back and apathetic when we're away from the game table.

I would assert though that a gamer who is a control freak by nature would prefer to GM than to play.

Diurnan_McKlugh

2014-09-28, 09:33 PM

Its funny how many DM's actually have on-table rules like your list. My only rule is the "5 second" rule. Dice must be on the table after a roll, flat, not edging any lines, paper or books and allowed to sit for 5 seconds, enough time for 2 other players or myself to verify the roll. Otherwise its automatic failed roll.

Most cheaters at my table quit the game or quit cheating after one session.

Oh, there is another rule. The book rules stand unless you ask for an exemption. Chances of getting exemption are 100% with a decent reasoning. Some rules just stink...like healing surges...don't allow those either. Cast a spell you lazy cleric!:smallcool:

Kaun

2014-09-28, 10:17 PM

-Telling players what color / style of dice to use and how to roll them.

I have done this one. No tiny dice, no dice that are barely legible. And all dice must land in the "rolling box" to be counted. I implemented these rules years ago to curb the behavior of one particular player. I implemented it across the board rather then singling them out.

-Dinging XP for showing up late or talking OOC

Ehhh. I give bonus xp for letting me know in advance whether or not your turning up to a session and also for turning up on time. I find players are like dogs; They learn more from being rewarded over punished.

-Insisting all dialogue by IC and refusing to let players use mechanical terms
-Refusing to let players look at the on other player's character sheets (or describe their own to other players except in in character terms)

These to are a little nuts.

-Refusing to let players take their character sheets home

While i don't do this, there is a couple players i would have liked to do this with. Never wanted to leave their character sheets with me, forgot to bring them to 75% of session.

-Refusing to let players add up the numbers on their own character sheets
-Refusing to let the players look at the rule books (even their own) without permission

wut?

-Telling players where to sit
-Not letting players check their phones

I have asked players to move some what so i can see them. I have also told people to quit browsing the web or f'n about on there phones on occasions.

-Arbitrarily banning basic character options without explanation

I have done this a lot with little more explanation then "it doesn't fit the game/i don't want it in the game." I find if that isn't enough of a reason for the player then its just going to end up in an argument anyway.

-Arbitrarily changing the rules mid game without explanation

I have changed rules mid game but not with out explanation. Generally the changes are to speed things up or because a rule was jarring or counter productive to running and playing a fun game.

-Making players take actions without clearly specifying them first each time, for example insisting a player say "I full attack with my long sword and five levels of power attack" every turn despite them doing that consistently for the entire battle and even making players announce passive abilities like Sneak Attack.

wow... thats seen as harsh? Yes i make players state there action again each round. I mean i except them saying something like, "i am going to make another full power attack like last round." But... why is this one even an issue?

When I asked one of my friends about this he simply told me that the only people who would ever put forth the effort to actually run a long term game are people who are starved for attention / control in their life and therefore use the gaming table as a place to get as much of those things as possible.

Well sure, there are probably a few people who run games for reasons like this. As for me, i just love playing table top rpg's. And i was the DM by default for so long that i now get bored only being responsible for one character.

Talakeal

2014-09-28, 10:36 PM

wow... thats seen as harsh? Yes i make players state there action again each round. I mean i except them saying something like, "i am going to make another full power attack like last round." But... why is this one even an issue?
.

Obviously it is a continuum. But in my current group a lot of the players keep losing massive DPS because they simply roll and forget to announce they are using default abilities like flurry of blows or sneak attack, and it seems to be an issue.

For example, I am playing in your game and have the spring attack feat. I move my model next to the enemy, roll a standard attack, and then move away. Would you really take an AoO if I didn't loudly state "I am using my spring attack feat!" at the start of the turn?

As for the dice thing, I personally let players roll any dice they like so long as they are real dice and have numbers printed upon them. One of my players actually gets mad at me for this though, as he has a pair of old dice with the paint worn off that can't be read by anyone else at the table and he thinks I am being "anal retentive" when I bought him new dice of the same type and asked him to use them.

I have another player who simply does not know how to roll dice and they fly everywhere knocking over models and rolling off the table, but I don't chew her out for it as there really isn't anything to be done without causing a heck of a lot of stress and drama.

On the other hand, my current DM insists that I roll all of the dice I am using in a turn simultaneously, and roll damage and attack together. It is extremely awkward for me as I have been rolling dice for decades and am not used to it, am not the most coordinated person, and have a bit of a visual processing disorder that means I take a seconds to get all those different dice colors sorted out in my head. Not a huge deal, but it is very annoying for me and the DM won't budge even a little on relaxing his restrictions.

Kaun

2014-09-28, 11:00 PM

Obviously it is a continuum. But in my current group a lot of the players keep losing massive DPS because they simply roll and forget to announce they are using default abilities like flurry of blows or sneak attack, and it seems to be an issue.

For example, I am playing in your game and have the spring attack feat. I move my model next to the enemy, roll a standard attack, and then move away. Would you really take an AoO if I didn't loudly state "I am using my spring attack feat!" at the start of the turn?

Generally i would ask if that what they were doing, before rolling the AoO. I find giving players the benefit of the doubt is best in these situations. But for things that effect the attack roll, like power attack, yeah i think players should call it before they roll. In saying that, if a player stated that every attack roll they make will be a 2 point power attack unless stated otherwise i would be happy to use that as the default as well.

As for the dice thing, I personally let players roll any dice they like so long as they are real dice and have numbers printed upon them. One of my players actually gets mad at me for this though, as he has a pair of old dice with the paint worn off that can't be read by anyone else at the table and he thinks I am being "anal retentive" when I bought him new dice of the same type and asked him to use them.

Yeah thats pretty much the reasoning behind all my dice rules. The tiny dice were damn hard to read at all let alone at a distance. Or dice with weird symbols rather then numbers, or weird designs that make them difficult to read.

I have another player who simply does not know how to roll dice and they fly everywhere knocking over models and rolling off the table, but I don't chew her out for it as there really isn't anything to be done without causing a heck of a lot of stress and drama.

Yeah this is why i have the rolling box. It's currently the card board box lid from a touch pad i bought a year or two back. Its about A1 size with a 40mm lip. If the dice land in the box they count if they don't then they don't count. I got sick of the under the couch 20's and the stuff getting knocked over, the dice rolled quickly on a book in the players lap and then snatched up. The edge rolls that players counted if they were high but re rolled if they were low.

Now, its just if they are in the box they count. There is nothing in there for them to edge on.

There is also a standing rule about getting your dice out of the box after a roll.

The funny thing is, the amount of new players that laugh and ask "why do you need such a big box?" then proceed to miss the box or bounce the dice out on the first time they roll.

On the other hand, my current DM insists that I roll all of the dice I am using in a turn simultaneously, and roll damage and attack together. It is extremely awkward for me as I have been rolling dice for decades and am not used to it, am not the most coordinated person, and have a bit of a visual processing disorder that means I take a seconds to get all those different dice colors sorted out in my head. Not a huge deal, but it is very annoying for me and the DM won't budge even a little on relaxing his restrictions.

I have used this rule before in games with lots of players. Its surprising how much time it can shave off combat, especially when we were playing gamed like 4e DnD where combat can be a massive time sink.

Talakeal

2014-09-29, 12:43 AM

Generally i would ask if that what they were doing, before rolling the AoO. I find giving players the benefit of the doubt is best in these situations. But for things that effect the attack roll, like power attack, yeah i think players should call it before they roll. In saying that, if a player stated that every attack roll they make will be a 2 point power attack unless stated otherwise i would be happy to use that as the default as well.

.

I totally agree 100%, I would not like it at all if a player refused to call things with limited uses or downsides beforehand. That is not what I am talking about; I am referring to DM's who won't let players use abilities with unlimited uses and no downsides without explicitly calling them out, or who won't let a player make a statement like "assume I am doing X unless I say otherwise".

Knaight

2014-09-29, 01:16 AM

sktarq

2014-09-29, 01:45 AM

I totally agree 100%, I would not like it at all if a player refused to call things with limited uses or downsides beforehand. That is not what I am talking about; I am referring to DM's who won't let players use abilities with unlimited uses and no downsides without explicitly calling them out, or who won't let a player make a statement like "assume I am doing X unless I say otherwise".
The first part I kinda get, if the DM is having trouble keeping up with his own duties (lots of monsters, lots of players, character turnover preventing familiarity, inexperience etc) a mentality of let the players worry about what ability they can use in a situation-I'll just run with what they say. . . And not wanting to deal with retconing a backstab etc. As a basic principle I could see it but application would be everything. If you not mentioning an ability use in anyway slows the game it doesn't happen would be in my mind harsh but not totally unreasonable but there would have to be quite a bit of give in the application.
As for not allowing a "default" to be set and noting down the adjusted numbers for himself that's mostly one of those points of bad execution I mentioned...

so yeah bad Dm on that-but may be more frazzeled than control freaky.

also several of these rules seem to be of a drive to get players to immerse themselves as possible with their character. He seems to be trying to drive immersion and suppress meta-gaming. Seems ham fisted to go about it that way but especially if that's what the DM sold as his idea ahead of time could work fine, but if he is trying to foist that style of play on people who don't want to use that style then it would be control freaky.

Eldan

2014-09-29, 01:51 AM

A lot of these also have a very authoritarian stance, which is completely alien to the groups I've been in. We're friends engaging in a leisure activity, there is no "boss" there. The GM has a different role than the players have, absolutely. That doesn't extend outside actual gameplay.

I've had a player or two where it was just necessary. There's this guy we have here who just... sort of shows up whenever people are gaming. Theoretically a nice guy, but also the strongest case of hyperactive ADD I've ever seen. He will constantly fiddle with things and go off-topic to such a degree that he even annoys himself. So yes, I have, in the past, taken his phone away from him when he was using it to show others clips of that cool new TV series he discovered a few days ago. While we were in a political negotiation.

In general, I have an "everything off the table" philosophy. No books, no laptops, no phones, just sheets, dice, writing material. I find those all far too distracting for me.

I've also vetoed character concepts.

Edit: it's also customary in my current group that all character sheets are kept in a binder above the game table (with the shared game books). It just makes it a lot easier if we keep all our gaming materials in one place, so that everyone knows where everything is. It helps that we game pretty spontaneously, i.e. there's the local warhammer store and whenever five or more people are still around when the shop closes and we all have time in the evening, we move over to the gaming room and play.

Sith_Happens

2014-09-29, 02:18 AM

Some rules just stink...like healing surges...don't allow those either. Cast a spell you lazy cleric!:smallcool:

I'm not really that up on 4e, but don't most healing powers just let the target immediately use one of their surges?

Curbstomp

2014-09-29, 05:23 AM

Talakeal-

I will attempt to respond point by point based on my own experiences with role-playing games. In specific as a DM for at least a decade and a player for at least fifteen years with over one hundred individual gamers. These were all done in person. Some of my current groups' members have been with me for ten years. Others are on their first or second campaign with us. I primarily play D&D 3.5 but have participated in campaigns from a variety of other systems.

-Telling players what color / style of dice to use and how to roll them.

I have rarely encountered this. That said I have one player currently who is rolling clear dice with no paint in the numbers. They are a pain to read. So it is conceptually tempting.

One of the groups I run has also discussed having a campaign where natural 1's and 20's count as 20's, but that rolling dice off of the table counts as a natural 1 regardless of what it lands on. We may do this at some point, but that would be campaign specific and by consensus.

-Dinging XP for showing up late or talking OOC

On missing entire sessions:
I do not give out XP to people who do not attend game unless they are missing it for work or family reasons.

On tardiness:
I usually have a 1/2 hour for people to arrive. If someone is later than that it is usually consequence-free, unless they make it a habit. In that case I speak to the player outside of game and see if another one of the play times is better for them. If that is the case then I transfer them to an appropriately-timed session. If it is simple negligence then I explain to them that late arrival disrupts the flow of the game, and that continued regular tardiness will result in expulsion from the group. Three strikes in a row and you're out.

On talking OOC:
I have allowed this in the past without issue if it is not terribly disruptive. If it is, then I gently remind the players that were are playing a game. This has generally served me well.

However, due to increased focus on role-playing in the three weekly sessions that I run, now I have begun to institute a five minute limit. After five minutes of OOC chat, then 100XP is docked from all participants. There are of course warnings before this is enacted. And out of fairness, if my players catch me at it while we are supposed to be playing, then they all gain 100XP.

-Insisting all dialogue by IC and refusing to let players use mechanical terms

That is... a bit much. Sometimes it is good to simply have a character roll a check, explain OOC what they are trying to do, then resolve the check and move on. One example might be trying to talk down the price of goods from a merchant using diplomacy. If one party member is shopping and the rest are waiting for them, then by all means the faster the better.

-Refusing to let players look at the on other player's character sheets (or describe their own to other players except in in character terms)

Looking at each other's sheets without permission is frowned on by every player I have ever played with. The only exception being noobs to a particular system. They usually need someone looking over their shoulders to help them understand their character sheet and modifiers. It should also be mentioned that in a game where not all PC's know each other well it may be appropriate for a character to keep some of their abilities or notes on their sheet hidden.

-Refusing to let players take their character sheets home

If losing sheets is a regular problem, I would institute this. It has never needed to happen. The two players in my group who are the worst at this volunteered to leave their sheets in my setting notes at the end of each session. They knew that it was becoming a problem for them and took steps themselves to address it.

-Refusing to let players add up the numbers on their own character sheets

If I suspected a player was cheating (or just bad at adding modifiers) I would check their math. This is generally the player's responsibility, not mine.

-Refusing to let the players look at the rule books (even their own) without permission

During game? I allow it, but abuse particularly by casters would be frowned on. If a player has been too lazy to copy down spell details and is relying on having time to look them up mid-session too bad. It slows the game down and makes it less fun for everyone. In my games every player had one minute to declare an action (resolution may take longer). If they have not declared an action by then, their turn is skipped. This encourages players to pay attention and makes gameplay smoother. So they can have book access, sure. But limited time to utilize it on their turn.

During a break or outside of game? Of course they can look at the rule books! Players who know the rules save me time and effort every single session that they play in.

-Telling players where to sit

Umm.... maybe. I would do this if two people were consistently disruptive sitting next to each other. The only other time I have seen this is when I played in a game where we sat in Initiative order.

-Not letting players check their phones

This is silly. Talk on them in session or play games on them though would be disruptive. Looking at it once in a while to see if you missed a call is fine. Just step away to talk.

-Arbitrarily banning basic character options without explanation

At the start of a campaign this is entirely appropriate pre-character generation.

-Arbitrarily changing the rules mid game without explanation

Not ideal, but if a player breaks the system in some way or if a rule cannot be quickly located then this can happen. Ideally it will not happen often.

-Making players take actions without clearly specifying them first each time, for example insisting a player say "I full attack with my long sword and five levels of power attack" every turn despite them doing that consistently for the entire battle and even making players announce passive abilities like Sneak Attack.

Of course you need to declare your actions. (Other than passive abilities. Sneak attack happens under the right circumstances. But Power Attack is something that requires a bit more specific control.)

Stella

2014-09-29, 08:50 AM

I am referring to DM's who won't let players use abilities with unlimited uses and no downsides without explicitly calling them out, or who won't let a player make a statement like "assume I am doing X unless I say otherwise".
Yeah, that's a problem. There's no reason at all a Rogue should have to "declare" sneak attack damage. Is the opponent flanked and vulnerable to precision damage? If yes and the Rogue hits, roll normal damage and precision damage together. Tell your DM to read the rules and apply them as appropriate:

The rogue’s attack deals extra damage any time her target would be denied a Dexterity bonus to AC (whether the target actually has a Dexterity bonus or not), or when the rogue flanks her target.
"Any time" indicates that it simply happens whenever the conditions are met, and doesn't need to be declared.

But some attacks (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0615.html) do need to be declared.

Composer99

2014-09-29, 12:31 PM

Most of those rules are reasonable in some contexts, and I think most responses have brought them up, and unreasonable or even outrageous in others. (The dice one seems especially apt as one of my fellow players has dice that are notoriously difficult to read - even he has trouble reading them!)

With respect to phone use, I did want to mention that players might use phones or tablets for reference (for example, I refer to rules and my current prepared spells on my phone for my Pathfinder cleric). Otherwise, expecting players to refrain from using the phone on their own initiative for non-game purposes (i.e. cat videos) is entirely reasonable, and so is expecting them to step away from the table if they get a call, or a text they have to respond to.

But beyond that I would not play at a table in which phones are banned. Apart from the fact that my phone is my reference document, I have a three year old whose bedtime occurs early in most play sessions, so if we're not playing at my house, I damn well expect to be able to step away from the table to call him and wish him goodnight, and I damn well expect to be able to take a call in the event that his mother (or other caretaker if he is being babysat) calls to report something has gone wrong. Suffice to say any rule enforcing "phone goes in one basket, battery goes in the other" would be treated as a hostile provocation.

Talakeal

2014-09-29, 01:06 PM

Talakeal-

I will attempt to respond point by point based on my own experiences with role-playing games. In specific as a DM for at least a decade and a player for at least fifteen years with over one hundred individual gamers. These were all done in person. Some of my current groups' members have been with me for ten years. Others are on their first or second campaign with us. I primarily play D&D 3.5 but have participated in campaigns from a variety of other systems.

I have rarely encountered this. That said I have one player currently who is rolling clear dice with no paint in the numbers. They are a pain to read. So it is conceptually tempting.

One of the groups I run has also discussed having a campaign where natural 1's and 20's count as 20's, but that rolling dice off of the table counts as a natural 1 regardless of what it lands on. We may do this at some point, but that would be campaign specific and by consensus.

On missing entire sessions:
I do not give out XP to people who do not attend game unless they are missing it for work or family reasons.

On tardiness:
I usually have a 1/2 hour for people to arrive. If someone is later than that it is usually consequence-free, unless they make it a habit. In that case I speak to the player outside of game and see if another one of the play times is better for them. If that is the case then I transfer them to an appropriately-timed session. If it is simple negligence then I explain to them that late arrival disrupts the flow of the game, and that continued regular tardiness will result in expulsion from the group. Three strikes in a row and you're out.

On talking OOC:
I have allowed this in the past without issue if it is not terribly disruptive. If it is, then I gently remind the players that were are playing a game. This has generally served me well.

However, due to increased focus on role-playing in the three weekly sessions that I run, now I have begun to institute a five minute limit. After five minutes of OOC chat, then 100XP is docked from all participants. There are of course warnings before this is enacted. And out of fairness, if my players catch me at it while we are supposed to be playing, then they all gain 100XP.

That is... a bit much. Sometimes it is good to simply have a character roll a check, explain OOC what they are trying to do, then resolve the check and move on. One example might be trying to talk down the price of goods from a merchant using diplomacy. If one party member is shopping and the rest are waiting for them, then by all means the faster the better.

Looking at each other's sheets without permission is frowned on by every player I have ever played with. The only exception being noobs to a particular system. They usually need someone looking over their shoulders to help them understand their character sheet and modifiers. It should also be mentioned that in a game where not all PC's know each other well it may be appropriate for a character to keep some of their abilities or notes on their sheet hidden.

If losing sheets is a regular problem, I would institute this. It has never needed to happen. The two players in my group who are the worst at this volunteered to leave their sheets in my setting notes at the end of each session. They knew that it was becoming a problem for them and took steps themselves to address it.

If I suspected a player was cheating (or just bad at adding modifiers) I would check their math. This is generally the player's responsibility, not mine.

During game? I allow it, but abuse particularly by casters would be frowned on. If a player has been too lazy to copy down spell details and is relying on having time to look them up mid-session too bad. It slows the game down and makes it less fun for everyone. In my games every player had one minute to declare an action (resolution may take longer). If they have not declared an action by then, their turn is skipped. This encourages players to pay attention and makes gameplay smoother. So they can have book access, sure. But limited time to utilize it on their turn.

During a break or outside of game? Of course they can look at the rule books! Players who know the rules save me time and effort every single session that they play in.

Umm.... maybe. I would do this if two people were consistently disruptive sitting next to each other. The only other time I have seen this is when I played in a game where we sat in Initiative order.

This is silly. Talk on them in session or play games on them though would be disruptive. Looking at it once in a while to see if you missed a call is fine. Just step away to talk.

At the start of a campaign this is entirely appropriate pre-character generation.

Not ideal, but if a player breaks the system in some way or if a rule cannot be quickly located then this can happen. Ideally it will not happen often.

Of course you need to declare your actions.

To clarify, I don't mean looking at other players sheets without their permission, I mean you are not allowed to show other people your sheet or relate the numbers on it voluntarily.

Also, I don't mean the DM needs to keep a copy of the sheet to prevent cheating / losing it. I mean the player cannot take the sheet home, whether or not it is the original or a copy.

Also, as far as declaring actions, I am not really sure it an "Of course" matter. I mean, if we are just sitting there slogging away at a monster, and it comes to my turn and I roll dice, do you REALLY need me to declare that I am attacking, or if I am attacking do you really need me to say that I am using my primary weapon instead of pulling out my backup weapon for no reason? Is there any reason why you won't accept a standing statement like "Unless specified otherwise assume I am full attacking with my long sword with five points of power attack?"

As I said previously, my current DM is very strict about how I roll my dice because he says it shaves a few precious seconds off of each round of combat. His insistence on the above seems like a FAR bigger waste of time imo.

Metahuman1

2014-09-29, 01:07 PM

-Insisting all dialogue by IC and refusing to let players use mechanical terms
-Refusing to let players look at the on other player's character sheets (or describe their own to other players except in in character terms)
-Refusing to let players add up the numbers on their own character sheets
-Refusing to let the players look at the rule books (even their own) without permission

These will vary form system to system. In some systems, they work out ok. In most versions of D&D, however, all your doing is giving your players the middle finger, particularly melee/mundane characters for most editions, and calling it "Role Play.".

mikeejimbo

2014-09-29, 04:34 PM

Plenty of GMs aren't control freaks. I'm not at all - I favor a player driven game, I trust my players, and I simply do not care about things like dice colors. Heck, all of the character sheets for a current game are at a player's house, because he hosts the game and that makes sense (plus, I don't need them to prep, mostly because I'm way over on the improvisational GM side).

I'm with Knaight on this one, and am probably somewhere similar on the spectrum of GM control. (I call it laissez faire GMing.) I don't think that GMs tend to be controlling, though the reverse - controlling types gravitating toward GMing - might be true. I'd say that the most likely personality to take up the mantle is that of the Storyteller, but that may have a high rate of controlling personalities itself.

Knaight

2014-09-29, 07:20 PM

I'm with Knaight on this one, and am probably somewhere similar on the spectrum of GM control. (I call it laissez faire GMing.) I don't think that GMs tend to be controlling, though the reverse - controlling types gravitating toward GMing - might be true. I'd say that the most likely personality to take up the mantle is that of the Storyteller, but that may have a high rate of controlling personalities itself.

Laissez faire pretty much sums it up, though there's a case to be made that lazy fare would sum it up better. :smallamused:

More seriously, I think it's rooted in player trust. I am not worried about my players cheating, at all. I don't particularly need to see the dice, keep the character sheets, etc. It's helpful sometimes, because I usually have the best mechanical knowledge and mental arithmetic speed in groups I'm in, but that's about it. Similarly, I trust my players to handle things related to their characters and what not, and as such have a very light hand on what gets introduced - I'll clarify setting things and make rulings accordingly, but there's a good chance that "can I play a dragon?" will get a response of "sure, why not?"

After all, the group is generally some combination of 4-6 friends. I like these people. I deliberately socialize with these people. I really don't see any need for control here.

mikeejimbo

2014-09-29, 10:57 PM

... but there's a good chance that "can I play a dragon?" will get a response of "sure, why not?

Haha, that's funny; I'm actually running a game where the premise is that the players are dragons.

Like in your case, I think the approach works because the people are friends I'm socializing with deliberately.

Also - and I hope none of my players catch wind of this and abuse the privilege - I have a general rule that the players can't bother me. I'm there to let them play. As long as they're all having fun, they can't "ruin" my world, or my plot, or favorite NPCs.

I suspect some of that works because I also improvise a lot

Curbstomp

2014-09-29, 11:01 PM

To answer your question Talakeal-

Yes I would accept a player declaring that they would power attack for five points for the duration of the fight with their long sword (for example) so that it not need to be rehashed every round. But I would still expect them to say something like "I continue attacking" when it comes to their turn. I would assume from the previous declaration that they were using the same method as before.

The reason for this is because most characters have more options in combat that just standing still and swinging. A few examples for martial characters: Intimidate, using ToB Abilities, Charging or Moving in general, activating a Magic Item, entering a Rage, activating a _______ Devotion feat, utilizing racial abilities like Stomp, switching to a weapon that ignores DR, and many more.

Threadnaught

2014-09-30, 06:17 AM

Sweet, another "bash on jedipotter by politely explaining relationships" thread.

It is a bit more accurate to say all DM's are controllers. That is people that like to have things set up and in control. And control is not a bad thing in a social activity. If just one person takes control, then a social activity can be much more fun and over all better for all.

Yes, but this control could be executed by the lightest of touches. In such a way where the person who is coordinating everyone, is leaving them in control of what they're doing.
On the other side of the scale, it could be as heavy handed as demanding they be able to post on twitter, exactly what they say including grammar, every time they speak.

One is mostly beneficial, the other, more like an abusive relationship.

Take a pot luck dinner....you could just sit back and say ''bring whatever'' or you can take a couple minutes to ask people what they will bring and make sure there is not too much over lap and a good variety. That is taking control.

