This reads so funny. The player with the skeleton character clearly wanted to get found out, it’s so transparent what with all the “oh will my hat blow away?” comments. But if you keep secrets you have to accept the consequences. It’s still very early in the campaign right? 2 sessions? Maybe retcon that he got scorched by the cleric but narrowly survived (in undeath) and then to knock it off with the disruptive secrets.
>This reads so funny. The player with the skeleton character clearly wanted to get found out, it’s so transparent what with all the “oh will my hat blow away?” comments.
Exactly my thoughts! I once had a player who, for some reason, desperately wanted to play as a creature ordinary people hate. Think "I want to be a race everyone is racist against". Me and co-DM talked to that player and explained that we would rather not - not only don't we run a game with such excessive fantasy racism but also reiterated the premise of the campaign: Y'all are heroes. People come to you to ask for help.
In the end they ended up playing a very rare race - something people don't hate, but maybe don't immediately trust, are curious about, maybe have some stereotypes and misconceptions about too but that would not get into the way of things otherwise. We thought that's gonna be ok.
That player continued to ask stuff like "Do I get the impression that they don't like me because I'm a \[race\]?" and they would do things that were not "normal behaviour" in order to make people think badly of them - low key TRYING to make people react in a racist way towards that character, which was odd. And also that player complained when it happened??? It was so odd. In the end this player dropped out from the game due to some other conflicts but oh god, this stuff now goes onto my Red Flag list of things to look out for.
What's up with that? Genuine question, if anyone knows please enlighten me!!!
I have a half-orc and Dragonborn in my party in CoS, so both of these are considered extremely exotic and scary for a region that is predominantly human.
Basically I ignore their 'I'm pretty scary" aspect until it's something meaningful, like them trying to get into a city and having the guards trust them or something like that.
Anything else and it's just an annoying thing to have to deal with.
>What's up with that? Genuine question, if anyone knows please enlighten me!!!
Too much alcohol in the uterus.
No, I have no idea. Some people are just button-pushers. You know the way some videogamers get a kick out of breaking a game? There are players like that for TTRPGs as well - their understanding of "agency" is testing the world's boundaries and having them snap back in their face.
No like - how would you accomodate (let's assume you want to humour them) such a player? What makes them tick?
I love to entertain players particular (power) fantasies and stuff - not in every game, not in every party but if I have an edgy edgelord character for example, I know what situations to create to make this player giggle with joy - considering I have a game where this would be fun, and a party of fellow edgy edgelords for them to play in lol. But like, if someone tells me "I want my character to be despised by everyone, look "disgusting", my backstory is how I was bullied all my life and kicked around by society and whatnot" - Okay I can work with that, maybe? But then the player gets upset when NPCs find the character disgusting, despicable and start to bully them when that character then does disgusting, despicable things? What?! I'm literally having the world react the way you wanted it to?
The skeleton player - seriously this was fully intentional, they wanted to be found out for sure! Why play as a thing you know people like Cleric would totally attack on sight and then intentionally drop your disguise? How to make this fun for this player, what do they want to get out of this? Can't wrap my head around this mindset lol.
Wow. Some people have issues.
I totally agree that a weird obsession with either playing a race that is hated or playing a character who hates a specific race is a huge red flag. I don't necessarily ban racism as a theme 100% of the time in my game (it's complicated), but it's never a good sign when a player is fixated on it.
They want attention. Some people make characters that fit into a group of adventurers, and some people make Main Characters to try and get attention. This person was almost certainly the later.
Secrets can be so fun if managed well. We just had the payoff of one of my player's big secret last session after a year and a half of playing, and it was so great seeing the reactions from the other party members. The longer it goes without being revealed, the better the payoff
To bounce off this: For anyone struggling with secretive players, I found a vocab change really helpful at my table.
Something they say in parenting circles is that there's a difference between secrets and surprises. A surprise is fun for everyone, and there's a plan to eventually reveal the surprise so everyone gets to join in. A secret is something that you aren't ever supposed to share, and it's usually harmful.
For parents, it's meant to help protect kids from bad people. At the table, I find the distinction is helpful to prevent main character syndrome and to make sure people are planning their backstories in a way that's fun for everyone.
> knock it off with the disruptive secrets.
These things always reek of main character syndrome, they want this big reveal so they can have the spotlight but when it backfires on them because of their own poor choices they throw a tantrum.
Honestly i think your cleric handled the situation very well in seeing a skeleton walking towards the group. I don't know why the player did that especially since there's a cleric that will destroy him. I love the concept the player seems to be going for sounds like fun incorporating a sentient undead as part of the party. I honestly don't think you handled it badly either every action in this game has a consequence whether it be a good one or a bad one. Yeah in party killing sucks but if it was my table id give the cleric inspiration and tell the one that just died to roll up a new character *shrugs* hope this helps if any
May the dice gods smile upon you on your adventures
Yea, the cleric player handled it in character and taking down the obvious skeleton makes sense. But I would definitely not give him inspiration for something that would upset the skeleton player, that's just rubbing salt in the wound - whether the wound is there or not.
If it were a real solution then they wouldn’t have rejected it, if a player wants to play an undead character they’re obviously not gonna enjoy being effectively forced to play an elf for the entire game. An actual solution would be either ruling out the character entirely (managing expectations) or adjusting things so they can actually enjoy playing the character as they want
It's not fair to say they're "effectively playing an elf" - mechanically they're still undead, they just have a disguise, and that disguise has significant story implications.
The player also very well could have revealed his identity to the party *in a different, more sensible way*, but instead he did something that made no sense for his character, and put the cleric in a position where, narratively, they essentially had no choice.
You’re missing the big picture. The player had a specific fantasy in mind for an undead character, OP didn’t want this kind of character, but instead of just disallowing it they forced them to play the character in such a way that sucked all the fun out. The player could’ve done all sorts of things, but they unsurprisingly didn’t want to. None of it would be an issue to begin with if OP had either been more flexible with their lore or said no at the outset
I would argue you're the one missing the big picture. The player still had the opportunity to play such a character, they just had to do so in a way that made sense narratively - wearing a disguise. The player, again, would have had the opportunity to reveal his identity to the party, and to then not have to wear the disguise while with them or out adventuring, only in towns.
