How to react when a GM changes basic world stuff from norms.

[mehs]

This isn't to talk about a GM changing a world to have dragons, magic, or to have wars, but basic stuff that isn't part of the premise. For example, in most cases, a medieval fantasy setting would correlate to medieval europe for pretty much all facets not directly related to the premise. If the basic world building and premise doesn't include gold being worthless, you spend effort to acquire gold, and the gm only tells you it is worthless after you make a plan based on spending it, how should you react?

In the specific example, I did something similar, stealing a crewmate on a pirate ship's clothing in order to frame another crewmate for stealing it. In real life, clothing and bedding were *the* main valuable objects sailors owned, as clothing wears out quickly at sea (and ship companies would expect you to pay for it yourself, while gladly selling you some at the cost of what they would actually have paid you). I made checks to sneak in and steal it, and while discussing the plan with the gm after the session, I was told a couple of things:
1) The pirates only care about things with direct and innate gp worth, if it ain't a trade good, they don't care. (In fact they communally share underwear apparently)
2) They use magic to clean clothing, which in turn prevents wear from the elements to the extent where it cost only a trivial amount.
3) I can't just pick something else to steal or otherwise retcon what I did based on this new information.

Does anyone have similar experiences? Does anyone have thoughts on the matter?

[Vizzerdrix]

That seems like basic info he failed to tell you. I would want to know what other things he planned to change.

Sharing underwear is just nasty. Change your mission from a frame job, to preventing lice and fleas (among other parasites) from spreading. Throw it all overboard!

Magic laundry service at sea? Are you playing in Eberron or something?

[Batcathat]

I feel like the GM should let players know things that their characters would know but the players themselves might not ("Well, you didn't ask whether a giant monster was standing in front of you, so..."). So letting a character collect lots of gold despite presumably knowing that it was worthless seems like bad form.

In your specific case it seems like that your character would know about the clothes (it sounds like your character is one of the pirates, correct?) so assuming the GM knew about your plan, I think they should've told you clothes wouldn't work for it.

[mehs]

The assumption is apparently almost every ship has a level 2 or so arcane caster who can spam cast prestidigitation/mending to do laundry service.

I told the GM the plan just after the session where I stole the clothing. My action to steal it was essentially the last of that session.

[TheStranger]

I feel like the GM should let players know things that their characters would know but the players themselves might not ("Well, you didn't ask whether a giant monster was standing in front of you, so..."). So letting a character collect lots of gold despite presumably knowing that it was worthless seems like bad form.

In your specific case it seems like that your character would know about the clothes (it sounds like your character is one of the pirates, correct?) so assuming the GM knew about your plan, I think they should've told you clothes wouldn't work for it.

First, I agree with this - the GM should make sure you, as a player, have the information your character would have.

In this instance, however, I'm not sure your GM did anything wrong. If your GM didn't know why you were stealing clothes until after the session, he wouldn't have known you were working under a misapprehension. So he may have just been going along with a player doing something that didn't make a lot of sense to him. So maybe he could have stopped to ask you why at some point, but he's not way out of line.

Also, I'm not sure "sailors' clothes are worth a lot" is a basic world-building norm. Even if it's true that a sailors' clothes are the most valuable things he owns, that's probably more an illustration of how poor sailors are than how valuable their clothes are. Your GM also could have just said, "Okay, you now have a bunch of ratty old clothes, which you are able to sell for the whopping sum of 5 SP." He also could have said, "Those sailors are extremely pissed. Roll for initiative." Either way, the idea that you were going to gain any meaningful wealth by robbing poor people seems pretty strange.

[Zanos]

The assumption is apparently almost every ship has a level 2 or so arcane caster who can spam cast prestidigitation/mending to do laundry service.
This isn't unreasonable, arcane casters are rare, but not that rare. Considering his spellslots will usually be unspent, having the wizard you keep on retainer at sea do the laundry makes perfect sense, since it's very efficient at cleaning, and hygiene is a problem at sea.