No coordination whatsoever and you either risk nobody bringing anything, or everyone bringing the same thing. Politely asking everyone to coordinate with each other isn't controlling them or the sessions either. :smalltongue:
To control people in this way, you would have to demand that each person supply a very specific food and, to avoid any potential mistakes that person could make in the kitchen when making certain foods, that they buy your favourite brand from your favourite store. That is taking control.

Just take the phone one. Sure the DM can ask ''pretty please with sugar on top'' that people not use phones during the game. But not everyone can put down the phone. And someone using their phone disrupts the whole game. So it is goo for the DM to step up and take control here.

Yes, it's surprisingly easy to say to someone that since they're mentally absent, you're going to be counting them as physically absent until they learn to stop using their phone during the game.

Or to remind someone playing a Facebook game that they're supposed to be playing the game on the table.

My rule is phone goes in one basket, battery goes in the other.

I cannot agree with this, maybe put everyone's phone into a basket, but not completely switched off and dismantled. Your players may have family that they care about and if they learn something serious happened while they were too busy gaming to be able to answer their phone because it had been dismantled, they're probably going to feel very guilty about it.
It's not too much that they're not constantly using their phones during a session and that any calls on their phones are to be received emergency calls only, but a complete blackout, too much.

OP beat me to it.

And the ''arbitrary'' stuff is just silly. I don't like the Tome of Battle, it will not be used in my game. I don't need to have a discussion about it or give the players a 10,000 word reason why.

A simple reason should be enough. Incidentally "I don't want to have to learn it" is a good reason. You cling to "I don't like it", but this is merely a poor excuse, you don't dislike ToB, you dislike something it does for players.

I'm big on no rule books during play. Some times I'll try and go book, by book, but too many books have too much information in them. So the easy way is just no books, no internet.

If the DM has a decent enough web connection, quickly searching something online can just take seconds.

And the ''don't look at the rules'' is very Old School.....only if games could be like that again.

They are, there's a variation of hide and seek where the chaser must not only find the other players, but catch them and say out loud the variant name twice followed by "1, 2, 3." The person caught must then assist the chaser.
There's another version where the hiding team has a safe location where they can't be caught, and a caught area where all caught players must stand until released by an uncaught player, they start with a number of lives that they lose each time they're caught. They lose all their lives and either they're out, or become a chaser. Depending on what rules are being used.
I'm pretty sure there are variants of hopscotch, anyone ever jump onto prime numbers only?

Yeah, a lot of this is schoolyard stuff, where the bigger kids are usually in control and are able to intimidate the littler kids into giving up, because trying to win would be "cheating", but they're examples of games that have wildly changing rules that the GM can (and does) change on a whim.

Often this DM type uses the secret rules to ''ban stuff''. If the player does not know something exists, it is ''banned''.

You're kidding right?

So new player who just arrived wanting to learn about an awesome game his buddy is always talking up, is banned from creating a character, because they don't know what options there are?
Other player, knows the exact sequence to making Pun-Pun and they have all the necessary pages bookmarked and memorized word for word. They're allowed to break the game by becoming the ultimate life form?

I ''ask'' that if someone comes to my house to play D&D, that they.......come to my house and play D&D. If they want to do anything else, I'll just tell them to leave.

What's with the quotation marks around "ask"? This is an expectation that upon accepting an invitation to participate in an event, that the invitee would participate in the event you invited them to participate in.

Though to be fair, you are sending out invitations with false promises of a game of D&D.

What exactly is to explain there? I''l ban stuff I don't like, no big deal there. Do you feel you need an explanation for ''I don't like''? I guess we could waste time talking about it. You'd say you like it, I'd say I don't and we'd just be wasting time.

"I don't like because it has melee Classes that play like Casters." Is a much better reason for disliking it than "I don't like it and will burn any copy I can get my hands on." Which isn't actually a reason at all, it's more of a threat really.

And ''arbitrary'' rule changes, well we could fill threads with this stuff. I go with ''the DM's say is final'', if you don't like it leave. I'll never understand the type of game like the DM says ''the arrow misses'' and then the player demands to know why rules-wise. You'd spend more time second guessing the DM then playing the game, so why bother?

Player A is playing a Ranger and rolls an 11, with +5 from Base Attack and +3 from Dexterity, that's 19 to hit. They hit the creature.
Player B playing a Fighter rolls a 10, with +7 from Base Attack, +4 from Strength and +1 from Weapon Focus, that's 22 to hit. They miss the creature.

What happens is, as they fight the enemy, it's AC goes up for each attack. Or something, I dunno, look, it's not like some of us make up the rules as we go along.

@Talakeal, leave. It's the best thing you can do.

Talakeal

2014-09-30, 02:33 PM

@Talakeal, leave. It's the best thing you can do.

Again, this isn't all the same DM. I have been DMing for the past decade and haven't had a chance to PC, and now I am looking for a new group, and am shocked by how rigid and authoritarian (as well as how quirky and averse to playing by the book) most of the DM's I am seeing are. I remember that from playing in High School, but I figured most people would have mellowed out as they got older (I know I have), but if anything the opposite seems to be the case. I had a long conversation with one of my old friends about it (the same one from my recent PvP thread who tells me I am in the lower class of gamers) and he came up with a long theory that is more or less the premise of this thread, which prompted me to make the initial post.

Threadnaught

2014-09-30, 03:40 PM

Again, this isn't all the same DM.

Even so, a DM that displays enough of these qualities that it becomes a complaint about their game, you should leave.

Like your current DM for example.

I have been DMing for the past decade and haven't had a chance to PC,

A whole decade? That's some serious commitment right there, you must've had a whole pile of enthusiasm for the campaign/s you ran.

I had a long conversation with one of my old friends about it (the same one from my recent PvP thread who tells me I am in the lower class of gamers) and he came up with a long theory that is more or less the premise of this thread, which prompted me to make the initial post.

Lower class of gamers? Where do you find these people?

Talakeal

2014-09-30, 03:47 PM

Even so, a DM that displays enough of these qualities that it becomes a complaint about their game, you should leave.

Like your current DM for example.

A whole decade? That's some serious commitment right there, you must've had a whole pile of enthusiasm for the campaign/s you ran.

Lower class of gamers? Where do you find these people?

I am the only one in my local circle of friends who has the patience to DM for more than a few weeks at a time. Also, most of it has been play-testing for Heart of Darkness.

As for the lower class of gamers thing, see my previous thread about PVP for more details.

Jay R

2014-09-30, 04:47 PM

Most of these are actions I could see taking only to solve a specific problem.

-Telling players what color / style of dice to use and how to roll them.

I saw this done exactly once. One player was getting consistently excellent rolls from a die with very low contrast, and nobody else could see what the numbers were. The player had to pick the die up to read it. Rather than accuse him of cheating, the DM lent him dice with high contrast that could be read across the table, and insisted that he use that. His rolls dropped down to average.

-Dinging XP for showing up late or talking OOC

My current DM gives bonus xps for showing up on time with your character sheet ready. That's because we have one player who never updated his sheet at home, and was taking gaming time to do it.

-Insisting all dialogue by IC and refusing to let players use mechanical terms

Can't imagine this in general, but it's pretty common at certain times. I expect people to speak IC during diplomacy, rather than saying, "I make a diplomacy check." I have no problem with using mechanical terms when the point at the moment isn't playing the roles.

-Refusing to let players look at the on other player's character sheets (or describe their own to other players except in in character terms)

I can't imagine doing this, unless I was trying to correct the problem of a rude player trying to learn other players' secrets by looking at their sheets, or trying to play numbers games to avoid role-playing.

-Refusing to let players take their character sheets home

I did the equivalent once. They could take them home, but I was updating all the sheets, and gave them new ones at the start of the next game. This avoided the problem of a person whose unfamiliarity with the system tended to mean we spent half an hour updating his sheet instead of playing.

-Refusing to let players add up the numbers on their own character sheets

Of course you can add them up. It's impossible for a DM to prevent it. But I certainly reserve the right to add it up myself.

The only time I could see insisting on this is if one player had a cursed item he didn't know about, and I was trying to prevent him figuring it out by meta-gaming.

-Refusing to let the players look at the rule books (even their own) without permission

If you're facing Clickclicks*, and you don't remember their weakness, then no, of course you can't look it up. You can try a knowledge check if you have the right skill, of course, but you cannot prevent having to make a knowledge check by means of the book.

*Featured in an article in The Dragon #10, October 1977.

-Telling players where to sit

Only if somebody is looking where he shouldn't. (I once had a player who tended to look where the minis for the next encounter were stored. I started leaving a red dragon, or some other attention-grabbing figure, in front.)

-Not letting players check their phones

My players would never do that. One player has been very apologetic that with his blind mother alone at home, he has to keep his phone on.

I would make such a rule only if somebody was disrupting the game, or appeared to be looking things up online.

-Arbitrarily banning basic character options without explanation

That's the DM's job. I wouldn't allow any dwarf or elf characters in my latest game, and would not tell them why. All dwarves are currently slaves of the giants, and when the elves arrive, they will be the elves from Terry Pratchett. No, I did not give away my plots.

Of course, no player was rude enough to push after I told then the rules for this game, either.

-Arbitrarily changing the rules mid game without explanation

I can't imagine this, unless somebody had found a particularly egregious rules trick that gave him way too much power.

-Making players take actions without clearly specifying them first each time, for example insisting a player say "I full attack with my long sword and five levels of power attack" every turn despite them doing that consistently for the entire battle and even making players announce passive abilities like Sneak Attack.

Depends on the situation. if somebody failed to mention the power attack until after rolling to hit, and it ever happened that he didn't use it when that made the different between a hit and a miss, then I would enforce this rule from then on.

Also, if the player only did it 99% of the time, then he has to tell me when he's doing it. And yes, you should announce a sneak attack. Why not?

Seriously, I feel like any day now I am going to find a DM who makes me raise my hand to ask a question or get a hall pass to use the bathroom.

Don't be silly. All your examples are about running the game.

When I asked one of my friends about this he simply told me that the only people who would ever put forth the effort to actually run a long term game are people who are starved for attention / control in their life and therefore use the gaming table as a place to get as much of those things as possible.

Simply untrue. Most DMs I know enjoy the act of creating a world. Tell your friend that his cynicism is closing his mind to a lot of human experience.

So is he right? If not what is up with these GMs? Is this normal, or am I merely getting a bad run of GMs like I have gotten a bad run of players in the past. Let me know what you think?

He's wrong. You appear to be getting a string of DMs who are reacting to specific problems from bad players. (Note that it may have been a bad player years ago who led to a particular rule being used in that game.)

veti

2014-09-30, 04:55 PM

To clarify, I don't mean looking at other players sheets without their permission, I mean you are not allowed to show other people your sheet or relate the numbers on it voluntarily.

Fair enough. Imagine if just one player has something on their character sheet that's not for everyone's eyes. The only realistic way to keep it private is to enforce the same secrecy for everyone.

Or even if they don't - this way, you don't know, right? So next game, when they might, the rule will be established and it won't immediately alert the players.

Also, I don't mean the DM needs to keep a copy of the sheet to prevent cheating / losing it. I mean the player cannot take the sheet home, whether or not it is the original or a copy.

That's a necessary corollary to the above "enforced secrecy" rule. No point keeping character sheets private at the table, then letting everyone go home and share them there.

Also, as far as declaring actions, I am not really sure it an "Of course" matter. I mean, if we are just sitting there slogging away at a monster, and it comes to my turn and I roll dice, do you REALLY need me to declare that I am attacking, or if I am attacking do you really need me to say that I am using my primary weapon instead of pulling out my backup weapon for no reason?

Yes, I absolutely do need you to declare that, and I don't think it's too much to ask that you do. I don't know about your sessions, but in mine, people roll dice all the damn' time. Sometimes they're trying to make up their minds what to do; sometimes they're just fidgeting; sometimes they're conducting some kind of half-assed statistical test to find their "best" dice. I don't really care, at least they're there. But when you're going to take your actual roll, to generate a number that the GM and the universe is expected to take note of - I want to be told exactly what it's for and what terms are being applied to it.

Is there any reason why you won't accept a standing statement like "Unless specified otherwise assume I am full attacking with my long sword with five points of power attack?"

Memory. I have a lot of variables to keep in my head during a melee, I don't see why I should have to devote precious space to saving you the energy of saying "power attack five" once every ten minutes.

As I said previously, my current DM is very strict about how I roll my dice because he says it shaves a few precious seconds off of each round of combat. His insistence on the above seems like a FAR bigger waste of time imo.

You can try to talk to him about it (out of session - don't waste everyone's time by bringing it up during game time), and maybe he'll explain some perfectly plausible reason that you haven't thought of. Or you can just walk away.

Talakeal

2014-09-30, 05:06 PM

Yes, I absolutely do need you to declare that, and I don't think it's too much to ask that you do. I don't know about your sessions, but in mine, people roll dice all the damn' time. Sometimes they're trying to make up their minds what to do; sometimes they're just fidgeting; sometimes they're conducting some kind of half-assed statistical test to find their "best" dice. I don't really care, at least they're there. But when you're going to take your actual roll, to generate a number that the GM and the universe is expected to take note of - I want to be told exactly what it's for and what terms are being applied to it.

Sounds like you have a much bigger issue with cheating players than I do. I find that giving players room to keep their own actions straight is both a waste of time and an insinuation that I don't trust them, but in a situation where I really DON'T trust them not to cheat it would make sense.

Boy, you would hate DMing for my group. In my homebrew system you wizards can more or less take basic spell seeds and then modify them with meta-magic which requires an occult skill test to pull off. So we have one guy who sits at the end of the table, crunching numbers and rolling dice while everyone else takes their turn, and then when we finally get around to him he will say something like:

"I cast an triple enlarged, double empowered, extended balefire fireball with five levels of piercing, everyone in this group needs to take a save at -5 or suffer 35 damage, then I cast a quickened triple extended seeking chain lightning with four levels of piercing, so this group over here needs to take a save at -4 or suffer 23 electric damage."

Zarrgon

2014-09-30, 07:52 PM

I had a long conversation with one of my old friends about it (the same one from my recent PvP thread who tells me I am in the lower class of gamers) and he came up with a long theory that is more or less the premise of this thread, which prompted me to make the initial post.

It's weird how wrapped around ''No'' D&D is. Every Dm has to say ''No'' to at least a couple player requests per game.

Say a DM makes up a setting ''like Ireland, with magic''. When a player asks ''can I be a dragon?" or even just ''Can i be a ninja''....the DM has to say ''No, that won't work.''

And just take the dragon one. Most DM's will say ''no'' by default. As a dragon character in a ''normal'' game can quickly ruin the game. The same way any powerful race does. So a DM learns quick that ''no'' was the right answer after all. And even when it does not ruin the game, it's such a huge risk as the number of games ruined is more then the number of games not.

Like character sheets. For some games I keep them. I know from the past the players will just loose them. So it just makes more sense for them to turn them in at the end of the night.

Mr Beer

2014-09-30, 08:37 PM

Like character sheets. For some games I keep them. I know from the past the players will just loose them. So it just makes more sense for them to turn them in at the end of the night.

Yeah, I keep them for that reason. Printed sheets are just a way to distribute the master record, which I keep on my computer.

mikeejimbo

2014-09-30, 08:38 PM

It's weird how wrapped around ''No'' D&D is. Every Dm has to say ''No'' to at least a couple player requests per game.

Say a DM makes up a setting ''like Ireland, with magic''. When a player asks ''can I be a dragon?" or even just ''Can i be a ninja''....the DM has to say ''No, that won't work.''

And just take the dragon one. Most DM's will say ''no'' by default. As a dragon character in a ''normal'' game can quickly ruin the game. The same way any powerful race does. So a DM learns quick that ''no'' was the right answer after all. And even when it does not ruin the game, it's such a huge risk as the number of games ruined is more then the number of games not.

Like character sheets. For some games I keep them. I know from the past the players will just loose them. So it just makes more sense for them to turn them in at the end of the night.

In what way does it "ruin" the game? The encounters become too "easy"? Make harder encounters. Make encounters involving things other than combat. Explore the reasons that a dragon would be friends with a ragtag band of misfits. Figure out some of the social ramifications of having a dragon friend. Dragon getting too much spotlight? Let other players have the spotlight. Let them explore their reactions to the dragon.

In my view, the only way it can "ruin" the game is if it bothers the other players. That is when you find compromise. Is the dragon overshadowing them in combat? Let them play crazy combat monsters too and scale up encounters. Do they want to play something weird too? Why the heck shouldn't they? Why shouldn't your party consist of a dragon, an archon, and a demilich? Worried they'll ruin your plot? Why? It's their game. Let them do whatever they want to the plot. Worried they'll take over the world and change it into something else entirely? Why? It's their world, let them do to it what they will.

Do the other players not want the tone and style of game that has that kind of stuff in it? OK.

Now you ban the dragon.

Steel Mirror

2014-09-30, 08:59 PM

In my view, the only way it can "ruin" the game is if it bothers the other players. That is when you find compromise. Is the dragon overshadowing them in combat? Let them play crazy combat monsters too and scale up encounters. Do they want to play something weird too? Why the heck shouldn't they? Why shouldn't your party consist of a dragon, an archon, and a demilich? Worried they'll ruin your plot? Why? It's their game. Let them do whatever they want to the plot. Worried they'll take over the world and change it into something else entirely? Why? It's their world, let them do to it what they will.

Do the other players not want the tone and style of game that has that kind of stuff in it? OK.

Now you ban the dragon.While I'm not saying that you are wrong here, I don't think that all games are going to be like that. Yeah, it's the players' game. That's a really cool and permissive attitude to take as a GM, and I applaud you for it. But it's the GM's game too, and given that she is putting most of the effort in to establish the world, make NPCs, figure out plot hooks, and all the other stuff that is going on other than the PCs merry band of misfits, she should have a slightly larger interest (and a better behind-the-scenes understanding) in deciding what player choices make sense with the rest of the campaign.

To go back to the example used, a historical Irish setting with added magic might not mesh well with a dragon as a player or character- or, for example, a shardmind, or a warforged. Nothing wrong with those choices in a different game, for a different group, but they don't mesh well with the slightly mystical alternate history vibe the GM was going for, and the player could reasonably be expected to make that sacrifice so that the GM's game can get off the ground and everyone could get started on having fun. That's a playstyle, just like the fantasy-kitchen-sink "everyone choose a weird race, a template, and a tristalt build" and build a sandbox around that is a style. A GM allowing a dragon in the first instance could certainly ruin the game for his players and himself, while a GM in the latter that tried to ban a dragon PC could ruin that game.

mikeejimbo

2014-09-30, 09:46 PM

To go back to the example used, a historical Irish setting with added magic might not mesh well with a dragon as a player or character- or, for example, a shardmind, or a warforged. Nothing wrong with those choices in a different game, for a different group, but they don't mesh well with the slightly mystical alternate history vibe the GM was going for, and the player could reasonably be expected to make that sacrifice so that the GM's game can get off the ground and everyone could get started on having fun. That's a playstyle, just like the fantasy-kitchen-sink "everyone choose a weird race, a template, and a tristalt build" and build a sandbox around that is a style. A GM allowing a dragon in the first instance could certainly ruin the game for his players and himself, while a GM in the latter that tried to ban a dragon PC could ruin that game.

I admit that the view isn't for everyone, but I think it can support any playstyle as well. The core rule of "The game is only ruined if it bothers another player" still stands if the player isn't getting the playstyle they signed up for. Then it would bother them. If it doesn't bother anyone then they didn't want that playstyle in the first place. If that bothers the GM, he should have found a set of players who did want that playstyle.

Granted this works best for games where the GM has an idea and then gathers players from among people she knows whom she believes would be interested, but doesn't work quite as well for established groups that run through different campaigns. There someone might say "I have an idea for a campaign" and the others would feel awkward for opting out.

Steel Mirror

2014-09-30, 09:52 PM

If it doesn't bother anyone then they didn't want that playstyle in the first place. If that bothers the GM, he should have found a set of players who did want that playstyle.That is certainly the crux of it! I've been lucky enough to, for the most part, have groups that were on the same wavelength as myself, so it's worked out quite well and I have enjoyed the hobby immensely. To judge by this forum, Talakeal and others...have not been so lucky.

mikeejimbo

2014-09-30, 10:02 PM

Yeah, that's true. I'm just waxing philosophic by now. Well, as philosophic as GMing can get.

It might be a good reason to try to introduce new people into the hobby.

Arkhaic

2014-09-30, 10:04 PM

Of course, that also depends on which Irish mythology your game is inspired on. I mean, the Might Arms graft from Faiths of Eberrron has precedent (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuada_Airgetl%C3%A1m), and that was done by a guy who died of, of all things, "a painful plague." Or, if you're sticking more to the Fenian Cycle...well, Fionn mac Cumhaill exists, so I'm sure you can come up with something that fits the tone of the campaign better than burning your thumb while cooking a magic fish. (It is important to figure out why the player wants to play a . If they wanted it for the mechanics then refluffing is easy; if they wanted it because of the societal and social impacts of being a humanoid killing machine then things are a bit harder, though still workable...and they're probably in the wrong game if they just want to play a robot.)

Edit: While this post specifically addressed the Irish campaign situation, the main points are as follows:

A given concept may not be as far from the campaign premise as it initially appears.
Refluffing is useful if the mechanical option's, well, mechanics, are the primary focus.
Unsuitable [I]character concepts can be adapted to fit other settings without compromising the core focus.

mikeejimbo

2014-09-30, 11:14 PM

Oh yeah, there's definitely room for compromise in a lot of situations. Those are definitely good points to keep in mind.

SimonMoon6

2014-10-01, 10:53 AM

-Refusing to let players take their character sheets home

This I've done in games, simply so that nobody loses the character sheets (and so that I, as DM, can look up the capabilities of the PCs more easily and know how to appropriately challenge them). So, I don't see this as a problem. Of course, these games weren't 3.x games, where you kind of have to know how to spend your money, so that might be a different experience.

Everything else is pretty crazy.

(Though if we're sharing similar crazy experiences, once in my early DM-ing days (about 25+ years ago), I told a player that he had to write his stats in the "right" order for 1st edition (SIWDCCh); he refused and quit. So... that was odd. I never did that again.)

Amphetryon

2014-10-02, 02:05 PM

Most of these are actions I could see taking only to solve a specific problem.

I saw this done exactly once. One player was getting consistently excellent rolls from a die with very low contrast, and nobody else could see what the numbers were. The player had to pick the die up to read it. Rather than accuse him of cheating, the DM lent him dice with high contrast that could be read across the table, and insisted that he use that. His rolls dropped down to average.

My current DM gives bonus xps for showing up on time with your character sheet ready. That's because we have one player who never updated his sheet at home, and was taking gaming time to do it.

Can't imagine this in general, but it's pretty common at certain times. I expect people to speak IC during diplomacy, rather than saying, "I make a diplomacy check." I have no problem with using mechanical terms when the point at the moment isn't playing the roles.

I can't imagine doing this, unless I was trying to correct the problem of a rude player trying to learn other players' secrets by looking at their sheets, or trying to play numbers games to avoid role-playing.

I did the equivalent once. They could take them home, but I was updating all the sheets, and gave them new ones at the start of the next game. This avoided the problem of a person whose unfamiliarity with the system tended to mean we spent half an hour updating his sheet instead of playing.

Of course you can add them up. It's impossible for a DM to prevent it. But I certainly reserve the right to add it up myself.

The only time I could see insisting on this is if one player had a cursed item he didn't know about, and I was trying to prevent him figuring it out by meta-gaming.

If you're facing Clickclicks*, and you don't remember their weakness, then no, of course you can't look it up. You can try a knowledge check if you have the right skill, of course, but you cannot prevent having to make a knowledge check by means of the book.

*Featured in an article in The Dragon #10, October 1977.

Only if somebody is looking where he shouldn't. (I once had a player who tended to look where the minis for the next encounter were stored. I started leaving a red dragon, or some other attention-grabbing figure, in front.)

My players would never do that. One player has been very apologetic that with his blind mother alone at home, he has to keep his phone on.

I would make such a rule only if somebody was disrupting the game, or appeared to be looking things up online.

That's the DM's job. I wouldn't allow any dwarf or elf characters in my latest game, and would not tell them why. All dwarves are currently slaves of the giants, and when the elves arrive, they will be the elves from Terry Pratchett. No, I did not give away my plots.

Of course, no player was rude enough to push after I told then the rules for this game, either.

I can't imagine this, unless somebody had found a particularly egregious rules trick that gave him way too much power.

Depends on the situation. if somebody failed to mention the power attack until after rolling to hit, and it ever happened that he didn't use it when that made the different between a hit and a miss, then I would enforce this rule from then on.

Also, if the player only did it 99% of the time, then he has to tell me when he's doing it. And yes, you should announce a sneak attack. Why not?

Don't be silly. All your examples are about running the game.

Simply untrue. Most DMs I know enjoy the act of creating a world. Tell your friend that his cynicism is closing his mind to a lot of human experience.

He's wrong. You appear to be getting a string of DMs who are reacting to specific problems from bad players. (Note that it may have been a bad player years ago who led to a particular rule being used in that game.)

Basically agree on all counts here. The list appears especially egregious because it's expressed in absolute terms, from a single POV, as a conglomeration of rules made by several DMs.

draken50

2014-10-02, 03:40 PM

When I first started to read the thread, I was plenty prepared to declare: "I am a GM and I am not a control freak!"