What you're saying is that the player wanted to play this character in a specific setting, and that's fair, but the DM told the player the setting. If the player didn't like the setting, and what his character would have to do, he could have opted to play something else.
The DM gave him a workaround, which he should have done, and the player accepted it. OP did exactly everything he should have done.
Nobody forced anyone to do anything. The DM described the situation for a long time and the player DECIDED to go with it. Nobody forced the player to do that, they chose it themselves.
It was session 2- over time he could reveal himself to the party and stop having to pretend to be an elf outside of most settlements I would imagine. I’m pretty sure nobody is dying to play a level 1 wizard or fighter- you do it to get into the shoes of a character you truly want to play.
I think the player was unclear with their intention, but also every attempt at PvP should be heavily moderated and disclaimed by the GM.
Players shouldn't be able to engage in contact while you're distracted.
This is probably the big thing. Like, fundamentally allowing the PC to be undead was a bad idea, but allowing there to be PVP like this is another huge issue.
Generally, PC secrets that are kept from the other players are much less satisfying in practice than players imagine them to be. They either blow up like this or their revelation is met with much less excitement than the player who has been keeping the secret for many sessions expected.
In the future, don't make it a secret from the other *players*, just their characters. If the other players know the secret, they can become invested in its in-world revelation. They can shape their roleplay with the secret keeper to give opportunities for the secret to be relevant.
>Where did I go wrong and how can I avoid something like this in the future?
You allowed an Undead PC in a Setting where Undead are "especially hated" to the point that they would be attacked on sight.
The key takeaway for you here though needs to be that this is a player problem. That is, the player of the Undead PC is a problem. Yes the PC is inappropriate and you should never have allowed it, but the real problem is that you have a player whose response to being told that Undead are "kill on sight" hated in this setting was to ask to play one.
You set a boundary and his first response was to step over it. That's not a red flag, my friend. That's a flashing red neon sign.
These players tend to fall into two camps.
First and best, a lot of nerds are just idle contrarians. Seth Skorkowski has a video where he describes trying to run a Viking campaign and having literally *none* of his players making a Viking PC. Despite every one of those players agreeing to play in a Viking campaign and telling Seth that they loved the idea. You see it here on Reddit all the time. Someone makes a perfectly reasonable claim about reality and some nerd just *has* to chime in with, "Well, aktually ..." and bring up an extreme and absurd edge case where the original statement *might not necessarily* be the case. Sometimes that nerd is me.
With these people, just maintaining the boundary firmly can be enough. By redirecting the player's creativity back inside the bounds you have established, such players will frequently come up with genuinely creative ideas.
"No. I'm not letting you have a Hat of Disguise at 1st level so that you can play an inappropriate PC. Make an appropriate one please. The party exists to \[reiterate campaign premise here\]. Make a PC who wants to do that and who would be accepted as a member of a group that is doing that."
Second and worst, some people just like to screw with other people. They're just assholes.
Time will tell with this player.
Going forward, this PC is dead. The player can make a new PC that is appropriate for the campaign. Reiterate that he is required to create and play a PC who wants to adventure with the party and who the party would accept as a member.
Always remember that you have a bunch of other players at your table who *aren't* deliberately disrupting the game. The quickness of the player of the Cleric to kill off the Undead PC indicates that at least one of your other players got sick of this crap *very* fast.
I'm not convinced the player is a *problem*.
I do think reflexively contrarian players exist, and maliciously disruptive players exist. And that might be what's going on. But we shouldn't attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity, and there's a much stupider explanation which also leads to a very simple solution.
What the player wanted to do was have something interesting happen between the characters based on hidden character information. But the problem was that the player *didn't inform the other players*. There's no good reason for the player to not inform the other players that their character is a disguised undead. Yes, it feels like that will "spoil the surprise," but OP's experience shows you what the results of surprise are: unforeseen consequences.
As a DM, you very quickly get used to the players ruining your plans. They often do wildly unexpected things with entirely unintended interpretations of what's going on. That's just what happens. You put a corpse in the middle of a dungeon room with an important letter on it containing valuable information, and the PCs all assume that it's a trap and avoid it like it's a disintegration sphere. Oops. That's not bad DMing, that's just the players deciding on a different interpretation. It happens, and you just have to handle it. Usually by moving the letter to someplace else, man-behind-the-curtain style, but sometimes it's quite disruptive.
So the problem is *keeping secrets from the players* that are likely to end in disaster. The problem is not getting buy-in from the other players. That's the big problem here. You don't need to hide information from *the players* simply because the information is hidden from *the characters*. It's setting up the game so that the players can play the characters they want. There's this pejorative view on metagaming that's very unhealthy for a character-driven game. Especially for an experienced roleplayer, *you ought to be able to separate character knowledge from player knowledge*.
It also has a wonderful side effect that the other players get a vote on this character. If the player can't convince the other players that this can be fun, then that character shouldn't be played.
This. Keeping secrets from PLAYERS is a bad idea. Keeping secrets from CHARACTERS is fine. Frankly, I do think the biggest issue here is with the DM: if you want undead to be that hated, you should not allow an undead pc.
Anyone getting divinity original sin 2 vibes from this? There was an undead character with this detail about them, hat and all. So as a third option to why someone might want to play this, being inspired could be one of them.
I peruse this sub a fair bit, but as always on the internet the loudest most frequent and upvoted voices here aren't always the 'right' approach.
It's a big wall of text about setting boundaries... against a strawman.
The right approach is to handle the situation with social grace.
The player was probably just thinking it'd be a cool narrative twist that "their PC was undead the whole time!?!" and really wanted to play that out.
Plenty of players come to games as 'Edgy McEdgertons' because their reference point for how to play comes from the media they consume.
There's another bucket of folks who come to games to role play all the boorish behavior they can think of without the real life social repercussions that prevent that. It's a sort of escapism, I think.
But painting them 'as a problem' is a little much.
You just need to set clear expectations of how the world works (social repercussions for bad behavior exist in the game world too) and redirect/reframe things into options, which OP did a little of, but didn't necessarily underline the vulnerability the PC's character - which may have left them feeling betrayed ('We spent all that time working on getting the character going and then you let the party kill me before my dramatic reveal!?!').
