What is with the entitlement? (shadzar stay out)

[Koumei]

I have to say, specifically making weapons Merciful or whatever is not a valuable thing to do in my games, because I seriously treat "below 0 HP" as "Defeated: the attacker wins, and they decide what happens to you".

Which actually works doubly well for PCs. Because they don't have to carefully pull their punches and flail about with penalties every time they want to take captives, and likewise if I miscalculate or the dice play funny buggers, I can just let it go down that way and instead of going TPK, the PCs can be forced to flee, or captured or whatever. So in both instances, it works out well. For everyone really.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

Here's the deal: your job as a DM is to make sure the players have fun.

I guess the DM doesn't qualify as a "player" any more?

What the fuck man?

Of course the DM is supposed to have fun.

But the DM, just like the players, has a prescribed role in the game, and that role is to arbitrate encounters in such a way as the game remains fun. The DM has the most direct impact on the actual fun of the game at the table. Anyone can fuck everything up, but no one can fuck it up the way the DM can, and no one can fix it like the DM can

[A Man In Black]

Fuck that. Fuck the idea that the DM is some happiness slave to the players. He has an equal stake in the game. His enjoyment comes from making up stories and a world for the characters to wander around in. Granted, you need ambulatory characters to do this, but at the same time, if I have to stop my story too much because someone's being a whiny, entitled bitch, guess who isn't getting invited to my next game?

Okay, but how does killing PCs make the game more fun for the GM?

[FatR]

Here's the deal: your job as a DM is to make sure the players have fun.

So, when I'm going to be paid for my job as a DM?

And until that happens, just accept as a fact, that my primary mission as a DM is to entertain myself, and that the same applies to the great majority of DMs out there. If my entertainment involves running campaigns with considerable chance of PCs' defeat, players have no right to object, as long as I was straightforward about what they can expect from my game.

In short, people who are playing heroes want to actually win like heroes. If you set it up so they can't do that, they don't have fun.

First off, stop strawmanning, no one talks about "can't" (as in "rock falls, everyone dies") but about "not guaranteed to". Second, people tend to denigrate action stories, that make too clear that there is no real risk for their heroes. The same applies to games. Whatever the Roy clone says, very few players will ever try to openly object to the idea of risk and possibility of death. Almost everyone insists that without them the victory can't be as sweet.

However, I admit there is a problem: people often aren't honest with themselves when they say that. Just like the number of people who whine about modern games being too easy is somehow considerably lower than the number of people who actually strive for platinum trophies/100% completions. A lot of players only want an illusion of risk and challenge. Often without admitting that to themselves until they are confronted with failure. In practice this means that the difficulty bar often should be set lower than it seems, and that the best policy for a long-running game where you don't know players very well is to make the actual difficulty low (my preferred method is advising players on character optimization, until the chance of a random TPK by level-appropriate monsters, who fight as if they wanted to win, is minimal), at least as long as the party goes in the general direction of the rails, while making it clear that abject stupidity or loony behavior can have fatal consequences.

[Shadow Balls]

But to take a more verbose tack:

I think the issue to two conflicting implied contracts.

*snip*

The problem with that is that the problem isn't that characters die when they are killed. The problem is that when characters fail as a result of their own actions, a certain subset of player blames anyone but themselves for this.

Changing the consequences for failure from character death to something else simply changes what they are blaming you for. And often, that alternative is worse but that's not the point. Either way, they'd still make adventurers that can't adventure. Either way they'd still expect you to provide them with a helmet to protect them from themselves. Either way they'd get highly upset when they learn the hard way that headbutting a wall fucking hurts.

Swordslinger: I do the same, before, during, and after the process. Thing is, this subset of players is taking up an inherently unreasonable position, so of course they cannot really be reasoned with.

K: I do not intentionally set out to kill anyone. However I play enemies according to their intellects and other capabilities. If the gnoll hunting party is presented with a prime chance to mob someone, then that someone is going to have 8 or more gnolls attacking them from all sides. And if that causes them to die, well that's just too bad. That's what happens when fighting intelligent, pack tactic using creatures and you isolate yourself from your group.

