Quote from: Mishihari on October 24, 2022, 01:57:01 AM

Quote from: SHARK on October 23, 2022, 04:56:47 PM
Any kind of fucking "Pacifist" Character. Come on. The DM needs to pull their head out o their ass and grab their own balls and tell such a stupid player NO. NO pacifist hippy druids.

Not really on the main topic here, but I'm going to quibble with this point.  Back in the day, I wrote a bunch of specialist clerics for my 2E setting, and one of them was pretty much a pacifist.  I think they might have been allowed to defend themselves in limited fashion if attacked, but that was it.  They had weak physical combat abilities (of course), and no offensive spells, but compensated with good buffs, vastly improved healing, and a permanent sanctuary spell.

Only one player ever rolled one, but his character was an awesome combat medic.  He was always in the thick of things, helping his comrades.  He was really brave too – he'd step between enemies and injured PCs to stop an enemy attack, praying (  ) that his sanctuary would hold.  It would mostly work, but I recall that he very nearly died that way when got between a BBEG and a downed PC and got skewered by a poisoned spear for his trouble after the BBEG made his save.

I guess the point is that almost any concept can work, but only if the player is not going to be an idiot about how to use it.

Well, I think this helps demonstrate a distinction between the involved/party-focused pacifist PC and the self-involved/disruptive pacifist PC.

The former decides they're playing a pacifist and looks for other ways their PC can assist their party (one or more of healing, buffing, support spells, skill monkey and face are good choices).

The latter decides they're going to play "the load" (a character in a typically comedic narrative who must be guarded or protected by the actual protagonist and exists only as source of obstacles to an otherwise straightforward task) and picks pacifism (and likely some other trait like suicidal curiosity or a code/rules that prevents them from doing anything useful) as their means of burdening the rest of the party, ideally until it breaks, because they find it entertaining (at best, they're funny enough be entertaining as they make the actual adventure harder... more typically the joke is funny only to them).

Quote from: SHARK on October 23, 2022, 04:56:47 PM
Greetings!

Yeah, it doesn't require weird races to be out-of-place. Even a Human character, with some inappropriate profession, religion, philosophy, or ideology, can be a really poor fit for the rest o the group. Not just a poor fit--but just entirely unworkable and inappropriate.

Any kind of fucking "Pacifist" Character. Come on. The DM needs to pull their head out o their ass and grab their own balls and tell such a stupid player NO. NO pacifist hippy druids.

Once, I had a dumb player want to play a genteel, urban schlub with a Rapier. I told him he would die out on the wastes. The second session with his character he was overwhelmed by Beastmen, and a heavily armoured Chaos Warrior brought him down with his Greatsword. The Beastmen proceeded to rip him apart, roast him over the bonfire and devoured him.

Inappropriate armour. Inappropriate weaponry. Inappropriate Character Type. I allowed him to learn the hard way. In future campaigns, I skipped the harsh lessons for the dumber players and just said NO. NO to A, B, C, or D. Whatever. Enforce the standards of the campaign, and of the group.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

I play the ball where it lands. I do a lot of setup before I start a campaign, I want my PC's to adapt and overcome. I get a *lot* of players that love the quick rapier wielding effete douche and when we're out in the frontier, they know it well ahead of time. If they're new players, my veteran players always warn them about my... interest... in environmental gameplay.

haha so it's always a blast when I put them through the task of making survival checks and making them go the wringer they set themselves up for - I *expect* them to roleplay it, and start dealing with it or suffer all the ramifications I put barbarian-types when the PC's have to go into the Big City and interact in hoity-toity affairs.

For me - this is all grist for the mill. Pacifist PC's? No problem... but you'll be expected to pull your weight or you can expect that PC to be booted from the group (or likely get himself killed.) But every now and then I'll get a player that sticks to their guns and they figure out how to make their little weird schtick work. But Pacifist? I've had a few players try... it's never worked longer than a session or two. And every single time they ended up becoming blood-curdling killers-of-monsters and men.

I don't *let* anyone make just anything for their PC tho. Players are pitching their PC concept to me (and the rest of the group) *after* I pitch them the campaign. So everyone is well aware of snowflakey concepts someone might bring in, and how it might impact everyone else. And it's my job to contextualize it - and if we can't agree that it might not be fun/appropriate it gets vetoed pretty quick.

There are inappropriate concepts, and then there are disruptive players. Those are important distinctions. You shouldn't have disruptive players at your table, for the obvious reason that there is a correlation between the two issues. New GM's have to usually learn to curate their groups. My players might be "new" relatively, but they learn pretty quick that I'll entertain "snowflake" concepts but they'll equally need to be prepared that they may not like the context... I'm open if they are. But that's also because I try to strongly instill the tone of the setting and my players are mildy mature enough to get it.