Having looked through things a bit though, I suppose it really depends on the persons definition. I have few things I am controlling about, which in my mind are for good reason.
I don't penalize OOC talk, as I know it's inevitable, but if the characters have a short time to react, the players do as well.

Additionally, I have a no-phones preference for game. I don't have an issue with someone checking it during breaks, and of course work/emergencies mitigate it. If you're just wanting to text friends or girls or whatever, do it another time, or don't come to my game. By the same token, if you show up with a magazine, and spend your time reading it and showing people pictures from it, I'm going to have a problem with that too. Phones basically exacerbate OOC stuff too. As once an OOC joke is made, then someone wants to show someone a gif, or video and I'm having to tell a more oblivious player that I don't care about the pirate themed metal band he wants everyone to listen to now, we've all heard of Alestorm and put your damn phone away!

As to declaring what you're rolling and why, there's a reason for that. Take power attack. You know it has penalty to hit, so if you roll a 10, you may decide... well I guess I wasn't power attacking, but if it was a 15, now you want add your BAB to the damage. Also I've seen others, and had players in my own game rolling d20s and then declaring something like, I got a 23 to pick his pocket! You don't get to just roll and then tell me what it was for.. Oh I got a 2? I was...ummm... rolling for listen... I guess I'm not paying attention to what he was saying. So yeah, in my game, anything you're going to roll for, is going to be stated before-hand.

See, here's the thing. I don't particularly consider myself a controlling person. RPGs for me are just a way that I see some good friends on a weekly basis. A big part of it though, does require effort on my part. I may not put as much time into my campaigns as some GMs, but there's definitely effort involved. Additionally, I try to make sure the house, or at least the gaming area is clean. I'm available and mentally capable of running. Basically, GMing while fun, does require more effort and preparation than any other social hobby I have. The thing is I think table-top gaming is a ton a fun, and well... not every gamer is a GM. I would expect that every other GM has the same thing.

So a player showing up 2 hours late is an insult to me, and the players who showed up on time. A player who won't put their phone down, is insulting me, and all the other players trying to get and stay engaged in the game. I won't say there aren't GMs who take things to far, and GMs who run bad games, or treat players like idiots or pawns. The thing of it is, is the ultimately, if you have a problem... run your own game. See, just as there are good and bad GM's, there are good and bad players. I've heard a player complain to an GM of mine because the GM told them not to bother showing up to session. The reason? The player decided that they wanted to go see movie with friends first and would show up 3 hours late, they were calling 15 minutes before the session started. Every GM I know has stories like that, where players consider it "unfair" to have any consequences for blowing off the game, the GM, the other players, and all the work that goes into it.

Knaight

2014-10-02, 11:39 PM

I admit that the view isn't for everyone, but I think it can support any playstyle as well. The core rule of "The game is only ruined if it bothers another player" still stands if the player isn't getting the playstyle they signed up for. Then it would bother them. If it doesn't bother anyone then they didn't want that playstyle in the first place. If that bothers the GM, he should have found a set of players who did want that playstyle.

I'd say that the core rule of "The game is only ruined if it bothers another player" holds, but that the broader definition of player that includes the GM is absolutely necessary here. Sometimes things legitimately do conflict with the important parts of a setting, and it's veto time.

Talakeal

2014-10-03, 01:51 AM

As to declaring what you're rolling and why, there's a reason for that. Take power attack. You know it has penalty to hit, so if you roll a 10, you may decide... well I guess I wasn't power attacking, but if it was a 15, now you want add your BAB to the damage. Also I've seen others, and had players in my own game rolling d20s and then declaring something like, I got a 23 to pick his pocket! You don't get to just roll and then tell me what it was for.. Oh I got a 2? I was...ummm... rolling for listen... I guess I'm not paying attention to what he was saying. So yeah, in my game, anything you're going to roll for, is going to be stated before-hand.

.

Yeah, it sounds like you have a problem with cheaters. In that case I guess it is important to do something, but I would still feel like gouging my eyes out if the DM made me state "I am full attacking the closest orc with my long sword for two points of power attack" over and over and over and over again in every round of a several dozen round combat.

As for the rest of your post, it doesn't sound particularly unreasonable, but imagine if someone acted like that in any other social situation? Like "Hey you want to hang out with me and my buddies on Friday night to drink beer and watch the game? Just understand that you can't use your phone while you are here, and if you show up late you have to sit on the broken chair and drink warm beer as a punishment!"

jedipotter

2014-10-03, 03:24 AM

NichG

2014-10-03, 06:24 AM

As for the rest of your post, it doesn't sound particularly unreasonable, but imagine if someone acted like that in any other social situation? Like "Hey you want to hang out with me and my buddies on Friday night to drink beer and watch the game? Just understand that you can't use your phone while you are here, and if you show up late you have to sit on the broken chair and drink warm beer as a punishment!"

There's tons of social situations where it'd be varying levels of inappropriate to be using your phone:

- Going to a movie
- Having dinner at a restaurant
- Playing a sport together (imagine if you're playing soccer and the goalie starts ignoring the game in order to text someone)
- Doing a raid as a group on an MMO.

A table-top RPG is closest to the third or fourth case. You're doing an activity where if someone gets distracted, it interferes with the flow of it for everyone present. It'd be pretty bad form to e.g. plan to play a game of soccer with your friends and then show up an hour late for the same reason - you dragging your heels means that they all get to play less, and maybe the game can't even happen.

If the point of the gathering isn't 'hanging out and being distracted' but is actually about the game, then when a player consistently does things that detract from the ability of others to play the game and have fun, it means that player is having a net negative effect on the experience. Which means if the point is the game, that player should generally be told to either stop it or leave the group. There's no real reason why a group of people should have to tolerate disruptive behavior from someone who can't take it as seriously as they want to.

1337 b4k4

2014-10-03, 07:02 AM

As for the rest of your post, it doesn't sound particularly unreasonable, but imagine if someone acted like that in any other social situation? Like "Hey you want to hang out with me and my buddies on Friday night to drink beer and watch the game? Just understand that you can't use your phone while you are here, and if you show up late you have to sit on the broken chair and drink warm beer as a punishment!"

Even if the "rule" wasn't explicitly stated, almost every single group of friends and acquaintances that I know, if someone always showed up late and then spent their time with their nose buried in their phone rather than engaged in whatever activity was going on, they would find themselves quickly un-invited from future gatherings. If you (royal, not you in particular) want to play on your phone, and don't want to respect the time bounds everyone has set aside, you can always do that from your home rather than inconveniencing everyone else. Essentially these sorts of rules and punishments are making explicit what is usually implicit in 95% of social situations. BTW, it would absolutely be 100% in character and in line for the last person to show up to "watch the game" to be stuck with the crappy seat and have to deal with warm beer or have to do the next ice run or whatever, especially if they were late.

Broken Twin

2014-10-03, 11:32 AM

Well, first off, based on what you've said about him, your friend sounds like a self-righteous jerk. I'd take his opinions with a massive grain of salt to begin with. But snark aside...

My opinion on those house rules:

-Telling players what color / style of dice to use and how to roll them.

I could understand telling players WHERE to roll their dice (on the table, floor is reroll), but what color/style seems a little much.

-Dinging XP for showing up late or talking OOC

Not giving them XP they didn't earn because they weren't there? Sure, that's fair. Removing XP they've already earned? Bad form.

-Insisting all dialogue be IC and refusing to let players use mechanical terms

Use all the meta terms you want OOC. No mentioning stuff like hit points IC. Forcing people who aren't comfortable with RPing their character to stay solely IC is not cool.

-Refusing to let players look at the on other player's character sheets (or describe their own to other players except in in character terms)

This entirely depends on the game and mood the group is trying to set. In beer and pretzel games it's ridiculous, in intrigue heavy games it's practically necessary.

[/quote]-Refusing to let players take their character sheets home[/quote]

I hold on to the master copy of my player's sheets when I GM solely so I can take their abilities into consideration when planning the next session. Plus, my players asked me to hold onto them. Outright refusing to let a player hold onto their sheet is uncool.

-Refusing to let players add up the numbers on their own character sheets

I... what? I can understand wanting to go over their numbers (especially if the player in question is bad at math), but refusing to let them do it themselves is a level of narcissistic control I (thankfully) haven't seen before.

-Refusing to let the players look at the rule books (even their own) without permission

I know the above isn't as much of a problem for me at the moment (I GM Savage Worlds primarily, there's not much in the way of rules or books to look at), but having played plenty of 3.5, abilities can get complicated. If you want to rules lawyer I'm going to put my foot down, but if you need to confirm how your character works I'm not going to disallow you. Within a reasonable time frame, obviously.

-Telling players where to sit

Beyond keeping first dibs on where I want/need to sit, I've never had to do anything like this. If I had two players that couldn't be sat next to each other, then they're either going to work their stuff out or one/both of them are no longer invited. I have no desire to play with people who can't act like grownups.

-Not letting players check their phones

I have something similar to this rule. If I have to tell you multiple times to stop playing with your phone, it goes in the hat on top of the fridge for the rest of the session. If it rings, feel free to answer it, but I'm not putting up with you disrespecting me or the other players and killing the immersion.

-Arbitrarily banning basic character options without explanation

Banning character options to help achieve the theme or setting of the campaign? Sure, I've done it. Refusing to provide any reasons for what you've banned? Bad form.

-Arbitrarily changing the rules mid game without explanation

Making a rules call is a major part of what the GM is there for. Actively changing the rules during play, on the other hand, is a good indicator to stop playing with that GM. ESPECIALLY if they refuse to provide a reason, or are doing so in a vindictive manner.

-Making players take actions without clearly specifying them first each time, for example insisting a player say "I full attack with my long sword and five levels of power attack" every turn despite them doing that consistently for the entire battle and even making players announce passive abilities like Sneak Attack.

The whole point of passive abilities is that they don't need to be declared. You want to use an active ability, you'd best let me know before the dice roll. Stuff that the book doesn't say you need to declare? Yeah, you don't have to. Special exception goes to Power Attack, which in my common experience is "On, unless otherwise declared."

draken50

2014-10-03, 12:38 PM

Yeah, it sounds like you have a problem with cheaters. In that case I guess it is important to do something, but I would still feel like gouging my eyes out if the DM made me state "I am full attacking the closest orc with my long sword for two points of power attack" over and over and over and over again in every round of a several dozen round combat.

As for the rest of your post, it doesn't sound particularly unreasonable, but imagine if someone acted like that in any other social situation? Like "Hey you want to hang out with me and my buddies on Friday night to drink beer and watch the game? Just understand that you can't use your phone while you are here, and if you show up late you have to sit on the broken chair and drink warm beer as a punishment!"

Well for one thing, I don't require declarations for anything that doesn't change the modifiers of the action. I don't need the rogue to declare that he is sneak attacking, because making use of sneak attack does not alter the chance to hit. That's fine. I wouldn't require the "full attack" declared, because if the player isn't moving beyond a 5 foot step, it really doesn't effect anything. I would however require the power attack to be declared for how many points, as that can also change, every single round.

Now, as to the social situation comparison... that's not really equivalent. Few social situations match tabletop gaming, and their requirements. If I'm playing a board game with someone, I not-unreasonably in my mind, would expect them to pay some attention to the game, so their individual turn doesn't take 5 minutes while everyone else takes 45 seconds. Wiz-War for example is a pretty quick moving fun game, that I've seen people drag to the point of boredom, by never paying attention and then constantly having to ask for recaps of everyone's turn, because they wouldn't get off facebook on their phone. I don't have problems with that when watching sports, because someone else not paying attention to the game, doesn't effect me or anyone else.

Trying to draw a similar comparison is like saying, "What you can't applause until the conductor's hands go down at the symphony? I can yell and scream and clap all I want at a WWF show." Yeah, they're both performances.. but there are different standards of behavior.

If we have risk night set up, and you show up 2 hours late.. well, you're not playing, we already started. Halo? You're in next round, I'll grab a beer. See... there's a difference, because things are different... like how much time is involved and how the game is designed.

Talakeal

2014-10-03, 01:20 PM

Well for one thing, I don't require declarations for anything that doesn't change the modifiers of the action. I don't need the rogue to declare that he is sneak attacking, because making use of sneak attack does not alter the chance to hit. That's fine. I wouldn't require the "full attack" declared, because if the player isn't moving beyond a 5 foot step, it really doesn't effect anything. I would however require the power attack to be declared for how many points, as that can also change, every single round.

Now, as to the social situation comparison... that's not really equivalent. Few social situations match tabletop gaming, and their requirements. If I'm playing a board game with someone, I not-unreasonably in my mind, would expect them to pay some attention to the game, so their individual turn doesn't take 5 minutes while everyone else takes 45 seconds. Wiz-War for example is a pretty quick moving fun game, that I've seen people drag to the point of boredom, by never paying attention and then constantly having to ask for recaps of everyone's turn, because they wouldn't get off facebook on their phone. I don't have problems with that when watching sports, because someone else not paying attention to the game, doesn't effect me or anyone else.

Trying to draw a similar comparison is like saying, "What you can't applause until the conductor's hands go down at the symphony? I can yell and scream and clap all I want at a WWF show." Yeah, they're both performances.. but there are different standards of behavior.

If we have risk night set up, and you show up 2 hours late.. well, you're not playing, we already started. Halo? You're in next round, I'll grab a beer. See... there's a difference, because things are different... like how much time is involved and how the game is designed.

Sorry, your example about the guy rolling his attack roll and then claiming it was just a listen check when he missed implied to me that you make people declare every little thing lest they find some way to cheat.

draken50

2014-10-03, 03:09 PM

Sorry, your example about the guy rolling his attack roll and then claiming it was just a listen check when he missed implied to me that you make people declare every little thing lest they find some way to cheat.

No worries, I get that, but it's less every little thing, and more I should know what their rolling for before they actually roll the dice.
As a die roll may not be necessary. I've also had players roll and state "I got a 2." or "That didn't work" Leaving me as the GM going "On what? you just rolled the dice and said you got a 2, what were you trying to do?"

The other example I've seen that in were players trying to not have what they were doing mentioned to the party. The kind of thing where the party is engaging in diplomacy, and one player just suddenly rolls and says "I got a 19 to shoot the guy in the face." Of course, said players don't really last long in my games, as they tend to get really pissed when the rest of the party surrenders immediately, and the would-be assassin gets killed by the guards. I've noticed those players get really mad when their antics get them killed and leave the rest of the party in worsened but not horrendous circumstances.

Exediron

2014-10-03, 04:11 PM

For those with a love for statistics, here's the current approval rating for each item (based only on people who gave specific positive/negative feedback on at least one of the items):

Phone Ban: 65% approval
Precise Action Descriptions: 60% approval
Dice Control: 47% approval
DM Keeping Sheets: 46% approval
Seating Control: 40% approval
Arbitrary Concept Bans: 40% approval
No Sheet Looking: 38% approval
Dinging XP: 35% approval
Arbitrary Rule Changes: 17% approval
IC-Only Dialogue: 14% approval
No Looking at Books: 14% approval
No Adding Up: 0% approval

The standout of course is DM refusal to allow characters to add up their own numbers or even to correct mistakes the DM might have made, which a whopping 0% of posters who commented on the issue considered reasonable (although about 30% were neutral).

Aotrs Commander

2014-10-05, 01:08 PM

Standard modus operandi in our group is that the DM keeps the characters sheets and that if a player wants to, they make a second copy to take home (virtually no-one I've gamed with in the last twenty-five years does this, but there have been a couple.)

-Telling players what color / style of dice to use
-Insisting all dialogue by IC and refusing to let players use mechanical terms

-Refusing to let players add up the numbers on their own character sheets
-Refusing to let the players look at the rule books (even their own) without permission

Those seem unreasonable.

-Telling players how to roll [dice]
-Refusing to let players look at the on other player's character sheets (or describe their own to other players except in in character terms)
-Telling players where to sit
-Not letting players check their phones

Those are not unreasonable in some situations, especially if they have resulted in the actions causing problems in the past.

-Arbitrarily banning basic character options without explanation
-Arbitrarily changing the rules mid game without explanation

"Without explanation" is the main problem here (and "arbitarily" might be). Fixing broken or nonsensical bits of rules (even mid-session)and ensureing character options/concepts et al (and other things) are appropriate to thre game is part of the DM's general duties.

The Hanged Man

2014-10-06, 03:04 PM

As a GM I have three rules.

1.) If you eat the food, you help pay for the food.

2.) If you come to my game under the influence of illegal intoxicants (or legal intoxicants used illegally), I will call the police on you.

3.) If you steal books (including pirating PDFs), I will carve off your face with a cheese grater.

This list may expand, depending on the needs of the game, but I will always explain my reasons. And if the interests of enough of the players don't match the needs of the game, I'm willing to change the sort of game it is.

DireSickFish

2014-10-06, 03:30 PM

Rallicus

2014-10-06, 03:43 PM

As a GM I have three rules.

1.) If you eat the food, you help pay for the food.

2.) If you come to my game under the influence of illegal intoxicants (or legal intoxicants used illegally), I will call the police on you.

3.) If you steal books (including pirating PDFs), I will carve off your face with a cheese grater.

You probably would have really hated me, then, when I was at my lowest.

This is... I don't know... a little extreme. I'd like some backstory as to the reasons as well.

Threadnaught

2014-10-07, 06:42 AM

As a GM I have three rules.

I thought the reasons were self explanatory. Fine I'll give my own interpretation.

1: Food costs money, therefore if you eat it, you help pay for it. This rule enforces politeness.

2: This is illegal you know. Also turning up to a session baked out of your skull is likely to leave you unable to concentrate if the game is at all serious. A DM already has to look after the players who are actually playing, they don't need to babysit someone going through the effects of whatever concoction Dopey McSmack managed to cook up.

3: This is illegal you know. And these books are rather expensive for those of us who paid for our own legitimate copies. Also sometimes it's good to remind someone that stealing stuff, doesn't make them any better than someone who doesn't.
I know a few PC gamers who think PC gaming is better than any console, because they can get all console exclusives for free. We don't talk anymore, as I like my Nintendo developed consoles and games.

DM Nate

2014-10-07, 08:37 AM

3: This is illegal you know. And these books are rather expensive for those of us who paid for our own legitimate copies. Also sometimes it's good to remind someone that stealing stuff, doesn't make them any better than someone who doesn't.
I know a few PC gamers who think PC gaming is better than any console, because they can get all console exclusives for free. We don't talk anymore, as I like my Nintendo developed consoles and games.

I agree that it is illegal, but here in my new home in Taiwan, it's difficult, expensive, and space-consuming to have a physical copy of ALL sixty 3.5 books I use. If I see one I like or use and have the spare money that month, then sure...for example, I have both Psionics and the MoI here in Taiwan, simply because I like them and can use them. But I am unable to actually purchase a complete physical library at this time.

Jay R

2014-10-09, 10:13 PM

I agree that it is illegal, but here in my new home in Taiwan, it's difficult, expensive, and space-consuming to have a physical copy of ALL sixty 3.5 books I use..

That's not an argument for stealing them. It's an argument for not using them.

There are lots of things I wish I could afford but I can't.

But I am unable to actually purchase a complete physical library at this time.

Then you can't legally or honestly use them. I am unable to actually purchase a Mercedes at this time. Therefore I drive a Nissan Sentra.

Steel Mirror

2014-10-09, 10:52 PM

Then you can't legally or honestly use them. I am unable to actually purchase a Mercedes at this time. Therefore I drive a Nissan Sentra.You aren't including out-of-print books in this restriction, are you? Because even if you decide to shell out for second-hand books, you aren't supporting the people who make them any more than if you got the pdf online. I appreciate your anti-piracy stand, but I personally relax such restriction when there is literally no way to purchase a copy in a way that would benefit the content creator.

Talakeal

2014-10-09, 11:31 PM

Alaris

2014-10-10, 01:10 AM

-Telling players what color / style of dice to use and how to roll them.
-Dinging XP for showing up late or talking OOC
-Insisting all dialogue by IC and refusing to let players use mechanical terms
-Refusing to let players look at the on other player's character sheets (or describe their own to other players except in in character terms)
-Refusing to let players take their character sheets home
-Refusing to let players add up the numbers on their own character sheets
-Refusing to let the players look at the rule books (even their own) without permission
-Telling players where to sit
-Not letting players check their phones
-Arbitrarily banning basic character options without explanation
-Arbitrarily changing the rules mid game without explanation
-Making players take actions without clearly specifying them first each time, for example insisting a player say "I full attack with my long sword and five levels of power attack" every turn despite them doing that consistently for the entire battle and even making players announce passive abilities like Sneak Attack.

I'm a little late to the party, but I'll give my opinion on these so called "Rules".

1. Nope. So long as the player's dice aren't unbalanced, they're fair game as far as I'm concerned.
2. Eh... I can see docking XP for being late. And if people are talking OOC too much that it's interrupting game, I can see that to. It's good, as long as the DM uses it right.
3. If you're using Mechanical Terms during Roleplay... then no, you can't. Find a better, in-character way to say. Just my opinion.
4. Eh... players can share all the information from their sheets they want... but I also state that they don't have to share it. And if it is shared Out of Character, then you can't use that knowledge in-character.
5. So long as I, the DM, have a copy of your sheet, you're free to take it home. (I need one incase you don't make the next session, and I'd have to NPC your character).
6. Silly, but I'm betting I don't have the whole story.
7. Silly.
8. Silly, though if it's his house, his rules. You can always leave.
9. If it's distracting from the game too much, then I'm all for this rule. If you have a phone call, okay... but no playing games on your phone while we're playing D&D.
10. I tend to give explanations, otherwise it is kinda silly.
11. Silly.
12. See, this I would make them do. You must announce use of your abilities. And I need to know that you're Sneak-Attack-ing, as there are other factors you might not be aware of (such as the enemy being immune to it). I'm behind this one... it's a solid rule.

All-in-all... a lot of these rules were silly... but in the right context, they are just fine.

And to answer your primary question... yes, a lot of us are. But it isn't always in a bad way, and most of us try to be reasonable about it.

Talakeal

2014-10-10, 02:23 AM

I'm a little late to the party, but I'll give my opinion on these so called "Rules".

6. Silly, but I'm betting I don't have the whole story.

12. See, this I would make them do. You must announce use of your abilities. And I need to know that you're Sneak-Attack-ing, as there are other factors you might not be aware of (such as the enemy being immune to it). I'm behind this one... it's a solid rule.

As for 6, the DM made everyone's characters for them. When he gave me the sheet I went through to double check his math (a lot of the numbers were obviously very off) and he got mad and told me that I wasn't allowed to do that. He is the DM, and therefore the numbers on the sheet are right because the DM says so, even if they don't add up.

Ifs funny, #12 has the most support, but it is the only rule that really frustrates me. It slows the game to a crawl, makes it just flat out monotonous, and punishes people for stupid reasons. The rogue in my party in particular, he forgets to declare sneak attack ~75% of the time, and his damage is pitiful as a result.

Trinoya

2014-10-10, 08:56 AM

So here's my take on these rules:

-Telling players what color / style of dice to use and how to roll them.

I can understand this for clarity of rolls, but beyond that the rule is stupid.

-Dinging XP for showing up late or talking OOC

I've been forced to dock XP for countless different infractions, from metagaming, talking OOC to relay IC information, walking behind the DM screen, cheating, etc. I don't begrudge a DM using the one powerful tool he has (how your character progresses) as a tool to curb bad behavior.

I wouldn't personally use it for showing up late though, **** happens.

-Insisting all dialogue by IC and refusing to let players use mechanical terms

This one seems a bit odd. Now I had a problem that my players would litterally not talk to one another, instead talking to me as if I were all the PCs (which got old fast) so I had to force a bit of change there. However not all dialogue needs to be IC, or even most of it, in my game. You just need to make sure you're not metagaming and I'm cool.

-Refusing to let players look at the on other player's character sheets (or describe their own to other players except in in character terms)

At my table no player has a right to look at any character sheet other than their own. If they leave it out in the open it's fair game, if they choose to tell you stuff about their sheet, that's cool... but if a player just grabbed another players sheet and began to read over it I'd voice a major complaint as the Dm. As for trying to describe it, if they are doing so in character they must use terms applicable to that universe, rather than saying, "my str score is 22!"

-Refusing to let players take their character sheets home

I have had players promise me time and time again that they will take good care of their character sheets.

I've switched to being almost 100% electronic, you can not trust players with their own character sheets. Ever. Hell you can't even trust the DM. Back it up and make sure I have five copies in at least six separate emails. I have seen character sheets vanish mid game... without a trace, never to be found.

-Refusing to let players add up the numbers on their own character sheets

More info required.

-Refusing to let the players look at the rule books (even their own) without permission

Depending on the book this is okay. I've restricted books (and had books restricted in games I've played in) based on character skills, and classes.

-Telling players where to sit

As the DM I get to pick my chair. If a player becomes an obvious problem with their seating selection I also get to declare that it needs to change. Other than that I think this is silly.

-Not letting players check their phones

As long as you're not playing games on it I don't care what you do on your phone... just don't expect me to repeat anything for you.

-Arbitrarily banning basic character options without explanation

The DM doesn't have to provide an explanation. It helps if he does, and I often do, but he doesn't have to.

-Arbitrarily changing the rules mid game without explanation

More information needed.

-Making players take actions without clearly specifying them first each time, for example insisting a player say "I full attack with my long sword and five levels of power attack" every turn despite them doing that consistently for the entire battle and even making players announce passive abilities like Sneak Attack.

I've had lots of players bitch and moan at me over the years because I did such horrible things as record when they 'dropped their sword' or 'stored their armor.' The players got upset because I would flat out declare if they didn't say they picked it up then they didn't. If you forgot your character forgot.