If someone wanted to play a Monk I'd direct them to Tome Monk or Unarmed Swordsage or some other such unarmed combatant. The problem is that this subset of people wants to win, but isn't willing to put forth the effort to do so. So they'll ignore this advice, insisting that they are just fine with their PHB Monk despite the fact that they are going to most likely miss with all of their attacks any time they go to attack and even if they hit with all of them nothing that they are fighting will care about the low amount of damage they were just dealt.

And at that point if they want to accuse me of not helping, I'm going to come back at them with that story about a guy in a hurricane asking for God to save him from the rising waters.

Radiant Phoenix: I assume that's some sort of name for the DM? If it's what they want, then sure, they can have their giant spider. The problem is that it isn't what they want. They're basket weavers. They want all the benefits of being awesome, but with none of the drawbacks. Such as having to learn how. When they make their sack scratching Monks and run around delivering Flurry of Blows, they're not expecting to be turned into a cheap sex joke. They're expecting that to actually work. Even though it clearly won't, and the DM himself is telling them this.

K: That is... really fucking stupid. We've already discussed directing them towards better options. Warping the entire campaign world so that the guy who refuses to put forth any effort into his character will not drop dead the moment anything level appropriate looks at him, so that he will not get discouraged... and you're describing this as if it were a good thing?

No, that's not how it works at all.

DM: So I noticed that your character has x, y, and z problems that are really going to interfere with...
Player: No, I'm good.
DM: No, they're really not. They can't do any of the things they are supposed to do.
Player: IF YOU KILL MY HORRIBLE CHARACTER YOU ARE A TERRIBLE PERSON
DM: ...

Because the guy who is just there to disrupt the campaign deserves a great deal of effort devoted to keeping him there, so that he can continue to disrupt the campaign right?

No. That is fucking stupid, and you should feel fucking stupid for saying it.

Every DM choice is biased. I mean, do your intelligent enemies always kill the poorly armored Wizard first, or do you target the fighter because he's the only one who can take a Troll attack and not explode? Do your enemies concentrate fire on one character to drop that one, or do they spread out attacks? Do your enemies intelligently lay traps and ambushes, or do you decide for RP reasons that they charge?

If the enemies know who the Wizard is, you'd better believe they're focusing fire on him. Unless there is a bigger threat of course. Poorly armored? What game are you playing? It's not D&D, because there Wizards are one of the best tanks. Mirror Image. If even one decoy blocks an attack you're better off than the Fighter and you get 2-5 of them at the assumed level of 5.

They are focusing fire on someone, and you'd better hope you can keep them guessing, or keep people protected, or someone WILL die.

If it's a type of enemy that would set up an ambush, and they have the ability and resources to do so, then yes they would in fact set up an ambush. And they'd likely get detected by Mindsight or Lifesense or some other such ability but that's not the point. The point is that the enemies are acting as their natures dictate.

And there are still people going after that fucking red herring that is failure =/= death.

Great. So your brilliant solution to the "problem" of "stupid player gets his character killed for a stupid reason, has to sit out of the game until he can make a new character and have them introduced" is "stupid player gets his character not killed, but still put in an unplayable state for an extended period because they did something stupid, said timeframe is likely longer than the length of time it would take to create a new character and introduce them, and instead of spending that time doing something (such as making a new character) they are spending it doing nothing at all".

Yes, let us bitch about people having to take forced breaks from gameplay when they fuck up by making them sit out even longer and with even less engagement in the meanwhile! That's an excellent idea! Truly, you are a Real Man of Genius (tm)!

...

Paizo boards =========> That way.

Last I checked these boards are for concepts that aren't completely fucking backwards.

I can only assume that K is playing Devil's Advocate here, as I have a really hard time believing that he could be this dumb.

I lay things out, the party finds ways to deal with those things. And that means that the Berserker gets in someone's face and hits AC 21 for 32 points of damage. And at this point one of the following things happen:

The target has some manner of fuck you ability, and uses it to prevent or dampen the attack. Presumably said ability would make a difference, or it would not be used.
The target has an AC of 22 or greater. Miss.
The target has an AC of 21 or less, and a current HP of 33 or more. They get hit, but are still standing so it doesn't much matter.
The target has an AC of 21 or less, and a current HP of 32 or less. The disabled/dying/dead rules get used. And fuck you for saying that's wrong.

I mean, Swordslinger has said some things that make me want to slap him around a bit with a large trout but he is totally, completely, and entirely right here.

