Why does no one ever address the "DMs are selfish" problem?

[90sMusic]

I have been an avid watcher of the Acquisitions Incorporated games and Critical Role games for years now and I love watching all of the associated content. A lot of it features the DM's like Matthew Mercer and Chris Perkins talking about how to be a really good DM. I've also watched other videos on the same topic from the likes of Matthew Colville and a number of others who are both "big names" and just random people who have played for 20+ years.

They all say very similar things about how to adapt your story and campaign and change interactions and so on to suit the players and make it more enjoyable for them...

That is what all of them say. All of them.

But the REALITY of D&D I have found to be completely different. Every DM I come across has their own little "vision" for what they want their world to be and what they want their game to be. They will deny absolutely everything that doesn't conform exactly to the little story they want to tell, sometimes even blocking out entire races or classes from the PHB just because they don't like them. They create new, arbitrary rules that disrupt the balance of the game just because they had a bad experience with something one time. They only follow the game rules when they work in THEIR favor, but anytime the game rules work in the favor of a player the DM ignores the written rules and instead changes things so they basically get their way.

I have been browsing through roll20 a lot lately going through all the 5e, weekly games and checking them out, and they all have a long list of very specific rules to follow to get into the games. I've read a lot of posts in their game forums between the players and their DM and it basically goes like this:
Player says "Why do we have this optional/variant rule? No one in the party seems to enjoy it."
DM says "Because I want it there."
Second player says "I agree, the game would be a lot more fun without it. It adds needless complication, time, and difficulty to even mundane actions."
DM says "I'm the DM, i'm god, I do what I want, if you dont like it then you leave"

I mean that is the exact OPPOSITE of what all the good DM's say you should do, but the reality is that seems to be how 99% of the DMs really act. They aren't interested in working with the players to craft a world or a story or coming to an agreement on any rules beforehand or anything like that. Instead, the DM already has an idea in their head before they even put together. They already choose all the rules they want, the world and setting and races and classes they will allow, they make all the decisions by themselves before there are even players to give any input. And while it is true the players agreed to play under those conditions when they joined the game, they had no realistic way of knowing how those various homebrew rules would interact and affect them once they actually started playing. They could've been having a great time playing except for a few nagging annoyances that are completely contrived and forced on them by the DM and then when they speak to their DM about it (which again, all the good DMs giving advice on how to DM always say you should talk it out with your players, etc) the DM basically just acts like the selfish kid who says "we play with my rules or im taking my football and going home".

I've noticed the exact same mentality on these forums too unfortunately. When people ask for help and get responses, or people just randomly comment on other threads, people always crop up talking about what great DMs they are while mentioning all the bad rulings and various rules they create and force on their players. Even here in a place that I would think would actually be open to the cooperative D&D experience has a bunch of DMs who are basically set in their ways and aren't open or tolerant to ANYTHING outside their tiny bubble of what they accept.

It is really hard to see DMs as anything more than that little brat of a kid that threatens to take their ball home, effectively ending the game for everyone, if they don't get their way.

I have been DM over many games and i've always worked with my players to make it work. I have modified my world in ways, some big, some small, in order to make their character concept work or i'll make some slight changes to their character to make it work and fit (for instance, someone wanted to play a dragonborn in a world I created that didn't have dragonborn, so i ultimately decided to let them be a dragonborn but we just labeled them as a half-dragon and modified his backstory a bit. Eventually his mother became one of the antagonists that wouldn't have even existed without that change).

Point is, I make the effort to work with people. I have changed huge parts of story elements I have had planned due to a particular choice a player has made, sometimes I change up the campaign goals entirely to something more fitting. Now I don't just do whatever the players want because sometimes they want outrageous crazy stuff like to play dragons or deities and weird stuff like that, but I do try to make things work out and I DM with the general idea that my job as the DM is to make the players have fun. Other DM's seem to only care about living out their own little fantasies or only ensuring that THEY have fun.

It is very disheartening and disappointing to see it over and over and over, anywhere you look that has people actually playing D&D. When you want to use your foot to nudge someone awake and the DM makes you roll and you roll a natural 20 so you kick their head off as a result, that is just stupid. I'm sorry, but that is the truth.

Are there any DM's out there who actually work with their players and build the world together instead of making all of the decisions themselves? Any DMs who enjoy the game vicariously through their players and focus on their players having a good time instead of changing all the rules so that YOU as the DM have all the "fun" at the player's expense?

How do you, as a player, navigate the waters of all of this douchey, selfish DM mentality that pervades D&D? Why does no one ever seem to talk about it or mention it when it is so prevalent and exists everywhere that D&D does? I mean when you have certain types of players like the min/maxer or the murderhobo, those topics are routinely addressed and made fun of, but the most common type of DM that exists never gets a mention?

[Yora]

RPG advice is mostly by GMs for GMs. For GMs to adress the problem they have to believe there is a problem in the first place. Unless GMs start asking "why do my players always run away?" there isn't really much to talk about.

As a player there isn't really anything to do about it other than telling the GM that you only want to play in the campaign if it is played differently. The GM can then take it or leave it.