Quote from: Mishihari on October 24, 2022, 01:57:01 AM

Quote from: SHARK on October 23, 2022, 04:56:47 PM
Any kind of fucking "Pacifist" Character. Come on. The DM needs to pull their head out o their ass and grab their own balls and tell such a stupid player NO. NO pacifist hippy druids.

Not really on the main topic here, but I'm going to quibble with this point.  Back in the day, I wrote a bunch of specialist clerics for my 2E setting, and one of them was pretty much a pacifist.  I think they might have been allowed to defend themselves in limited fashion if attacked, but that was it.  They had weak physical combat abilities (of course), and no offensive spells, but compensated with good buffs, vastly improved healing, and a permanent sanctuary spell.

Only one player ever rolled one, but his character was an awesome combat medic.  He was always in the thick of things, helping his comrades.  He was really brave too – he'd step between enemies and injured PCs to stop an enemy attack, praying (  ) that his sanctuary would hold.  It would mostly work, but I recall that he very nearly died that way when got between a BBEG and a downed PC and got skewered by a poisoned spear for his trouble after the BBEG made his save.

I guess the point is that almost any concept can work, but only if the player is not going to be an idiot about how to use it.

Greetings!

No doubt, my friend!

Certainly, there are some "Pacifist" character concepts that can be interesting and meaningful, as you describe.

Furthermore, there are on rare occasion such players that can play such characters well, in a mature, rational, and entertaining manner.

However, I generally subscribe to the idea of "Possibility and Probability". Anything is "possible"--but what is more than likely to be probable?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Chris24601 on October 24, 2022, 09:27:36 AM

Quote from: Mishihari on October 24, 2022, 01:57:01 AM

Quote from: SHARK on October 23, 2022, 04:56:47 PM
Any kind of fucking "Pacifist" Character. Come on. The DM needs to pull their head out o their ass and grab their own balls and tell such a stupid player NO. NO pacifist hippy druids.

Not really on the main topic here, but I'm going to quibble with this point.  Back in the day, I wrote a bunch of specialist clerics for my 2E setting, and one of them was pretty much a pacifist.  I think they might have been allowed to defend themselves in limited fashion if attacked, but that was it.  They had weak physical combat abilities (of course), and no offensive spells, but compensated with good buffs, vastly improved healing, and a permanent sanctuary spell.

Only one player ever rolled one, but his character was an awesome combat medic.  He was always in the thick of things, helping his comrades.  He was really brave too – he'd step between enemies and injured PCs to stop an enemy attack, praying (  ) that his sanctuary would hold.  It would mostly work, but I recall that he very nearly died that way when got between a BBEG and a downed PC and got skewered by a poisoned spear for his trouble after the BBEG made his save.

I guess the point is that almost any concept can work, but only if the player is not going to be an idiot about how to use it.

Well, I think this helps demonstrate a distinction between the involved/party-focused pacifist PC and the self-involved/disruptive pacifist PC.

The former decides they're playing a pacifist and looks for other ways their PC can assist their party (one or more of healing, buffing, support spells, skill monkey and face are good choices).

The latter decides they're going to play "the load" (a character in a typically comedic narrative who must be guarded or protected by the actual protagonist and exists only as source of obstacles to an otherwise straightforward task) and picks pacifism (and likely some other trait like suicidal curiosity or a code/rules that prevents them from doing anything useful) as their means of burdening the rest of the party, ideally until it breaks, because they find it entertaining (at best, they're funny enough be entertaining as they make the actual adventure harder... more typically the joke is funny only to them).

Greetings!

*LAUGHING*!! Exactly, Chris!

I believe it's possible to have a mature and reasonable player play some weird kind of Hippy Pacifist. When you find such a player, that's great!

But, as I discussed previously, or implied, yeah. What is the more commonly encountered player seeking to play such a character? These kinds o characters are on one hand played for laughs--which has some merit, to be sure--but, as you mentioned, is more than likely to get old *fast*.

The majority o the time such characters are played to intentionally derail and jack with the rest of the party and make their life more difficult--all while the weird character's player gets to smugly hee hee at everyone else's expense.

So, yeah. I think the best policy is just to say NO right rom the get go.

I've had groups of all Marines that their characters would just gang on the problem character down and kill them. End of problem. Even later on--and now, most of my current players just wouldn't tolerate such a dysfunctional character.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: tenbones on October 24, 2022, 11:00:54 AM

Quote from: SHARK on October 23, 2022, 04:56:47 PM
Greetings!

Yeah, it doesn't require weird races to be out-of-place. Even a Human character, with some inappropriate profession, religion, philosophy, or ideology, can be a really poor fit for the rest o the group. Not just a poor fit--but just entirely unworkable and inappropriate.