As an answer to your general question though, this is kind of weird. Specifically coming into this thread I had no idea that sailors valued clothes unusually high. So it's possible your DM didn't know that either. I think him saying your plan fails with no chance to change your actions based on information your character should have had is unreasonable, however. I have a similar situation where I had a character inadvertently activate a magical circle that summoned an unbound Marilith. I asked the DM why I couldn't figure out that was the function when I passed my check to decipher the runes, and he told me I only translated them, I didn't interpret their meaning, which is something my character would have pretty trivially known to do. In fact, in both this case and my own, I'd argue that the DM simply doesn't want you to succeed, and is altering events such that you fail.

[Doctor Despair]

Technically, I suppose you need to make a DC10 Knowledge check to know common knowledge -- even if this is common knowledge, there is still the possibility of failure

[Batcathat]

I asked the DM why I couldn't figure out that was the function when I passed my check to decipher the runes, and he told me I only translated them, I didn't interpret their meaning, which is something my character would have pretty trivially known to do. In fact, in both this case and my own, I'd argue that the DM simply doesn't want you to succeed, and is altering events such that you fail.

Wait, maybe I'm missing something obvious here but wouldn't translating the runes pretty much be the same as interpreting them? What information did you get by translating them if not what they meant?

[BRC]

I've been on the GM side of a similar situation. I had a culture I'd described as "Vaguely Viking Based", and a player (playing a character from said culture) suddenly drops a reference to some unified governmental body, because he'd gotten excited, done a bunch of research on icelandic society in the middle ages, and made some assumptions about the world/thought i'd given him permission to invent a bunch of worldbuilding (which normally i'm down for 100%, but you gotta work with me on it).

This was for a one-shot, so it's not like i'd thoroughly built out the world, but suddenly there was this government body that would certainly have been relevant to the story had I known it existed.


This seems like a pretty simple misalignment of assumptions. You know that Clothes are some of the most valuable things a sailor would own (We think of Textiles as cheap, but before the industrial revolution, anything cloth would have been VERY important), he thinks of "Commoner's Clothes" as costing a few CP in the Phb.

I think it's less him having thought out this whole "magic laundry as the norm" thing ahead of time, and more him, starting at the assumption that Clothes are cheap, worldbuilding to justify that rather than realign his world (Which isn't an unsual or unjustified response), especially since this all got sprung on him AFTER the dice had been rolled about it.

In his shoes, I'd probably have let you change what you stole, but I can see him not wanting to (He'd approach the whole thing with the assumption you were stealing something trivial and of little value, and set DC's/NPC attention accordingly. If you suddenly retcon that you were stealing something with more value, the scene would have played out differently.


I don't really have much in the way of advice for how to handle this situation, but in the future. Often when I have plans, I find it a good step to run them by the GM/the group as a sanity check, to make sure they align with the GM's assumptions about the world, or any worldbuilding my character could be assumed to know, but I don't necessarily know. This is doubly true when the plan relies on tricking or manipulating somebody, since, in the end, it's up to the GM to determine how believable a lie is, and so it's important to make sure the GM has buy-in on your Con working before you start rolling dice to make it happen.


Imagine this, you're a GM.

the PC's are trying to break into a wealthy merchant's house, which is protected by guards. You imagine these "Guards" as the merchant's personal bodyguards, six people who work directly for the merchant.

PC: I follow one of the guards as they leave their shift.
GM: "Okay, make a stealth check to follow him without being noticed"
PC: Alright, once he's alone in the street, I cast Sleep
GM: He falls asleep
PC: Alright, I put a blanket on him so he looks like a random drunk, take his uniform and go back to the house.

At this point, you know the PC's plan, use the uniform as a disguise to get pas the guards at the door. However, now that you know the plan, you also know that it won't work, and that the PC would KNOW it wouldn't work, because there's only 6 guards, and so they'll all recognize each other. A uniform alone won't get you inside.