Fuck that. Fuck the idea that the DM is some happiness slave to the players. He has an equal stake in the game. His enjoyment comes from making up stories and a world for the characters to wander around in. Granted, you need ambulatory characters to do this, but at the same time, if I have to stop my story too much because someone's being a whiny, entitled bitch, guess who isn't getting invited to my next game?

RPGs are a collaborative effort. I consider whiny, entitled players to be on the same level as Gygaxian DMs (when the players haven't asked for that level of fuckery), cheaters, and other deal-breakers.

Edit: Let me put it another way. The whining comes from players losing, not from characters getting killed. If you gave some negative impact to the PCs from losing a fight, you'd still have people bitching that it's not fair. To which I suggest that combat is dangerous. By definition. There has to be a penalty to losing, otherwise from a game standpoint there literally is *no* reason to get into combat.

Now this guy understands the meaning of grab your sack and man up. It's a shame so many others do not.

Okay, but how does killing PCs make the game more fun for the GM?

It doesn't really. But not killing them at points at which they clearly should die makes it less fun for everyone, including the DM. That even includes the entitled guy who is upset that playing a Monk is a bad idea, even if he does not realize it right now.

[FatR]

It's everyone's story, and you deciding to end it when you lose nothing by not ending it is you being a dick.

A DM can well lose something by not ending a story - his enjoyment of the game. And, as noted above, DMing is not a job, and it is not supposed to be a chore. If a DM enjoys running gritty stories with noticeable possibility of random death, or one-shots, where the ending of the story is both predestined to happen and can well turn into a bloodbath for PCs, that's his right. (Long-term campaings with a recurring cast of characters is not the only RPG format, you know and I'm not even sure it is the most common.) If a DM really doesn't like the idea of saving PCs by plot insurance after they do something insanely stupid, he's not obliged to.

Players can still fail. They can fail all over the place, but dying and not getting to play anymore has to be off the table.

How the fuck "dying" is equated to "not getting to play anymore" for DnD, I have no idea. Getting captured can easily be a far bigger problem. Fuck, getting a magic toy broken can easily be a far bigger problem. Even a TPK can be undone at high levels.

I feel better now that I know you were lying to yourself.

So, in your opinion, using any system at all (i.e., adopting a framework that allows one's inputs to have at least somewhat predictable and consistent results, therefore allowing player's choice to matter, which inevitably means that the player's skill also matters) is lying to oneself?

[DSMatticus]

When a bunch of people get together to play an RPG, what they are doing is coming together to mutually enjoy a shared hobby. There are things that means and things that doesn't, but one thing it absolutely has to fucking mean, by definition, is that everyone is at the table playing. I didn't take the evening out of my week to show up, die an hour in, and spend the rest of the night statting up a new character or waiting for resurrection. I came to play the god damn game, and if the only way you can get your rocks off is by telling me "no," that's a problem with you.

Now D&D 3.5 has problems that make this a serious concern:
1) Lengthy, involved character creation process that both takes time and breeds attachment. When a character dies, it's not a trivial affair.
2) When the PC's 'lose,' there are very few other options other than total death. This makes it hard to tell stories where the players lose but don't die.
3) Very high core mortality rates at every level range due to random lucky hits.

Nobody is suggesting that the PC's should have some plot-related midas touch where everything they touch turns to success. They should fail. They should lose combats. But you, as a DM, need to realize that when character death is a consequence of losing/failure, the player has to stop playing, realistically speaking until the next session. So when you kill a character, you're kicking that player out of the night's game.

Toddlers understand why that makes you an asshole. I shouldn't have to explain that to anyone here.

[hogarth]

I think talking about dying vs. not dying is kind of a red herring: as noted above, most GMs don't really want to kill their PCs frequently, and most players don't really want their PCs to be totally immune to death (although I've certainly seen outliers in each case).

The more usual tension that I've seen is between people (players and GMs alike) who think that the PCs should be almost killed in every encounter (with the occasional, rare death) and those who think that the PCs should rarely be almost killed (with death being even more rare than that).

[fectin]

It's a game. That is a voluntary social construct, and it gives you no rights whatsoever.

Let me repeat that: You. Have. No. Rights. (with respect to the game)

So what does that mean? It means most of this discussion is bullshit, because everyone is sitting around presenting their gaming preferences as arbitrarily absolutist, with zero basis in anything.