[Mechalich]

Leaving aside the merits of the argument entirely, the key issue is supply and demand.

Players are abundant, GMs are not. There is always a shortage of GMs, whole gaming groups are forced to undertake kludges to have a game at all such as rotating GMs or badgering the most experienced player into GMing. In most cases where there's drama between a gaming group kicking out a player is a viable option while kicking out the GM is not, because it means the group ceases to exist. So no matter how valid your criticism of a GM may be, it's meaningless unless you are in a position to have someone else shoulder the burden. So long as there is a GM shortage, the bar for GM success is merely 'better than not having a game at all' which is incredibly low.

[Yora]

There's also always "If you think you know better, do it yourself".

Which really is not that difficult as everybody always makes it. The biggest challenge to that is that RPGs never explain how to run them. The last time I've seen an RPG explain how it's played was in 1983.

[Zalabim]

Briefly, I think the preponderance of advice in the vein of "yes, but" and "work with your players" and "Understand your player's motivations" is a tacit acknowledgement that there's a lot of GMs that need this advice.

It's sort of similar to how tech support starts with the stupid questions, and relationship advice begins with "talk to the person instead of strangers on the internet." It gets said so much because so many people get it wrong.

[Yora]

There is a lot of great different perspectives that GMs can get from talking to strangers on the internet. It's pretty much the only way to see different perspectives of how you see your job and goals as a GM.
But for that GMs first needs to see that there is a problem with how they are doing things so far.

[RazorChain]

How do GM's know that they are good GM's? Because the players tell them so, the players express their excitement and can't wait for the next session.

I'm old and selfish. I've been running games for almost 30 years...I have wife, kids and a career and only time for biweekly gaming. I run what I want, how I want and because I have no problem finding players that express their excitement and tell me I'm good. I don't guess I doing something right, I know goddamn well I'm running my games right because I've been told so dozens of times. I don't need those what's their names bigshots to tell me how to run my games I've been running them at least as long as them. I've run over dozen systems which is why I don't refer to myself as DM but GM because it's the most neutral term for all the systems I've run. When the time comes that players don't flock to my table and I don't have to turn people away and I sit there alone playing solo...hating my GM then I might start running something that isn't my vision or what I want to run. Or who knows? Maybe I could get to play some?


I have every right to be selfish because I pour my blood, sweat and tears into my games and my settings, I've spent hundreds of man hours on my campaigns. I'll also tell you a little trade secret, when I run my "vision", then I'm engaged, I'm excited about my games and you can bet that translates into a far better experience for my players.


I'm a selfish, dirty, bastard GM and you can bet that my players come back and beg for more.

That being said, I always work with my players to make their stay in my "vision" a fantastic experience and I'm far too old and experienced to make people roll unnecessary rolls to wake someone up, or if you manage to get on the back of your horse or if you manage to climb over that 4' fence.

So before you take a dump on all those decent GM's on these forums you should ask those whiney players to step up and run the game they want.

[90sMusic]

Leaving aside the merits of the argument entirely, the key issue is supply and demand.

Players are abundant, GMs are not. There is always a shortage of GMs, whole gaming groups are forced to undertake kludges to have a game at all such as rotating GMs or badgering the most experienced player into GMing. In most cases where there's drama between a gaming group kicking out a player is a viable option while kicking out the GM is not, because it means the group ceases to exist. So no matter how valid your criticism of a GM may be, it's meaningless unless you are in a position to have someone else shoulder the burden. So long as there is a GM shortage, the bar for GM success is merely 'better than not having a game at all' which is incredibly low.

I suppose this is the crux of the issue and why they feel they can do anything they want with impunity.

I've DMed countless games over the years, some of which lasted for more than a year. I like to DM, but sometimes I just want to kick back and be a player sometimes too because as a DM you don't get the sense of "wonder" and not knowing that the players do and they get to solve puzzles and figure things out and make connections, and that kind of stuff is fun too.

The thing that really got me to thinking about this whole ordeal was I was browsing roll20 again tonight because I was considering looking for another group to play in and I saw an old game and DM I played with months ago. Absolutely terrible DM that railroaded you into ever encounter, always treated the players like they were disposable human garbage. Even in the applications to join his game he responded to virtually every post someone made with some sort of a meme image from the internet with some kind of disappointed face or something equally childish, without actually saying anything in response to any of them. When I played with him however long ago, all of his players left his game because the guy was so bananas and loved to change the rules on the fly to just try to make things harder on the players just because he wanted us to die now and then and force us to roll new characters. We all left and I watched that listing for about a week afterwards and he filled up with 5 new unfortunate souls. Since then I noticed that same posting up 2 more times. He keeps losing all of his players than just grabbing new ones every few weeks so when I saw his post up yet again tonight, all I could do was shake my head. And I got to thinking about it and honestly he isn't that much different from most other DMs I have played with. They just treat it like it's their own little solo adventure they're playing by themselves for their own amusement and the players are just there to give some semblance of credibility to the whole thing.

