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.
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…
Angry John Brown noises
Idk, I think that might be a bit of an overreaction and a missed opportunity. He has a good point about being from that town and slavery being a normal part of his life growing up. That could’ve turned into an interesting in-character exploration of cultural moral standards: genuine confusion about what’s wrong with being a “good” slave-owner, maybe a conversation about how easily freed slaves are re-captured, it could turn into a whole revelation for the barb that culminates in a quest to dismantle the entire slave trade.
Obviously we’re missing some context, and it’s possible that the player exhibited problematic behavior, but personally I don’t think the scenario is itself that bad. Just sounds like a barbarian from a slave-trading society role playing their character. Some would argue that eating meat would be likewise incompatible with a good-alignment, but our culture sees no fundamental moral objection to slaughtering animals.
That can only be possible when the player knows that slavery is evil, but is role-playing a character who doesn’t know it/has never really thought about it.
But the bit about wanting to be a good slave owner like a pre-civil war slaver, and that someone can only be good or bad relative to their culture, implies that it was said out of character. The fact that a person really believes that there is a difference between good and bad slave owners (and specifically mentioned the pre-civil war era, lol) is a massive red flag.
First of all, it’s stupid: just because slavery exists in your society, you don’t need to be a slaver. Good people can exist in a corrupt society as well. If they didn’t, we’d still have slavery today. Heck, one of the most famous DnD characters is a dark elf who cut ties with his people to fight for the Good (Drizz’t). If slavers are brought up in a good campaign, the obvious conclusion would be to stop them, not to take part in the evil system.
There’s also the fact that, if the campaign is specifically asking for good-aligned characters, nobody would expect someone to “well, akshually slavery can be good” them. Like, maybe it is (it’s not), but you’re explicitly not playing a good character, so why are you doing that? Join any other group out there. This group probably doesn’t want you to shift on them the burden of discussing why drowning puppies in the well is a bad behaviour, while you’re drowning those puppies.
I could also point out that (1) the fact that he doubled and tripled down on his intention of owning slaves, and quit the table because of it, is kind of moronic, and (2) depicting the girl of the party specifically as a “screaming queen” rings of misogyny as well.
Also, I’m not really going to give the benefit of the doubt to someone whose idea of a good character is a cosplay of a pre-civil war south american slave owner.
“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.
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.
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.
if there was ever someone that wouldn’t be allowed to play
anything but Lawful/Neutral Goodat my table it would be Mr. “I can just be a Good Slave Owner” over there.Fixed
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
You’re taking a design flaw as something intentional.
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.”
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