Either make an effects-based argument for your preferred playstyle, or acknowledge that it's your preference, others may have different preferences, and move on. Right now, it is seriously like an argument over whether chocolate or vanilla is the best ice cream flavor.

[K]

Here's the deal: your job as a DM is to make sure the players have fun.

So, when I'm going to be paid for my job as a DM?

And until that happens, just accept as a fact, that my primary mission as a DM is to entertain myself, and that the same applies to the great majority of DMs out there. If my entertainment involves running campaigns with considerable chance of PCs' defeat, players have no right to object, as long as I was straightforward about what they can expect from my game.

If you can't enjoy making a game fun for other people, you should not be a DM.

It's just that simple. This whole "I'm the DM so I can run the game any way I want" attitude is extremely harmful to the hobby as a whole, and it's that reason that most DMs are shitty. It is literally that kind of selfishness that drives people out of the hobby.

Just because you are running the game does not mean you are entitled to do whatever you want. Everyone agreed to show up and be in your game, and that's how you are being paid. If that's not enough, then you should just be a player and let someone else run the game.

Not everyone has what it takes to be a good DM. Heck, Gygax created this game and he didn't have the chops to be a good DM, so don't feel bad if you don't have the necessary personality traits that would allow you to enjoy making other people have a fun evening.

[Seerow]

Here's the deal: your job as a DM is to make sure the players have fun.

So, when I'm going to be paid for my job as a DM?

And until that happens, just accept as a fact, that my primary mission as a DM is to entertain myself, and that the same applies to the great majority of DMs out there. If my entertainment involves running campaigns with considerable chance of PCs' defeat, players have no right to object, as long as I was straightforward about what they can expect from my game.

If you can't enjoy making a game fun for other people, you should not be a DM.

It's just that simple. This whole "I'm the DM so I can run the game any way I want" attitude is extremely harmful to the hobby as a whole, and it's that reason that most DMs are shitty. It is literally that kind of selfishness that drives people out of the hobby.

Just because you are running the game does not mean you are entitled to do whatever you want. Everyone agreed to show up and be in your game, and that's how you are being paid. If that's not enough, then you should just be a player and let someone else run the game.

Not everyone has what it takes to be a good DM. Heck, Gygax created this game and he didn't have the chops to be a good DM, so don't feel bad if you don't have the necessary personality traits that would allow you to enjoy making other people have a fun evening.

While I agree with most of what you've been saying K, there are people out there who enjoy the idea that their character can randomly die at any time to that Orc's axe crit, or by rolling a bad save against that wizard's spell. Typically this should only be a real impediment at low to mid levels (at high level you should either have easy access to no drawbacks rez, or be battling your way out of hell to come back to life because you're that kind of badass), but for players who enjoy that type of game, there is nothing wrong with the GM giving that to them.

It all comes down to the play dynamics of the group. Some groups prefer lower personal risk, with the risk coming from failing a task and the story moving in a different direction. Other groups prefer the risk to be highly personal, and would rather die and roll up a new character to clean up the mess their last character left behind.

Either one of these is a valid playstyle. The only time the GM is being a dick is when the players clearly prefer one, and the GM decides he's going to run the other anyway. If your players want to be able to die when they screw up, and you have him get locked up and tell him to figure out a way to break out of jail, you're being as much of an asshole to that guy as the GM who TPKs parties who would prefer the other method.

[Ravengm]

If you're straightforward about exactly what your game entails, then the players don't really have a right to bitch about it later. If you change your expectations or game details without telling anyone, or just make a dictatorship-esque change (e.g. "ALL CONJURATION SPELLS ARE NOW FORBIDDEN"), then you are a douchemonger.

It's not always the DM's fault, but a good portion of the time it is.

[Maj]

But you, as a DM, need to realize that when character death is a consequence of losing/failure, the player has to stop playing, realistically speaking until the next session.

You know, I see this point. But every now and then, you have a player who does something really stupid - like the halfling wizard with a riding dog mount who mysteriously charges into battle wielding a whip and not doing magic, or the gun-wielding maniac who decides that he's going to charge into a hole full of monsters regardless of what the rest of the party is doing.

At the point where a character's actions are disrupting the other players' fun, I have no objections to their own stupidity resulting in their death.