It is just such a shame because D&D has infinite potential for fun but finding a DM that isn't god awful and horrific is next to impossible. They all have so much baggage and craziness they drag around with them and none of them are willing to actually do the job or do it well, they are just in it for themselves. Reminds me a lot of most forum moderators actually. It's like they just enjoy having some tiny amount of authority over another person and try to abuse it as much as they can for as long as they can and don't actually care about doing their "job" and any resemblance of them doing their job is just a byproduct of their immense desire to use whatever power they actually wield.

I always enjoy the experience vicariously through the players. To me, the more fun they have, the more fun i'm having. When they spend the entire week group texting about what they think is going on and what they plan to do next and so on, it makes me feel good and accomplished to have gotten them all so engaged and to have them all talking about their own conspiracy theories and trying to puzzle things out and all that. They don't even have to tell me they had fun because I can see that they enjoy themselves and are all really involved in the plot and characters. To me, that is enough. I don't have to beat them down and feel like i'm "winning" to enjoy it or to throw omnipotent characters in the middle of them that are protected by plot armor to just toy with them and abuse them (I see this happen a LOT) with impunity. I keep my world consistent once they begin playing, but I will bend or change things to make the players happy before we begin. A player who can't really play what they want to play will usually be half miserable and always thinking of what "could" have been if they could have made the character they actually wanted to. Some of those little tweaks have led to some of the most interesting D&D experiences i've ever had.

I played with some DMs that were so controlling, they would take your backstory and rewrite it. I always found the opposite to be more satisfying, because instead of forcing their characters bluntly into your world you can adjust your world to them instead. You can get extra NPCs and towns from their backstories. You can get additional quests and allies and villains from their backstories. You're really denying yourself another source of content for yourself and your players to explore just because you want to have absolute god-like control over everything. It is kind of disgusting to be honest. Those people should write fan-fics instead of play D&D because they want every character to be and do exactly what they want and they certainly aren't good enough to write anything of higher quality like a book.

I'll never like or respect DM's who are self centered. They have their toys and won't let anyone else play with them unless it's entirely their game, their rules, no exceptions, no compromise, etc. They shoehorn enough players into their game who have little or no experience or they are just really desperate to be able to play at all and they have a good time because it's better than nothing. And they love living on that threat of taking their ball home if they don't get their way. I enjoy games of D&D between friends and friends have more of a communal and cooperative relationship. Dictators and control freaks aren't friends. They just "use" those people they play with for their own purposes. It's kind of sad really, but I don't think they'll ever realize what they're missing out on because whatever it is inside them that is broken in the first place won't let them ever see it. They just need a few pats on the back from players who are starved for a game to play and will take anything and they're convinced they are doing a good job and will continue to do so. And if anyone ever has a problem with them? Boom, just boot em out and replace em with the countless interchangeable cogs that they see players as instead of people and certainly not as friends.

[Koo Rehtorb]

But the REALITY of D&D I have found to be completely different. Every DM I come across has their own little "vision" for what they want their world to be and what they want their game to be. They will deny absolutely everything that doesn't conform exactly to the little story they want to tell, sometimes even blocking out entire races or classes from the PHB just because they don't like them. They create new, arbitrary rules that disrupt the balance of the game just because they had a bad experience with something one time. They only follow the game rules when they work in THEIR favor, but anytime the game rules work in the favor of a player the DM ignores the written rules and instead changes things so they basically get their way.

I have been browsing through roll20 a lot lately going through all the 5e, weekly games and checking them out, and they all have a long list of very specific rules to follow to get into the games. I've read a lot of posts in their game forums between the players and their DM and it basically goes like this:

I'm going to be controversial here for a minute.

D&D attracts bad players and GMs. It's a system that was built on a ****ty toxic GMing culture from day one and it's poisoned the playerbase. Decades of terrible DM advice in the DM handbooks have thoroughly cemented awful DM habits (I don't want to put all the blame on D&D here, some other systems certainly have made the same mistakes). I don't want to give the impression that I'm saying you can't have fun playing D&D. It's not a system without its own merit. I'm just saying that if you want to have a good game of D&D you need a group that is actively fighting against the norm, and you don't have that pressure to contend with with every system/game culture out there.

And you're certainly not helping matters any by playing with strangers, especially internet strangers. I suggest turning your friends into roleplayers and playing with them, you're probably going to have a better time.

If you can't do that, then consider playing a different game. It's still entirely possible that you find a bad group in a different game, or even a good group in D&D. But I suggest that you're going to have better odds with a different game.

[Milo v3]

Every DM I come across has their own little "vision" for what they want their world to be and what they want their game to be. They will deny absolutely everything that doesn't conform exactly to the little story they want to tell, sometimes even blocking out entire races or classes from the PHB just because they don't like them. They create new, arbitrary rules that disrupt the balance of the game just because they had a bad experience with something one time. They only follow the game rules when they work in THEIR favor, but anytime the game rules work in the favor of a player the DM ignores the written rules and instead changes things so they basically get their way.

Sounds like you've had some crappy experiences man.

DM says "I'm the DM, i'm god, I do what I want, if you dont like it then you leave"

Sounds rather hyperbolic.

