The SJWhiners are fading away. Slowly but surely they're realizing nobody cares about their BS worldview.

r/rpg is for all intents and purposes completely irrelevant in the hobby.
While it seems to be a huge community (1.5 millions of subscribers) the actual active contributors are at most...... 1.5 thousands, mainly from the USA (active users spike up from around  12:00 - 13:00 UTC, early morning in the US East coast) and plummets to about 3 or 4 hundreds before that (morning and early noon in Europe and Africa).
Moreover, that place is practically brigaded by forgies, storygamers and math-challenged people that consider second grade arithmetic "too crunchy". The shilling for PbtA, FitD and generally rules light player-facing crap that goes on there is absolutely staggering.

TL;DR: the probability that whatever's coming up on r/rpg is crap is near 100%.

Hmmm. First time I've ever seen that Gygax story, but in all honesty...fuck that kid. I used to see people like that all the time when I was in high school and college. They'd show up to games with obviously fake ass characters and act like they were totally legit. Yes, you absolutely rolled 6 straight 18s, totally believe you. I do remember one instance where one of those clowns had some sort of fighter with a 19 STR (UA elf maybe?) and a whole bunch of other nonsense, the DM just rolled with it even though he knew the truth. Guy got killed in the first encounter because he was a complete moron and did some really dumb stuff. He never showed up to any of the games after that.

Alternative story...I was running AD&D, one of my buddies rolled up a fighter with an 18/XX STR legitimately when we were generating characters. Overall, some of the best stats I've ever seen. Party finds a sarcophagus and he just opens it willy-nilly, level drained by a wight and dies. He wasn't even playing stupidly, it was just a bit of carelessness on his part, but lesson learned. In the 15+ years since, he never opens up coffins without a cleric nearby.

Anyway, anyone complaining about how Gygax handled this has never actually played/run games with a munchkin/powergamer OR they are in fact that player themselves.

The only thing Gygax did that I would not have is the bit with the dwarf. Unless there is an in game reason such as magical hokey pokey, the hard and fast rule is the DM gets the whole world. The PC is strictly for the player. Other than that I think letting a player bring about the the demise of their PC through sheer stupidity is a fine practice with a glorious history.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on September 27, 2023, 09:17:47 PM

Quote from: rytrasmi on September 27, 2023, 06:31:44 PM
And DCC has the death stamp, which is a neat take on it.

I always took that as a joke. But probably a joke with a kernal of truth, in that old school killer DM vein.

Joke or not, I've had sheets stamped and I done the stamping. Remarkably, it does bring some closure. Plus writing in the cause of death is fun, reminds me of Nethack and other games with tombstones.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on September 27, 2023, 09:05:32 PM
Nothing at you personally. I'm sorry if you got that impression.

Ha, no. I realized after the fact my intent would have been more clear if I had shopped Gary's head on there!

Quote from: Exploderwizard on September 28, 2023, 07:42:46 AM
The only thing Gygax did that I would not have is the bit with the dwarf. Unless there is an in game reason such as magical hokey pokey,

Agreed.  Unless there is magical compulsion the player controls the PC.

Quote from: Exploderwizard on September 28, 2023, 07:42:46 AM
The only thing Gygax did that I would not have is the bit with the dwarf. Unless there is an in game reason such as magical hokey pokey, the hard and fast rule is the DM gets the whole world. The PC is strictly for the player. Other than that I think letting a player bring about the the demise of their PC through sheer stupidity is a fine practice with a glorious history.

There's no telling how Gygax actually handled the situation at the time (if it happened, he could be making it up) but there are ways to make it work without stomping on player agency.  I like to slip a player a note.  I find that players love to go along with secrets or building up big events.

  Actions having Consequences is Systemic Oppression! Also fire should be shamed for repeatedly burning me when I touch it! 

Honestly, yeah I'm not surprised. Forget it, Jake, it's RedditTown. Like Mainstream Media and Controversy, Social Media substitutes Hyperventilation for Breathing. It's not real people discussing real ideas, it's paid performers desperate to distract your attention.

I think most people willing to game won't give much care to Gygax not hand-holding a likely cheater as they make repeated bad choices into a Game Over. The kids these days nearly rejoice at that consequence with the rejoinder, "Get Good, Noob." This sounds like the extremely negligible populace of terminally poutraged running low on their shame-spiral dopamine hit.

Quote from: rytrasmi on September 28, 2023, 08:46:12 AM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on September 27, 2023, 09:17:47 PM

Quote from: rytrasmi on September 27, 2023, 06:31:44 PM
And DCC has the death stamp, which is a neat take on it.

I always took that as a joke. But probably a joke with a kernal of truth, in that old school killer DM vein.

Joke or not, I've had sheets stamped and I done the stamping. Remarkably, it does bring some closure. Plus writing in the cause of death is fun, reminds me of Nethack and other games with tombstones.