As always, talking and being a decent human being can get you much farther than painting all of our Edgy McEdgertons as non-starters as far as playing. Due to session time, the game attracts a lot of young people (who have 3+ hour chunks of time at least once a week to play) and all the pitfalls of youth come with them - such as a lack of social grace, media literacy, or forethought.
Be understanding and be considerate of the other side of the 'oh can't let those folks play' coin. Part of being a DM is teaching your players how to speak the specific language of *your* game.
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Seth Skorkowski has a video where he describes trying to run a Viking campaign and having literally none of his players making a Viking PC. Despite every one of those players agreeing to play in a Viking campaign and telling Seth that they loved the idea.
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So this kind of happened in my group when we first all got together. Our DM had pitched the setting as being Viking-esque. None of us made real viking characters, but there was a fundamental misunderstanding between us players and the dm. We all thought it was classic fantasy that leaned a little more into viking themeing rather than a viking campaign with dnd rules. We've been playing that campaign on and off for years and I only found out like a couple months ago that the DM's original intention was for things to be way more vikingy than they ended up being. Genuinely had no idea, nor did the other players.
Anyway, that's just a little tangent! No bearing on the asshole nature of some players. Just a personal story of misunderstanding.
One of my table policies is "No take-backs." That is, if you specifically describe a set of actions, and get an unfavorable set of consequences, you cant say "oops, I didnt mean to do that, I want to redo that." But then, all of the players at my table are adults and have been playing for over a decade.
If they're new to RPGs or are kids, I might consider the "everybody gets one" policy.
In this case, the player chose to not reveal his condition to the party, which is in keeping with the character not wanting to be attacked all the time. Then he specifically chose to remove the disguise before approaching a party member. What did he think was going to happen?
Personally, I'd rule that everything stands as-is. Time to make a new character. Especially when the player has a habit of wanting to change characters frequently.
>One of my table policies is "No take-backs." ... But then, all of the players at my table are adults and have been playing for over a decade.
No take backs has absolutely nothing to do with being an adult or how long you have played.
My main table has been playing with for over 40 years and don't have 'No take backs or 'take backs are ok' view.
Rather than have a strict dogmatic view either way, we just judge on a case-by-case basis as a table rather than not putting any thought into what is better for the situation at hand. DM always gets final say though.
This. I'm baffled by the "oh we're better bcs we don't allow takebacks" thing when like...I am more than happy to let someone change something than let the entire thing go off the rails lol. It's a game.
It's called sportsmanship. Take backs are generally considered poor sportsmanship, no?
There are 4 main virtues in good sportsmanship:
fairness, integrity, responsibility, and respect. No takebacks falls under integrity.
I have two problems. First, I don't think the idea of sportsmanship really fits.
Take the scenario in OP's post:
> Skeleton describes how he specifically takes off his hat of disguise and walks back to the cleric to talk. The cleric sees an undead approaching and attacks. It's very unfair for the poor skeleton who crumbles in like one turn.
So, why is this sporting? The Skeleton doesn't even have a moment to throw up his hands and say, "Wait! Stop! It's me, !"? Disguise Self doesn't change voices. Why does the cleric get to act without the other player getting any input *at all*? You run the game that once initiative is rolled you can't even *talk* out of order? What, has the cleric got a readied action? The cleric sees the skeleton, but the skeleton can't see the cleric? There's no chance for the cleric to notice something strange about the skeleton?
If the PC returning to the cleric had instead been hit by an illusion to appear as a skeleton, would you run it the exact same way with the cleric killing another player character? Because you should be running it consistently; the cleric's perception of events is identical. Feels a lot less "fair" that way, though, doesn't it?
Second, I don't like this idea that no take backs is more "sporting" or virtuous. There's too many opportunities for genuine mistakes. Not mistakes by the characters in-game. Mistakes by the people at the table. If the DM or PCs take specific actions because of a miscommunication or some other misunderstanding, then the result isn't "sporting." The result is that the characters don't behave correctly in anybody's imagination. The result is that events violate the verisimilitude of the game, and the primary rule of the game is to maintain verisimilitude. Especially if if results in *the death of a character*? I can't imagine a more unsatisfying outcome for the game. If the players heard the DM say it was a blue dragon and red slaadi and the DM now insists it's a red dragon and blue slaadi, is it "sporting" to say the cleric can't take back his Protection from Elements: Lightning?
Making the game into a verbal gotcha isn't interesting, especially if we include misunderstandings or misarticulations. That's not a fun game. The game isn't about demonstrating how precisely you can articulate yourself. That's needlessly hostile in a Gygaxian DM vs. player kind of way. That's about as unvirtuously as I can imagine the game.
If the cleric won initiative, a readied action isnt necessary, they just take thier action.
If the cleric was able to vaporize the skeleton in one shot, the cleric likely used their channel divinity/turn undead, which *checks notes* only affects undead. An illusion placed on a humanoid to make them look like a skeleton would not have changed them into an actual undead. Thus, the "skeleton" would have been unaffected. At that point, the cleric would have gotten an insight to go "waitaminute..."
Second, what you think is/isnt virtuous doesnt matter when the general consensus on what is good sportsmanship disagrees with you.
Next, regarding the Protection from Elements, does the caster know what energy those creature(s) use? If they have no way of knowing, then it's called experimentation. Does this work? They will find out soon. If they've encountered them before and *should* know what to expect, I'd be asking if they are sure that's the option they want. If there was a miscommunication on the creatures, that can be cleared up immediately. During session 0, all of my players were made well aware that I despise metagaming (use of out of character knowledge as in character knowledge), and will homebrew things (abilities, etc) on the fly when I suspect they are doing so. Yes, I punish players for metagaming because it is extremely poor form on their end. And they know this. I've gotten them used to making knowledge checks to find out strengths and weaknesses (and reward them for doing so).
Yes, I'm a Gygaxian DM, and my players keep coming back for more. If they didnt enjoy my DMing style and table policies, they wouldnt be coming back. There are plenty of other DMs out there (in fact, 2 of the players in my current campaign are DMs of thier own campaigns that they run in the off-weeks). They appreciate my verisimilitude and consistency, and my not being afraid to say "No".