Are there any DM's out there who actually work with their players and build the world together instead of making all of the decisions themselves? Any DMs who enjoy the game vicariously through their players and focus on their players having a good time instead of changing all the rules so that YOU as the DM have all the "fun" at the player's expense?

*Points at self and basically every DM I've ever had* (can't be certain about one of them since they got banned from the forum 1 day into the game)

[sengmeng]

Well, I disagree in regards to myself and my experiences, and your philosophy in general. To me, a GM and his players are like an author and his readers, and one who takes any feedback or caters at all is being generous. A book that gives you 10 hours of entertainment may cost the author 10 years of work, so cut the guy some slack. GMs aren't quite that extreme, but they will be doing homework outside of game sessions to tell a better story. So you might tell them "I don't feel like doing an undead hunting campaign," but he might have homebrewed ten new undead for you to fight. You might build a cleric of the god of knowledge, and he might have meant the god of knowledge to be the ultimate villain. Long story short, you lose little whims you felt like pursuing when indulging you could mean hours of work. Me, I try. One of my players wanted to be a half orc barbarian. That's socially problematical in my setting, but I gave them a quest right off to get the local populace to accept him. I'm telling a story here and your awakened yak cleric of Olidammara just doesn't seem worth bending over backwards for.

At the same time, there's more to my viewpoint than saltiness. You can't, as a GM, allow the players to peek behind the curtain and see nothing. The world falls apart if they see it as malleable and up on the air. So even if I'm pushed off the edge of the map and making stuff up on the fly, I act like its all part of the plan, and if I actually have a plan, I don't like it getting altered. I'm not saying I fudge numbers to keep the villain alive if it's not their time to die; I reward player luck and ingenuity even when it throws a monkey wrench in the plot. What I won't do is have that villain I statted up get shelved because someone else hijacked my narrative with their dread necromancer whose even worse than the villain.

TL;DR version: By telling you no, GMs are saving themselves from hours of homework on top of already having lives and homework for a game.

[Lorsa]

What makes you think no one ever address this problem? I believe it's been addressed multiple times, especially on this forum.

However, I do think you are mixing two things in your original post. Adapting the story, campaign and interactions to fit the players and make it more enjoyable for them is not the same as allowing all races or classes or holding to a specific set of rules.

The general framework of a setting is one thing, how the game is run is another. In an online game especially, it is not surprising that a GM (who takes the sole initiative of setting up the game) has a clear idea of the game world and the rules that will apply. That doesn't mean they should run the game in a way that makes it devoid of player input, but that is a different thing altogether.

[Sredni Vashtar]

And you're certainly not helping matters any by playing with strangers, especially internet strangers. I suggest turning your friends into roleplayers and playing with them, you're probably going to have a better time.

Respectfully, I think you have this a bit backwards. Yes, a real life friendship can be a boon to discussing what sort of game the group as a whole wants, a la session zero. However, it can be a burden if the individual parts of the group disagree on what they want. Going online, while fraught with the usual dangers of trolls, unreliability, and inconsistent schedules, allows anyone to cherry pick exactly what they want. If I want to run an all-gnome game, I could find a number of people who want to play gnomes, and anyone wanting to play an elf could easily find another game that fits their preferences. (That's a bad example, but I think it illustrates the point.)

[Frozen_Feet]

What makes you think no one ever address this problem? I believe it's been addressed multiple times, especially on this forum.

The topics of "how to be a good GM" and the relationship dynamics between players and GMs are flatly some of the most talked-about things in the entire hobby. Entire game companies have been founded on a difference of opinion on the issue.

So it's been addressed allright.

The real question is "why hasn't it been solved?"

Let me play a devil's advocate for a moment and give one possible answer:

Because selfish GMs are more active in starting games, majority of games end up with a selfish GM. This includes majority of good games. The reason for this is that a strongly GM-driven game only needs one motivated person who knows the rules to start; the other players can be less skilled or complete beginners and this will not majorly impact the stability of the game. By contrast, alternatives such as consensus-driven play requires several equally skilled people. This means that even if proportionately, GM-driven games are less succesfull, they make up with sheer volume.

In short: GM-driven games with selfish GMs are better at propagating themselves and the hobby than the alternatives. Hence, alternatives are outcompeted and left as a minority.

[pwykersotz]

Simple. Most people play as a hobby. For that reason, they have no reason to improve unless they feel they want to. Professional GM's and those who have significant visibility online have a stake in being highly skilled and widely accepted. Their brand depends on it. GM Steve down the street does not.

FYI, your argument is patently false in many ways. This forum and others encourage a lot of improvement. But you don't improve if you're shut down, and honest discussion about DMPC's, fumble rules, homebrew, and other things is necessary. That means you don't get to slap down things you don't like, even if you perceive them as toxic. If you do, you're just making people dig their heels in and be more of what you hate, rather than encouraging growth by the mutual sharing of ideas. This means that bad ideas are highly visible, and so are GM's who are in various stages of learning.

I say this as someone who has now been GM'ing almost 9 years who has been on this forum since that time. Giantitp was the first community I found for D&D, and is my favorite. I was much more terrible at GM'ing in the past, and the forums here helped me grow quite a bit. So yeah, this stuff does get talked about. And fixed.