Toddlers understand why that makes you an asshole. I shouldn't have to explain that to anyone here.

No. I'm pretty sure that toddlers would just go find something else to do - like get naked, dump glitter on their heads, and go climb a bookshelf.

[K]

While I agree with most of what you've been saying K, there are people out there who enjoy the idea that their character can randomly die at any time to that Orc's axe crit, or by rolling a bad save against that wizard's spell. Typically this should only be a real impediment at low to mid levels (at high level you should either have easy access to no drawbacks rez, or be battling your way out of hell to come back to life because you're that kind of badass), but for players who enjoy that type of game, there is nothing wrong with the GM giving that to them.

I've never met those players, so I suspect they don't exist.

I've met players that said they wanted that, usually to get into a game being advertised as such, but those guys tend to not come back to the game after they get killed off and then they don't play RPGs for a few months at all. This is hardly a good thing.

Super-lethal games can be fun for one-shot adventures, but for any game with character persistence, they really don't seem to be fun for anyone but a very small minority of players and certain DMs who are pissed off that they have to run the game.

[Red_Rob]

It isn't that players want a "super lethal" game. The issue is that a game without risk of failure is boring, and the risk of failure implies that at some point there must be actual failure. Sometimes characters die and the players lose. Hopefully this is the result of bad player decisions, but the fact we use dice means that sometimes a player will eat a crit and die. Its not the DM being a dick, and it doesn't make the game an unbeatable "killer dungeon".

Although really, you don't believe any players enjoy the game more knowing there is more risk?

[tzor]

Not everyone has what it takes to be a good DM. Heck, Gygax created this game and he didn't have the chops to be a good DM, so don't feel bad if you don't have the necessary personality traits that would allow you to enjoy making other people have a fun evening.

Just out of couriosity, did you ever play in a game with Gygax as the DM (and I don't mean at a convention, lots of DM's get a killer attitude at a con because it's not a long term campaign)? Then how can you tell if he sucked or not? I never played with him as a DM in any manner, so I have no opiions one way or the other, but he did run a campaign for several years. I'm sure those people liked the game or else they wouldn't have continued playing.

Not all people play like you do K. Also note, it's really easy to roll up someone in 1E. The problems of 3E didn't exist back then and for that specific reason!

[tzor]

By the way, back when I actively DM'ed, the posibility of character death (except real stupid character death ... as in who put that rule in there) always existed. Just because your character died (he's not dead ... he's sleeping) doesn't mean you are without any activity for the evening. (Unless you want to take on the unique role of Kibbitzer where the puns would flow like fine wine.) E-character sheets were always ready for any emergency and I would find the strangest ways to put a temp into the party.

Or if your estimated time of death was going to be short, you could do the DM a favor and run over to the bar to refill the beer pitcher (gaming at a bar/pizza joint was extra sweet). I wonder if we need to order another pie.

[Seerow]

While I agree with most of what you've been saying K, there are people out there who enjoy the idea that their character can randomly die at any time to that Orc's axe crit, or by rolling a bad save against that wizard's spell. Typically this should only be a real impediment at low to mid levels (at high level you should either have easy access to no drawbacks rez, or be battling your way out of hell to come back to life because you're that kind of badass), but for players who enjoy that type of game, there is nothing wrong with the GM giving that to them.

I've never met those players, so I suspect they don't exist.

I've met players that said they wanted that, usually to get into a game being advertised as such, but those guys tend to not come back to the game after they get killed off and then they don't play RPGs for a few months at all. This is hardly a good thing.

Super-lethal games can be fun for one-shot adventures, but for any game with character persistence, they really don't seem to be fun for anyone but a very small minority of players and certain DMs who are pissed off that they have to run the game.

*shrug* I've met a few who claim to be like that without specifically talking to someone about getting into a game. Personally, I enjoy a campaign where character death is something that can happen from time to time.

Also, there's a pretty wide middle ground between the style of game you describe (failure means something bad happens, but you're still alive to correct it, you're never really going to die) and the style of game you're deriding (extremely high lethality, TPKs every other session, etc). Yeah, if my character was dying once every two sessions, I'd get bored pretty quick. But if over the course of a long campaign I lose one or two characters, I'm pretty all right with that. In fact I've been trying to hint to my current GM to hurry up and kill my current character off in shadowrun (you'd think this would be easy, but no apparently not).