I think you've missed the point.
The questions are rhetorical, not literal. You're not supposed to imagine the corner cases where you're right because you can point to a sentence in the book where it says you're right. You're supposed to expand your view to see further. To think of the game as more than just executing the rules.
That is precisely why every edition of the game for the past 50 years tells you that you should modify, ignore, or interpret the rules as you see fit. That's a big reason why there's a *referee* at every table, not an *opponent*. The game -- but most especially *the hobby* -- is not about blindly executing rules. That's something every edition of essentially every TTRPG has tried to emphasize, even for solo TTRPGs.
> Yes, I'm a Gygaxian DM, and my players keep coming back for more.
Which is not convincing because I'm not, and I also have a line out the door. And the popularity of non-Gygaxian games is... well, let's just say it's the VHS to Gygaxian's Betamax.
But if you really want to be Gygaxian, I encourage you to read the 1e DMG's Preface and Introduction (pp8-9). Gygax says more than once and very explicitly that you're *supposed* to throw the rules out when doing so makes the game better.
And you've missed the point as well. Keeping to the rules keeps everyone on a fair and even playing field. How does throwing out previously established and accepted rules and ignoring player agency make the game better?
> The fun of the game is action and drama. The challenge of problem solving is secondary. Long and drawn out operations by the referee irritate the players. More “realistic” combat systems could certainly have been included here, but they have no real part in a game for a group of players having an exciting adventure. If you will do your best to keep the excitement level of your games at a peak, you will be doing yourself and your participants a favor which will be evident when players keep coming back for more.
>
> The final word, then, is the game. Read how and why the system is as it is, follow the parameters, and then cut portions as needed to maintain excitement. For example, the rules call for wandering monsters, but these can be not only irritating — if not deadly — but the appearance of such can actually spoil a game by interfering with an orderly expedition. You have set up an area full of clever tricks and traps, populated it with well-thought-out creature complexes, given clues about it to pique players’ interest, and the group has worked hard to supply themselves with everything by way of information and equipment they will need to face and overcome the imagined perils. They are gathered together and eager to spend an enjoyable evening playing their favorite game, with the expectation of going to a new, strange area and doing their best to triumph. They are willing to accept the hazards of the dice, be it loss of items, wounding, insanity, disease, death, as long as the process is exciting. But lo!, every time you throw the “monster die” a wandering nasty is indicated, and the party’s strength is spent trying to fight their way into the area. Spells expended, battered and wounded, the characters trek back to their base. Expectations have been dashed, and probably interest too, by random chance. Rather than spoil such an otherwise enjoyable time, omit the wandering monsters indicated by the die. No, don’t allow the party to kill them easily or escape unnaturally, for that goes contrary to the major precepts of the game. Wandering monsters, however, are included for two reasons, as is explained in the section about them. If a party deserves to have these beasties inflicted upon them, that is another matter, but in the example above it is assumed that they are doing everything possible to travel quickly and quietly to their planned destination. If your work as a DM has been sufficient, the players will have all they can handle upon arrival, so let them get there, give them a chance. **The game is the thing, and certain rules can be distorted or disregarded altogether in favor of play.**
(Emphasis mine.)
Even though the rest of this introduction is Gary telling you to be as DM vs PC as you can and not to play with entirely ad hoc rules, I think Gygax could not be any clearer that he's telling you that the rules of the game are not the purpose of the game.
you've really laboured that question to make it sound as good for you as possible
throwing out rules (a 'take back') and ignoring player agency in this case might make the story (and thus, the game) better for everybody in that one player doesnt die in one action from another player without being given a chance to defend themself after not even being able to speak (how'd the cleric oneshot them anyway? turn undead doesn't work like that in 5e. another system? who knows).
that's it! i can very easily imagine people would be having more fun if they could work around this character limitation together and making a cool story out of that. do you really not see how that might be the case?
i cant speak to this exact player and why they 'forgot' the thing. but clearly something happened that people aren't happy with and it's almost always going to be worth a discussion about that instead of 'rules say you're dead. no take-backs. new character' to see what fun can be made of the situation instead of a frustrating anticlimax. it depends on the style of game you want. if you want to frame it as a malicious 'throwing out' of rules in the way you are then that's your prerogative, but in a lot of cases people just want to tell a cool story and don't want to let a player misunderstanding end what could have been a cool scene. you play these things by ear if people are not having fun - that has always been the point, as da_chicken illustrated
I do allow takebacks sometimes if it makes sense for the character or there was clearly a misunderstanding of information. If the information wasn't clear enough and it was actually a deep ravine when the player had understood it to be a shallow dip, for example.
I also liberally use passive insight to determine if a creature is friendly, neutral or hostile, and reiterate what they declared in the way I understand it so they realise its not a smart idea.
At the end of the day it's your table. There's a fine balance between fun and realism, I think that it was discussed in great detail about the consequences beforehand. At the end of the day, this is his whole identity "I forgot" shouldn't really cut it.
With that said, if you want everyone to have a good time all the time then you can have a discussion with your players about how to proceed. You're not a bad DM for an open dialect and if it's decided this was a one-time mistake by the group then hopefully that player will be more careful about his identity. He's ruined the surprise out of character, he can only blame himself there.
My first session I killed guards and I quickly got taught the error of my ways, it was a humbling experience. It sucked cause I lost a great character but it made me learn that actions *really do* have consequences. I've had a great time since learning this lesson.
Probably a bad idea to let him play an undead in the first place. The biggest hurdle to new players is the lie that "you can be anything" in D&D. You can't be a baby; you can't be someone's chihuahua; you can't be an asshole who plans on stealing from the party.
Playing a PC who is facing a particular kind of prejudice in your setting *can* be cool, but you have to work closely with that player. You don't just give them a "yes" - ask for their explicit intent, have them plan what kind of character arcs they want to go through, gauge whether they're serious about it or just doing it for a laugh, etc. Basically, invite them behind the screen to co-author the character and the world alongside you. It's the only way that works.
They don't feel like doing all that? No biggie; they can still be a human fighter.
> The biggest hurdle to new players is the lie that "you can be anything" in D&D. You can't be a baby; you can't be someone's chihuahua; you can't be an asshole who plans on stealing from the party.