As for abilities: You need to declare every ability you use. Period. I don't care if you have used magic missile 20 times that fight, or power attack 100, or sneak attack 1,000. If you don't declare that the ability is going of then it isn't going to go off. Your sneak attack isn't automatic, and your power attack sure as hell is not. A player could effortlessly alter his rolls by saying, "oh yeah, I got a 25 to hit" or knowing that the AC was a mere 20 he could then say, "oh yeah, I got a 20 to hit, and I had used 5 points of power attack!"

Most abilities, by the rules in fact, basically say you have to declare their use, so I really don't see the problem with this.

In conclusion: Most of this stuff is trivial, if odd, and I suspect there is more to it, but it'd be better to take your complaints about these rules and why you disagree with them directly to the DM to get them to change. A good DM, no matter how controlling, has to be willing to accept change to his rules... hell my players get to vote on changing rules.

Saves me a lot of trouble later on, and gives players significant input...

Amphetryon

2014-10-10, 09:13 AM

Jay R

2014-10-10, 09:35 AM

You aren't including out-of-print books in this restriction, are you? Because even if you decide to shell out for second-hand books, you aren't supporting the people who make them any more than if you got the pdf online. I appreciate your anti-piracy stand, but I personally relax such restriction when there is literally no way to purchase a copy in a way that would benefit the content creator.

Yes, of course I include out-of-print books. You're proposing the rule, "Don't steal if you can buy it from the original creator." I'm proposing the rule, "Don't steal."

... I will always take the legal alternative if there is one. If there isn't I have no compunctions against not giving my money to people who don't want it.

Fine, but sometimes the only legal alternative is not to use a book you do not own and cannot buy.

If there isn't I have no compunctions against not giving my money to people who don't want it.

Nobody's suggesting giving money to people who don't want it. I'm suggesting not taking what isn't yours.

DM Nate

2014-10-10, 09:41 AM

Yes, of course I include out-of-print books. You're proposing the rule, "Don't steal if you can buy it from the original creator." I'm proposing the rule, "Don't steal."

Fine, but sometimes the only legal alternative is not to use a book you do not own and cannot buy.

Nobody's suggesting giving money to people who don't want it. I'm suggesting not taking what isn't yours.

Call me Chaotic Neutral then. :smallyuk:

Jay R

2014-10-10, 09:43 AM

6. Silly, but I'm betting I don't have the whole story.

That's almost automatically true for all of them. We have Talakeal's reasoning in one direction, but not the DM's reasoning in the other. Sometimes we have Talakeal's understanding of the DM's reasoning, but that's not necessarily the same thing.

Out of curiosity, how much - if any - of the complaints against these rules do you think could reasonably be described by a DM as the player being a control freak? I can see an argument from behind the DM screen that at least some of these complaints are based on a player feeling like s/he needs more control. . . depending on the specific details and origins of the rules listed, such an argument may even apply to all of them.

Each one reads to me like a DM reaction to a specific player problem. They could all just be a DM being obnoxious, of course, but it seems more likely that there is a specific problem being addressed. That's why I wish we could know the DM's reasoning.

As for 6, the DM made everyone's characters for them. When he gave me the sheet I went through to double check his math (a lot of the numbers were obviously very off) and he got mad and told me that I wasn't allowed to do that. He is the DM, and therefore the numbers on the sheet are right because the DM says so, even if they don't add up. my party in particular, he forgets to declare sneak attack ~75% of the time, and his damage is pitiful as a result.

I see three explanations.
1. He has some house rules that the characters are supposed to slowly learn about, so he's trying (awkwardly) to prevent learning about them by meta-gaming.
2. There's an active curse that the party doesn't know about.
3. He's poor at math and very defensive.

Only number 3 is a bad thing, and if true, it would be extremely obvious in the rest of the game as well.

If it's important to you to add things up, go ahead, but do it mentally. But when you find the answer isn't the exact D&D rules, be silent about it. Remember that there could be something going on you don't know about. Keep an eye out for signs of a DM who is too mathematically poor to be a DM. But also keep your eyes out for signs of interesting house rules or intriguing outer influences affecting the party.

Ifs funny, #12 has the most support, but it is the only rule that really frustrates me. It slows the game to a crawl, makes it just flat out monotonous, and punishes people for stupid reasons. The rogue in my party in particular, he forgets to declare sneak attack ~75% of the time, and his damage is pitiful as a result.

1. This rule doesn't slow things down at all, since you could easily say, "I full attack with my long sword and five levels of power attack," or "Colonel Mustard with the short sword in the sneak attack" while picking up the dice. Forgetting the rule and trying to change what you did and arguing over it slows the game down, but accepting the rule in good faith and using it does not.

2. By the second round of the first combat, I would have my character's most common attack written down in big letters on a sheet or 3x5 card in front of me as a reminder, and I would ostentatiously read from it every single round. If that's the rule, take the obvious step to play well under that rule.

3. On the rogue's turn, I would remind him to sneak attack, every time. When the DM complained, I would say that I'm not reminding his character to attack the way he always attacks; I'm reminding the player about the DM's rule.

Knaight

2014-10-10, 10:23 AM

Yes, of course I include out-of-print books. You're proposing the rule, "Don't steal if you can buy it from the original creator." I'm proposing the rule, "Don't steal."

I'm not pro-piracy at all, but there's a distinction to be made between piracy and theft. The big thing is that theft deprives the original owner of what they have. It has two effects: The acquisition of the object by the thief, and the loss of the object by the victim of theft. Piracy only encompasses the first of these, and that's a very relevant point. The two can be equated if each instance of piracy is blithely treated as a lost sale, but that is abject nonsense. Plus, even that bit of equating only covers things like stealing from a store's inventory, and not something like stealing someone's bike and only form of transportation*.

*To use something that actually happened to me. I assure you, I'd rather have some writing pirated. At least that wouldn't impede my ability to move, cost me the ability to get to a class for a week, and generally be an inconvenient pain in the rear.

Jay R

2014-10-10, 01:11 PM

I'm not pro-piracy at all, but there's a distinction to be made between piracy and theft.

Yes, of course. And there's a distinction to be made between robbery and burglary, or between assault and battery, or between extortion and blackmail, or between manslaughter and murder.

But they are all illegal.

icefractal

2014-10-10, 01:14 PM

As a GM I have three rules.
...
2.) If you come to my game under the influence of illegal intoxicants (or legal intoxicants used illegally), I will call the police on you.Wow.

Maybe it's different in your location, but here in the USA that rule makes you sound kind of ... terrifying. Because with our current drug laws / prison system, such a declaration is pretty much saying "I want to ruin this person's life forever, for disrupting my game". It's like if you meant the cheese grater comment seriously.

I can agree on chipping in for food though!

Talakeal

2014-10-10, 01:38 PM

Yes, of course. And there's a distinction to be made between robbery and burglary, or between assault and battery, or between extortion and blackmail, or between manslaughter and murder.

But they are all illegal.

This is true, although it varies depending on where you live. I personally consider myself to be NG in D&D terms, and base my morality on whether or not it causes people pain rather than the current rules imposed on me by local politicians. But then again, you could probably tell that from the thread title. Funny, I thought we were about to veer off topic with the piracy discussion, but it really is relevant.

1. He has some house rules that the characters are supposed to slowly learn about, so he's trying (awkwardly) to prevent learning about them by meta-gaming.
2. There's an active curse that the party doesn't know about.
3. He's poor at math and very defensive.

1: Would not surprise me at all, as he has secret house rules all the time, which I do not agree with in any case.
2: Starting players with secret curses is in and of itself a pretty **** move.
3: If I were a betting man I would say that this is almost certainly the case. The DM in question hatesbeing wrong about anything, and will go out of his way to appear to be the authority on whatever the current topic of discussion whether or not he knows what he is talking about, even going so far as to correct other people's accurate statements with his own nonsense.

1. This rule doesn't slow things down at all, since you could easily say, "I full attack with my long sword and five levels of power attack," or "Colonel Mustard with the short sword in the sneak attack" while picking up the dice. Forgetting the rule and trying to change what you did and arguing over it slows the game down, but accepting the rule in good faith and using it does not.

2. By the second round of the first combat, I would have my character's most common attack written down in big letters on a sheet or 3x5 card in front of me as a reminder, and I would ostentatiously read from it every single round. If that's the rule, take the obvious step to play well under that rule.

3. On the rogue's turn, I would remind him to sneak attack, every time. When the DM complained, I would say that I'm not reminding his character to attack the way he always attacks; I'm reminding the player about the DM's rule.

1: No, it doesn't. I can pick up and roll dice much faster than I can say a sentence, and I can also pick up my dice during the previous players turn without disrupting anyone, talking not so much. Also, it does slow down the combats because the DM needs to make people reroll or recalculate their damage every round as a result, and the fights take a lot longer because we aren't doing anywhere near the damage we should when the rogue cant sneak attack and the monk cant use flurry of blows.

2: Yeah, but that's a big pain in the butt for no gain. Although, like I said, that seems to be the whole point of this rule (along with passively accusing your players of being cheaters).

3: Yeah, except one of the DM's other rules is no OOC dialogue at the table. Also, we aren't allowed to look at one another's sheets or describe ourselves using mechanical terms, so I don't actually know what abilities the other players are forgetting to use.

Basically, this rule is not too bad in isolation. But it is pretty hypocritical when combined with a lot of his other rules which are for making the game go faster, and it is screwing up the other players to a degree where the DM has told me that he doesn't want me taking weapon specialization isbecause I don't have to declare it every turn and therefore it gives me a too big a bonus to damage compared to the rest of the party, as since I don't have to declare its effects they will always be active.

Out of curiosity, how much - if any - of the complaints against these rules do you think could reasonably be described by a DM as the player being a control freak? I can see an argument from behind the DM screen that at least some of these complaints are based on a player feeling like s/he needs more control. . . depending on the specific details and origins of the rules listed, such an argument may even apply to all of them.

IMO wanting control over your own actions is not unreasonable, you only cross the line into "control freak" territory when you are making other people adhere to your demands. For example, my DM forbid me from filling out the encumbrance section on my character sheet last session. I am OCD and the blank space was driving me nuts, so I waited until he left the room and did it anyway. That is crazy for sure, but I would never dream of insisting that the other players do the same, which would push my personal neurosis into the level of control freak imo.

icefractal

2014-10-10, 02:35 PM

Basically, this rule is not too bad in isolation. But it is pretty hypocritical when combined with a lot of his other rules which are for making the game go faster, and it is screwing up the other players to a degree where the DM has told me that he doesn't want me taking weapon specialization isbecause I don't have to declare it every turn and therefore it gives me a too big a bonus to damage compared to the rest of the party, as since I don't have to declare its effects they will always be active.Wat. So we're not just dealing with a paranoia about cheating here, we're dealing with someone who thinks that people forgetting to declare their abilities is a feature, possibly out of some misplaced idea that annoyance = challenge = good.

Record a clip of yourself declaring all your stuff, play it at the start of every turn. Maybe this will demonstrate how ridiculous it is. Or maybe the DM will ban audio playback devices for being OP. :smallwink:

Knaight

2014-10-10, 04:14 PM

Yes, of course. And there's a distinction to be made between robbery and burglary, or between assault and battery, or between extortion and blackmail, or between manslaughter and murder.

But they are all illegal.

Sure, which doesn't make calling one of them another any more accurate, particularly when there is an obvious increase in severity between the two.

Steel Mirror

2014-10-10, 04:29 PM

Yes, of course I include out-of-print books. You're proposing the rule, "Don't steal if you can buy it from the original creator." I'm proposing the rule, "Don't steal."
Alternatively, I'm proposing the rule "if it hurts no one, I don't have a problem with it."

BeerMug Paladin

2014-10-10, 05:07 PM

Wat. So we're not just dealing with a paranoia about cheating here, we're dealing with someone who thinks that people forgetting to declare their abilities is a feature, possibly out of some misplaced idea that annoyance = challenge = good.
I once played in a game where the DM insisted it was the players' duty to declare spot checks. I tried to counter this argument by saying that since they were free, I could simply declare a spot check every round, or once every 5 foot step I took and it would slow down the game to a ridiculous degree.

It didn't work to convince him. Not that it mattered really, the DM actually mostly ignored everyone who tried taking actions anyway, so I couldn't have made my point by slowing the game down even if I wanted to prove my point.

I think a lot of these types of things are meant to challenge the players and add extra difficulty, and automatic skills just make things too easy.

The Glyphstone

2014-10-10, 05:10 PM

Great Modthulhu: The tangent discussion about pirating is off-topic and Inappropriate. End it immediately, please.

DM Nate

2014-10-10, 05:51 PM

I once played in a game where the DM insisted it was the players' duty to declare spot checks. I tried to counter this argument by saying that since they were free, I could simply declare a spot check every round, or once every 5 foot step I took and it would slow down the game to a ridiculous degree.

It didn't work to convince him. Not that it mattered really, the DM actually mostly ignored everyone who tried taking actions anyway, so I couldn't have made my point by slowing the game down even if I wanted to prove my point.

I think a lot of these types of things are meant to challenge the players and add extra difficulty, and automatic skills just make things too easy.

In my games, Spot/Listen checks (as well as Knowledge checks) are move actions, when in initiative. However, they can give you information in combat like what an enemy's weakness might be, or help you figure out what square an invisible creature is hiding in.

huttj509

2014-10-10, 09:04 PM

In my games, Spot/Listen checks (as well as Knowledge checks) are move actions, when in initiative. However, they can give you information in combat like what an enemy's weakness might be, or help you figure out what square an invisible creature is hiding in.

It depends. They really have 2 different uses.

a) I'm looking to see if I can spot a weak point, or hear their orders being passed. This would be active spot/listen, and would generally need to be declared (or at least the intent, "do I see anything unusual" would get a response of "roll me a spot check" for example). Making that a move action would not at all be out of line.

b) Rolling to see if you spot the ambush, or hear something sneaking up on you. This would be a passive spot/listen, and should NOT need to be declared. "You never said you were looking in the corner" would be a general failure of communication while GMing.

Coidzor

2014-10-10, 09:45 PM

DM Nate

2014-10-10, 09:48 PM

b) Rolling to see if you spot the ambush, or hear something sneaking up on you. This would be a passive spot/listen, and should NOT need to be declared. "You never said you were looking in the corner" would be a general failure of communication while GMing.

I usually prompt my players do to a spot/listen check every time the scenery changes significantly, or if there's an ambush coming. However, that roll counts permanently for that location, and they won't notice anything more even if they roll again. (Checks about a particular enemy are different rolls, however.)

BeerMug Paladin

2014-10-10, 11:15 PM

It depends. They really have 2 different uses.

a) I'm looking to see if I can spot a weak point, or hear their orders being passed. This would be active spot/listen, and would generally need to be declared (or at least the intent, "do I see anything unusual" would get a response of "roll me a spot check" for example). Making that a move action would not at all be out of line.

b) Rolling to see if you spot the ambush, or hear something sneaking up on you. This would be a passive spot/listen, and should NOT need to be declared. "You never said you were looking in the corner" would be a general failure of communication while GMing.
Basically, b was supposed to be treated as a. So if you suspect you might be ambushed, you were supposed to declare you were making a spot check to see it.

I don't think this was entirely his fault, I think this understanding came from another DM who said you had to declare disbelief in an illusion in order to get a save. Mere interaction couldn't ever allow a save. The case for spot/listen working as an intended action makes a lot more sense that way.

Coidzor

2014-10-11, 12:01 AM

So, I have been trying to find a new game group and have tried several and this has been the first time I have been a PC for a number of years, and I am shocked to find out how many inane rules my fellow DM's have. It almost feels like I am back in elementary school. This isn't a single person I am talking about, no one person has done all of them, but here is a list of some examples I am talking about:

I find that most of these problems tend to come up when people who shouldn't be playing any games end up being the only people in a social circle offering to run or when people game outside their social circle and don't bond with their gaming groups at all.

-Telling players what color / style of dice to use and how to roll them.

Crazy, anal-retentive, and smacks of taking a general good advice(try not roll dice that look too similar to a fellow player's, especially if not using a dice tower or anything to keep errant rolls from ending up in other's areas in order to cut down on confusion/dice going home with the wrong people.

-Dinging XP for showing up late or talking OOC

Yep, pretty insane and not that far from the whole hall pass thing. I can't fathom why someone would prefer people get up and wander off rather than explain why they have to leave the table or asking if anyone wants a refill while they're up.

As for showing up late, that's trying to deal with an out of character problem, or, y'know, a fluke of traffic/personal emergency, in game. So obviously this is not the sort of person that anyone should be playing with.

Persistent inability to show or willfully disregarding the agreed to schedule are things to be dealt with, sure, but not like that.

-Insisting all dialogue by IC and refusing to let players use mechanical terms

That just makes the game impossible to play. You can't make checks, you can't attack, you can't cast spells... Though I hope it's not taken to the extreme where saying "hey, I need to hit the head, be right back," means that one's character ends up saying that in game. Given the rabid trollsanity of the list, I'm going to go ahead and assume that you've seen just that and ask why you didn't run away screaming upon encountering that.

...Or start looking around for a convenient window. Either one.

-Refusing to let players look at the on other player's character sheets (or describe their own to other players except in in character terms)

Sounds like someone overly-infatuated with World of Darkness who tried taking that ethos to a game system where it was inappropriate. How close to right am I on that one?

-Refusing to let players take their character sheets home

That's just unenforceable, really. I'm familiar with the DM having the official copy of the character sheet for purposes of running the game or shared access to the online version, sure, but that kind of hand-holding is patronizing if it's not actually necessary for whatever reason. I know we've had a couple of games where due to rotating DMs and players it turned out to just be simpler to keep all of the materials for that game, DM notes, maps, character sheets, all together in one place, sure, but that was a mutually agreed thing.

-Refusing to let players add up the numbers on their own character sheets

I can't even imagine what kind of person would be like that. Most math nerds hate actually doing basic arithmetic. :smallconfused: I think that might be the craziest thing. Certainly in the running for top thing to most bog down the game, especially if buffs get involved. Hoo. Having to stop the game just so the DM can go around and mark on the character sheets what the buffs are action-by-action would drive me insane to the point where I'd have to wonder at anyone who'd put up with that rather than chucking the person out on their ear or ceasing to play and beginning to just cackle madly at the perfect insanity unfolding around them.

-Refusing to let the players look at the rule books (even their own) without permission

Paranoia, paranoia, everybody's coming to get me.

-Telling players where to sit

What, like, beyond "this area is my corner of the table as the DM and my nice extra squishy DMing chair?"

-Not letting players check their phones

What, did someone get an emergency phone call because a family member ended up in the hospital and then the DM got pissed off and attacked them or violently ejected them from the building/game?

Actually, that reminds me of when Lanky stabbed for some reason.

Or did you mean just no being a phone zombie at the table? Because that's fairly common in my experience and part of basic game etiquette. But, I mean, if there's an important call that one has to take, well, you gotta take it. Excuse yourself if possible, sure, but, well, life takes priority over leisure activities. Especially when the matter is life and death :smallconfused:

-Arbitrarily banning basic character options without explanation
-Arbitrarily changing the rules mid game without explanation

Yep. Never play with people who won't explain themselves and get offended when asked to do so.

Real convenient way they mark themselves as unfit for DMing, playing with, and possibly associating with at all in meatspace.

-Making players take actions without clearly specifying them first each time, for example insisting a player say "I full attack with my long sword and five levels of power attack" every turn despite them doing that consistently for the entire battle and even making players announce passive abilities like Sneak Attack.

I... one declares the sneak attack dice separately from the other damage anyway. So one would already be doing that without having to declare it separately anyway. :smallconfused:

And saying "I repeat my full attack routine" would convey all of that information much more concisely unless the turns were taking so long that it would legitimately need to be restated how much one were full-attacking.

Those people in particular need to be introduced to the concept of a primary weapon though.

So is he right? If not what is up with these GMs? Is this normal, or am I merely getting a bad run of GMs like I have gotten a bad run of players in the past. Let me know what you think?

Not the only people, no. But it's been a somewhat known thread that power-hungry people have been attracted to GMing since before I entered the hobby in the early 2000s. Probably the awareness goes back to the 1980s or so when people started realizing that the oldschool style was problematical and started to change things up.

Talakeal

2014-10-11, 12:33 AM

@Coidzor: in response to your query, the ic dialogue thing is only when talking to other players about game stuff. So no saying, for example, I am down to five hp could you please cast cure light wounds on me?"

The phone thing is about checking texts or voicemails you receive during a game, not about playing games or surfing the web or having conversations at the table.

NichG

2014-10-11, 12:55 AM

I'm partial to either pre-rolled passive spot and listen checks or the idea of passive checks as a constant, such as average roll + the character's modifier, aye. So if they ask for a roll on something they can roll but if they don't and it's something where it should come up, then we just go to the already determined value for that instance and check that to determine pass/fail/result.

This is a little tricky, because effectively you're giving them an average of a ~+2.75 bonus to their checks. E.g. if the average result (lets round down to 10) is enough to pass then you automatically tell them the outcome. If it isn't enough to pass, they ask to roll. 50% of the time they roll below or equal to the average and there's no change, but the other 50% of the time they roll 11-20 which averages 15.5, or an improvement to the average of 5.5.

I think it makes more sense to classify things (particular skill uses, etc) as either proactive abilities or reactive abilities, and only ever roll on the proactive side. So 'sneaking' is proactive and 'spotting' is reactive - you roll sneaking against the average result for spotting. Furthermore, you can make it really clear - you never need to ask to receive the benefits of a reactive use of a skill, but you always need to take some kind of explicit action to receive the benefits of a proactive use of a skill. The fact that there's no variation in outcomes on the free uses of skills prevents things like the infinite-free-sleight-of-hand-checks gimmickry.

But, I mean, if there's an important call that one has to take, well, you gotta take it. Excuse yourself if possible, sure, but, well, life takes priority over leisure activities. Especially when the matter is life and death :smallconfused:

I don't really think this follows. For most people, doing other activities that have the potential to disrupt their phone access isn't a big deal - driving out in areas with bad coverage, going hiking in the mountains, even playing a sport where due to the noise and chaos you won't notice a phone call. There's some threshold where its fine to tell someone 'hey, if you want to participate in this activity, here's the condition; you've gotta evaluate the risks for yourself and make a decision'. That risk might be the 10^-7 chance that someone happens to kidnap your kid and call you with a ransom request during game, but you missed it because of a no-phones rule, but its the same 10^-7 risk that that happens when you're in a subway station with bad reception or are out on a boat or are taking a flight somewhere. If someone said 'no, that risk is too much for me', then it'd be fine for them to decide not to participate in the activity, but I think for most people it shouldn't be an issue and so it's a reasonable thing to request.

Unless we're talking about a doctor on-call, in which case life-or-death calls are a lot more frequent. But I also think its reasonable to ask a player who can't commit to the game due to other uncontrollable factors in their life to leave their spot for someone else who can actually make a commitment to it.

I don't personally have a problem with cellphones at the table, but I have a big problem with people who e.g. bring their kids to game in lieu of hiring a babysitter or something like that, or who miss every other session due to dealing with various kinds of important personal problems. Yes, they have other responsibilities which are more important than their responsibility to the game, but since the behavior is disruptive I think its reasonable to ask them to just not play if they can't find a way to deal with that responsibility in a non-disruptive manner. After all, their various problems should not automatically be the responsibility of everyone at the table just because they would like to play.

Coidzor

2014-10-11, 01:07 AM

Out of curiosity, how much - if any - of the complaints against these rules do you think could reasonably be described by a DM as the player being a control freak? I can see an argument from behind the DM screen that at least some of these complaints are based on a player feeling like s/he needs more control. . . depending on the specific details and origins of the rules listed, such an argument may even apply to all of them.

Yeah, "I want to be able to be contacted if something happens with my elderly mother who has been having health problems lately or my child because I am a parent with a child or I need to be contactable in some form in case of a work-related emergency even though thankfully those don't actually regularly occur or anything," is such a control freak ethos. :smalltongue:

This is a little tricky, because effectively you're giving them an average of a ~+2.75 bonus to their checks.

Frankly, the convenience is worth giving people a 10 instead of a 10.5 average roll.

E.g. if the average result (lets round down to 10) is enough to pass then you automatically tell them the outcome. If it isn't enough to pass, they ask to roll. 50% of the time they roll below or equal to the average and there's no change, but the other 50% of the time they roll 11-20 which averages 15.5, or an improvement to the average of 5.5.

I don't know where you're getting that idea from, that they'd be able to ask to roll after they had already failed a roll which they weren't aware they were making due to it being a passive check.

I think it makes more sense to classify things (particular skill uses, etc) as either proactive abilities or reactive abilities, and only ever roll on the proactive side. So 'sneaking' is proactive and 'spotting' is reactive - you roll sneaking against the average result for spotting. Furthermore, you can make it really clear - you never need to ask to receive the benefits of a reactive use of a skill, but you always need to take some kind of explicit action to receive the benefits of a proactive use of a skill. The fact that there's no variation in outcomes on the free uses of skills prevents things like the infinite-free-sleight-of-hand-checks gimmickry.

Um. Yes. :smallconfused: I'm sure what you think my position is if you got the impression that I'm against having a rolled stealth check versus a passive perception check.

I don't really think this follows. For most people, doing other activities that have the potential to disrupt their phone access isn't a big deal - driving out in areas with bad coverage, going hiking in the mountains, even playing a sport where due to the noise and chaos you won't notice a phone call.