[Shadow Balls]

Two things:

1: The whole death/not death thing. Either way if you screw something up you're going to sit out a while. If the consequences are NOT death, you will sit out LONGER. So take every negative thing you've said about how it isn't fair to die, and apply it moreso to the alternatives. Because that is the actual situation.
2: I hate luck. Despise it even. And yet despite that I'd happily take losing to some random orc, or a random save or lose or whatever the case might be to the alternative in which the entire campaign is entirely pointless because nothing bad will happen to you if you screw up/are unlucky/etc. This is the same reason why optimization involves minimizing luck as much as possible. Aside from the very lowest levels that no one really even plays at, if you die it was probably your fault. Should have packed Heavy Fort/better saves/more rerolls of natural 1s.

I'm not talking about games where people are constantly dying (unless they really are dumb enough to keep doing stupid, reckless things and the party is dumb enough to keep raising them). I am talking about games in which death happens. I am talking about games in which someone deliberately does something stupid, and expects their opponent to not punish them for it. And that punishment might very well mean character death. Or it could mean something worse. That means they're sitting out a while. It happens. Most importantly, it's not the DM's fault when a player is an idiot.

[fectin]

I've never met those players, so I suspect they don't exist.

I've met players that said they wanted that, usually to get into a game being advertised as such, but those guys tend to not come back to the game after they get killed off and then they don't play RPGs for a few months at all. This is hardly a good thing.

So you can't imagine someone who both hates to lose, and also hates "everyone's a winner!" competitions? It's always either apathy or the Special Olympics?

edit: tags

[Lago PARANOIA]

I'd just like to say that even though in abstract 'killing people if they're stupid' is a defensible position, in actuality I've often seen it morph into a rather twisted 'blame the victim' mentality. Oh, you got polymorphed into a frog while going down the hall? You should've been more careful. Oh, you got thrown into the dungeon for offending the king? You shouldn't have made that diplomacy roll. Oh, you got TPKed by the ghouls? You should've done the Mongol Archer thing rather than run up to engage them, even if they were tearing into some villagers. Etc..

[Swordslinger]

So you've been hurt before and now you want to hurt others? How pedestrian.

But that's just the thing. I wasn't actually hurt. I had a lot of fun with that game. The quest before that we played the Keep of the Shadowfell and we actually won the adventure barely with the last PC standing who got a lucky critical at the end and it was a really exciting time. The adventure after that, we ended up getting owned by the Duergar. And it was actually a pretty cool moment realizing that I'd have to leave half the party behind and retreat because the battle was unwinnable at that point.

It gives me something I'll remember. If the game is just a series of easy guaranteed wins, nothing is particularly memorable.

And all that was fun. I like knowing the risk element is real and that the DM won't bail us out if things go bad. When something exciting happens it's because it really happened, not because the DM is fudging dice. Once you know you have that DM security blanket, the game is significantly less exciting to me.

So you'd rather watch the evolving story of a DnD game if people die all the time because you find it more interesting?

The actual deaths are unimportant, but I need to know it's possible that people die.

[PoliteNewb]

When a bunch of people get together to play an RPG, what they are doing is coming together to mutually enjoy a shared hobby. There are things that means and things that doesn't, but one thing it absolutely has to fucking mean, by definition, is that everyone is at the table playing. I didn't take the evening out of my week to show up, die an hour in, and spend the rest of the night statting up a new character or waiting for resurrection. I came to play the god damn game, and if the only way you can get your rocks off is by telling me "no," that's a problem with you.

So I assume you don't play in card tournaments (Euchre or CCG or whatever), because in those there is a chance that you will be knocked out of the running and spend the rest of the night watching other people play?

You also don't play long boardgames like Risk or Axis & Allies or etc., because in those there is a chance that your faction will be destroyed, and then you will spend the rest of the night watching other people play?

Now if you DON'T enjoy those hobbies, that's cool; not everybody does. But the existence of gaming sessions like those demonstrates that not everybody has your sense of entitlement. There are people who show up expecting to play a god damn game, until they lose. And then they act like a grown-up and accept the fact that they have lost, but that you will get to play again. Hell, in the case of D&D, playing again could mean the same night, or even the same adventure (depending on what version you're playing, how complicated character creation is, and the DM's ingenuity at inserting characters into the plotline).