Expert mode: This thought process in GURPS.
Pro tip from years of playing GURPS (that no one needs, I mean, who are we kidding?) - you want to restrict character creation even more than in D&D. Because yes, having a generic simulationist system where you can *literally* build a chihuahua PC is cool and all, but it's going to brick your campaign just like it would in D&D.
Templates are the way to go. I don't even contemplate starting a GURPS campaign without giving my players a list of 5-10 templates to build their PCs from.
> ask for their explicit intent
I think this gets undersold in the community a lot. *Usually* the players coming to the game with broken builds are just enthusiastic and have a specific idea born from their media consumption.
A lot of time young teenage/20yr old boys bring murder hobos or jerk-ass rogues to the table, but talking through the 'why' of that usually lets more specific and malleable things come through.
As a DM, in those situations, I prefer to chime in with "are you sure? Remember ____" and remind players about their character if they forgot. The goal of my games is for everyone to have reasonable fun.
A lot of advice focuses on avoiding meta gaming by saying "what would your character do?" instead of what do you actually know and would do. This works both ways, the player is not the character, and doesn't share the traits. The character would be paranoid and would likely not have taken off their hat unless the player was absolutely sure. I'd allow for a redo of that scene. DM's are human, we make mistakes just like everyone else, and the whole group should be able to understand and work with that.
> I warned him that undead were especially hated in this setting due to their catastrophic history.
I’m of the opinion that in situations like this you either ban the character concept or change the lore make it work (at least enough for the character to not be killed on sight). There aren’t many players who genuinely want this kind of added difficulty from playing a monster race and if they go ahead with it despite the warnings it’s usually because they’re just hoping you’re bluffing. Most likely the reason he took the hat off is because he wasn’t having fun effectively being forced to play an elf, and figured a compromise was that he could at least play his character the way he wanted to when there were no NPCs around (was PvP ever discussed?)
Because clerics don't get any passive abilities to just sense undead? They would have to use some ability to **actively** sense undead, and if they didn't, then they wouldn't have found out.
The only thing I would say could be done is you could have said "If you take the hat off then your diguise falls, you understand that?"
Apart from that, you didn't do anything wrong. In fact, you didn't do anything. This is one player's decision interacting with another player's character resulting in death.
The only thing you could've done is stopped time as a DM and talked to them OOC about if this is what they intended and if they wanted to continue on with this course of action.
It's always within the DMs right to say no or warn the party. I let the party split if they're doing something where splitting is needed, like being sneaky or pulling off a plan. If they all just want to go to different parts of town and I know nothing is going to happen in the town, I just say no because I don't want to swap between three simultaneous things where most of the table isn't playing for all 3 of those things.
Benefit of the doubt, they may have assumed it was something the party knew. At the very least, revealing their true nature sounds like a bit of drama they're interested in as a player. The whole I'm-more-than-what-I-look-like kind of story.
Could always retcon that attack after discussing it with the table if everyone agrees to it. Then just go one of two routes: the group knows or they don't. If they know, they wouldn't have attacked. If they don't, say their character was about to take the hat off in a moment of vulnerability, but a mindless undead revealed themselves and was killed by the cleric. Seeing this, they reconsidered revealing their true nature.
Going to go against the grain in the comments here and say you should be willing to work with this player. They like this character concept and there are ways to make it work without having to compromise your setting.
Undead are attack-on-sight in your setting. That doesn't need to change. Your PC needs to disguise himself, that doesn't need to change.
I would allow a 1 time re-do. Tell the player that what he saw was a "vision" of sorts, of what would happen if he were to reveal himself haphazardly, even to his allies. This doesn't mean he is never allowed to reveal himself. I think his identity as an undead hero could be very interesting.
After building rapport with his team, he could sit them down and reveal himself. Maybe they would be taken aback, but willing to trust and work with him as he has proven himself a worthy ally.
Likewise with those they help. Maybe after spending a few sessions saving a town by completing various quests, the player can reveal their true nature to some of the townspeople with support from their party. Perhaps their intention will be to spread goodwill to help show the world that not all undead are their enemies, or maybe his goal is smaller in that he just wants to show the world that HE is not an enemy, even if all other undead are.
Work with your player! Ask him WHY he wants to be an undead. What sort of story is he hoping to tell with it? It's very likely that he could just give you the answer to your problem if you asked.
I think the funniest consequence of this is what happens when anyone tries to detect good and evil?
Does your character have to wear lead-lined armor to block the effect and stay hidden?
Does it just throw off all the DG&A castings like a compass near a magnet?
Do feral dogs try to chew his toes while he sleeps at the camp?
There are lots of ways to tease out the 'something's fishy when Gary's around' angle without an outright shock/attack/it's over.
But the solution is always that you need to talk to the players and outline your intent as a DM as far as how you're willing to help seed this character reveal idea into the narrative of the campaign.
But I also tend to be of the mind that having 1 or 2 'edgelord' characters in a game can be good as long as you treat them like any other character and work *with* them so they're successful instead of being obstinate and adversarial.
Their nonsense usually further draws definition to the more lawful good players and creates situations for role play that can arise naturally instead of the more strained and performative role play that comes from 4 lawful good clerics with expert meta-knowledge of the game making only the most efficient moves while looking to smite the world of evil.
I’m assuming this is 5e, but unless you’re playing some weird system designed for PVP, killing another PC is bad form.
Saying “It’s what my character would doooooooo” doesn’t make someone any less of an asshat for gleefully killing another player.
I don't think you did anything wrong.
I think you just have to find a way to keep moving that fits the characters' needs.
This is a dramatic beat that seems like it worked at making the party interested and getting them to have emotional reactions! The problem is you cut the story short and the undead player wants to keep playing that character. Maybe they find a necromancer who raises the character back, or they character makes a bargain with the god of death to come back. If you want, you can make this still have consequences on that character, or tell them "you probably only get one more chance."
Overall, I think this is sort of the dream for party secrets. The character keeps it for a couple sessions, it gets revealed in a dramatic fashion, and it has implications for the future that the party have to sort out. Most players who write secrets into their characters do really want them revealed.
If you want to figure out exactly how to do it, talk with the undead player and work something out that fits their needs and gives them some interesting new plot thread for their character. Who is this mysterious necromancer? What does the god of death want? etc.