In tems of me navigating the waters of bad GM's as a player, that's easy. I tolerate bad games. I gently make suggestions, and I roll with it when I'm ruled against. I try to be a pleasant player who people want to GM for, and that lends weight to my ideas. There are obviously some games I have to walk away from because they are just that bad, and some where I find myself incompatible with the table. But for the most part, every GM I've played under has dramatically improved over time. That's not to say I take credit, but I do feel it's a stronger place to judge from than browsing random forum games.

[Jay R]

I have never had a selfish DM. Somebody doing work so that I can play is not being selfish.

If he or she is running a game I can't enjoy, then I won't play. But far more often, the game isn't one I can't enjoy - it's just different from my original idea. That's not indicative of a poor DM. Far more often, they are just wanting to play a game tht isn't my favorite. Somebody refereeing a baseball game when I want to play football isn't being a bad football referee; she's just running a different game.

Over the years, I've had lots of fun playing in games that went in a direction I didn't want them to go. I don't have the only fun ideas, and even if my ideas are better than the DM's, playing the game she wants to run is better than not playing, and enormously better than being in a game the DM doesn't want to run.

Yes, it was originally frustrating when my would-be loner outcast thief/wizard wound up running a county, developing an army, and dealing in politics. But even though it wasn't my original concept, it turned out to be lots of fun.

D&D doesn't have to be perfect to be wonderful.

[Koo Rehtorb]

Respectfully, I think you have this a bit backwards. Yes, a real life friendship can be a boon to discussing what sort of game the group as a whole wants, a la session zero. However, it can be a burden if the individual parts of the group disagree on what they want. Going online, while fraught with the usual dangers of trolls, unreliability, and inconsistent schedules, allows anyone to cherry pick exactly what they want. If I want to run an all-gnome game, I could find a number of people who want to play gnomes, and anyone wanting to play an elf could easily find another game that fits their preferences. (That's a bad example, but I think it illustrates the point.)

This is reasonable advice if you're trying to solve a problem of people having different tastes. A more reasonable example of this is probably a group of friends who enjoy different systems. Sure, maybe the guy who loves Pathfinder and the guy who loves FATE might not be the best match for each other. That's fine.

I think the OP is describing a different problem, though. The problem the OP is trying to solve seems to be, at least in my view, nutjob, power hungry, railroading, control freaks. And that absolutely is a problem you can solve by playing with your friends. Because, presumably, you're friends with those people because you like them and get along well with them. And also your friends are more likely to listen to you when you have a problem with the way they're running something, whereas internet strangers are more likely to flip you off and make inappropriate remarks about your mother.

[OldTrees1]

The topics of "how to be a good GM" and the relationship dynamics between players and GMs are flatly some of the most talked-about things in the entire hobby. Entire game companies have been founded on a difference of opinion on the issue.

So it's been addressed allright.

The real question is "why hasn't it been solved?"

Let me play a devil's advocate for a moment and give one possible answer:

Because selfish GMs are more active in starting games, majority of games end up with a selfish GM. This includes majority of good games. The reason for this is that a strongly GM-driven game only needs one motivated person who knows the rules to start; the other players can be less skilled or complete beginners and this will not majorly impact the stability of the game. By contrast, alternatives such as consensus-driven play requires several equally skilled people. This means that even if proportionately, GM-driven games are less succesfull, they make up with sheer volume.

In short: GM-driven games with selfish GMs are better at propagating themselves and the hobby than the alternatives. Hence, alternatives are outcompeted and left as a minority.

Why hasn't it been solved?

Well, from my own perusing of those threads I notice 2 points that I suspect prevent consensus:
1) Different Strokes for Different Folks
DMing discussions that talk about more than one kind of DMing tend to end up with a spectrum of accepted DMing styles rather than a single style reaching consensus. Each of these styles receives validation from these discussions, which encourages those styles to continue to exist.
2) Resilience of a bad position
Sometimes DMing discussions isolate an example of Bad DMing. Someone that matches that example might be participating in the discussion, or may be reading the discussion later. The Backfire effect describes the phenomena where the DM's conviction in their style gets stronger when their style is being criticized.

So I think it hasn't been solved because there will never be a single solution and because the timescale for the good ideas to outreproduce the bad ideas is longer than one might have expected.

[Lazymancer]

They all say very similar things about how to adapt your story and campaign and change interactions and so on to suit the players and make it more enjoyable for them...

That is what all of them say. All of them.

But the REALITY of D&D I have found to be completely different. Every DM I come across has their own little "vision" for what they want their world to be and what they want their game to be.

That's because public GMs are lying through their teeth to make themselves look good.

GMs IRL do not get fame, publicity, and/or money for running "good" games. Consequently, they don't waste time on something they don't want to waste their time on. If they try to do something because they "must" (rather then because they have fun) they'll simply burn out and stop being GMs.

Darwinian selection: only sufficiently selfish GMs can survive.