Any kind of fucking "Pacifist" Character. Come on. The DM needs to pull their head out o their ass and grab their own balls and tell such a stupid player NO. NO pacifist hippy druids.

Once, I had a dumb player want to play a genteel, urban schlub with a Rapier. I told him he would die out on the wastes. The second session with his character he was overwhelmed by Beastmen, and a heavily armoured Chaos Warrior brought him down with his Greatsword. The Beastmen proceeded to rip him apart, roast him over the bonfire and devoured him.

Inappropriate armour. Inappropriate weaponry. Inappropriate Character Type. I allowed him to learn the hard way. In future campaigns, I skipped the harsh lessons for the dumber players and just said NO. NO to A, B, C, or D. Whatever. Enforce the standards of the campaign, and of the group.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

I play the ball where it lands. I do a lot of setup before I start a campaign, I want my PC's to adapt and overcome. I get a *lot* of players that love the quick rapier wielding effete douche and when we're out in the frontier, they know it well ahead of time. If they're new players, my veteran players always warn them about my... interest... in environmental gameplay.

haha so it's always a blast when I put them through the task of making survival checks and making them go the wringer they set themselves up for - I *expect* them to roleplay it, and start dealing with it or suffer all the ramifications I put barbarian-types when the PC's have to go into the Big City and interact in hoity-toity affairs.

For me - this is all grist for the mill. Pacifist PC's? No problem... but you'll be expected to pull your weight or you can expect that PC to be booted from the group (or likely get himself killed.) But every now and then I'll get a player that sticks to their guns and they figure out how to make their little weird schtick work. But Pacifist? I've had a few players try... it's never worked longer than a session or two. And every single time they ended up becoming blood-curdling killers-of-monsters and men.

I don't *let* anyone make just anything for their PC tho. Players are pitching their PC concept to me (and the rest of the group) *after* I pitch them the campaign. So everyone is well aware of snowflakey concepts someone might bring in, and how it might impact everyone else. And it's my job to contextualize it - and if we can't agree that it might not be fun/appropriate it gets vetoed pretty quick.

There are inappropriate concepts, and then there are disruptive players. Those are important distinctions. You shouldn't have disruptive players at your table, for the obvious reason that there is a correlation between the two issues. New GM's have to usually learn to curate their groups. My players might be "new" relatively, but they learn pretty quick that I'll entertain "snowflake" concepts but they'll equally need to be prepared that they may not like the context... I'm open if they are. But that's also because I try to strongly instill the tone of the setting and my players are mildy mature enough to get it.

Greetings!

Hey Tenbones! "The effete rapier-wielding douche.." *Rolling* Yeah, man! You got that right! It's like, dude, the Rapier didn't replace the plate armoured Knight because it was *better*. It's called *muskets*. In a Medieval or Dark Ages world...a Rapier would be laughed at. In this world, there's a reason why only aristocrats living in highly urban cities use them, and no one else does...*Laughing*

I front load the harsh reality of my game world to players as well. I try and short-cut anyone wanting to be really dumb though. It just saves everyone more time. I try to steer players towards many different character types and classes, but all geared at surviving and playing well within the game world itself.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

I don't disagree at all that sometimes players are trouble makers, sometimes they want snowflake characters without regards to the setting, and that the latter you can accommodate if you want.

However, somewhere along the way, I found myself drawing the line in a much simpler method:  Is the request to accommodate the character going to cause me trouble?  Do I think the player has not thought it through?  Is it going to be more work for me to handle it than it is for the player to make it work?  If it starts to drift into that realm, the answer is still, "No."  Yeah, I could make it happen, but I don't want to. 

Naturally, I'll cut the players putting in effort a lot more slack.  One of my central tenets for living in this world is that when I find someone not putting in an effort, I'm looking for a way that it becomes their problem, not mine.

One of my guiding principles in this is that it's really important to not interfere with players' ability to play their characters the way they want.  I get to control the whole world.  They only get to choose their characters' actions.  Taking away even a bit of what little control they have over the world makes the game markedly less fun.  If something is in the campaign and it doesn't give them an unfair advantage over the other players then they're free to do it.  That said, I don't change the world to accommodate oddball ways to play either.  It's a violent world out there and the enemies don't care about your pacifist principles, they'll still kill you if given the chance.  If a player wants to behave in a way that's countersurvival, he'd better be very smart about it or have his next character rolled up and ready to go.

Quote from: Mishihari on October 25, 2022, 12:30:08 AM
One of my guiding principles in this is that it's really important to not interfere with players' ability to play their characters the way they want.  I get to control the whole world.  They only get to choose their characters' actions.  Taking away even a bit of what little control they have over the world makes the game markedly less fun.  If something is in the campaign and it doesn't give them an unfair advantage over the other players then they're free to do it.  That said, I don't change the world to accommodate oddball ways to play either.  It's a violent world out there and the enemies don't care about your pacifist principles, they'll still kill you if given the chance.  If a player wants to behave in a way that's countersurvival, he'd better be very smart about it or have his next character rolled up and ready to go.