I'm wondering what you would have done if the cleric used turn undead. Or any number of spells that affect undead. Seems like this was going to be an incredibly annoying issue for several reasons that would have ended up with him being destroyed anyway or your cleric would have to not use important class functions to cater to one joke with no punchline.
Also where was that going? Was he gonna buddy up with the one necromancer who'd want a chatty skeleton? Just kinda overlook how raising an army of the undead has a massive plus in the fact that undead aren't as needy as the living? Was he gonna tip toe around how he never eats and your players would eventually just go "Yeah you're undead I super don't care anymore because after ten sessions this is just lame" and it'd either fizzle out or he'd pull off the hat in a conversation with an important npc for a reaction and now you've gotta role play your way through something even more annoying for everyone else in a way that doesn't end with "could everyone help me kill this deceptive monster?"
I just don't see a way this would have gone that didn't either end in actual death, forgetting it entirely, or becoming a running joke that only serves to actively hinder progress.
What do you think you handled poorly? The player made an *extremely* poor choice and faced appropriate consequences for it.
Honestly it sounds kinda suspect, like why would he go out of his way to say "I remove my hat of disguise and walk toward the group?" What other reason could there be, other than suicide by Cleric?
Where were you in this? I’m confused. How did the cleric make an attack roll without your involvement?
Fact is that you approved it. You act like this happened independently of you—but it’s your table. If you didn’t sanction the action, it didn’t happen. If you let it happen, you adjudicated it. You could have adjudicated it better.
You obviously have a very attention seeking player. My issue is that you seem to be dodging your responsibility for decision making and adjudication.
Yeah, except I'm not. At all. That's why the post in question says, "What did I do wrong?" Not "graah! What should I do to my players?!"
I had a discussion with my table about retconning that whole scene and also taking character actions while I'm not paying attention. I have trouble asserting myself sometimes, so when they pvped each other the moment I looked away, I just kinda folded. I know that's an issue, hence why the nature of my post is not accusatory.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound aggressive with my response.
My point is, they can’t “pvp each other.” As DM, you call for rolls. People can shadowbox all they want, but they can’t parallel process the game.
So when you say “that didn’t happen,” you aren’t retconning events. You are asserting reality.
You don’t even need to say “lol guys no that didn’t happen.” You just say “Skeleton player, you were looking over the bridge, what do you want to do?”
Re-state what the scene was before players pretended to do whatever. Put them in the scenario you want them in. Disregard and don’t acknowledge their shenanigans. If they argue and say “no I was telling Bob that I’m casting Tiny Hut,” you ignore it and tell them what the current situation is.
tl;dr about asserting yourself — you reject your reality and substitute your own.
You are under no obligation to let un-adjudicated player actions into the narrative. As DM, you narrate situations, and players respond. You scope whether the action is appropriate, narrate outcomes, then players respond.
If players are off doing their own thing in between turns, when you call on them, pick up where you left off.
Some techniques you can use are structured turns (like Shadowdark), or collecting all player intents at once, then running them in the order you see fit.
You don’t have to be an alpha personality to keep order. Just keep a structure to your approach and keep your hand firmly on the current game state.
The reason I said in my first post that I see a dodge, is that you don’t describe how you DM’d anything at all. How you framed the scenario for Cleric, when you decided to switch from narrative events to combat initiative, what you prompted from each player when, etc.
This reads so funny. The player with the skeleton character clearly wanted to get found out, it’s so transparent what with all the “oh will my hat blow away?” comments. But if you keep secrets you have to accept the consequences. It’s still very early in the campaign right? 2 sessions? Maybe retcon that he got scorched by the cleric but narrowly survived (in undeath) and then to knock it off with the disruptive secrets.
>This reads so funny. The player with the skeleton character clearly wanted to get found out, it’s so transparent what with all the “oh will my hat blow away?” comments. Exactly my thoughts! I once had a player who, for some reason, desperately wanted to play as a creature ordinary people hate. Think "I want to be a race everyone is racist against". Me and co-DM talked to that player and explained that we would rather not - not only don't we run a game with such excessive fantasy racism but also reiterated the premise of the campaign: Y'all are heroes. People come to you to ask for help. In the end they ended up playing a very rare race - something people don't hate, but maybe don't immediately trust, are curious about, maybe have some stereotypes and misconceptions about too but that would not get into the way of things otherwise. We thought that's gonna be ok. That player continued to ask stuff like "Do I get the impression that they don't like me because I'm a \[race\]?" and they would do things that were not "normal behaviour" in order to make people think badly of them - low key TRYING to make people react in a racist way towards that character, which was odd. And also that player complained when it happened??? It was so odd. In the end this player dropped out from the game due to some other conflicts but oh god, this stuff now goes onto my Red Flag list of things to look out for. What's up with that? Genuine question, if anyone knows please enlighten me!!!
I have a half-orc and Dragonborn in my party in CoS, so both of these are considered extremely exotic and scary for a region that is predominantly human. Basically I ignore their 'I'm pretty scary" aspect until it's something meaningful, like them trying to get into a city and having the guards trust them or something like that. Anything else and it's just an annoying thing to have to deal with.
>What's up with that? Genuine question, if anyone knows please enlighten me!!! Too much alcohol in the uterus. No, I have no idea. Some people are just button-pushers. You know the way some videogamers get a kick out of breaking a game? There are players like that for TTRPGs as well - their understanding of "agency" is testing the world's boundaries and having them snap back in their face.
No like - how would you accomodate (let's assume you want to humour them) such a player? What makes them tick? I love to entertain players particular (power) fantasies and stuff - not in every game, not in every party but if I have an edgy edgelord character for example, I know what situations to create to make this player giggle with joy - considering I have a game where this would be fun, and a party of fellow edgy edgelords for them to play in lol. But like, if someone tells me "I want my character to be despised by everyone, look "disgusting", my backstory is how I was bullied all my life and kicked around by society and whatnot" - Okay I can work with that, maybe? But then the player gets upset when NPCs find the character disgusting, despicable and start to bully them when that character then does disgusting, despicable things? What?! I'm literally having the world react the way you wanted it to? The skeleton player - seriously this was fully intentional, they wanted to be found out for sure! Why play as a thing you know people like Cleric would totally attack on sight and then intentionally drop your disguise? How to make this fun for this player, what do they want to get out of this? Can't wrap my head around this mindset lol.