But, by the time you reveal that, there have been several die rolls and a spell slot invested in the idea that a Uniform is going to get somebody through the door.

maybe you didn't make the nature of the Guards in question clear, but you also never said that these Guards were part of some large organization. You might have just said "Guards", you imagined a handful of private security, the PC imagined members of the City Watch, or some large mercenary.

[Zanos]

Wait, maybe I'm missing something obvious here but wouldn't translating the runes pretty much be the same as interpreting them? What information did you get by translating them if not what they meant?
I knew they were a segment of a larger prophesy, and I got the literal meaning of the runes. But this was handwaviumed as being different from their mystical meaning, which the DM specifically told me I would have known if I had rolled another spellcraft check after the fact. Personally, I think he was just rubbing my face in it, by acting like it was my fault because I didn't know I was supposed to play 'mother may I' with his puzzle.


-snip-
While I agree that worldbuilding on the fly isn't an unreasonable response to a PC bringing in unknown assumptions, the particular case here strikes me as one where this would be unusual even in the absence of any assumptions particular to the setting. Maybe the DM considers clothes to not be the most important thing somebody owns, sure. But clothes still aren't exactly cheap, and in nearly any society framing someone for having stolen your clothes would have some impact. The DM went so nucleaur on the PCs actions that it's comical; the pirates share underwear. That's why I have trouble interpreting the DM as acting in good faith.

[Silly Name]

Even if the DM didn't know about sailors considering their clothes especially valuable, surely if someone steals my clothes I'm going to be angry at them because, well, the implication here is that I'm forced to go around in my underwear, which most people would find humiliating.

Plus I'd assume on a medieval ship you have a very small number of clothes, so it's not like I'm missing a shirt. I'm missing my whole wardrobe!


I gotta agree that the reaction seems comical and an attempt to completely stop the original plan from taking form - seriously, communal underwear? I may have went ahead and rolled with it saying the sailors interpreted this as a prank and that at worst there was some confusion but no big deal (assuming this takes place at sea and that this reaction feels appropriate), but I certainly would not retcon the ship into an hippie commune just to mess with a player's plan.

[Quertus]

Technically, I suppose you need to make a DC10 Knowledge check to know common knowledge -- even if this is common knowledge, there is still the possibility of failure

"Sorry, you failed your knowledge check to know where to put your pants, so they're on your head."

"I knew I should have taken ranks in knowing what skill was needed to know where to put my pants."

:smallbiggrin:

[Doctor Despair]

"Sorry, you failed your knowledge check to know where to put your pants, so they're on your head."

"I knew I should have taken ranks in knowing what skill was needed to know where to put my pants."

:smallbiggrin:

Hey, it's not MY fault you didn't take ranks in Knowledge: Pants...

[Telok]

At least you weren't three sessions in before you learned that the world's sun was fixed in the sky and that neither night nor moons had ever existed. Seem like the sort of thing that would be mentioned at some point during the game intro.

[nedz]

I suspect that your DM though you were doing this for the purpose of running a disguise or possibly some prank.

I doubt they considered it very important and it seems that this is simply a case of different assumption of social norms.

[Batcathat]

At least you weren't three sessions in before you learned that the world's sun was fixed in the sky and that neither night nor moons had ever existed. Seem like the sort of thing that would be mentioned at some point during the game intro.

That's... pretty bad. And unlike the price of pirate clothing, it really seems like something that would come up in the introduction to the world or campaign or whatever it was.

Also, it kinda reminds me of this poor guy (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0229.html).

[Telok]

That's... pretty bad. And unlike the price of pirate clothing, it really seems like something that would come up in the introduction to the world or campaign or whatever it was.

Also, it kinda reminds me of this poor guy (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0229.html).

In all fairness the DM did mention it at some point, just not when the whole group was around, two of the other players were not surprised. However one of those players was the DM's significant other, and the other was their best friend. The two of us only really spent time with them on the weekends were the ones caught by surprise.

