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Another thing I noticed is getting more common among RPG Horror Stories. When once it was common to see entitled players complaining the GM is not running the game like Matt Mercer runs on Critical Role, I have lately seen quite few stories where problem GM tries to use that to deflect criticism. It's usually the type to be acting creepily towards women, both in and out of game, enjoying juvenile, overtly edgy humor and/or insisting of all kinds of bigotry for "historical accurracy". And when the players confront him (as it's almost always a guy) about it, he's going to say something like "Stop sucking Mercer off, this is real D&D!" or "Go play at Matt Mercer's table, if you don't like it!".

While, as usual, there is possibility these stories are fake, I can see these being true - the kind to engage in those specific behaviors is also the kind to grab on buzzwords or try to twist real problems to deflect criticism.

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[-] MouseKeyboard@ttrpg.network 84 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)
[-] Aielman15@lemmy.world 49 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Back in the time of Reddit, I saw someone complaining because, after joining a table that expressively required only good-aligned characters, he couldn't buy slaves at the market.

His logic was that slavery is not morally wrong by itself, and that he would treat the slave well.

He got tons of upvotes for that one, and I lost yet another small speck of trust in humanity.

EDIT: Ha! I still had the screenshot saved somewhere. Now you too can rejoice in hearing sane and balanced argumentations such as "I planned to be a good owner to them, like a good person in the pre-civil war era might do". You're welcome.

At least I misremembered the number of upvotes. He got a few, but not many (although, because of how Reddit works, it's not possible to separate upvotes from downvotes, so he could've gotten a lot of downvotes and an even greater number of upvotes). Granted, the fact that that comment was in the positive still makes me sad...

[-] Mandarbmax@lemmy.world 21 points 7 months ago

Angry John Brown noises

[-] sirblastalot@ttrpg.network 11 points 7 months ago

Every day I feel better and better about leaving reddit.

[-] EmptySlime 10 points 7 months ago

Now there's a rule the certainly totally didn't come from a ton of people playing "Chaotic Neutral means I get to be a 'lol so random xD' murder hobo" type characters at all.

Now I'm not really a fan of forcing people to play Good alignment characters, but my god if there was ever someone that wouldn't be allowed to play anything but Lawful/Neutral Good at my table it would be Mr. "I can just be a Good Slave Owner" over there.

[-] MouseKeyboard@ttrpg.network 10 points 7 months ago

if there was ever someone that wouldn’t be allowed to play ~~anything but Lawful/Neutral Good~~ at my table it would be Mr. “I can just be a Good Slave Owner” over there.

Fixed

[-] VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world 6 points 7 months ago

The only way I could see purchasing a slave not being an evil act would be if they immediately freed them or funneled them to some kind of underground railroad. Wanting to actually keep them as a slave would be crossing the moral event horizon.

[-] MouseKeyboard@ttrpg.network 2 points 7 months ago

Perhaps also if a freed slave would be in danger of being reenslaved.

[-] TheGreatDarkness@ttrpg.network 4 points 7 months ago

"like a good person in the pre-civil war era" is so darkly hialrious to me. I run in old setting, Mystara, where two biggest empires have legal slavery and are also bittere rivals. One, Thyatis, is based off Roman Empire and biggest hurdle to ending slavery is that whenever you try to argue against it, Thyatians point at other empire, Alphatia, and it's "pre civil-war south style slavery" and argue that next to this their (a.k.a. Roman) style of slavery is very humane.

And I still made it very clear that if any of my players try buying slaves, no god will save them from my wrath.

[-] Diotima@ttrpg.network 29 points 7 months ago

The edgelord DMs who say stuff like this tend to forget that D&D is in many ways meant to be a better world. Where slavery exists, for example, it exists as something that evil people do and heroes stop. If you're participating, you're not a hero; you're the asshole the heroes are there to stop.

Bigots exist in our campaign, but its because we utterly enjoy putting them in their place.

[-] Archpawn@lemmy.world 13 points 7 months ago

D&D has hell. It used to be that the fastest-reproducing races were also evil, sending more and more people to hell.

Looking it up, the creators were Christian, so maybe they thought real life was even worse, but D&D was always intended as a crapsack world. If you want to play one that isn't, great. Just be prepared to rewrite some major lore.

[-] Diotima@ttrpg.network 9 points 7 months ago

D&D generally is a game of heroism and hope. D&D's hells aren't the hell of out world, nor do devils serve the same role. Different settings have different themes (the style guides are useful for insight) but overall, heroism matters.