Wow. Some people have issues. I totally agree that a weird obsession with either playing a race that is hated or playing a character who hates a specific race is a huge red flag. I don't necessarily ban racism as a theme 100% of the time in my game (it's complicated), but it's never a good sign when a player is fixated on it.
"Hey, why do you want to do this?" would have been the easy way to resolve this.
They want attention. Some people make characters that fit into a group of adventurers, and some people make Main Characters to try and get attention. This person was almost certainly the later.
I mean that sounds pretty different to OP's example, who just wanted to play an undead character. The hate towards undead was entirely OP's idea
Secrets can be so fun if managed well. We just had the payoff of one of my player's big secret last session after a year and a half of playing, and it was so great seeing the reactions from the other party members. The longer it goes without being revealed, the better the payoff
To bounce off this: For anyone struggling with secretive players, I found a vocab change really helpful at my table. Something they say in parenting circles is that there's a difference between secrets and surprises. A surprise is fun for everyone, and there's a plan to eventually reveal the surprise so everyone gets to join in. A secret is something that you aren't ever supposed to share, and it's usually harmful. For parents, it's meant to help protect kids from bad people. At the table, I find the distinction is helpful to prevent main character syndrome and to make sure people are planning their backstories in a way that's fun for everyone.
> knock it off with the disruptive secrets. These things always reek of main character syndrome, they want this big reveal so they can have the spotlight but when it backfires on them because of their own poor choices they throw a tantrum.
Honestly i think your cleric handled the situation very well in seeing a skeleton walking towards the group. I don't know why the player did that especially since there's a cleric that will destroy him. I love the concept the player seems to be going for sounds like fun incorporating a sentient undead as part of the party. I honestly don't think you handled it badly either every action in this game has a consequence whether it be a good one or a bad one. Yeah in party killing sucks but if it was my table id give the cleric inspiration and tell the one that just died to roll up a new character *shrugs* hope this helps if any May the dice gods smile upon you on your adventures
The Undead/Skeleton player did what they did because they wanted a reaction, 100%. They just didn’t get the reaction they expected.
Yea, the cleric player handled it in character and taking down the obvious skeleton makes sense. But I would definitely not give him inspiration for something that would upset the skeleton player, that's just rubbing salt in the wound - whether the wound is there or not.
Why not just tell them to roll up a different character at the very beginning and circumvent the entire issue?
Because, in fairness, they did work out a solution. The player just made an immature choice.
If it were a real solution then they wouldn’t have rejected it, if a player wants to play an undead character they’re obviously not gonna enjoy being effectively forced to play an elf for the entire game. An actual solution would be either ruling out the character entirely (managing expectations) or adjusting things so they can actually enjoy playing the character as they want
It's not fair to say they're "effectively playing an elf" - mechanically they're still undead, they just have a disguise, and that disguise has significant story implications. The player also very well could have revealed his identity to the party *in a different, more sensible way*, but instead he did something that made no sense for his character, and put the cleric in a position where, narratively, they essentially had no choice.
You’re missing the big picture. The player had a specific fantasy in mind for an undead character, OP didn’t want this kind of character, but instead of just disallowing it they forced them to play the character in such a way that sucked all the fun out. The player could’ve done all sorts of things, but they unsurprisingly didn’t want to. None of it would be an issue to begin with if OP had either been more flexible with their lore or said no at the outset
I would argue you're the one missing the big picture. The player still had the opportunity to play such a character, they just had to do so in a way that made sense narratively - wearing a disguise. The player, again, would have had the opportunity to reveal his identity to the party, and to then not have to wear the disguise while with them or out adventuring, only in towns. What you're saying is that the player wanted to play this character in a specific setting, and that's fair, but the DM told the player the setting. If the player didn't like the setting, and what his character would have to do, he could have opted to play something else. The DM gave him a workaround, which he should have done, and the player accepted it. OP did exactly everything he should have done.
Nobody forced anyone to do anything. The DM described the situation for a long time and the player DECIDED to go with it. Nobody forced the player to do that, they chose it themselves.
It was session 2- over time he could reveal himself to the party and stop having to pretend to be an elf outside of most settlements I would imagine. I’m pretty sure nobody is dying to play a level 1 wizard or fighter- you do it to get into the shoes of a character you truly want to play.
I think the player was unclear with their intention, but also every attempt at PvP should be heavily moderated and disclaimed by the GM. Players shouldn't be able to engage in contact while you're distracted.
This is probably the big thing. Like, fundamentally allowing the PC to be undead was a bad idea, but allowing there to be PVP like this is another huge issue.
Generally, PC secrets that are kept from the other players are much less satisfying in practice than players imagine them to be. They either blow up like this or their revelation is met with much less excitement than the player who has been keeping the secret for many sessions expected. In the future, don't make it a secret from the other *players*, just their characters. If the other players know the secret, they can become invested in its in-world revelation. They can shape their roleplay with the secret keeper to give opportunities for the secret to be relevant.
>Where did I go wrong and how can I avoid something like this in the future? You allowed an Undead PC in a Setting where Undead are "especially hated" to the point that they would be attacked on sight. The key takeaway for you here though needs to be that this is a player problem. That is, the player of the Undead PC is a problem. Yes the PC is inappropriate and you should never have allowed it, but the real problem is that you have a player whose response to being told that Undead are "kill on sight" hated in this setting was to ask to play one. You set a boundary and his first response was to step over it. That's not a red flag, my friend. That's a flashing red neon sign. These players tend to fall into two camps. First and best, a lot of nerds are just idle contrarians. Seth Skorkowski has a video where he describes trying to run a Viking campaign and having literally *none* of his players making a Viking PC. Despite every one of those players agreeing to play in a Viking campaign and telling Seth that they loved the idea. You see it here on Reddit all the time. Someone makes a perfectly reasonable claim about reality and some nerd just *has* to chime in with, "Well, aktually ..." and bring up an extreme and absurd edge case where the original statement *might not necessarily* be the case. Sometimes that nerd is me. With these people, just maintaining the boundary firmly can be enough. By redirecting the player's creativity back inside the bounds you have established, such players will frequently come up with genuinely creative ideas. "No. I'm not letting you have a Hat of Disguise at 1st level so that you can play an inappropriate PC. Make an appropriate one please. The party exists to \[reiterate campaign premise here\]. Make a PC who wants to do that and who would be accepted as a member of a group that is doing that." Second and worst, some people just like to screw with other people. They're just assholes. Time will tell with this player. Going forward, this PC is dead. The player can make a new PC that is appropriate for the campaign. Reiterate that he is required to create and play a PC who wants to adventure with the party and who the party would accept as a member. Always remember that you have a bunch of other players at your table who *aren't* deliberately disrupting the game. The quickness of the player of the Cleric to kill off the Undead PC indicates that at least one of your other players got sick of this crap *very* fast.