Also, quite a lot of things you listed are a consequence of poor game design, rather than personal qualities of GMs. Just like players are incetivized by rules (3.5 being the most famous) to fight monsters and put themselves into dangerous circumstances (the only certain method of getting XP), rather than try to bypass everything, like any sane person would, so are GMs are incentivized by the existing materials to make a choo-choo out of their campaign and nerf things that might destabilize situation. This is how we get hysterical roleplaying with every event being dramatized to the absurd level. I can't even remember how many times I've seen heroes breaking in at the last possible moment, when the world is a dozen combat rounds away from destruction.

I'm going to be controversial here for a minute.

D&D attracts bad players and GMs. It's a system that was built on a ****ty toxic GMing culture from day one and it's poisoned the playerbase.

I'd say it's the opposite. It was built by amateurs and poisoned by those who thought themselves Right. Except they weren't and we are dealing with the fallout.

Decades of terrible DM advice in the DM handbooks have thoroughly cemented awful DM habits (I don't want to put all the blame on D&D here, some other systems certainly have made the same mistakes). I don't want to give the impression that I'm saying you can't have fun playing D&D. It's not a system without its own merit. I'm just saying that if you want to have a good game of D&D you need a group that is actively fighting against the norm, and you don't have that pressure to contend with with every system/game culture out there.

You don't give impression to the level of not saying anything. I can't even guess if you are part of the True Real "Roleplayer" camp or of Filthy Munchkin Roll-Player camp.

[Yora]

Let me play a devil's advocate for a moment and give one possible answer:

Because selfish GMs are more active in starting games, majority of games end up with a selfish GM. This includes majority of good games. The reason for this is that a strongly GM-driven game only needs one motivated person who knows the rules to start; the other players can be less skilled or complete beginners and this will not majorly impact the stability of the game. By contrast, alternatives such as consensus-driven play requires several equally skilled people. This means that even if proportionately, GM-driven games are less succesfull, they make up with sheer volume.

In short: GM-driven games with selfish GMs are better at propagating themselves and the hobby than the alternatives. Hence, alternatives are outcompeted and left as a minority.

I very much doubt that. It's just that people don't start forum threads about playing with a GM who does an alright job and ask for advice to help with that problem.

[Tanarii]

You seem to be talking mostly about public games, and especially online games. In public games, the DM wants to strongly define *exactly* what rules will be used before hand, along with what options will and won't be available. Before they even begin to solicit players. Doing otherwise is a recipe for a generic game that will fall apart, instead of being compelling and unique. Or at least unique enough to draw players.

Then there's supply and demand. Public games DMs are in high demand. Players are not. There's no reason for the DM to change the rules to make an exception for them, there are plenty of other players willing to take the slot.

I'm not a fan of completely inflexible DMs, because obviously that's stupid. Nor overly complex games with tons of custom character and resolution options. But you'd be surprised how many whiny special snowflake players there are, and that tends to make public DMs move into a 'my way or the highway' point of view in reaction.

[Vercingex]

Running a game requires a great deal of creative input. I imagine that lots of people who GM games (myself included) are drawn by the idea of creating a world and sharing it with other people as much as by actually running a game. And as with many creative types, they may feel resentment at having their vision tampered with by meddlesome players and PCs.

That being said, I don't think this GM "selfishness" is as big a problem as the OP suggested. As much as games need GMs, GMs need some sort of artistic vision in order to craft successful games outside of published modules.

It's a very tricky balance, finding someone who is both creative, and yet not so attached to their creations that they become unwilling to accommodate other people's ideas, just because those ideas weren't their own. A GM who can create a consistent, engaging world and incorporate the player's good ideas (and ruling out the bad ones- a GM has to serve as the judge of such things, after all).

On the subject of banning races/classes/features; Sometimes, some idea or concept just doesn't fit into a GM's setting, regardless of how hard they and the players try to finagle it. Clerics don't work in Dark Sun, period. Players may have to hold off on their current pet character concepts if it doesn't fit the setting.

[Mendicant]

Why does no one ever address the "DMs are selfish" problem?

This is probably the #1 topic of discussion here. It's been "addressed" to the nth degree.

There are a lot of reasons this happens, but the issue I've seen the most frequently is the disconnect between what makes DMing fun and what makes playing fun. An immense part of what makes GMing enjoyable is that it's a creative outlet. Anyone who's ever written fiction or created art or put themselves into something creative knows how nervewracking it can be to share that with other people who might think it's crap. With GMing, that dynamic is still there, but it's compounded. There's a power disparity on one hand, and on the other, someone who inserts the cardboard tube samurai into your lovingly-crafted L5R campaign isn't just rejecting your creation but actively crapping on it. Not everybody navigates that gracefully.

[Honest Tiefling]

Running a game requires a great deal of creative input. I imagine that lots of people who GM games (myself included) are drawn by the idea of creating a world and sharing it with other people as much as by actually running a game. And as with many creative types, they may feel resentment at having their vision tampered with by meddlesome players and PCs.

That being said, I don't think this GM "selfishness" is as big a problem as the OP suggested. As much as games need GMs, GMs need some sort of artistic vision in order to craft successful games outside of published modules.