My DM is a control freak and it'd hurt their feelings if I had to take a call because someone had a heart attack rather pales in comparison to the actual logistical hurdles of dealing with poor reception, especially considering that people take much different precautions for when they're going on a dangerous trip into the wilderness for days at a time than they do for spending 4-6 hours at someone's house within civilization.

The comparison is, frankly, ludicrous.

There's some threshold where its fine to tell someone 'hey, if you want to participate in this activity, here's the condition; you've gotta evaluate the risks for yourself and make a decision'.

And there's a threshold of what it is proper and appropriate to ask. Someone's house being held sacrosanct against all manner of telecommunications is an unreasonable request in and of itself because there is no actual reason for it other than red herrings. Rendering a cellphone inoperable is not the same thing as taking steps to preclude people from playing video games on their cell phone. It's grossly over-reacting and shows an unhealthy mindset of control over other people's rights. That bit where my rights end where yours begin comes into play here.

That risk might be the 10^-7 chance that someone happens to kidnap your kid and call you with a ransom request during game, but you missed it because of a no-phones rule, but its the same 10^-7 risk that that happens when you're in a subway station with bad reception or are out on a boat or are taking a flight somewhere.

That you're setting yourself and other DMs as being on the same order as a force of nature and federal law speaks volumes of how inappropriate such a request is.

I don't personally have a problem with cellphones at the table, but I have a big problem with people who e.g. bring their kids to game in lieu of hiring a babysitter or something like that, or who miss every other session due to dealing with various kinds of important personal problems. Yes, they have other responsibilities which are more important than their responsibility to the game, but since the behavior is disruptive I think its reasonable to ask them to just not play if they can't find a way to deal with that responsibility in a non-disruptive manner. After all, their various problems should not automatically be the responsibility of everyone at the table just because they would like to play.

You'd have fooled me with how personally you seem to have taken the mere suggestion that there are reasons that people would like to be able to be contacted in case of personal emergencies over a block of time ranging from 4 to 6 hours in the heart of civilization.

And you're kind of missing the point if you're talking about a hypothetical example where someone is constantly taking emergency calls every session, of course that's an issue, but that's an issue separate from people being able to take emergency calls in the first place.

Exediron

2014-10-11, 01:26 AM

I don't really think this follows. For most people, doing other activities that have the potential to disrupt their phone access isn't a big deal - driving out in areas with bad coverage, going hiking in the mountains, even playing a sport where due to the noise and chaos you won't notice a phone call...

I've been thinking about saying something on this subject for a while now, so I'll chime in with my agreement.

I think this is a largely spurious argument, and I think it's being used as a form of unassailable straw man to hide behind - people can't say it's okay to put the game ahead of your family's well-being, so if they get tricked into attacking the straw man instead of the real argument they're forced to concede. Except for most people - with the obvious exception of doctors, people with sick family members, etc. - it's not really an issue.

That said, I do personally feel the best solution is to enforce an incoming-only policy. Players can check and even (if important) respond to messages or calls, but not originate any during the game. It's hard to imagine a scenario in which both a) the person should be playing, and b) they have a life-threatening need to make a call or send a text. I don't think most of us who are in favor of the phone ban are really authoritarian control-freaks, we're just people who have had bad experiences with players who cannot pry themselves away from their phone and will, like puppets on strings and with complete disrespect for their fellow players, unclip it and check it every time it dings for an inane social media update or cute cat picture.

DM Nate

2014-10-11, 01:27 AM

[COLOR="#0000FF"]I don't know where you're getting that idea from, that they'd be able to ask to roll after they had already failed a roll which they weren't aware they were making due to it being a passive check.

I personally never secretly roll for my players...just too easy to fall into drama and bad feelings.

Exediron

2014-10-11, 01:34 AM

I personally never secretly roll for my players...just too easy to fall into drama and bad feelings.

He's not suggesting rolling for them, either. The way the passive perception system works is that you have a table in front of you with their applicable bonus already having 10 added to it that would read, for example:

Lugdor: 11
Aelyriel: 19
Gront: 9
Zorlok: 21

So when they enter the room with the DC 20 hidden door, the DM knows that Zorlok notices it and no-one else does. It removes chance completely from the equation, for the benefit of preventing OOC knowledge that stems from perception rolls.

DM Nate

2014-10-11, 01:36 AM

He's not suggesting rolling for them, either. The way the passive perception system works is that you have a table in front of you with their applicable bonus already having 10 added to it that would read, for example:

Lugdor: 11
Aelyriel: 19
Gront: 9
Zorlok: 21

So when they enter the room with the DC 20 hidden door, the DM knows that Zorlok notices it and no-one else does. It removes chance completely from the equation, for the benefit of preventing OOC knowledge that stems from perception rolls.

At the same time, the party always knows that Zorlok will spot the THING, so they don't feel like they're contributing on that front.

With my parties, unless they roll abysmally low, the THING is always found, but it's by whomever has the highest check at the time. Which could, conceivably, be any of them.

Exediron

2014-10-11, 01:45 AM

At the same time, the party always knows that Zorlok will spot the THING, so they don't feel like they're contributing on that front.

That is true. However...

With my parties, unless they roll abysmally low, the THING is always found, but it's by whomever has the highest check at the time. Which could, conceivably, be any of them.

I think that's a statistically outlying occurrence. In my experience, there are usually one or two characters with dramatically higher perception skills who will nearly always be the ones rolling best anyway.

DM Nate

2014-10-11, 01:57 AM

I think that's a statistically outlying occurrence. In my experience, there are usually one or two characters with dramatically higher perception skills who will nearly always be the ones rolling best anyway.

More often than not, yes. But they still enjoy the sense of chance and luck.

Coidzor

2014-10-11, 02:07 AM

I've been thinking about saying something on this subject for a while now, so I'll chime in with my agreement.

I think this is a largely spurious argument, and I think it's being used as a form of unassailable straw man to hide behind - people can't say it's okay to put the game ahead of your family's well-being, so if they get tricked into attacking the straw man instead of the real argument they're forced to concede. Except for most people - with the obvious exception of doctors, people with sick family members, etc. - it's not really an issue.

I don't often get to say this, being white and male, but check your privilege.

I've had family emergencies crop up while I was in the middle of gaming and I have had friends who have either had to leave the game to attend to an elderly family member having one of those crises that demand a response but don't demand the expense or burden to the EMT system to call an ambulance. When I was younger I occasionally had episodes where taking 2 minutes to respond to my absent-minded mother that I was not being murdered or raped or mugged saved me a hell of a lot of trouble. I have played with parents who needed to be able to be contacted by the people who were babysitting for them.

The game experience would not have been improved by finding out about those after the session ended several hours later, I tell you what.

That said, I do personally feel the best solution is to enforce an incoming-only policy. Players can check and even (if important) respond to messages or calls, but not originate any during the game. It's hard to imagine a scenario in which both a) the person should be playing, and b) they have a life-threatening need to make a call or send a text. I don't think most of us who are in favor of the phone ban are really authoritarian control-freaks, we're just people who have had bad experiences with players who cannot pry themselves away from their phone and will, like puppets on strings and with complete disrespect for their fellow players, unclip it and check it every time it dings for an inane social media update or cute cat picture.

Well, obviously people shouldn't be making outgoing calls without a very good reason like they're the one ordering the freaking pizza. That's a no-brainer. :smallconfused:

Exediron

2014-10-11, 02:08 AM

More often than not, yes. But they still enjoy the sense of chance and luck.

Well, then I suppose that's just an example of 'know your group' and I'll leave it there. I realize that there are some players who feel a need to personally contribute at all levels, but my own group is content to only personally contribute on some levels and that's the way we like it. For such groups, averaged perception checks can work just fine.

Disclaimer: Personally, I don't use them. But I do think there are good arguments to do so. I usually just say (for example) 'anyone who can make a 25, roll spot'. Since I call spot (or listen) checks for non-combative things all the time - the waitress is eying up Zorlok lustily, or the idol has scratches on its eyes as though some fool tried prying them out but was unable to finish - the players don't have any reason to freak out if they all fail, and they don't know what to look for if the result is 'nobody notices anything'. Sure, they know there was something possible to know - but there's always something possible to know that you didn't, and you can't go crazy over it every time.

DM Nate

2014-10-11, 02:13 AM

Sure, they know there was something possible to know - but there's always something possible to know that you didn't, and you can't go crazy over it every time.

If they fail, I usually give them a red herring, like, "You notice a large, unkempt rat nosing around the garbage at the far side of the alley. His eyes glint hungrily." Then, as they move closer to inspect the rat, that's when the Drow ambush happens.

Sartharina

2014-10-11, 02:13 AM

Coidzor

2014-10-11, 02:16 AM

Most responses to the No Cell phone thing:
What you say - "Stop playing Angry Birds or browsing YouTube or Texting your other friends."
What they hear - "You are now cut off from your family FOREVER!"

Because saying no angry birds or no futzing around playing with the phone while we're supposed to be playing is quite different from saying "no cellphones out ever." Or demanding that they be dismantled(which, given jedipotter, would include voiding the warranty on one's iPhone and a soddering iron, IIRC) and placed into the DM's possession.

So, yeah.

Sartharina

2014-10-11, 02:18 AM

Because saying no angry birds or no futzing around playing with the phone while we're supposed to be playing is quite different from saying "no cellphones out ever." Or demanding that they be dismantled(which, given jedipotter, would include voiding the warranty on one's iPhone and a soddering iron, IIRC) and placed into the DM's possession.

So, yeah.

I take it you've never gamed with anyone with terrible phone control, then?

Exediron

2014-10-11, 02:18 AM

Well, obviously people shouldn't be making outgoing calls without a very good reason like they're the one ordering the freaking pizza. That's a no-brainer. :smallconfused:

You know that's not what I meant. But since you decided to use it as an example, if they just decide to order a pizza out of the blue without it being a group thing then yeah, they really shouldn't have.

I've had family emergencies crop up while I was in the middle of gaming and I have had friends who have either had to leave the game to attend to an elderly family member having one of those crises that demand a response but don't demand the expense or burden to the EMT system to call an ambulance. When I was younger I occasionally had episodes where taking 2 minutes to respond to my absent-minded mother that I was not being murdered or raped or mugged saved me a hell of a lot of trouble. I have played with parents who needed to be able to be contacted by the people who were babysitting for them.

And almost all of those instances were things they would have known might come up ahead of time and been able to explain in advance. If someone reaches for their phone I'm not going to assume they might be in one of those situations because it's not the norm. If they've told me in advance, and ignore the message if it isn't one of those kind, I'll be fine with it.

Seriously, a glance at the phone to see if it's critical isn't a problem. But that's not what people do for the most part. When my mother was in and out of the hospital and I was often her transport a few years ago I could quite easily have checked my phone to see if it was her. That doesn't give a blanket excuse to answer/respond to whatever it is just because I had one good reason to check it.

NichG

2014-10-11, 03:06 AM

I don't know where you're getting that idea from, that they'd be able to ask to roll after they had already failed a roll which they weren't aware they were making due to it being a passive check.

Um. Yes. :smallconfused: I'm sure what you think my position is if you got the impression that I'm against having a rolled stealth check versus a passive perception check.

Based on your post, I was assuming a player could do something like this:

Player: I enter the room.
DM: (Describes the room). (Secretly checks the player's Spot modifier against a hidden enemy; player would require 5 more Spot than he has in order to beat the Hide check of the enemy).
Player: (Waits 30 seconds). Okay, I look around the room for a hidden enemy.
DM: Okay, roll Spot.

I'm saying that the last line should be: DM - That's a passive use of Spot, so you automatically take 10 on the check.

My DM is a control freak and it'd hurt their feelings if I had to take a call because someone had a heart attack rather pales in comparison to the actual logistical hurdles of dealing with poor reception, especially considering that people take much different precautions for when they're going on a dangerous trip into the wilderness for days at a time than they do for spending 4-6 hours at someone's house within civilization.

The comparison is, frankly, ludicrous.

And there's a threshold of what it is proper and appropriate to ask. Someone's house being held sacrosanct against all manner of telecommunications is an unreasonable request in and of itself because there is no actual reason for it other than red herrings. Rendering a cellphone inoperable is not the same thing as taking steps to preclude people from playing video games on their cell phone. It's grossly over-reacting and shows an unhealthy mindset of control over other people's rights. That bit where my rights end where yours begin comes into play here.

That you're setting yourself and other DMs as being on the same order as a force of nature and federal law speaks volumes of how inappropriate such a request is.

The comparison with civil rights and federal law is 'frankly, ludicrous', because this is not a situation where the DM is imposing themselves proactively on your life and saying 'you must play in my game, and you must surrender your cellphone'. The DM is not bound by law to run for you, and you are not bound by law to play in their game. The DM presents a condition on them running the game for you - whether you think that's reasonable or not, it may be reasonable to them. If you aren't willing to meet that condition, then you can choose to not put yourself in a situation in which you are taking a risk you aren't comfortable with by simply not playing in that game.

You'd have fooled me with how personally you seem to have taken the mere suggestion that there are reasons that people would like to be able to be contacted in case of personal emergencies over a block of time ranging from 4 to 6 hours in the heart of civilization.

Mostly what I take personally is this tendency for people to over-exaggerate the importance of things in order to elicit sympathy or get their way. 'If you don't let me have my cellphone, its the equivalent of making my mother die of a heart attack, you monster!' Its a kind of irrationality that particularly irritates me because when its used in the context of social manipulation it actually works (e.g. its not irrational as a strategy, even if its irrational logically). It keeps getting rewarded, so I prefer to take a stronger stance on the opposing side when I see it.

I also do take the kid-at-the-table thing personally, because I was a player at a table where one of the other players had a spouse who really would have preferred if he spent the weekend taking care of the kid rather than gaming. So she often brought the kid over and derailed game for about an hour each week (it didn't help that the DM was very easily distracted by the kid). Of course as a player I couldn't really say 'don't do that' too strongly, but I'll certainly refuse to let people do that as DM.

icefractal

2014-10-11, 04:03 AM

The comparison with civil rights and federal law is 'frankly, ludicrous', because this is not a situation where the DM is imposing themselves proactively on your life and saying 'you must play in my game, and you must surrender your cellphone'. The DM is not bound by law to run for you, and you are not bound by law to play in their game. The DM presents a condition on them running the game for you - whether you think that's reasonable or not, it may be reasonable to them. If you aren't willing to meet that condition, then you can choose to not put yourself in a situation in which you are taking a risk you aren't comfortable with by simply not playing in that game.Um, yeah? That's what we're talking about. Nobody's saying they'd punch the DM in question or picket outside his house, they're saying that they would choose not to play with someone who insisted on such a rule. They're totally free to have that rule, but it doesn't make them immune to criticism.

Anyway, my feeling is that other peoples' inability to control themselves around a phone is not my problem. That kind of "well, we had to make this annoying rule because one person was stupid" is something I loathe in general, and I'm certainly not going to participate in it when I don't have to. If the problem is "people play Angry Birds on their phone", then tell them not to do that. None of this grade-school collective punishment BS.

NichG

2014-10-11, 06:03 AM

Um, yeah? That's what we're talking about. Nobody's saying they'd punch the DM in question or picket outside his house, they're saying that they would choose not to play with someone who insisted on such a rule. They're totally free to have that rule, but it doesn't make them immune to criticism.

Anyway, my feeling is that other peoples' inability to control themselves around a phone is not my problem. That kind of "well, we had to make this annoying rule because one person was stupid" is something I loathe in general, and I'm certainly not going to participate in it when I don't have to. If the problem is "people play Angry Birds on their phone", then tell them not to do that. None of this grade-school collective punishment BS.

I'll certainly agree that there are more politic ways to stop cellphones from being used at game than how Talakeal's DM went about it. Heck, you could even do incredibly manipulative and sneaky things that would get players to police themselves - get a friend to act as a plant, for example. Have them come to the first game and receive a bunch of obnoxious phone calls, etc, until all the other players are so pissed off about it that they ask you to make a rule.

I'm not sure that would go over any better than the blunt and honest approach in the external analysis however. If anything, that kind of roundabout technique feels more controlling than just saying 'cellphones have been a problem at my games in the past; please don't bring them to game; if you do bring one, I'll ask you to leave it in the other room'.

Amphetryon

2014-10-11, 07:13 AM

Yeah, "I want to be able to be contacted if something happens with my elderly mother who has been having health problems lately or my child because I am a parent with a child or I need to be contactable in some form in case of a work-related emergency even though thankfully those don't actually regularly occur or anything," is such a control freak ethos.
That's an interesting strawmanning of the position I quoted.

sktarq

2014-10-11, 12:47 PM

Because saying no angry birds or no ....

So, yeah.

I have a pretty simple rule *minimize or no distractions at game* as DM I have final say on what is or is not a distraction. I consider this to be a pretty standard rule for almost all DM/ST/GM's. I expect that to be a rule when I sit down to game as a player too, and so do the vast majority of players I've known. If people on their cell phones are becoming a distraction then asking everyone to turn off or stack their phones seems fine. Treating all the players as similarly as possible generally seems help more than it hurts. Personally I like cell phones at the table as I tend to text secret info or reminders of secret missions to players regularly. Also I seen health care issues be used as a reason to let a player keep and check their phone in a game where the ST asked that they be turned off-but with the stipulation to do in a way to minimize the impact of non-emergency issues (it was put on vibrate generally)

BeerMug Paladin

2014-10-11, 03:47 PM

Reading this, I can't help but remember being in a movie theater and seeing a pre-movie thingy saying to please shut off the cell phones. I don't really remember that being any kind of big deal at the time.

Although there are cell phones with the infinitely less disruptive vibrate mode these days, which makes the scenario a little different in the modern age. Now those pre-movie thingies request off, or vibrate mode.

Nagash

2014-10-11, 03:57 PM

I really dont see how someone texting is disruptive to the game. Who cares? Maybe your story isnt that interesting and they're keeping busy, maybe they're a casual player who doesnt care about story at all and just wants to bash orcs with their friends so when its not orc bashing time they entertain themselves in other ways. What difference does it make in your life or game how they choose to enjoy their gaming as long as they do it quietly?

This is definitely control freak behavior.

I do have one rule thats been called control freaky though. I will not stop the game for your bad nicotine habit. Theres no smoking in my home and if you have to step outside constantly go for it, but your gonna miss stuff. Your bad habit is not my problem or anyone elses.

Same with the phones actually. If your on a call, ok it might be important. This isnt school and I dont need a rundown of your personal life to decide if it is or isnt. But again. I'm not stopping the game for it. So if its non-combat your gonna miss some stuff that one of the other players is gonna have to recap for you and if its in combat then someone else is going to take your turn, deal with it.

I've found this is really the easiest way to do everything with no hard feelings anywhere.

Melzentir

2014-10-11, 06:26 PM

This is just my opinion and a comparison to how I as a DM would run things.

-Not letting players check their phones
-Refusing to let players take their character sheets home

:smalltongue:
In some cases these things can improve the flow of the game or make administration easier. They are rules I may enforce at my table IF the above mentioned proves to be a problem. Usually it isn't, so I'll probably not enforce it.

-Telling players where to sit
-Arbitrarily banning basic character options without explanation
-Arbitrarily changing the rules mid game without explanation
-Making players take actions without clearly specifying them first each time, for example insisting a player say "I full attack with my long sword and five levels of power attack" every turn despite them doing that consistently for the entire battle and even making players announce passive abilities like Sneak Attack.

:smalleek:
Well... telling players not to sit where they can see the DM's stuff is valid. Making them sit in the order of initiative for long combat makes sense but you shouldn't have to switch seats every hour.
Banning basic character options may have to do with the setting or what the DM has planned. If it conflicts with plot or the DM really hates some obscure race, I suppose that makes sense... to some extent.
Clearly stating what you're doing is just to prevent misunderstandings, but it can be taken too far, especially if it really was clear to begin with.

-Telling players what color / style of dice to use and how to roll them.
-Dinging XP for showing up late or talking OOC
-Refusing to let players add up the numbers on their own character sheets

Wow, okay, we're venturing into control freak territory here. This really doesn't make sense. You're here to have fun, right? And about numbers; there is supposed to be some degree of meta game. If you don't get any indication whether your character is 1 hit point or 15 hit points away from death in any possible way, get a new DM.

-Refusing to let the players look at the rule books (even their own) without permission

Wow, ok. This is simply outrageous. :smallfurious: Why the hell did you get them in the first place? Unless the DM states that he's using homebrew rules in stead or that this works better, this is just ridiculous.

Sartharina

2014-10-11, 06:38 PM

Anyway, my feeling is that other peoples' inability to control themselves around a phone is not my problem. That kind of "well, we had to make this annoying rule because one person was stupid" is something I loathe in general
How do you get through your life? That's how almost every rule ever has ever been made.

Aedilred

2014-10-11, 08:09 PM

I really dont see how someone texting is disruptive to the game. Who cares? Maybe your story isnt that interesting and they're keeping busy, maybe they're a casual player who doesnt care about story at all and just wants to bash orcs with their friends so when its not orc bashing time they entertain themselves in other ways. What difference does it make in your life or game how they choose to enjoy their gaming as long as they do it quietly?

I don't mind so long as when they're called on to do something they're alert and ready to go. I've played with players who are sufficiently non-immersed that they'll sit there playing on their phone or reading a book or whatever and when they're called on to do anything they'll go "huh, what?" and need everything explained to them. Often including reminding them who we're fighting and why. It gets annoying pretty quickly. If a GM has, or has had, players like that, I can fully appreciate a "no phones" rule at the table.

(I've never really understood "this player is bored" being used as a valid reason for their obvious disengagement from the game, anyway. That's surely inherently a problem either with the player or the game.)

To be honest, while checking your phone for messages or missed calls or the time or whatever is one thing, if someone is just sitting there playing with their phone or having a long text conversation with someone that's not obviously urgent (i.e. they haven't felt the need to tell us it's important to excuse their doing so) is just rude in any kind of social context, as much as anything else. It implies that anything going on on your phone is more interesting, important and worthy of your attention than anything the other person might have to say. Even where that's true, it's rude to point it out.

Sartharina

2014-10-11, 08:14 PM

DM Nate

2014-10-11, 09:15 PM

I do have one rule thats been called control freaky though. I will not stop the game for your bad nicotine habit. Theres no smoking in my home and if you have to step outside constantly go for it, but your gonna miss stuff. Your bad habit is not my problem or anyone elses.

I'm not sure how much of a chain smoker your friends have been, but I have no problem with people who take a 5 min break for a smoke once or twice during the course of it. Nicotine is both a stress reliever and one of the most addictive substances known...it's a lot easier to put down a phone than stop smoking. :-P

Coidzor

2014-10-11, 11:09 PM

I take it you've never gamed with anyone with terrible phone control, then?

I have, and we've dealt with it as necessary rather than going off the deep-end and overreacting and saying that no one can have a phone at all. Because there's degrees of response between complete permissiveness and jedipotter's ethos.

How do you get through your life? That's how almost every rule ever has ever been made.

You don't see any difference between the logistics of dealing with a small group of people and dealing with the entire glut of society?

You know that's not what I meant. But since you decided to use it as an example, if they just decide to order a pizza out of the blue without it being a group thing then yeah, they really shouldn't have.

So you didn't mean that people shouldn't just be calling and texting willy-nilly during a game and that this is a no-brainer to everyone? :smallconfused:

The pizza refers to the pizza as in the hypothetical pizza of the group. Ordering pizza for a single person would be... untenable logistically unless they were some kind of super-glutton, at least by every pizza delivery mechanism that I'm familiar with. :smallconfused:

And almost all of those instances were things they would have known might come up ahead of time and been able to explain in advance. If someone reaches for their phone I'm not going to assume they might be in one of those situations because it's not the norm. If they've told me in advance, and ignore the message if it isn't one of those kind, I'll be fine with it.

Well, naturally this would come up for those who have a reasonable expectation of such things coming up and for the purposes of this hypothetical argument the kind of person who'd come up with a hard-line, unwavering, non-negotiable rule as "NO CELL PHONES EVER," would never budge or compromise or act in a reasonable manner. Otherwise they'd have gone with one of the myriad options that isn't banning all cell phones and/or all cell phone use whatsoever.

That just seems to be part of the basic premise, really. :smallconfused:

Seriously, a glance at the phone to see if it's critical isn't a problem.

Apparently it is from what I've read of Sartharina, jedipotter, and NicheG's posts on the subject. Admittedly I'll need to go back and read through NicheG's post to reply to it since I've only skimmed it before going through and replying to it.

But that's not what people do for the most part. When my mother was in and out of the hospital and I was often her transport a few years ago I could quite easily have checked my phone to see if it was her.

I'm not really sure that we can really confirm that, as our experiences are apparently jarringly divergent.

That doesn't give a blanket excuse to answer/respond to whatever it is just because I had one good reason to check it.

Well, now, where was I saying that? I'd rather like to know where I said something I had no intention of saying so I can go back and edit it to correct it to accurately reflect what I'm trying to communicate here.

That's an interesting strawmanning of the position I quoted.

Great example that illustrates the problems with a hardline, extreme position on the subject, rather. :smalltongue: I've lived and experienced various sorts of personal and family emergencies coming up during play. None of these situations would have been improved by going jedipotter on the phone situation.

Based on your post, I was assuming a player could do something like this:

Player: I enter the room.
DM: (Describes the room). (Secretly checks the player's Spot modifier against a hidden enemy; player would require 5 more Spot than he has in order to beat the Hide check of the enemy).
Player: (Waits 30 seconds). Okay, I look around the room for a hidden enemy.
DM: Okay, roll Spot.