D&D is a fucking game. Sometimes you lose games. D&D is better than most, in that losing is a.) not necessarily going to happen and b.) not permanent. But the possibility of loss is there. It should be there. In the opinion of many (myself included), it's part of what makes the game fun.

If your attitude is "I spent my valuable time to come here, so I better be able to play every minute, regardless of what I do or what my dice rolls are"...fuck that, and fuck you.

[Shadow Balls]

I'd just like to say that even though in abstract 'killing people if they're stupid' is a defensible position, in actuality I've often seen it morph into a rather twisted 'blame the victim' mentality. Oh, you got polymorphed into a frog while going down the hall? You should've been more careful. Oh, you got thrown into the dungeon for offending the king? You shouldn't have made that diplomacy roll. Oh, you got TPKed by the ghouls? You should've done the Mongol Archer thing rather than run up to engage them, even if they were tearing into some villagers. Etc..

There is more to those situations than that.

Polymorphed into a Frog: If you don't notice the Baleful Polymorph trap, and roll a 1 on the save (because I can't imagine how else you would otherwise fail a mere DC of 17), and have nothing to reverse the spell... then yes, you should have been more careful. Not because you necessarily had any specific reason to believe that there was a Baleful Polymorph trap there, but because your group is clearly and heavily underprepared for anything level appropriate. If it wasn't a low DC trap reversible by a mere Dispel Magic among other things, it would be some manner of CR = level monster.

Diploderp: If your Diplomacy skill is so bad that a low number would cause you to be thrown in jail, then yes you should have left it to the Bard. It's still kind of dumb you have to sit out for a while because of one failed skill check, I'll grant you that. But the same could happen while climbing a high wall at lower levels or something to that effect.

Ghouls: For everyone to die here, that's some seriously bad luck. Someone getting paralyzed for a few rounds I can easily see happening, but everyone? While it likely would have been safer to stay at range, this one is more bad luck than bad decision.

You can call that blaming the victim if you want, but doing so is only a bad thing if they really weren't asking for it. More going into Harlem shouting racial slurs against black people and less single female walking around at night alone but not actually doing anything wrong.

[FatR]

If you can't enjoy making a game fun for other people, you should not be a DM.

Demanding absolute altruism from a person who automatically holds 50% of votes in any decision related to running the game, and, in nearly all cases I've seen, does more prep work related to running the game than everyone else combined, is not realistic. I mean, even if it was a noble sentiment, although it isn't (as it demands from a person to subjugate his own preferences to that of a group of others - which might not, and probably does not, even have a unified opinion - just because), it still wouldn't have been realistic.

It's just that simple. This whole "I'm the DM so I can run the game any way I want" attitude is extremely harmful to the hobby as a whole, and it's that reason that most DMs are shitty. It is literally that kind of selfishness that drives people out of the hobby.

Didn't we rape your dog and set fire to your house as well?

Just because you are running the game does not mean you are entitled to do whatever you want.

I never said so. Just that I'm entitled to running the game the way I want. If you don't like it - tough luck, don't let the door to hit you on your way out and don't think you have any right to complain unless you were misinformed about what the game is going to be.

Now, the real life is generally more complicated, of course, particularly if you play with old friends, and not with a pickup group (which probably was drawn to DM's vision of the game to begin with). A compromise of expectations often must be achieved before starting a new campaign. A good discussion about what everyone wants before starting the game is quite valuable for its long-term survival. And outright booting people out of the group is something I'm only willing to do in response to OOC disruptive behavior in actual practice. But the fact is, if the compromise ends up unsatisfying to the DM, the game will be over, or, if the DM is forced into running it by using out-of-game relationships as a leverage, it will most likely suck, and cause friction endangering these relationships.

If that's not enough, then you should just be a player and let someone else run the game.

Here's breaking news for you: in nearly all roleplaying groups, the number of people willing to shoulder DM's work, particularly on a systematic basis, is far less than the number of potential players. And your suggestions, by their very nature, will make it far lesser.

Not everyone has what it takes to be a good DM. Heck, Gygax created this game and he didn't have the chops to be a good DM,

I know about how Gygax ran the game, and unless all acounts are false he was an awesome DM. His PCs literally wrote their names in the history of DnD. You, though, have yet to show your DM cred that entitles you to judge DMing of others.