I personally agree with this. I haven't done much collaborative world building, but when I have...It never really stuck. The GM suddenly had a lot more work incorporating random bits that weren't always coherent and learning new bits while trying to run a story. The bits put together didn't always weave together well, so it felt like a quilt of weirdness more then anything.

I always enjoy world building, and I really want to build a world to explore when DMing. It's one of the reasons I like DMing. I just have the idea of being upfront about my desires, and how I am going to be unlikely to add additional races and cultures, especially since I need trade routes and history to exist in a particular pattern. I don't think that makes me a bad DM to be inflexible on that front as long as I am honest, just a bad fit for some people.

I'd like to try collaborative world building, but I also think that the DM is a story teller. The Campaign usually has a story to tell, even if it has an episodic structure. Some people really can't make a good story if bits of the world keep changing, especially without warning. And then you have the awkward conversation of "No, that doesn't happen...For reasons. Reasons completely unrelated to the plot, I swear!"

Even the web comic attached to these forums made outright fun of the issues of collaborative world building. Ninjas, anyone?

[ThurlRavenscrof]

And you're certainly not helping matters any by playing with strangers, especially internet strangers. I suggest turning your friends into roleplayers and playing with them, you're probably going to have a better time

Agree. I got annoyed with my LGS and just started DMing and forced my friends to play with me. Since they weren't already into d&d, they would say things like "I'll play if I get to be a werewolf adventurer" or other weird things. I got used to saying yes and then figuring out how to make their requests reasonable, balanced, and interesting (rather than just saying no or just being a push over who allows a weird choice to break the game). Now I DM a lot for friends but also for my LGS.
Recently I had a combat set up with a fomorian who I had reskinned as a mad scientist who had given himself a new eyeball with magical powers. But instead of fighting him, one of my players asked the scientist to give him a new eyeball too. He rolled high enough so I made up some eye surgery rules on the spot and gave him a formorian eye... It would have been way too powerful at his level so I made the power once a day and told him he couldn't use it until his body accepted the surgery which was after the next level up.

There's always a way to say "yes and" to your players and if your dms aren't trying to, I'd maybe find some new dms

[2D8HP]

...The problem the OP is trying to solve seems to be, at least in my view, nutjob, power hungry, railroading, control freaks.....

When I last successfully GM'd a game it was for a largely improvised Call of Cthullu game back in the 1980's.

CoC was pretty easy, but I never enjoyed it as much as D&D, either as a player or as a GM, but my players preferred it when I ran non-D&D settings, so that's what I did, maybe because my D&D "settings" pretty much just were town+tavern, treasure-and-monster-filled-tombs, and bandit-filled-woods in-between.

Fast forward 25+ years, and now people want to play D&D again!

Great!

Except..

New D&D has way too many options for me to keep track of (as a player I only have to pick a simple class, ignore most of the rules, and have fun, but as a DM?).

So yes if I was going to handle being a DM I would house-rule the Abyss out of it (largely by red-penciling out most options leaving just the Starter Set/Basic rules core).

I'm fully aware that would make the game less fun for players (no Dragonborn Warlocks etc.), so I don't DM, but if I did I would need to change it enough for me to handle, and I would be a "jerk" DM as well.

...It is really hard to see DMs as anything more than that little brat of a kid that threatens to take their ball home, effectively ending the game for everyone, if they don't get their way...

Maybe you can DM?

[ImNotTrevor]

There's also always "If you think you know better, do it yourself".

Which really is not that difficult as everybody always makes it. The biggest challenge to that is that RPGs never explain how to run them. The last time I've seen an RPG explain how it's played was in 1983.

I have good news.

There are games that explain how they're played. They're increasingly common now, after Apocalypse World came out and accidentally became a central pillar to build games on like D20 systems.

Honestly, Apocalypse World is the easiest game to GM that I've ever GMed. It's awesome. 10/10 best game for a first time GM. In fact, my 60-year-old dad is GMing for the first time with this system and is doing a great job. The only way you can suck at GMing Apocalypse World is if you ignore what it tells you to do and/or try to approach it like D&D. It will break a lot of your old habits fast. (It pretty much tells you that any NPC except the truly, truly exceptional will die after 3 harm. Most characters have a weapon that deals 2 harm. Your NPCs will not last. The concept of the BBEG has no place in AW)

Anyways. Sorry to rant about my favorite system, but newer games are moving towards explaining how to GM them correctly as a whole.

[dps]

To the extent that I agree with the OP (which certainly isn't totally), the basic problem is that gaming and DMing is a hobby, not a profession. A degree of selfishness is completely justified. DMs are doing what they do for enjoyment, not the satisfaction of their "customers". If a gaming group could afford to actually hire someone to DM and pay them enough that it would count as a full-time job, because DM who didn't base their actions upon their customers' preferences would lose their jobs. Of course, really bad DMs will lose their jobs in the sense that they will lose players, but players will put up with a DM who in the players' opinions is doing a fairly bad job because it's not all that easy finding someone who is willing and able to DM. If DMs were getting paid, the same players can just hire a new DM if they weren't satisfied with the job the current one is doing.