I'm saying that the last line should be: DM - That's a passive use of Spot, so you automatically take 10 on the check.

...I'm quite confused as to why you'd go there, really, if you trigger an ambush due to not spotting it, you can't just go and roll spot for it, the ambush is already triggered.

The comparison with civil rights and federal law is 'frankly, ludicrous', because this is not a situation where the DM is imposing themselves proactively on your life and saying 'you must play in my game, and you must surrender your cellphone'. The DM is not bound by law to run for you, and you are not bound by law to play in their game. The DM presents a condition on them running the game for you - whether you think that's reasonable or not, it may be reasonable to them.

People can think unreasonable things like dismantling phones are reasonable, but that does not make it so.

If you aren't willing to meet that condition, then you can choose to not put yourself in a situation in which you are taking a risk you aren't comfortable with by simply not playing in that game.

Obviously, but that doesn't justify bad behavior or unreasonable demands simply because "well, you have to consent to it."

Mostly what I take personally is this tendency for people to over-exaggerate the importance of things in order to elicit sympathy or get their way. 'If you don't let me have my cellphone, its the equivalent of making my mother die of a heart attack, you monster!' Its a kind of irrationality that particularly irritates me because when its used in the context of social manipulation it actually works (e.g. its not irrational as a strategy, even if its irrational logically). It keeps getting rewarded, so I prefer to take a stronger stance on the opposing side when I see it.

It's a technique to illustrate why an extreme case is bad. Sure, it's the simplest, most expedited way to do so. I could go through and argue through every particular point of why it's bad, but I don't really need to, I just need to show that it's bad in at least some capacity rather than go through an entire treatise on DM overreach and player infantalizatoin.

Nor did I start off at that position, but instead had to elaborate further when people scoffed at the idea of people ever having personal or family emergencies while playing D&D or argued that people deserved to have those emergencies go on without their awareness because they were playing D&D without actually bothering to argue why that would be the case, instead just lazily stating their point like it's a rebuttal when it does not actually rebut.

I also do take the kid-at-the-table thing personally, because I was a player at a table where one of the other players had a spouse who really would have preferred if he spent the weekend taking care of the kid rather than gaming. So she often brought the kid over and derailed game for about an hour each week (it didn't help that the DM was very easily distracted by the kid). Of course as a player I couldn't really say 'don't do that' too strongly, but I'll certainly refuse to let people do that as DM.

Honestly, I'd hate to have a small child at the table because the players couldn't have someone watch the kid for an evening or the DM was an ass and wouldn't let them be in contact with the freaking baby sitter, which I just see as tying back to my general point as I just hinted at by pointing at the DM being an ass and not letting them have a lifeline to the freaking babysitter.

So I sympathize with you there as it being unplesant but mostly just see it as reinforcing the general point that forbidding all cellphones and all cell phone use is a gross overreaction that's senseless rather than actually undermining my position in any way, shape, or form.

Nagash

2014-10-12, 01:13 PM

I think you are one of the only people in the world who doesn't find texting to be distracting and disruptive.

You need to get out a little more. Bars, clubs, movie theatres, restaurants, work. people are texting everywhere. I cant remember the last place I was where half the building wasnt glued to their phones.

Why are you distracted by what someone else is doing anyway? Pay more attention to what your doing and leave other peoples actions to them and you'll find yourself much less..... disrupted and distracted in general.

Aedilred

2014-10-12, 01:44 PM

Why are you distracted by what someone else is doing anyway? Pay more attention to what your doing and leave other peoples actions to them and you'll find yourself much less..... disrupted and distracted in general.

I don't usually care what people are doing so long as it doesn't have an effect on what I'm doing. If I'm trying to engage with people in a social environment and they're giving every impression of not listening because they're texting, that's annoying and kind of rude, and I don't think it's unreasonable to think that way.

I do think it's unreasonable to demand or enforce a strict "no phones" policy (whether that be "phones off" or confiscation/dismantling of phones and allowing people at least to check their phone if it's buzzing to see if it might be important is pretty unobjectionable. But, as people have said, if someone is more interested in what's going on on their phone than in the game we're supposedly playing, and it's not something actually important or an emergency, that's causing a problem for everyone else.

That there is a happy medium and what that happy medium is seems pretty obvious to me, but unfortunately it relies on people not being tools.

Amphetryon

2014-10-12, 07:26 PM

You need to get out a little more. Bars, clubs, movie theatres, restaurants, work. people are texting everywhere. I cant remember the last place I was where half the building wasnt glued to their phones.

Why are you distracted by what someone else is doing anyway? Pay more attention to what your doing and leave other peoples actions to them and you'll find yourself much less..... disrupted and distracted in general.

Because someone texting during combat, or a group IC negotiation with important NPCs, is all but inevitably going to slow down the flow of the game for everyone else at the table, unless the person is able to text while rolling dice, describing their action, and/or conversing about strategy (and I've never seen anyone actually able to text while rolling), rather than (at best) saying "hold on, just a second, my girlfriend just sent me this funny cat pic."

NichG

2014-10-12, 10:43 PM

...I'm quite confused as to why you'd go there, really, if you trigger an ambush due to not spotting it, you can't just go and roll spot for it, the ambush is already triggered.

Really? You can't see any situation in which something that would be detected by a spot check doesn't become immediately revealed by its own action the second the first PC fails to spot it? Enemies waiting for the right moment to act rather than rushing the first PC to enter the room, environmental hints/information that can reveal potential hazards or clues, etc?

People can think unreasonable things like dismantling phones are reasonable, but that does not make it so.

Obviously, but that doesn't justify bad behavior or unreasonable demands simply because "well, you have to consent to it."

The fact that you have to consent to it means that the window of what is reasonable is much wider than if you were compelled. Let me give you a concrete example that directly relates to your point. In the Tokyo metro lines, in each train there's a special part of the train that is set aside preferentially for the elderly, expectant mothers, etc. The handholds are a special color and there are a bunch of signs around it. For the entire train, you're expected to put your cellphone into 'manner mode', but in that particular part of the train you're expected to actually power it down. I don't actually know what the rationale is - I assume some sort of belief about cellphone radiation having a harmful effect on the infant.

If that's the case, its pretty clearly nonsense. However, because I can just go stand 2 feet away if I really don't want to turn off my cellphone, I would say that fact doesn't matter - it's a reasonable request to make even if the underlying reason is wrong because there are a number of people who would get upset and afraid otherwise, and the inconvenience it makes for me to comply with it is minor.

If the rule were 'you can't use cellphones in Japan', then it becomes far more unreasonable because there's nothing I can do to avoid that if I have a serious reason to need a cellphone.

I would say that most people should reasonably be able to do without a cellphone for a few hours every week. The people who believe that they are so important that they have to be in communication contact 24/7 are the ones who are being irrational there (or they're CEOs or doctors on call, which is a highly infrequent situation that isn't really relevant for Talakeal's table). Hearing about an emergency now rather than 3 hours from now when you aren't the doctors taking care of it isn't actually going to change anything except maybe make you anxious and unhappy for 3 more hours of your life - if your mother or son is in surgery, you receiving a call about it or not isn't going to change the outcome at all. But hey, its okay, you get to be a bit irrational - that's allowed! Because you can always decide that having constant cellphone access is more important to you than playing at a particular table.

Honestly, I'd hate to have a small child at the table because the players couldn't have someone watch the kid for an evening or the DM was an ass and wouldn't let them be in contact with the freaking baby sitter, which I just see as tying back to my general point as I just hinted at by pointing at the DM being an ass and not letting them have a lifeline to the freaking babysitter.

So I sympathize with you there as it being unplesant but mostly just see it as reinforcing the general point that forbidding all cellphones and all cell phone use is a gross overreaction that's senseless rather than actually undermining my position in any way, shape, or form.

This is apples to oranges. Kids bother me but cellphones do not. So at my table, text all you want but if you want to bring your kid in, I won't permit it. For someone else, cellphones might bother them but kids would not. So for their table, forbidding cellphones but letting players bring their kids because they're worried about not having cellphone access to a babysitter would make sense.

Its possible for different tables to have different etiquettes, and for them all to be reasonable given their particular circumstances and social dynamics. There isn't just one 'true set of correct etiquettes' and everything else is unconscionably unreasonable.

Sartharina

2014-10-12, 11:42 PM

You need to get out a little more. Bars, clubs, movie theatres, restaurants, work. people are texting everywhere. I cant remember the last place I was where half the building wasnt glued to their phones. Theaters during a show - hell no. I've gotten people kicked out of movies for using cell phones during a movie. As for bars and clubs - they're not at my table, engaged in conversation with me.

Why are you distracted by what someone else is doing anyway?Situational awareness, social awareness, and perception.

Pay more attention to what your doing and leave other peoples actions to them and you'll find yourself much less..... disrupted and distracted in general.If people lack the ability to pay attention to both themselves and others around them, it certainly explains why so many people are absolutely socially vile.

Mr Beer

2014-10-12, 11:55 PM

Pulling out your phone during conversation is douchey as hell. Occasionally checking a text or whatever during a game is fine but being glued to it, is not.

Nagash

2014-10-13, 01:09 PM

Because someone texting during combat, or a group IC negotiation with important NPCs, is all but inevitably going to slow down the flow of the game for everyone else at the table, unless the person is able to text while rolling dice, describing their action, and/or conversing about strategy (and I've never seen anyone actually able to text while rolling), rather than (at best) saying "hold on, just a second, my girlfriend just sent me this funny cat pic."

No it doesnt.

A. anyone can text and roll a dice at the same time. Its really easy. Hell I'm the DM and I do it. Its called multitasking. Its really not an uncommon skill.

B. Someone texting a lot during the session doesnt want to be part of the strategy discussions or RP. Dont ask them to be, they dont want to.

In general if as a GM you just focus on the people who are engaged in whatever is going on and dont try to force someone elses square peg into your round hole everything will run smoother and everyone will be happier.

If for instance your in a big negotiation RP scene and 3 players are asking questions and participating and 1 is texting why would you care about the one texting? Talk to the other 3 that are interested in that part of the game and leave the texter alone. He's not hurting you or anyone else.

icefractal

2014-10-13, 04:07 PM

How do you get through your life? That's how almost every rule ever has ever been made.I said I loathe it, not that I can't deal with it. :smallwink:

But the GM isn't my employer, they're not someone with legal authority, and the game isn't something I'm contractually or otherwise obliged to play. I'm doing it for fun. So I'm not going to volunteer for rules that I find stupid, simple as that.

And also:
Same with the phones actually. If your on a call, ok it might be important. This isnt school and I dont need a rundown of your personal life to decide if it is or isnt. But again. I'm not stopping the game for it. So if its non-combat your gonna miss some stuff that one of the other players is gonna have to recap for you and if its in combat then someone else is going to take your turn, deal with it. This is pretty much how I deal with it, no dictatorial tactics required. The game is happening - you can participate or not. That's not something that's my job to enforce, because I play with adults.

melquisedeq

2014-10-13, 04:12 PM

Are there really this many people this vocal in the defence of "being on the phone" (texting, angry birds, youporn, whatever form it takes)? That's just bloody abominable.

It's quite pathetic that so many groups seem to be so needy for players, that they choose to suffer [random plural noun for genitalia] who are unwilling to pay more than just passive, peripheral attention to the game... aren't there any considerate, decent players in your acquaintance who you could invite instead?

Or is this more of a social dynamic overlap case, where the idiot doesn't really want to be there, but he's best buds with player X who won't play if his idiot buddy is not playing and he happens to own the GM screen, so no one really wants the idiot there except player X but everyone tolerates his half-presence because player X is a decent contribution to the table plus they've kind of grown used to looking at the picture on the screen?

Whatever it is, it's absurd. Equally absurd, though, is the expectation that no one touch their phones. L-to-the-O-to-the-L!
I'll set it vibrate, I'll fully abstain from taking non-exceptional calls, and won't engage in text debates (because more than two texts in a row ARE a debate)... but I reserve the right to make that call myself (drumroll).

Anyone whose blood didn't just boil reading that little bit about "phone in one basket battery in the other", or the bit about "what's so wrong about someone not really caring except in the rare moments he decides to bless the rest of the table with his presence" need to surround themselves with better human beings, people just generally better at being human, and I promise that your life, and subsequently your gaming group, will feel substantially more rewarding. Trust me on that.

It's lowered expectations on common sense and basic decency, like those this thread so often illustrated, that allow this hobby to still be seen by society at large as one of the last refuges for socially-inept borderline personalities drunk on make-believe power.

Jay R

2014-10-13, 04:20 PM

The problem the DM is trying to prevent may not be texting; it may be looking up the scenario, or just reading the monster's stats, on the Internet. We haven't heard the DM's side.

1337 b4k4

2014-10-13, 04:26 PM

A. anyone can text and roll a dice at the same time. Its really easy. Hell I'm the DM and I do it. Its called multitasking. Its really not an uncommon skill.

It's also something that's been found in studies to more or less not exist. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_multitasking) Long story short, while we can fake it, most studies have found that in reality, people multi tasking tend to do worse on both things they're doing than if they just do one thing at a time.

B. Someone texting a lot during the session doesnt want to be part of the strategy discussions or RP. Dont ask them to be, they dont want to.

That's pretty much what the "no phones" rule does. It explicitly and up front states that if you are not interested in participating in the event that everyone else has gathered for, then your presence is not requested. Don't get me wrong, I don't mandate that all the phones be shut off, batteries removed and locked in a vault, but I also expect my players to be engaged in the game as our time is limited. Yes, there are things that are more important than gaming. And if you have one of those things, then you should be doing that, not gaming, and not sitting at the table pretending to game while you actually do something else. Every group can (and should) set their own threshold for what is or is not acceptable levels of distraction at a table, but it is no more wrong for a DM to insist on no phones at all than it is for you to be texting in the middle of running your game. It's up to each individual player to decide how much or how little distraction they want when they play.

CarpeGuitarrem

2014-10-13, 06:33 PM

Y'know, relevant to the phone situation--as I recall, there's a lot of people who get really irked with people who go to answer their phones in the middle of a meal. Because it's a sort of shared social time. It's rude to answer your phone or text back in the middle of a meal. It's true that meals are shorter than gaming sessions tend to be, but that's what stepping away from the table tends to be for.

Amphetryon

2014-10-13, 06:45 PM

No it doesnt.

A. anyone can text and roll a dice at the same time. Its really easy. Hell I'm the DM and I do it. Its called multitasking. Its really not an uncommon skill.

B. Someone texting a lot during the session doesnt want to be part of the strategy discussions or RP. Dont ask them to be, they dont want to.

In general if as a GM you just focus on the people who are engaged in whatever is going on and dont try to force someone elses square peg into your round hole everything will run smoother and everyone will be happier.

If for instance your in a big negotiation RP scene and 3 players are asking questions and participating and 1 is texting why would you care about the one texting? Talk to the other 3 that are interested in that part of the game and leave the texter alone. He's not hurting you or anyone else.

With what, exactly, are you rolling your dice whilst holding the phone? Or, do you mean you're pausing the one in order to do the other? Because if that's the case, you're taking more time - and paying less attention - than if you were focused on one OR the other. Many people think they can multitask. Few of them are actually any good at it. I can provide you with several articles demonstrating this, if you insist.

If the game has a lot of parts that a person doesn't wish to be a part of, why is that person there? Do you typically choose to spend your free time doing things you'd rather not do?

Nagash

2014-10-13, 07:35 PM

With what, exactly, are you rolling your dice whilst holding the phone? Or, do you mean you're pausing the one in order to do the other? Because if that's the case, you're taking more time - and paying less attention - than if you were focused on one OR the other. Many people think they can multitask. Few of them are actually any good at it. I can provide you with several articles demonstrating this, if you insist.

If the game has a lot of parts that a person doesn't wish to be a part of, why is that person there? Do you typically choose to spend your free time doing things you'd rather not do?

I have two hands. Phone in one, dice in the other. Quick pause to add the results and I'm back onto what I was doing before.

I've heard a couple people claim multitasking "does things badly" well sure your not totally paying attention after all. But how the hell do you roll dice worse or better? You just pick it and drop it back down. Theres really not much skill involved.

Although I personally use a dice rolling app on my phone, so its more like "push button read results".

Knaight

2014-10-13, 07:52 PM

I really dont see how someone texting is disruptive to the game. Who cares? Maybe your story isnt that interesting and they're keeping busy, maybe they're a casual player who doesnt care about story at all and just wants to bash orcs with their friends so when its not orc bashing time they entertain themselves in other ways. What difference does it make in your life or game how they choose to enjoy their gaming as long as they do it quietly?

They aren't playing. As the GM, there's a conscious effort to engage the players, and that person is generally being a distraction, and slowing the game down - particularly if you aren't willing to just have their character do things without them clearing it. Players texting continually is absolutely disruptive, and while it's less disruptive than people who just shut down temporarily for whatever reason, it's still a disruption. Obviously, this doesn't mean that phones should be restricted or anything, or that legitimate texting for an actual reason is a problem*, but it's a disruptive activity.

I also really don't get this "your story" bit. It's the players story as much as the GMs, and unless everything between fights is just long stretches of exposition in which nothing is happening** anyone actually playing the game is generally making decisions on what their character is doing fairly frequently.

*So, not just maintaining casual conversation by text all game.
**Which I'd generally recommend against anyways. Conciseness is valuable in descriptions, long non-interactive exposition is boring as heck, and if the game can just be tuned out by one of the people playing without it really affecting it I question the actual interactivity.

Alejandro

2014-10-13, 08:02 PM

Roxxy

2014-10-13, 09:38 PM

I've heard a couple people claim multitasking "does things badly" well sure your not totally paying attention after all.
If the game isn't good enough to totally pay attention, why bother with the GM at all?

Sartharina

2014-10-14, 12:59 AM

No it doesnt.

A. anyone can text and roll a dice at the same time. Its really easy. Hell I'm the DM and I do it. Its called multitasking. Its really not an uncommon skill.And everyone sucks at it - especially those who think they're good at it. People do not multitask well.

B. Someone texting a lot during the session doesnt want to be part of the strategy discussions or RP. Dont ask them to be, they dont want to. If they're not going to game, they should be somewhere else, not distracting those who ARE trying to game.

In general if as a GM you just focus on the people who are engaged in whatever is going on and dont try to force someone elses square peg into your round hole everything will run smoother and everyone will be happier. Except the people sick of the person not engaged constantly stopping things because he's always lost.

If for instance your in a big negotiation RP scene and 3 players are asking questions and participating and 1 is texting why would you care about the one texting? Talk to the other 3 that are interested in that part of the game and leave the texter alone. He's not hurting you or anyone else.Because the one texting is distracting everyone else, and WILL disrupt the game when they try to get back into it.
I have two hands. Phone in one, dice in the other. Quick pause to add the results and I'm back onto what I was doing before.

I've heard a couple people claim multitasking "does things badly" well sure your not totally paying attention after all. But how the hell do you roll dice worse or better? You just pick it and drop it back down. Theres really not much skill involved.

Although I personally use a dice rolling app on my phone, so its more like "push button read results".

What are you doing with the dice, and why are you rolling?

That's something that bothered me with Talakeal's response - if the game has you just rolling dice without explanation, with everything taken for granted, something's gone horribly wrong with the game. You've stopped Roleplaying, and have started ProgressQuesting.

azoetia

2014-10-14, 01:40 AM

Gamgee

2014-10-14, 02:15 AM

I DM because nobody in my group will; they are all either too lazy to do all the prep or are too disinterested in mechanics to learn anything beyond their characters. I get a certain amount of latitude because, well, their alternative is not gaming at all. I don't abuse it, but I have made it clear that if I'm going to put forth the effort to do this then some things will be done my way and people have to live with it.

That said, I don't do much of what's in the original post. The biggest one that I do is keep all character sheets. This is simply a habit that my group has done since before I joined, and once I was appointed the perpetual DM I kept the practise. I had actually never thought about doing it any other way, or that someone could find it disagreeable. Nobody has any desire to look at their character sheet between sessions and the most obvious person to hold onto them is the person who has to show up with assembled materials anyway. I just tuck them with everything else.

As for phones, I consider being constantly distracted by your device to be no different than sleeping at the table (which has been a problem with one player in the past who is no longer with us.) If someone does this it will result in in-game consequences, up to and including killing that person's character, followed by the player being disinvited to any future sessions. I trust 30+ year old adults to be able to check messages and glance at sports scores and the weather periodically without becoming disengaged so I don't ban their handsets, only punish their disrespect. Don't ask me to DM and then ignore the work I had to do on your behalf.

And if a player rules-lawyers me I'll give that person a warning. If it continues I'll give his or her character a disease.

Yeap I pretty much agree with this. If they aren't paying attention and the players are sick of playing baby sitter to keep them up to date and they get killed. Hey. You didn't seem to care too much about staying alive.

The only other person who tried to GM was pretty intimidated by it. He also has an odd fixation with criticism. Like if you say one funny thing about his world. Like wow that guys name is bob in a Roman Empire setting and point it out. He will sit there for 4 hours trying to think of an appropriate Roman name instead of just forgetting about it. Despite every single player saying it doesn't ****ing matter and we want to play the game.

The other time was him getting mad at me for thinking I was mad at him. He wouldn't shut up and stopped GMing to tell us some stupid story about a video game every 30 seconds. He does this for 2 hours before GMing for like 30 minutes tops. I want to play the game. Of course I'm a little pissed. Then when he sees me glaring at him he throws his papers on the floor and says "that's all I had planned". Even though if he had just kept going I would have been happy.

We don't let him GM any more.

So yes. I'm the only one stable enough to be a GM.

Kami2awa

2014-10-14, 02:40 AM

Goodness, guys...

I don't mind any of this stuff. Check your phone? Fine. OOC chat? Fine. Take a break? Game sessions are often super long compared to just about any other activity so yeah, go take a break for food/cigarette/fresh air. Fallen asleep? I sympathise (I work long hours and our games are necessarily in the evening). This is a social activity that's intended to be fun, not a primary school class.

BrokenChord

2014-10-14, 03:04 AM

I think it's generally just good form not to check your phone at the gaming table, it's sort of annoying if a player consistently rolls the dice off the table and makes somebody get up to retrieve them, and at the very least I do tell my players not to look at one another's character sheets without that player's permission, though I don't personally care if they all decide that right after their characters meet, they want to pass their sheet around the table as a substitute for telling them everything about themselves. Players at my tables do reserve the right not to share their sheet if, for example, they're actively hiding something like possession of a certain item or even what their entire class combination is (for example, I once had a game with a Rogue/Cloistered Cleric with the domain(s?) that give the Cleric class bunches of Rogue skills including Hide and a Dragon Magazine feat that stacks cleric levels with Rogue levels for determining Sneak Attack damage, and he was basically pulling a farce of being a pure Rogue for plot reasons, which would've had a way less effective reveal if the other players had known) or even if they're just passively not revealing something, like parts of their backstory.

Other than that, I agree, the stuff you listed is quite ridiculous.

azoetia

2014-10-14, 03:43 AM

Goodness, guys...
Fallen asleep? I sympathise (I work long hours and our games are necessarily in the evening). This is a social activity that's intended to be fun, not a primary school class.
Sleeping isn't a social activity. If someone would prefer to sleep than game then he or she should stay home and sleep.

If it happens once in a while it's not a big deal; an overworked person can accidentally fall asleep at the table despite having every intention of participating fully. I have a problem with habitual sleepers and will DM-smite them.

Jay R

2014-10-14, 07:02 AM

Quick pause to add the results and I'm back onto what I was doing before.

Exactly. Your contribution to the complex game in front of us has been reduced to a "quick pause to add the results", so you can get back onto what you were doing before, which clearly is not the social game the rest of us are doing.

Nagash

2014-10-14, 04:10 PM

I'm colorblind, so when I GM, I ask the players to not use certain dice. No player has ever had an issue with this, because most of them collect dice and the few who don't, borrow. Does sound like you've had some awful GM experiences. Usually those GMs get that way from trying to compensate for awful players.

Also, to agree with Knaight: What if I was on a basketball team, and took out my phone and started texting right there on the court, just because I didn't have the ball? Sure, it sounds silly, but it isn't any different. You're either engaged in a team activity, or you aren't.

its not like basketball at all. Over the years I've had plenty of players that as soon as the party hits town declare "i'm going to the bar to get drunk and hit on all the women" we dont need to play that out. so the other players who might actually be doing something interesting get the spotlight. and bar guy? go ahead, text away.

Because the right analogy is actually football. Sometimes your team has the ball and your up, other times your sitting on the bench watching anyway. So who cares what your doing on the bench?

Amphetryon

2014-10-14, 04:32 PM

its not like basketball at all. Over the years I've had plenty of players that as soon as the party hits town declare "i'm going to the bar to get drunk and hit on all the women" we dont need to play that out. so the other players who might actually be doing something interesting get the spotlight. and bar guy? go ahead, text away.

Because the right analogy is actually football. Sometimes your team has the ball and your up, other times your sitting on the bench watching anyway. So who cares what your doing on the bench?

It matters because you're always on the offense when the rest of the people in your group are on offense (and on defense when the rest of your group is on defense), unless you're commonly splitting the party. If your character concept truly is "bench warmer," then you're not likely to be what most around here consider a team player.

Aedilred

2014-10-14, 05:17 PM

Because the right analogy is actually football. Sometimes your team has the ball and your up, other times your sitting on the bench watching anyway. So who cares what your doing on the bench?