Hopefully none of your PCs ever died from dysentery

Quote from: Yitzhak Marxx on September 27, 2023, 11:59:05 AM
Was taking the killed pc's sheet as a trophy the norm? I hope it was... Imagine having a sheet cemetery, separations for the worthy and for the unwise, etc...

It was common, and moreover, it made sense.

Let me explain.

In those days you had multiple DMs, and multiple games, and you as a player would take your character between them -- these different games would all be canon to your character; what you win in one game you can take along with your character. In a sense they all take place in one overarching world.

So naturally if you die, you take that too -- the character is dead for good. They take the sheet so you can't just continue on.

To my mind, the big question isn't what happens to the one player. It's about what kind of game it is for everyone else. What has the DM conveyed about what the game is?

For me as GM, if I don't want the player bringing in his 13th level ranger, I'll just say "I don't want you bringing in that 13th level ranger". Boom. Done. I'm not going to waste everyone's time - and snatch control of other PCs - just to kill off that one PC.

If I was another player at that table, it sounds un-fun to watch the DM dragging it out when he obviously has it out to kill that PC.

---

Quote from: King Tyranno on September 27, 2023, 03:36:17 PM
I think the handful of you asking if Gary would've played the module differently is missing the forest for the trees.

Yes, no shit he would've played differently. pb[He absolutely constructed a scenario to humilate that player.[/b] And that's a good thing, frankly.  Bear in mind, there's very little mention of the other players or what the game was really about. This is a story of how Gygax dealt with a power-gamer. Someone who came in with a high level character they didn't actually know how to play properly. This guy could've trolled or munchkined their way into completely destroying Gygax's campaign.

First of all, if this is true, I think your title for the thread is inaccurate. If as a DM, I construct a scenario specifically to humiliate a player, then the result isn't "natural consequences". It's what I chose to do to him.

Quote from: King Tyranno on September 27, 2023, 03:36:17 PM
The thing is, you can't just accuse people of things with no evidence. Sure Gygax could've just said "I think you cheated and fudged this character's stats" but he would've just looked like a fool with no way to prove this. Better to give that player just enough leeway to damn themselves and vindicate Gygax. If that player just knew and played their character properly nothing would've happened.

As DM, I can do whatever I fucking like. I don't have to say that the player cheated -- I can just not allow that PC in.

I started playing in my pre-teens in the late 1970s, but I only started going to convention tournaments in the mid-1980s. By that time, all the tournaments I played had pregenerated characters. To my mind, it makes no fucking sense to let in whatever a player has written on their sheet.

I am curious. What if the player had been moderately skilled? i.e. Not grossly dumb, but roughly average compared to the other players. Do you think Gygax should then have let him had a 13th level ranger, and treated him the same as the others?

Quote from: jhkim on September 28, 2023, 07:04:43 PM
To my mind, the big question isn't what happens to the one player. It's about what kind of game it is for everyone else. What has the DM conveyed about what the game is?

For me as GM, if I don't want the player bringing in his 13th level ranger, I'll just say "I don't want you bringing in that 13th level ranger". Boom. Done. I'm not going to waste everyone's time - and snatch control of other PCs - just to kill off that one PC.

If I was another player at that table, it sounds un-fun to watch the DM dragging it out when he obviously has it out to kill that PC.

But if you said that, while allowing others, the natural outcome would be the player protesting your decision and asking why you're excluding him for no reason.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on September 28, 2023, 06:00:20 PM

In those days you had multiple DMs, and multiple games, and you as a player would take your character between them -- these different games would all be canon to your character; what you win in one game you can take along with your character. In a sense they all take place in one overarching world.

.

No, most DMs didn't allow that as power levels and magic items levels were different.  Mostly a DM would edit a PC that came from elsewhere.

I've got mixed feelings about it.  I'd have told the player to level down to seventh for the adventure or make a new seventh level character entirely.  What would he have done if the player had been "competent" or at least really good at using the rules to do things?  As it is, I think he alienated a player and comes off looking a bit like a dick.  That's okay, being a bit of a dick is part of his reputation.  People sitting at his table should be a bit offended if he ain't.  After all, he's Gary Gygax and I'm not.

One of the reasons I love Rolemaster Standard System is that broken characters can die as easily as the next guy.  You really have to treat any threat as potentially life threatening.  I had some players think I was a killer GM because my wife's character took an arrow to the femoral artery this one time and I didn't fudge it.  A friendly necromancer arrived to heal her after the fight, to me that's still a bit fudgy even if the fudge had some strings attatched.  There was also this time a Paladin tried to hunt a moose with a War Mattock and wound up with broken ribs through his lungs.  A kindly druid showed up and healed him but it created a rift in his relationship with the paladin's own patron diety.

I guess I'm saying I wouldn't have killed off the character but I might have done the rest of it, I think, maybe.