And I think that this sums it up nicely.

At the end of the day, the game is a cooperative effort between the GM and the Players.  There's got to be some give and take to keep it fun for everyone.  Flexibility, yes; chasing after every Player's whim?  No.

Quote from: Osman Gazi on October 25, 2022, 09:43:00 AM

Quote from: Mishihari on October 25, 2022, 12:30:08 AM
One of my guiding principles in this is that it's really important to not interfere with players' ability to play their characters the way they want.  I get to control the whole world.  They only get to choose their characters' actions.  Taking away even a bit of what little control they have over the world makes the game markedly less fun.  If something is in the campaign and it doesn't give them an unfair advantage over the other players then they're free to do it.  That said, I don't change the world to accommodate oddball ways to play either.  It's a violent world out there and the enemies don't care about your pacifist principles, they'll still kill you if given the chance.  If a player wants to behave in a way that's countersurvival, he'd better be very smart about it or have his next character rolled up and ready to go.

And I think that this sums it up nicely.

At the end of the day, the game is a cooperative effort between the GM and the Players.  There's got to be some give and take to keep it fun for everyone.  Flexibility, yes; chasing after every Player's whim?  No.

I think WOTC's latest epiphany, is that not only should the game be about the DM catering to the players' whims; the rules as written should both allow and encourage it.  WOTC wants to pigeon hole DM's into that role.

I wholeheartedly agree. WOTC seems to be contributing to the tide of player entitlement that has become a problem for myself and other GMs - expecting the GM to bend over backwards to accommodate all of their crazy demands for a game. The GM is not being paid (usually), so why should we pander to their unreasonableness?

Quote from: phantomness on November 08, 2022, 07:43:11 PM
The GM is not being paid (usually), so why should we pander to their unreasonableness?

If the GM was being paid, firing the unreasonable customer(s) would be prudent. The expectation used to be bringing an appropriate character to game, like bringing skates and a hokey stick to an ice hokey game, instead of of the currently promoted make a game out of whatever whacky trash players fancy. Garbage in, garbage out, so I do not see how one could make a great game around bad characters. However, it is seen as unfashionable to declare any concept nonfunctional or inappropriate and turn it away, it must be the GM;s fault for failing to turn lead into gold.

Quote from: Wisithir on November 08, 2022, 08:19:49 PM

Quote from: phantomness on November 08, 2022, 07:43:11 PM
The GM is not being paid (usually), so why should we pander to their unreasonableness?

If the GM was being paid, firing the unreasonable customer(s) would be prudent. The expectation used to be bringing an appropriate character to game, like bringing skates and a hokey stick to an ice hokey game, instead of of the currently promoted make a game out of whatever whacky trash players fancy. Garbage in, garbage out, so I do not see how one could make a great game around bad characters. However, it is seen as unfashionable to declare any concept nonfunctional or inappropriate and turn it away, it must be the GM;s fault for failing to turn lead into gold.

Welcome to theRPGsite, phantomness.

In my experience, I'd prefer to deal with this by selecting players. I find that if a player really wants to bring an inappropriate character who will ruin the game, then I don't want them in my game even if they're forced to take a more standard character.

What I'm curious about for anyone is - how would you say that WOTC is contributing to the problem? They're publishing new races and new classes, but D&D has always had a steady stream of those. As I see it, they're available options if the DM wants them.

Going to acknowledge that I misspoke there - the only way I would probably say WOTC would be directly contributing to the problem of player entitlement would be if they made RAW state that the DM must put the player's needs before their own - in which case I would probably stop GMing for any edition of D&D.

Thanks for the welcome, jhkim!

All I have noticed from my experience hanging out on the official D&D Discord is seeing how self-identified players and GMs interact in chat, and how people who have differing opinions get shouted over and publicly shamed a lot while the moderators there do not always respond to what is happening. 

WotC contributes to the problem by having new content come with a use anywhere/everywhere implication and never encouraging curating or culling contents. They want sales so are pushing a buy and use everywhere mentality instead of simply expanding options. A book of options is great, and one might choose to use none of them, but X more core classes implies that there are now N+X options to choose from instead of a GM curated selection of Y choices out of N+X possibilities.

I recruited on Roll20 for a 5e game. The expectation among the '5e public' is definitely that anything should be allowed, even though I explicitly said PHB + Xanathar's only. Often players don't know or care where stuff comes from, it appears on eg D&D Beyond and that's enough for them.