I expect most coaches worth their salt, not to mention the rest of the players, would rather someone on the bench was engaged in what's going on in front of them and paying attention, at least to the extent of knowing the game situation and having made his own assessments of the opponents' capabilities, so that he's ready to go when called upon, rather than needing it all explained to him every time he comes on and off. Rather than texting, or reading a newspaper, or watching cat videos.

melquisedeq

2014-10-14, 07:02 PM

I expect most coaches worth their salt, not to mention the rest of the players, would rather someone on the bench was engaged in what's going on in front of them and paying attention, at least to the extent of knowing the game situation and having made his own assessments of the opponents' capabilities, so that he's ready to go when called upon, rather than needing it all explained to him every time he comes on and off. Rather than texting, or reading a newspaper, or watching cat videos.

Anyone who's ever even just passively watched a sport, ever (yes, even while texting) will have noticed that bench players focus 100% on the game, will cheer and suffer through their mates' ups and downs, and often even get emotionally involved to the point of actually getting physically involved and risking serious penalties for it. This goes for any team sport, anywhere, it's common etiquette.

Failing to observe and display this basic etiquette always elicits outrage from everyone else involved in the game (from colleagues to commentators to fans), and I've never seen it done out of genuine disregard or obliviousness or non-malicious disinterest, it is ALWAYS a "penis move" from a player deliberately and unequivocally trying to let his displeasure be known. Displeasure specifically directed at his teammates, or his coach, or something else on his side of the game, mind you, not the opposition.

So yeah, it's undeniably accurate to say that not paying attention to the game is a couple of middle-fingers raised to your fellow players.

Exediron

2014-10-15, 01:23 AM

Because the right analogy is actually football. Sometimes your team has the ball and your up, other times your sitting on the bench watching anyway. So who cares what your doing on the bench?

It's a perfectly fine analogy, but it just underlines how disrespectful your position here is. When you stop paying attention the moment you're not directly involved it sends a distinct message of disrespect to everyone else at the table. Unless they're equally selfish, then it probably bothers them that people aren't paying any attention to the effort they're putting into planning, playing their character, or whatever other activity that they believe is interesting they're partaking in. Most people aren't doing it purely for themselves.

And to take the football analogy a step further, one of the big reasons players on the bench do pay attention is because they might be called on to rejoin the action any time; likewise as a player, you might join the action any time, and when you do if you've been paying attention you'll know what's going on and you won't slow down the game for everyone who was actually a part of it.

Jay R

2014-10-15, 06:55 AM

Because the right analogy is actually football. Sometimes your team has the ball and your up, other times your sitting on the bench watching anyway. So who cares what your doing on the bench?

If you have a full-time coach whose job is to tell you what to do each play, and you are not supposed to be involved with the planning, that makes sense. (Although a competent coach ignores the guy on the bench who doesn't focus on the field, and puts in the substitute who is invested in the game.)

Really - watch the guys on the bench some time. They are studying plays, talking to the coaches, coordinating with each other. They aren't playing with their smart phones.

If you are in charge of what your character does, and you're part of the team making long-term strategic plans for the party, then not paying attention is forfeiting one of your responsibilities.

The Insanity

2014-10-15, 06:59 AM

If you have a full-time coach whose job is to tell you what to do each play, and you are not supposed to be involved with the planning, that makes sense. (Although a competent coach ignores the guy on the bench who doesn't focus on the field, and puts in the substitute who is invested in the game.)

Really - watch the guys on the bench some time. They are studying plays, talking to the coaches, coordinating with each other. They aren't playing with their smart phones.

If you are in charge of what your character does, and you're part of the team making long-term strategic plans for the party, then not paying attention is forfeiting one of your responsibilities.
The problem with that analogy is that one is a job while the other is just a hobby.

Jay R

2014-10-15, 07:38 AM

The problem with that analogy is that one is a job while the other is just a hobby.

Nonsense. It's equally true in high school games or amateur leagues.

Yes, it's a hobby. But the hobby involves making group decisions. If you aren't gathering all the data, you're forfeiting the responsibility to be ready to help make group decisions.

Alejandro

2014-10-15, 09:54 AM

I appreciate the support. :) I hadn't even considered the bench analogy, but it's an excellent one. When I used the basketball example, I wasn't even thinking of that; I was just considering the players who are actually on the court. Yes, only one of them has the ball at any given moment, but that doesn't mean the others aren't doing anything...far from it. Same with a group of PCs/players. Even if only one character is currently 'doing something', that doesn't mean the other players should just disengage entirely. What if that PC suddenly needs help? What if the GM realizes 'hey, I am making everyone else sit there while Dirk Flexface resolves this, time to throw in a complication that shakes things up?' As others noted, if you were paying attention, you can immediately react, and not have that dazed "I was looking at my phone" expression.

A basketball game and a roleplaying group are both hobbies. (American) culture just so far sees fit to pay people to play basketball or football and watch it on TV, more than a tabletop game. However, things are changing...as a partial example, video games are basically the national sport of South Korea now.

Knaight

2014-10-15, 11:41 AM

Nonsense. It's equally true in high school games or amateur leagues.

Yes, it's a hobby. But the hobby involves making group decisions. If you aren't gathering all the data, you're forfeiting the responsibility to be ready to help make group decisions.

Heck, it's true in pickup games. You've got a group of people who have gathered to go do a thing. As such, they should do the thing. If they want to spectate, then they should be a spectator. In a ball game setting, that means not being a player. In an RPG setting that also means not being a player.

xroads

2014-10-15, 01:18 PM

So, I have been trying to find a new game group and have tried several and this has been the first time I have been a PC for a number of years, and I am shocked to find out how many inane rules my fellow DM's have...

Wow. No, I can't say I have DMs that bad. The biggest "control freak" member of my current group would be me. And my only rule is don't play video games or watch video on your tablet while I'm running the game. That's only because it's distracting for me and other players.

But here are some of my suggested responses to your DMs...

Telling players what color / style of dice to use and how to roll them.
Respond by saying "That's a great color! And can you make sure to wrap them with a nice bow when you buy them for me?"
Refusing to let players add up the numbers on their own character sheets
Tape a calculator/table around your arm like a shield, jump onto the table, and start shouting "Libertas enim aequationes! Sit math libera!"
Refusing to let the players look at the rule books (even their own) without permission
Disguise your book to look like "Fahrenheit 451". Then when the DM makes mistake, say to him "But on page 101, Ray Bradbury says..."

No but seriously, most DM's aren't that bad. But if you keep finding the bad ones, just remember that there are always other options. Even if it's just to go home and blast zombies on your console of choice. :smallcool:

Talakeal

2014-10-15, 06:23 PM

On the topic of phone emergencies, while it isn't a matter of life and death, I have had plenty of times when someone needed to take a call during a game and it was important enough to pause or even end the game for. They aren't matters of life or death, but I have had plenty of occasions where someone's family members needed to get ahold of them for a minor emergency like a flooded basement, a lost dog, a broke down car, a forgotten appointment, or the like. All things that are every bit as important as playing a game. I remember one time when a player's best friend's boyfriend had just broken up with her and she just needed someone to talk to, and I made the call to end the game session early so he could go home to see her in person.

That's something that bothered me with Talakeal's response - if the game has you just rolling dice without explanation, with everything taken for granted, something's gone horribly wrong with the game. You've stopped Roleplaying, and have started ProgressQuesting.

Care to elaborate on that? Do you get the impression that we aren't describing our actions in a narrative sense, or do you think we are not speaking to each other at all and just each playing our own little game out in our heads?

Neither of those quite accurate, but I am not sure how to elaborate on the situation without a little more detail as to what is bothering you.

Aedilred

2014-10-15, 06:43 PM

On the topic of phone emergencies, while it isn't a matter of life and death, I have had plenty of times when someone needed to take a call during a game and it was important enough to pause or even end the game for. They aren't matters of life or death, but I have had plenty of occasions where someone's family members needed to get ahold of them for a minor emergency like a flooded basement, a lost dog, a broke down car, a forgotten appointment, or the like. All things that are every bit as important as playing a game. I remember one time when a player's best friend's boyfriend had just broken up with her and she just needed someone to talk to, and I made the call to end the game session early so he could go home to see her in person.

Precisely. This is why I think any policy that bans phone use entirely, let alone confiscation and dismantling of phones, is unreasonable. Emergencies can happen and they're not predictable. Almost all of them are more important than the game. And while people might voluntarily choose to put themselves in a position where they're effectively unreachable, the key point is that that's their decision, not anyone else's. Obliging someone to do that where it isn't necessary is just a jerk move.

Equally, I think sitting there on the phone during any kind of face-to-face social interaction browsing your phone, texting, etc. is pretty damn rude. I had dinner with a couple tonight who came to physical (though non-serious) confrontation over this very issue.

I pretty much agree with melquisedeq's post on the subject in its entirety.

Nagash

2014-10-15, 07:51 PM

It matters because you're always on the offense when the rest of the people in your group are on offense (and on defense when the rest of your group is on defense), unless you're commonly splitting the party. If your character concept truly is "bench warmer," then you're not likely to be what most around here consider a team player.

Thats really not at all true. Parties split up all the time, especially in town to do things like follow different clues or shop in different places. Some characters might have a home or business in town they go to check on and others just flop at the tavern.

I expect most coaches worth their salt, not to mention the rest of the players, would rather someone on the bench was engaged in what's going on in front of them and paying attention, at least to the extent of knowing the game situation and having made his own assessments of the opponents' capabilities, so that he's ready to go when called upon, rather than needing it all explained to him every time he comes on and off. Rather than texting, or reading a newspaper, or watching cat videos.

Nope, because see if your a defensive back then what the other teams safeties and line are doing have absolutely zero affect on your play.

Your not playing against them, your playing against the other teams offense. Which is on the other bench at the same time as you, waiting, just like you.

If you actually watch some sports, especially pro you'll notice those guys on the sidelines are usually doing something totally un-related to the game. Or at best they are reading over a play book or chatting with one of the coaches.

Hell if your party is split you really SHOULDNT be paying attention to the other players turns since your character isnt there and doesnt know whats going on.

Sartharina

2014-10-15, 08:05 PM

Care to elaborate on that? Do you get the impression that we aren't describing our actions in a narrative sense, or do you think we are not speaking to each other at all and just each playing our own little game out in our heads?The former - not having time to state your abilities made me think of a bunch of people staring at a board, rolling dice quickly and watching the numbers hawkishly, everyone knowing what's going on... with dice flying too fast for people to get a word in about what they mean edgewise. :smalltongue:
On the topic of phone emergencies, while it isn't a matter of life and death, I have had plenty of times when someone needed to take a call during a game and it was important enough to pause or even end the game for. They aren't matters of life or death, but I have had plenty of occasions where someone's family members needed to get ahold of them for a minor emergency like a flooded basement, a lost dog, a broke down car, a forgotten appointment, or the like. All things that are every bit as important as playing a game. I remember one time when a player's best friend's boyfriend had just broken up with her and she just needed someone to talk to, and I made the call to end the game session early so he could go home to see her in person.I can understand this, which is why I don't see phone dismantling as reasonable. However, confiscation may be in order (But emergencies can still get through) because there are a LOT of people with no phone discipline who will vehemently deny it even while trying to furiously text and not pay attention to what's going on.

Aedilred

2014-10-15, 08:54 PM

Nope, because see if your a defensive back then what the other teams safeties and line are doing have absolutely zero affect on your play.

Your not playing against them, your playing against the other teams offense. Which is on the other bench at the same time as you, waiting, just like you.

If you actually watch some sports, especially pro you'll notice those guys on the sidelines are usually doing something totally un-related to the game. Or at best they are reading over a play book or chatting with one of the coaches.

I watch a lot of cricket, and have seen a fair amount of (association) football, to say nothing of other sports. For many players, there is a lot of sitting-around involved in both games, and even in cricket where players can be sitting around doing nothing for literally days they are still more often than not on the balcony watching the play, and many coaches expect that. Likewise in football there are usually nine or ten guys who know that in all likelihood they will not be playing, and they are expected to be - and are - still fully engaged in the match along with the coaching staff. Players have actually been dropped over disrespectful conduct while on the bench. I would honestly be surprised if any of the players had their phones with them, let alone get them out and play around with them during the game, whether on the field or not. I've certainly never seen it.

Svata

2014-10-16, 05:04 AM

Well, first off, based on what you've said about him, your friend sounds like a self-righteous jerk. I'd take his opinions with a massive grain of salt to begin with. But snark aside...

My opinion on those house rules:

I could understand telling players WHERE to roll their dice (on the table, floor is reroll), but what color/style seems a little much.

Not giving them XP they didn't earn because they weren't there? Sure, that's fair. Removing XP they've already earned? Bad form.

Use all the meta terms you want OOC. No mentioning stuff like hit points IC. Forcing people who aren't comfortable with RPing their character to stay solely IC is not cool.

This entirely depends on the game and mood the group is trying to set. In beer and pretzel games it's ridiculous, in intrigue heavy games it's practically necessary.

-Refusing to let players take their character sheets home

I hold on to the master copy of my player's sheets when I GM solely so I can take their abilities into consideration when planning the next session. Plus, my players asked me to hold onto them. Outright refusing to let a player hold onto their sheet is uncool.

I... what? I can understand wanting to go over their numbers (especially if the player in question is bad at math), but refusing to let them do it themselves is a level of narcissistic control I (thankfully) haven't seen before.

I know the above isn't as much of a problem for me at the moment (I GM Savage Worlds primarily, there's not much in the way of rules or books to look at), but having played plenty of 3.5, abilities can get complicated. If you want to rules lawyer I'm going to put my foot down, but if you need to confirm how your character works I'm not going to disallow you. Within a reasonable time frame, obviously.

Beyond keeping first dibs on where I want/need to sit, I've never had to do anything like this. If I had two players that couldn't be sat next to each other, then they're either going to work their stuff out or one/both of them are no longer invited. I have no desire to play with people who can't act like grownups.

I have something similar to this rule. If I have to tell you multiple times to stop playing with your phone, it goes in the hat on top of the fridge for the rest of the session. If it rings, feel free to answer it, but I'm not putting up with you disrespecting me or the other players and killing the immersion.

Banning character options to help achieve the theme or setting of the campaign? Sure, I've done it. Refusing to provide any reasons for what you've banned? Bad form.

Making a rules call is a major part of what the GM is there for. Actively changing the rules during play, on the other hand, is a good indicator to stop playing with that GM. ESPECIALLY if they refuse to provide a reason, or are doing so in a vindictive manner.

The whole point of passive abilities is that they don't need to be declared. You want to use an active ability, you'd best let me know before the dice roll. Stuff that the book doesn't say you need to declare? Yeah, you don't have to. Special exception goes to Power Attack, which in my common experience is "On, unless otherwise declared."

All these are pretty much what I think as well, though dice color might be necessitated by someone using dice that are difficult to read. But so long as I can tell what it says and its on the table, its good.

Amphetryon

2014-10-16, 06:06 AM

Thats really not at all true. Parties split up all the time, especially in town to do things like follow different clues or shop in different places. Some characters might have a home or business in town they go to check on and others just flop at the tavern.

If these things take up more time at the table than adventuring as a group, you're talking about a play experience so far removed from what my experience and reading tells me is 'typical' for gaming that we may as well be discussing different hobbies.

comicshorse

2014-10-16, 12:26 PM

If these things take up more time at the table than adventuring as a group, you're talking about a play experience so far removed from what my experience and reading tells me is 'typical' for gaming that we may as well be discussing different hobbies.

I'd say that depends on the game you're playing. Certainly my experience would put individual RP'ing as taken up as much time as 'adventuring' as being the standard for the groups I game with

Amphetryon

2014-10-16, 01:24 PM

I'd say that depends on the game you're playing. Certainly my experience would put individual RP'ing as taken up as much time as 'adventuring' as being the standard for the groups I game with

Is it then your contention that RPGs are not, as a majority, a group activity? If so, how would you classify them instead, and what specific RPGs are you referencing to reach that particular conclusion? If not, then what, precisely, are you disagreeing with regarding the point that RPGs are a group activity?

The Insanity

2014-10-16, 01:58 PM

Is it then your contention that RPGs are not, as a majority, a group activity? If so, how would you classify them instead, and what specific RPGs are you referencing to reach that particular conclusion? If not, then what, precisely, are you disagreeing with regarding the point that RPGs are a group activity?
{{scrubbed}}

LaserFace

2014-10-16, 02:34 PM

Even the most atrocious DMs I've had weren't the sort of control freaks we're discussing in this thread. I'd say their biggest faults were that they were Just Stupid.

I've never had the urge to ban phones or books or whatever at the table. I don't really establish "rules", apart from encouraging the players to approach the game as a group activity. Work together. Don't metagame. Don't be an annoying prick. There isn't much to it, beyond that. If I do something that departs from a previous ruling, I explain my thoughts (maybe we actually got it wrong last time). If I think something is dumb, and don't want it in the campaign, I ask the players how they'd feel about it being absent (ie the Dragonborn race).

I DM because I want to give my friends a good time, and spare them the really ****ty D&D experiences I've had as a player. I approach it honestly and with some deal of effort, and I think it prevents most of the need for really controlling anything, because it seems the players want to work with me whenever they can. Overall, I think D&D goes very well at our table because we all trust each other and want to contribute to a group experience, as friends. I consider myself very fortunate to be part of my current group.

I think some DMs might be controlling when they feel other players aren't giving the game respect; maybe their first thoughts aren't about how their game fails to draw the appeal they want it to (and that lack of appeal invites distraction or poor attitude), but rather they focus on how obnoxious the players are. I know when I was young and new to DMing, the idea of controlling my players was much more appealing, because they were a bunch of knobs. But, while they were knobs, I was also just a bad DM, so, I don't think there was much helpful encouragement going either direction.

For those of you who are unfortunately encountering these situations, I recommend trying to communicate your honest feelings or find better parties. Although, sadly, I find communication will only work with some people, certainly not with DMs who are Just Stupid.

So, my advice is play with friends, or people who you can befriend.

comicshorse

2014-10-16, 03:01 PM

Is it then your contention that RPGs are not, as a majority, a group activity?

It isn't, I just feel it isn't necessary for all the P.C.s to be involved in the action for every second of every session and neither does anyone I currently game with, or gamed with in the recent past (roughly 20 or so people).
RP'ing involving just one (or two or three) of the group pursuing their own goals is important (IMHO) to help develop both their characters and the world in more depth

If so, how would you classify them instead, and what specific RPGs are you referencing to reach that particular conclusion?

This holds true for every game I play or GM ( and have played in the recent past) Vampire, Cyberpunk, Changeling, Warhammer, Victorianna, Serenity etc

If not, then what, precisely, are you disagreeing with regarding the point that RPGs are a group activity?

I wasn't

Amphetryon

2014-10-16, 04:13 PM

{{scrubbed the original}}

I'm unsure why I was quoted in order to generate this response, as it has no bearing on the statement I made which you quoted.

Talakeal

2014-10-16, 05:06 PM

The former - not having time to state your abilities made me think of a bunch of people staring at a board, rolling dice quickly and watching the numbers hawkishly, everyone knowing what's going on... with dice flying too fast for people to get a word in about what they mean edgewise. :smalltongue:.

I normally RP quite a bit in combat, although I will admit that in the middle of a vey long combat I do sometimes get low on energy and switch into tactical wargame mode. When I DM I normally narrate everything at the start and end of combats, have named NPCs banter with their opponents, and during the middle of combat only narrate unusual tactics or especially good / bad rolls. I have been told that I actually give too much detail, as some groups I DM for don't know what clues are relevant vs. background dressing.

As for the other PCs, it varies by person. Some RP quite a bit, other's not at all, and some of them can't go more than 30 seconds without cracking a joke. There is also at least one person who fails at basic math or coordination or who is just plain indecisive and their turn takes longer than everyone else's combined, so I wouldn't worry about the game going too fast.

I can understand this, which is why I don't see phone dismantling as reasonable. However, confiscation may be in order (But emergencies can still get through) because there are a LOT of people with no phone discipline who will vehemently deny it even while trying to furiously text and not pay attention to what's going on.

Yeah, but I don't feel that I have the authority to make those kinds of demands of my friends. I request that they not text or play games or browse the internet, and they generally grumble and get defensive but end up complying in the end. I have yet to have someone so addicted to their phone that either of us really needed to force the issue. Also, if you confiscate the phone, how do they know whether or not an incoming call is an emergency or not?

draken50

2014-10-16, 05:42 PM

See the reason I have my no-phone rules was because of a player who would compulsively mess around on his phone.

A lot people may not realize this, but it's fairly common for people who would otherwise be invested and engaged with a game or other social activity to get distracted by their phone. Much as I appreciate the baseless accusations that if anyone is looking at their phone it's because I run a boring game, there are people who are not good at putting away other distractions. Comparatively, you might look at the kind of people who when on vacation still must compulsively check and respond to emails... on their phone, and find it difficult to separate themselves from said piece of technology.

So my player, and good friend, would be engaged in the game, then receive a text, check it respond to it, and start messing around on his phone, losing track of the game ect. As a result of that and the disruptions it regularly caused. I.E. Multiple times a session. I had to instigate a no phone rule. I will say, if you find the game so boring that you need other avenues of entertainment, then find another game. I have watched a player in a game I was not running get very defensive that he should be able to play WOW during the game, because he was just farming, and this kind of bull reminds of just that kind of entitled behavior.

Sartharina

2014-10-16, 05:54 PM

Yeah, but I don't feel that I have the authority to make those kinds of demands of my friends. I request that they not text or play games or browse the internet, and they generally grumble and get defensive but end up complying in the end. I have yet to have someone so addicted to their phone that either of us really needed to force the issue. Also, if you confiscate the phone, how do they know whether or not an incoming call is an emergency or not?They can take it if it rings. They have to hand it over to the "Confiscated Phone Shelf" so they don't grab and start browsing on it (And I give my phone to someone else because Grepolis can be addicting) without an incoming call/text.

As a DM and game host, I derive my authority from consent of the governed. All rules in place are the will of the table, and enforced by the DM.

draken50

2014-10-16, 06:24 PM

As a DM and game host, I derive my authority from consent of the governed. All rules in place are the will of the table, and enforced by the DM.

Bingo.

My no phone rule was enacted with a vote, of myself, and all but one person at the table. It seems the only person not bothered by the phone use, was the person using the phone. If I had a game where all of my players wanted to just use their phones, I would not have that kind of rule. I also wouldn't run the game. That's the beauty of table-top games. Anyone can run them. If you don't like my rules, you can run your own game, and I can choose to obey your rules and play, or not.

Talakeal

2014-10-17, 12:38 AM

Bingo.

My no phone rule was enacted with a vote, of myself, and all but one person at the table. It seems the only person not bothered by the phone use, was the person using the phone. If I had a game where all of my players wanted to just use their phones, I would not have that kind of rule. I also wouldn't run the game. That's the beauty of table-top games. Anyone can run them. If you don't like my rules, you can run your own game, and I can choose to obey your rules and play, or not.

Its a shame people can't come to some sort of compromise. It seems like such a small thing to quit a game over on either side.

Nagash

2014-10-17, 03:02 AM

I watch a lot of cricket, and have seen a fair amount of (association) football, to say nothing of other sports.

Really? Because you didnt name one yet.

Nagash

2014-10-17, 03:04 AM

If these things take up more time at the table than adventuring as a group, you're talking about a play experience so far removed from what my experience and reading tells me is 'typical' for gaming that we may as well be discussing different hobbies.

That probably explains the disconnect then. In all my years of gaming this has been pretty much the norm in all my groups, as a player or a GM.

Aedilred

2014-10-17, 05:07 AM

Really? Because you didnt name one yet.

Sorry, I have no idea what you're even talking about at this point, or why my naming one (in addition to the two I mentioned in the post you quoted) would be in any way helpful or more relevant than what I've already said on the subject.

Amphetryon

2014-10-17, 08:09 AM

That probably explains the disconnect then. In all my years of gaming this has been pretty much the norm in all my groups, as a player or a GM.

I'm fascinated that the folks you game with would feel a need to come together as a group at all, given the dynamics you've described are essentially completely devoid of anything that makes an RPG a social game. Do you exclusively PbP?

draken50

2014-10-17, 11:38 AM

Its a shame people can't come to some sort of compromise. It seems like such a small thing to quit a game over on either side.

The not having phones was the compromise... See, it wasn't "You have poor impulse control control with your phone, you're out of my game." It was, "Because you can't pay attention to the game when you have the phone, you will need to set it across the room when we are playing game."

I doubt many of us with the rules made them due to one incident, but when the player is the type to make excuses or say "sorry, won't happen again" and then do it again 5 minutes later and make more excuses when it's brought up... yeah... a rule gets created that everyone abides by.

sktarq

2014-10-17, 12:21 PM

Its a shame people can't come to some sort of compromise. It seems like such a small thing to quit a game over on either side.

If it means that one side or another is not having fun then why not? If the Dm and other players take the phone as an insult (which I totally get with some levels of phone distraction) then asking that player to stop or leave is really the only way.

As just like I'm not a fan of certain RPG's and thus don't play in them because I don't find it fun. I find certain splats change their base games in ways that lower the amount of fun. As a player I may well have to deal with the parts I dislike less and so have a higher tolerance of such things but as a DM I don't want to sacrifice my fun (nor that of the other players who will be harmed by my lack of attention and commitment to the game resulting from that) for the sake of a splat.

Also DM may well ban certain options splats etc for one game and then allow them the next and visa versa in order to shape a specific campaign feel. If a 16th century western European inspired game bans ninjas, shujenga, wu jen, and barbarians I'd call that fair.