And if one likes and gets power enough, one can even descend into the hells to punch the devil himself in the face.

[-] Archpawn@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago

I've heard campaigns don't usually make it to a very high level. How often do you kill the evil gods and free the souls in the lower planes?

[-] Diotima@ttrpg.network 1 points 7 months ago

Depends! 5E is broken at higher levels so rarely there. I've had a few complete campaigns in older editions though; a group with insanely high levels completed the Throne of Bloodstone and another custom campaign closed out after saving reality itself. As for killing gods, once. One of our PCs ascended to godhood too. For the hells, that's never been an overall goal. Freeing good souls, yes.

[-] Archpawn@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago

So in short, it's a crapsack world, and campaigns rarely involve fixing it?

There was a campaign that Puffin Forest did where there was a treaty between celestials and fiends that was stolen reigniting the war with the intent that the upper planes would win. But the guy who did that was the antagonist. The players were trying to preserve the status quo.

[-] Diotima@ttrpg.network 2 points 7 months ago

Maybe in your campaigns, but that's absolutely not how the FR are designed. But, don't take my word for it. Per the official FR style sheet:

"The Forgotten Realms is a hopeful setting. The good guys will eventually win. ... While not every moment of a story or image in art should be hopeful (the villains need their time in the spotlight, and bad things do happen), keep this tone in mind."

[-] Archpawn@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago

They don't even have stats for the gods. The only way players could win in a way that fixes the cosmology involves heavy homebrew.

I think when they said "the good guys will eventually win" they meant like stopping this particular big bad from doing whatever they're trying to do. Not that they'll replace the gods, make sure every afterlife is paradise, and find a cruelty-free alternative to the Wall of the Faithless.

[-] Diotima@ttrpg.network 1 points 7 months ago

They only just recently made an adventure catering to high level characters. 2E, 3E offered stats, so clearly they intended there to be a path.

[-] Archpawn@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

It's clearly not a priority if they're only just doing it in 5e. They expect most players to play in a crapsack world and leave it a crapsack world. After all, if it wasn't a crapsack world there'd be no need for heroes, and they want a persistent world instead of having it always end after the players finish their campaign and fix it.

[-] Diotima@ttrpg.network 1 points 7 months ago
[-] TheGreatDarkness@ttrpg.network 2 points 7 months ago

You're taking a design flaw as something intentional.

[-] TheGreatDarkness@ttrpg.network 8 points 7 months ago

You are already rewriting the lore as you speak. First of all, always evil races do not go to hell, they go to domains of their gods. Hell is for people who signed a pact or no one else wanted. You're full of shit

[-] Archpawn@lemmy.world 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I see. I didn't realize the domains of evil gods were pleasant places to be. What are they like?

I was using "hell" abstractly to mean any bad afterlife. I didn't know they actually had one called that.

[-] Diotima@ttrpg.network 3 points 7 months ago

In the Forgotten Realms, there are nine layers of hell. What the domain of an evil god is like are as varied as the many gods. But they're not designed for punishment; what sense would that make?

[-] TheGreatDarkness@ttrpg.network 4 points 7 months ago

Precisely. In grander lore Nine Hells is composed off souls Devils basically stole from the Gods and all worshippers of gods, even evil ones, go to their type of heaven. And if that heaven looks like hell, that just tells you this god has some freaks for worshippers.

[-] Dud@lemmy.world 3 points 7 months ago

Which is on or under the ground as the situation dictates.

[-] AnarchoSnowPlow@midwest.social 22 points 7 months ago

Used to be, gm rule 1 was "everyone should be having fun"

I, and it's been awhile, have changed my personal rule 1 to "every player has autonomy"

Nobody came to watch your one person play, it's a group storytelling game, if it's not collaborative you're doing it wrong.

[-] Kichae@lemmy.ca 12 points 7 months ago

I've been edging away from the "storytelling game" (group or otherwise) framing of things for a while now. It's... well, it's not wrong, but I've found that the framing centres things like plot and even performance in everybody's mind, and that has had some perverse side effects. It negates the collaborative effort in peoples minds, linearising the game, and shifting agency away from the PCs and the table, and to the GM during prep.

It's the connotational difference between "telling a story" and "running an adventure", and it's mostly invisible.

[-] Archpawn@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago

Does that mean Rule Zero comes before Rule One?

this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2024
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