Ask me to run a game for you and your group for free, and while I'm willing to work with you on some things, I'll run the game the way I think is best. Pay me $30,000 a year with benefits to run your game, and I'll run it your way.

[FreddyNoNose]

I suppose this is the crux of the issue and why they feel they can do anything they want with impunity.

I've DMed countless games over the years, some of which lasted for more than a year. I like to DM, but sometimes I just want to kick back and be a player sometimes too because as a DM you don't get the sense of "wonder" and not knowing that the players do and they get to solve puzzles and figure things out and make connections, and that kind of stuff is fun too.

The thing that really got me to thinking about this whole ordeal was I was browsing roll20 again tonight because I was considering looking for another group to play in and I saw an old game and DM I played with months ago. Absolutely terrible DM that railroaded you into ever encounter, always treated the players like they were disposable human garbage. Even in the applications to join his game he responded to virtually every post someone made with some sort of a meme image from the internet with some kind of disappointed face or something equally childish, without actually saying anything in response to any of them. When I played with him however long ago, all of his players left his game because the guy was so bananas and loved to change the rules on the fly to just try to make things harder on the players just because he wanted us to die now and then and force us to roll new characters. We all left and I watched that listing for about a week afterwards and he filled up with 5 new unfortunate souls. Since then I noticed that same posting up 2 more times. He keeps losing all of his players than just grabbing new ones every few weeks so when I saw his post up yet again tonight, all I could do was shake my head. And I got to thinking about it and honestly he isn't that much different from most other DMs I have played with. They just treat it like it's their own little solo adventure they're playing by themselves for their own amusement and the players are just there to give some semblance of credibility to the whole thing.

It is just such a shame because D&D has infinite potential for fun but finding a DM that isn't god awful and horrific is next to impossible. They all have so much baggage and craziness they drag around with them and none of them are willing to actually do the job or do it well, they are just in it for themselves. Reminds me a lot of most forum moderators actually. It's like they just enjoy having some tiny amount of authority over another person and try to abuse it as much as they can for as long as they can and don't actually care about doing their "job" and any resemblance of them doing their job is just a byproduct of their immense desire to use whatever power they actually wield.

I always enjoy the experience vicariously through the players. To me, the more fun they have, the more fun i'm having. When they spend the entire week group texting about what they think is going on and what they plan to do next and so on, it makes me feel good and accomplished to have gotten them all so engaged and to have them all talking about their own conspiracy theories and trying to puzzle things out and all that. They don't even have to tell me they had fun because I can see that they enjoy themselves and are all really involved in the plot and characters. To me, that is enough. I don't have to beat them down and feel like i'm "winning" to enjoy it or to throw omnipotent characters in the middle of them that are protected by plot armor to just toy with them and abuse them (I see this happen a LOT) with impunity. I keep my world consistent once they begin playing, but I will bend or change things to make the players happy before we begin. A player who can't really play what they want to play will usually be half miserable and always thinking of what "could" have been if they could have made the character they actually wanted to. Some of those little tweaks have led to some of the most interesting D&D experiences i've ever had.

I played with some DMs that were so controlling, they would take your backstory and rewrite it. I always found the opposite to be more satisfying, because instead of forcing their characters bluntly into your world you can adjust your world to them instead. You can get extra NPCs and towns from their backstories. You can get additional quests and allies and villains from their backstories. You're really denying yourself another source of content for yourself and your players to explore just because you want to have absolute god-like control over everything. It is kind of disgusting to be honest. Those people should write fan-fics instead of play D&D because they want every character to be and do exactly what they want and they certainly aren't good enough to write anything of higher quality like a book.

I'll never like or respect DM's who are self centered. They have their toys and won't let anyone else play with them unless it's entirely their game, their rules, no exceptions, no compromise, etc. They shoehorn enough players into their game who have little or no experience or they are just really desperate to be able to play at all and they have a good time because it's better than nothing. And they love living on that threat of taking their ball home if they don't get their way. I enjoy games of D&D between friends and friends have more of a communal and cooperative relationship. Dictators and control freaks aren't friends. They just "use" those people they play with for their own purposes. It's kind of sad really, but I don't think they'll ever realize what they're missing out on because whatever it is inside them that is broken in the first place won't let them ever see it. They just need a few pats on the back from players who are starved for a game to play and will take anything and they're convinced they are doing a good job and will continue to do so. And if anyone ever has a problem with them? Boom, just boot em out and replace em with the countless interchangeable cogs that they see players as instead of people and certainly not as friends.

Well, if a player doesn't like my game they are free to take a hike. I have been running games since 74 and like my old fashion ways.

There was a point where the player base started growing and became more mainstream (compared to wargamers in the 70s) and we started getting more liberal views in the game. The "good DMs don't kill players" is part of the newer thinking I reject. We died a lot back then and it was fun. If we didn't get the stats to become a paladin you didn't play a paladin. Touch luck.

Newer players didn't like that. Why can't I be a paladin. ::cries:: No wonder they believe DMs shouldn't kill players or why a player thinks he should have a say in how a DM runs his game. It is all about them.

[2D8HP]

...I have been running games since 74....

1974?

I think that makes you "King Grognard".

I bow to you sir.