[Toliudar]

This seems like an even more meta issue than explaining or not explaining your understanding of details of how the world works. It's quite likely that the DM hadn't given a second thought to how pirates value stuff...until a plan was proposed that didn't mesh with the assumptions. So they probably didn't think to establish that particular assumption on their part because curse of knowledge (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge). Keep in mind that there really isn't a 'standard mediaeval fantasy setting', just a bunch of assumptions that we each build up based on fairy stories, history classes, these discussions and all the books we've read. And so the DM's vision of 'standard mediaeval fantasy world' is not going to mesh with yours completely.

The bigger problem is that the DM seems to have clearly understood your intention with the theft and deliberately omitted an OOC discussion of how to actually mesh your goals with their vision of the reality of their world. It suggests an adversarial process that may not lead to an enjoyable game experience.

Time for a conversation about what both of you want out of a game experience?

[GrayDeath]

This seems like an even more meta issue than explaining or not explaining your understanding of details of how the world works. It's quite likely that the DM hadn't given a second thought to how pirates value stuff...until a plan was proposed that didn't mesh with the assumptions. So they probably didn't think to establish that particular assumption on their part because curse of knowledge (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge). Keep in mind that there really isn't a 'standard mediaeval fantasy setting', just a bunch of assumptions that we each build up based on fairy stories, history classes, these discussions and all the books we've read. And so the DM's vision of 'standard mediaeval fantasy world' is not going to mesh with yours completely.

The bigger problem is that the DM seems to have clearly understood your intention with the theft and deliberately omitted an OOC discussion of how to actually mesh your goals with their vision of the reality of their world. It suggests an adversarial process that may not lead to an enjoyable game experience.

Time for a conversation about what both of you want out of a game experience?

Couldn`t have said it better.

[mehs]

For reference, The pirate I had stolen from to frame another person was the quartermaster.

The scene immediately after the PC's were pressganged onto a pirate ship was a person being brutally executed (keelhauled) for stealing from the quartermaster's store.

[Vizzerdrix]

Hey, it's not MY fault you didn't take ranks in Knowledge: Pants...

Side note: D&D has sever!l magic nipple rings, but not a single pair of pants. Why is this?

[Doctor Despair]

Side note: D&D has sever!l magic nipple rings, but not a single pair of pants. Why is this?

No one in 3.5 actually wears pants. It's common knowledge in every setting, but no one -- not even the illustrators -- thought to ask for a roll in Knowledge: Pants to find out.

[Vizzerdrix]

No one in 3.5 actually wears pants. It's common knowledge in every setting, but no one -- not even the illustrators -- thought to ask for a roll in Knowledge: Pants to find out.

Hmm... Legs isn't even an item slot. Would that mean no one wears pants because no one has legs? Does everyone go from hips, right to feet?! :smalleek:

By Pelor! If the average human male is a bit under 6 feet tall, but none of that is leg, what do humans REALLY look like in D&D? I think we are on to something. Does any racial description even mention legs?

[Doctor Despair]

Hmm... Legs isn't even an item slot. Would that mean no one wears pants because no one has legs? Does everyone go from hips, right to feet?! :smalleek:

By Pelor! If the average human male is a bit under 6 feet tall, but none of that is leg, what do humans REALLY look like in D&D? I think we are on to something. Does any racial description even mention legs?

New headcanon is all DnD characters take the form of Rimworld-style pawns

[Vizzerdrix]

New headcanon is all DnD characters take the form of Rimworld-style pawns

But even they can wear pants. No shoes though. I bet that is why rimworld has no glass or nails.

[Celestia]

It wasn't D&D, but I once had a jerk of a GM do that to me. I made a knight character (after he no save killed my last character), so, naturally, I gave her a horse. I show up to the session with my horse riding knight, and he asks me how the heck I have a horse. I said I converted build points into money and bought it. Then he just says that no, I can't have a horse and makes up some bullcrap about how horses are extremely rare and expensive and that he'll totally explain it later. And then he refused to refund the build points I spent.