There seems to a be an assumption that if a DM understands it that they will find it okay. But understanding how Tome of Battle works (and trying it out) didn't make me like it. I disliked what that rule set did to game play. So I just have avoided games that used the rule set. Just like I avoid 4e

Nagash

2014-10-17, 04:43 PM

I'm fascinated that the folks you game with would feel a need to come together as a group at all, given the dynamics you've described are essentially completely devoid of anything that makes an RPG a social game. Do you exclusively PbP?

Actually no i hate PbP. Tried it once and was bored stiff.

Our games run more like action movies or heist movies. If you watch things like heat, oceans 11 and the expendables theres definite times when the group is working together on some goal and you know they are a group with a shared goal (usually) but theres also lots of individual stories going on that bring those characters and their motivations to life.

Basically everyone gets their guitar solo on each adventure. I would guess this grew out of most of the people I've played with coming from games like world of darkness and spycraft where a majority of the session was RP and only a small part was tactical combat or dungeon crawling type stuff.

The group works together because most of the time we are basically mercenaries who can get more done working together then alone, or we're all fugitives who escaped together and are more likely to stay free as a team then alone. Those sorts of stories and games thrive off of individual stories and how they are woven together.

NichG

2014-10-17, 08:59 PM

Tzi

2014-10-17, 09:56 PM

I have an incredibly chill and wonderful set of players whom honestly I often rely upon for knowledge of the rules and in some cases the group partially DM's themselves when it comes to raw rules. Also no phones? no reading your own rulebook? seating charts? Jesus freaking Buddha muhammed that sucks. The players often are entrusted to keep track of their own characters and mechanics and we only pass around the rule book if there is a dispute or a possible conflict between raw rules and the game world.... which I freely admit happens because I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of all the rules.

To date I've never come down against players for being late, but I DID get angry when a player was just deliberately ****ing around. Like she said "i'm good to game," but then told us to play without her because she insisted on installing a gate latch on her garden gate at her house and so we spent two hours without her character.

HOWEVER

I've been called a total control freak by one member of the circle for my world building techniques and practices. Mainly players can't be WHATEVER they want in the context of homebrew worlds. Back stories need a degree of approval and I have to help give advice and tweaks to fit within the worlds lore and context at times. Thanks to 5e this is less difficult but still....

ALSO I don't allow any homebrew race a player chooses out of a hat. I have a predefined and pretty rigid list of races, classes and available items that exist within the logic of game world. This only becomes a conflict because this player is a hyper optimizer and munchkins as much as he can but then again I rarely invite him to my sessions because of this.

I maintain dictatorial godlike control over the world I've built and will very rarely bend lore or write whole new lore unless the players idea really lights a spark in me. In most cases Ideas and lore for CERTAIN players are an after thought justification to optimize ahead of RP and or a ton of rule lawyering to break the spirit of game and its world.

Nagash

2014-10-18, 06:43 PM

If the individual side-stories are important for tying together the game like you suggest, then the justification of 'it doesn't involve me so what does it matter if I'm not paying attention' doesn't fly. If they aren't important (e.g. they're not something that the other players benefit from being aware of) then it should be done as a downtime action, where that particular player meets with the DM to run the side-scene. In both cases, the DM and player should first ask themselves 'do I really need to do this alone?' and 'is there some way I can stretch things to involve everyone in this activity?'

Your missing the point entirely. Its not supposed to involve everyone. Its not an everyone time of the game. Its an individual time of the game and the other characters dont know what your doing during it. You might fill them in later on some of what you did, all of what you did or none of it at all.

Thats the point. Your character is a real person, he didnt surrender his individuality when he joined an adventuring party and what he does may or may not have anything to do with the rest of the group.

For example, if a player is going off on the side to deal with a situation in which a demon has a lien on their soul, and is just doing it solo because they're an untrusting sort of person, then from the meta-game point of view it makes sense to encourage something like 'the other PCs notice him slip out and follow'.

No it doesnt. At all. Its not a group story and that character may or may not want the rest of the characters to know. And frankly the "group" is your co-workers. Thats like saying the guys from your office should follow you around after work and spy on everything your doing the rest of the time. Its creepy, weird and stalkerish.

If a player is going off on the side to have his PC romance a particular priestess who his character is taking a liking to and has to deal with some particular awkwardness centered around that, then it doesn't make sense for the other characters to tag along, but assuming that this isn't just 'I continue the courtship' but rather is something with important decisions to be made, it's fairly character-defining and the other players should watch attentively.

If it doesnt involve their characters... no they shouldnt. It doesnt involve them and their characters dont know about it. It has nothing to do with them. And even if it will involve the group later, their characters arent there, so all they should know about is what the character who was there chooses to tell them.

If the player is going off on the side to do something like order 8 specific magical items from his supplier, where there's no real character development or relevant decision-making going on, then it should be done offline via email with the DM.

Again nope. Thats a game activity and it happens during game time. Dont bother me in the middle of the week with game stuff. I'm busy with my job, wife and 4 children. I am not doing game stuff any time but game day.

As a player, a particular pet peeve of mine is for gaming tables where people eat up a lot of time with things that matter only to them and which they could have gotten done just fine before game (shopping for gear, etc).

that stuff is the game too. Theres more to gaming then the time your killing monsters. It is a roleplaying game after all not an MMO

Amphetryon

2014-10-18, 07:20 PM

Actually no i hate PbP. Tried it once and was bored stiff.

Our games run more like action movies or heist movies. If you watch things like heat, oceans 11 and the expendables theres definite times when the group is working together on some goal and you know they are a group with a shared goal (usually) but theres also lots of individual stories going on that bring those characters and their motivations to life.

Basically everyone gets their guitar solo on each adventure. I would guess this grew out of most of the people I've played with coming from games like world of darkness and spycraft where a majority of the session was RP and only a small part was tactical combat or dungeon crawling type stuff.

The group works together because most of the time we are basically mercenaries who can get more done working together then alone, or we're all fugitives who escaped together and are more likely to stay free as a team then alone. Those sorts of stories and games thrive off of individual stories and how they are woven together.

My emphasis. Either you're changing your definition of "most of the time" based on the answers you're giving, or you're contradicting earlier statements you made that indicate that most of the time you're off doing things separately, rather than working together.

NichG

2014-10-18, 10:21 PM

Your missing the point entirely. Its not supposed to involve everyone. Its not an everyone time of the game. Its an individual time of the game and the other characters dont know what your doing during it. You might fill them in later on some of what you did, all of what you did or none of it at all.

Thats the point. Your character is a real person, he didnt surrender his individuality when he joined an adventuring party and what he does may or may not have anything to do with the rest of the group.

No it doesnt. At all. Its not a group story and that character may or may not want the rest of the characters to know. And frankly the "group" is your co-workers. Thats like saying the guys from your office should follow you around after work and spy on everything your doing the rest of the time. Its creepy, weird and stalkerish.

If it doesnt involve their characters... no they shouldnt. It doesnt involve them and their characters dont know about it. It has nothing to do with them. And even if it will involve the group later, their characters arent there, so all they should know about is what the character who was there chooses to tell them.

That's why he can do things over email with the DM when you aren't asking everyone else to sit there and pretend not to hear. The point is that the players are more important than the characters - its not good to do things that waste people's time, either as a player or as the DM.

Again nope. Thats a game activity and it happens during game time. Dont bother me in the middle of the week with game stuff. I'm busy with my job, wife and 4 children. I am not doing game stuff any time but game day.

By insisting on this, you're valuing your own time at about 4-5x the rate of the time of the other players. If you spend an hour during game doing stuff they can't participate in, then they've each wasted an hour of their time. If every player ends up doing this, then on the whole all of you will have less time for your busy lives outside of game for the same length of actual in-game play-time.

If you have 6 players and a game session that is normally 6 hours long, you could either have 3 hours of shared game and 3 hours of each of the players doing a 30-minute bit of maintenance/shopping/side-story alone. Or you could shorten the game session to 5 hours and have each player spend an hour before game emailing the DM about their downtime actions, then have 5 hours of shared game. The net result is that everyone gets to play an extra hour and a half. Or you could shorten the game to 3.5 hours and then everyone gets to hang out with their kids/do chores/etc for an extra hour and a half.

that stuff is the game too. Theres more to gaming then the time your killing monsters. It is a roleplaying game after all not an MMO

That stuff is stuff that can be done without having the DM and other players as a passive audience. It makes no difference, and you're explicitly saying that 'they have no right to be involved in it because its unreasonable for their characters to stalk you', so why exactly do you need to have them at the table when you do it? You aren't even 'showing off' because you're insisting they not watch.

Here's an idea: why not do this kind of thing on your own when other people are taking their turn in combat, rather than playing with your phone? You evidently have lots of spare time in the game, so you might as well use it to take care of those things which don't involve the other players.

Nagash

2014-10-19, 01:18 AM

My emphasis. Either you're changing your definition of "most of the time" based on the answers you're giving, or you're contradicting earlier statements you made that indicate that most of the time you're off doing things separately, rather than working together.

Not at all. Most of the time when we are killing things for money we get more done together that way.

But killing things for money is a very small amount of the game time. So most of the actual game time is doing things that may or may not be benefited by acting as a group and often arent.

Nagash

2014-10-19, 01:27 AM

By insisting on this, you're valuing your own time at about 4-5x the rate of the time of the other players.

Nope. I'm giving it an exact 1 for 1. 1 minute of game time is one minute of game time. Period. For everyone.

None of my players mind because they know they can get that solo time too. They are individuals who happen to be part of a team.

And since I'm not a control freak jerk about phones or what not, when its not your solo time you can chat OOC, order a pizza, screw around on your phone or whatever you want to do.

We are friends, and D&D is a social activity. Its not a class, job or responsibility. We come together on sundays because we like to hang out together, and we like gaming. Its not one or the other.

When your playing you play and when your not up to bat you hang out and socialize.

Gamgee

2014-10-19, 01:37 AM

It seems kind of pointless to call everyone up to come and play at one specific area around a table and play dnd when you could be doing anything. Sounds like you don't play DnD you have social events that happen to have DnD as one of many possible things to do.

If people were constantly getting off focus way too much I put them back on track because the whole point of this is to play DnD. If I want to hang with them I can call them to do that. There are a lot of better activities to do casually than DnD. At least from where I'm looking at things.

All my players feel the same. We have a "if your not bringing your game then just do your own thing" policy. Usually they won't show or a few players will split off and do other things as long as its away from the main table and not interrupting us. If you had intentions of coming and not playing and taking a semi active role in the events even then there is no point showing since your going to be slowing down and interrupting everyone else who is. I'm not saying we're all business or hardcore we like to have jokes and fun too, but at the end of the day DnD is the main event.

If its a board game or video games or something no one cares, but DnD is pretty big.

Haven't really had to enforce any of these things it's just people showing each other common respect. Other than the few times we have to remind each other to stay a little more on task. And if no one can concentrate or we're all too busy having fun doing something else? We'll move away from the table and just do something else instead of forcefully trying to play DnD. It happens.

comicshorse

2014-10-19, 10:05 AM

I'm genuinely surprised this is a surprise to people, I haven't played (or G.M.'ed) a game in years that wasn't a roughly equal mix of all group stuff and individual/ some of the P.C's Rp'ing

DM Nate

2014-10-19, 11:52 AM

I'm genuinely surprised this is a surprise to people, I haven't played (or G.M.'ed) a game in years that wasn't a roughly equal mix of all group stuff and individual/ some of the P.C's Rp'ing

Depends on the history of the players. Some are accustomed more to epic-style games where each player has their own individual side-story. In the games I DM, on the other hand, the players play together or not at all; I'm not going to waste other peoples' time when we only have opportunity to get together once a month.

NichG

2014-10-19, 04:26 PM

Depends on the history of the players. Some are accustomed more to epic-style games where each player has their own individual side-story. In the games I DM, on the other hand, the players play together or not at all; I'm not going to waste other peoples' time when we only have opportunity to get together once a month.

Its not even an 'either/or' situation. You can have games where every character has their own individual side-story, but you run it in such a way that everyone always has something game-related to be doing. For example, by making it a prerequisite to find reasons to involve the other PCs when doing those side-story arcs if you want to do them during the main session, and then making use of Skype or a forum component to the campaign in order to do downtime things between games. Or having a game system where the players can take over parts of the DMing for a bit, and while the DM runs a side-scene for player A then player B runs a collective scene for players C,D,E (or vice versa - player B runs the side-scene for player A, while the DM runs the collective scene for C,D,E).

So you can have a epic-style game with developed individual storylines without asking a bunch of people to sit around bored waiting for their turn. You just need to be ready to take the metagame needs of the players and the game into account (e.g. 'my character is a loner and only spends time with the party when forced to' is going to be a problem, so it becomes a 'decide to react differently' type of situation).

Talakeal

2014-10-25, 07:01 AM

Jornophelanthas

2014-10-25, 07:36 AM

Also, the rule about no OOC dialogue apparently also applies to conversation between the PC and the DM. The DM made a comment about how I kept failing a roll, I said that it was because I only had a +1 bonus, and he gave me a lecture about meta-game talk at his table!

This is just silly. If the DM expects all players to speak in character all the time, even to him, then it would not be unreasonable for you to say that Thorgrash the Fierce (or whatever your character is called) does not understand the disembodied voice that demands he "rolls" something, and will not give in to the urges to shout out seemingly random numbers between 0 and 30, lest his companions think he is crazy.

This DM seems to want to overregulate his players to such an extent that he may grant or take away their right to speak. Are you also forbidden from saying that you are enjoying the game if your character happens to be standing in a Silence area?

Amphetryon

2014-10-25, 08:12 AM

Not at all. Most of the time when we are killing things for money we get more done together that way.

But killing things for money is a very small amount of the game time. So most of the actual game time is doing things that may or may not be benefited by acting as a group and often arent.

So, "most of the time" is equal to "a very small amount of the game time"? How does that work, exactly? Is there some usage of fast and slow-moving demiplanes going on here that I didn't see?

NoldorForce

2014-10-25, 09:25 AM

Knaight

2014-10-25, 09:26 AM

So on the subject of declaring actions:

Last night I was fighting an enemy and declared I was attacking an enemy. I rolled to hit and damage with my sword. The DM ruled that because I didn't specify I was DRAWING my sword before attacking I had to reroll the attack as an unarmed attack. Note that I also never said I didn't draw my sword, I just sort of assumed it was the sort of thing an adventurer would do in a dungeon, but whatever. So I made an unarmed attack, missed, and took an AoO.

The next round I specifically stated I was drawing my sword and readying an attack.

Then when my third turn came around I rolled my d20 and damage. The DM then stated that because I didn't declare what I was doing first (even though my entire previous round's action was draw my sword and prepared to attack) that my attack was invalid and I missed my turn.

I was pissed and almost rage-quit the game right there.

Also, the rule about no OOC dialogue apparently also applies to conversation between the PC and the DM. The DM made a comment about how I kept failing a roll, I said that it was because I only had a +1 bonus, and he gave me a lecture about meta-game talk at his table!
This isn't control freak DMing so much as just terrible* DMing. It honestly reminds me of elementary school - I inadvertently brought free form role playing to an elementary school through my brother, and a lot of 4th graders and similar found this sort of nitpicking funny. There was a lot of people walking into doors because people didn't specify they opened them first, and this DM sounds like they would fit right in - though they wouldn't fit in with the crowd that didn't do that and played better games.

So, what I'm saying is that this guy is GMing like a particularly incompetent 4th grader with no experience. A particularly incompetent 4th grader who probably isn't even interested in RPGs, at that.

*Insert profanity-filter violating word of your choice if you want here, because it probably fits.

So, "most of the time" is equal to "a very small amount of the game time"? How does that work, exactly? Is there some usage of fast and slow-moving demiplanes going on here that I didn't see?
It says that most of the time is applied to a particular subset, which works out to not-most of the superset. Say we have G, which is the time in the game. Then we have C and O, which is combat and other. In C we have the subset T, which is where the teamwork comes in. The information given gives us:
T/C>.5, probably significantly.
T/G<.5, probably significantly.
C/G<.5, probably significantly.

Where the middle term is implied by the outer two.

Jay R

2014-10-25, 11:25 AM

As a DM and game host, I derive my authority from consent of the governed. All rules in place are the will of the table, and enforced by the DM.

That is theoretically incorrect, although in practice it comes to nearly the same thing.

I derive my authority by saying, "I'm going to run a game, and these will be the rules." All rules in place are at the will of the DM. People then agree to play it based on their consent to be governed by those rules. But they didn't tell me I had the authority to make rules; they looked at the rules I proposed and accepted them.

As I said, it comes to nearly the same thing, but they cannot, for instance, decide that I have to stop running AD&D and start running 4E, or something.

They can certainly propose a rule and try to convince me to adopt it. If they succeed, then it is adopted by the will of the DM. If they fail, they can play under my rules or go elsewhere.

Telok

2014-10-25, 01:45 PM

I'm thinking about the last game I ran (D&D, not the Paranoia filler games when too many people were unable to attend). I wrote into the rules of the setting modifications that prevented long distance teleportation and magical flight, and a couple minor hinderances to making custom magic items. I was explicit about the emphasis on exploration, discovery, and using the magic items looted from dungeons instead of going to magic-mart.

One of them started going in for permanent flight at 7th level, mostly through class feature mounts and the Phantom Steed spell. They kept it up even after I told them that they were missing encounters, dungeons, and loot by being too fast or too far away. I just had NPC adventuring groups clear out the places after the party was too high a level for it to matter. When they complained that the NPCs had better reputations than they did I pointed out that they never told anyone who they were or what they were doing, they just went into town to visit merchants and then left the same day. All told I think they missed about three or four dungeons from this and roughly 50,000+ gp in loot.

During this time they attacked a ruined demon forttress to get demon hearts because they wanted someone to make fire resistant saddles for them. All well and good except that they were completely unprepared. No cold iron or silver weapons to bypass DR, no Protection from Evil, no See Invisible, everyone carrying light sources through the darkness... Several of them died. That wasn't a problem, the problem was that one of them threw away one of the parts of the demon-killing, plot-critical, artifact sword that they had found becuse it was "too confusing and complicated". Of course he threw it away literally just outside the walls of the fort.

The sorcerer-sage who was helping them to find the other parts by divination and research was pretty pissed when they told him "Don't bother, we dropped it in the demon fort." The Deva he called up was pretty pissed too. Becuse if the party had done any research, or just asked anyone with more than 4 ranks in Knowledge (History) they would have known that the ruined demon fort had a closed portal straight to the lower planes in it and that part of the artifact sword that had been used to close it (yup, same on that they had) could be used to open it again.

Ever after that there were dire mutterings about how they should go murder the sorcerer-sage for insulting them. So I statted up him and his tower just in case.

I wanted to not be railroady, but they insulted or ignored several powerful NPCs and never prepared or planned for anything. I kept feeling that I had to push or pull them in paticular directions to keep them from just murdering anyone who didn't immedately kowtow and fawn at their feet. This was in addition to them never talking to anyone but merchants and so not knowing anything about the world around them beyond what they directly observed (the arcana and nature knowledges topped out about +10 because they needed to get into prestige classes, nobody ever had any other knowledge skills).

Perhaps I shouldn't have pushed them. Maybe I should have let them murder the judge that they suspected of taking bribes in the town square in front of her children. But I don't know if they would have enjoyed being hunted outlaws in a setting slowly being overrun by demons that they weren't competent to fight.

Palanan

2014-10-25, 02:12 PM

Originally Posted by Sartharina
As a DM and game host, I derive my authority from consent of the governed. All rules in place are the will of the table, and enforced by the DM.

"We who are as good as you swear to you who are no better than we, to accept you as our king and sovereign lord, provided you observe all our liberties and laws; but if not, not."

:smallsmile:

Originally Posted by Jay R
That is theoretically incorrect, although in practice it comes to nearly the same thing.

I derive my authority by saying, "I'm going to run a game, and these will be the rules." All rules in place are at the will of the DM.

To me these seem like very different approaches. I agree with Jay that in practice they more or less converge--but not always, which can cause issues if the players are expecting one approach and the DM another.

I have the sense that some of this is demographic, related to different editions and age groups. Like myself, Jay is an older gamer who's accustomed to a particular style in which the DM has final authority over rules and decisions. Players can certainly voice their opinions, but ultimately the DM has the last word.

There are younger cohorts in which the gaming style is…not quite democratic, but much more insistent on a give-and-take, with an expectation that players can heavily influence rules and their application. I'm not enough of a scholar of editions and their ramifications to point to any causes, but I've certainly seen the effects at close range.

Knaight

2014-10-25, 02:29 PM

To me these seem like very different approaches. I agree with Jay that in practice they more or less converge--but not always, which can cause issues if the players are expecting one approach and the DM another.

They seem about the same, honestly. In either case, the DM has the power - Jay's example of not having to run 4e isn't implied by Sarathina's statement, as that would be break the power distribution of her system. Jay's example still requires on the authority coming from the consent of the governed, as the authority doesn't exist unless people voluntarily choose to subject themselves to it - it's not derived from the initial set up at all, as it vanishes even with that set up if the players choose not to play.

Talakeal

2014-10-25, 02:57 PM

But why is the GM the only one who gets to make my way or the highway demands?

I have been in several players where a player made demands on the group and hold the game hostage until it was met. Either because we had a small enough. Group that without them there would be no game, because they hosted the game, were the only one who owned the books, or were giving other players a ride.

Sartharina

2014-10-25, 03:05 PM

But why is the GM the only one who gets to make my way or the highway demands?Because you let him.
He's the one making and running the game. Show the DM the highway and elect one of your other players to DM a game instead (And possibly exclude the original DM).

Just as a player needs to balance his desire to play a game with his personal threshold for tolerance with a game, players need to make DMs balance their desire to run a game with the power they want to have over it.

The Insanity

2014-10-25, 03:12 PM

But why is the GM the only one who gets to make my way or the highway demands?
He doesn't. You can always DM yourself.
Oh, you don't want to? Guess you'll gonna have to go with the DMs demands then.

Palanan

2014-10-25, 03:14 PM

Originally Posted by Talakeal
I have been in several [games] where a player made demands on the group and hold the game hostage until it was met.

"Holding the game hostage" is a completely different dynamic than the DM establishing and enforcing the rules of play. The latter is part of ordinary gaming, the former is clearly dysfunctional as you've defined it.

Originally Posted by Sartharina
Just as a player needs to balance his desire to play a game with his personal threshold for tolerance with a game, players need to make DMs balance their desire to run a game with the power they want to have over it.

And this by way of perfect example of the more recent attitudes towards gaming.

Talakeal

2014-10-25, 03:24 PM

I just don't see it.

How is having a DM saying "You can't play unless you are wearing a blue shirt with a green tie" a perfectly reasonable part of the gaming experience, but the player who hosts the game saying "I demand that everyone plays a bard because I want them buffs" a dysfunction? Either one is a refusal to compromise and an attempt to lord your power over people who should be your friends.

icefractal

2014-10-25, 03:25 PM

The DM ruled that because I didn't specify I was DRAWING my sword before attacking I had to reroll the attack as an unarmed attack. Oh god, "Simon Says" DMing, the lowest of the low. I hate that **** with a fiery passion, and probably would have simply just halted the game and refused to proceed until the DM rolled back this idiocy, or doubled-down on it (at which point I would leave). Makes me annoyed just hearing about it. :smallmad:

Anyway - something I do, that I realized people might consider controlling: I don't do book-keeping during game-time. That means that no chargen at the table (I have pregens if needed), no leveling-up at the table, shopping stays off the table as much as possible.

I'm fine helping people with these things, outside the game. It's just that after having more than one session completely consumed by stuff that could have been handled beforehand, I've got no patience for it anymore.

Re: "Group chargen builds in connections!" - I'm specifically talking about crunch-medium or heavy systems where the character mechanics take some time to make even after the concept is decided. We do discuss the campaign as a group before-hand, and talk about character concepts then.

Talakeal

2014-10-25, 03:27 PM

He doesn't. You can always DM yourself.
Oh, you don't want to? Guess you'll gonna have to go with the DMs demands then.

Right, but that goes both ways.

For example: There is a gaming group of six guys. Five of them get together and tell the fifth "You WILL DM for us, and when you do you will play with X house rules in Y campaign setting." He can always refuse, but if he wants to be part of the gaming club, he is going to have to go with the groups demands.

Or let me put it another way, saying "If you don't let me win I am taking my ball and going home," is considered immature and rude behavior for children, but it appears as though numerous adults think it perfectly reasonable to pull the same stunt if people do not bow to their every demand and cater to every whim, and that seems really weird to me.

The Insanity

2014-10-25, 03:38 PM

Right, but that goes both ways.
Finding new players is easier than finding DMs.

Talakeal

2014-10-25, 03:49 PM

Finding new players is easier than finding DMs.

Good DMs are hard to find, but if the were good DMs they probably wouldn't be pulling half of this nonsense.

Bad DM's are a dime a dozen. I have voluntarily left a lot of games because of bad DMing, I have never felt the need to kick a player out of my group.

LaserFace

2014-10-25, 04:03 PM

Like, I think the DMs ought to be lenient, but I also think players shouldn't be upset when a DM says something is inappropriate given a particular setting. Neither should be at extreme, although by nature of the DM being the provider of setting material, themes, etc, it does seem that players do have to follow his or her lead a little bit more. Or else you just don't have those things defined.

Roxxy

2014-10-25, 04:48 PM