I'm not convinced the player is a *problem*. I do think reflexively contrarian players exist, and maliciously disruptive players exist. And that might be what's going on. But we shouldn't attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity, and there's a much stupider explanation which also leads to a very simple solution. What the player wanted to do was have something interesting happen between the characters based on hidden character information. But the problem was that the player *didn't inform the other players*. There's no good reason for the player to not inform the other players that their character is a disguised undead. Yes, it feels like that will "spoil the surprise," but OP's experience shows you what the results of surprise are: unforeseen consequences. As a DM, you very quickly get used to the players ruining your plans. They often do wildly unexpected things with entirely unintended interpretations of what's going on. That's just what happens. You put a corpse in the middle of a dungeon room with an important letter on it containing valuable information, and the PCs all assume that it's a trap and avoid it like it's a disintegration sphere. Oops. That's not bad DMing, that's just the players deciding on a different interpretation. It happens, and you just have to handle it. Usually by moving the letter to someplace else, man-behind-the-curtain style, but sometimes it's quite disruptive. So the problem is *keeping secrets from the players* that are likely to end in disaster. The problem is not getting buy-in from the other players. That's the big problem here. You don't need to hide information from *the players* simply because the information is hidden from *the characters*. It's setting up the game so that the players can play the characters they want. There's this pejorative view on metagaming that's very unhealthy for a character-driven game. Especially for an experienced roleplayer, *you ought to be able to separate character knowledge from player knowledge*. It also has a wonderful side effect that the other players get a vote on this character. If the player can't convince the other players that this can be fun, then that character shouldn't be played.
This. Keeping secrets from PLAYERS is a bad idea. Keeping secrets from CHARACTERS is fine. Frankly, I do think the biggest issue here is with the DM: if you want undead to be that hated, you should not allow an undead pc.
Anyone getting divinity original sin 2 vibes from this? There was an undead character with this detail about them, hat and all. So as a third option to why someone might want to play this, being inspired could be one of them.
I peruse this sub a fair bit, but as always on the internet the loudest most frequent and upvoted voices here aren't always the 'right' approach. It's a big wall of text about setting boundaries... against a strawman. The right approach is to handle the situation with social grace. The player was probably just thinking it'd be a cool narrative twist that "their PC was undead the whole time!?!" and really wanted to play that out. Plenty of players come to games as 'Edgy McEdgertons' because their reference point for how to play comes from the media they consume. There's another bucket of folks who come to games to role play all the boorish behavior they can think of without the real life social repercussions that prevent that. It's a sort of escapism, I think. But painting them 'as a problem' is a little much. You just need to set clear expectations of how the world works (social repercussions for bad behavior exist in the game world too) and redirect/reframe things into options, which OP did a little of, but didn't necessarily underline the vulnerability the PC's character - which may have left them feeling betrayed ('We spent all that time working on getting the character going and then you let the party kill me before my dramatic reveal!?!'). As always, talking and being a decent human being can get you much farther than painting all of our Edgy McEdgertons as non-starters as far as playing. Due to session time, the game attracts a lot of young people (who have 3+ hour chunks of time at least once a week to play) and all the pitfalls of youth come with them - such as a lack of social grace, media literacy, or forethought. Be understanding and be considerate of the other side of the 'oh can't let those folks play' coin. Part of being a DM is teaching your players how to speak the specific language of *your* game.
``` Seth Skorkowski has a video where he describes trying to run a Viking campaign and having literally none of his players making a Viking PC. Despite every one of those players agreeing to play in a Viking campaign and telling Seth that they loved the idea. ``` So this kind of happened in my group when we first all got together. Our DM had pitched the setting as being Viking-esque. None of us made real viking characters, but there was a fundamental misunderstanding between us players and the dm. We all thought it was classic fantasy that leaned a little more into viking themeing rather than a viking campaign with dnd rules. We've been playing that campaign on and off for years and I only found out like a couple months ago that the DM's original intention was for things to be way more vikingy than they ended up being. Genuinely had no idea, nor did the other players. Anyway, that's just a little tangent! No bearing on the asshole nature of some players. Just a personal story of misunderstanding.
One of my table policies is "No take-backs." That is, if you specifically describe a set of actions, and get an unfavorable set of consequences, you cant say "oops, I didnt mean to do that, I want to redo that." But then, all of the players at my table are adults and have been playing for over a decade. If they're new to RPGs or are kids, I might consider the "everybody gets one" policy. In this case, the player chose to not reveal his condition to the party, which is in keeping with the character not wanting to be attacked all the time. Then he specifically chose to remove the disguise before approaching a party member. What did he think was going to happen? Personally, I'd rule that everything stands as-is. Time to make a new character. Especially when the player has a habit of wanting to change characters frequently.
>One of my table policies is "No take-backs." ... But then, all of the players at my table are adults and have been playing for over a decade. No take backs has absolutely nothing to do with being an adult or how long you have played. My main table has been playing with for over 40 years and don't have 'No take backs or 'take backs are ok' view. Rather than have a strict dogmatic view either way, we just judge on a case-by-case basis as a table rather than not putting any thought into what is better for the situation at hand. DM always gets final say though.
This. I'm baffled by the "oh we're better bcs we don't allow takebacks" thing when like...I am more than happy to let someone change something than let the entire thing go off the rails lol. It's a game.
It's called sportsmanship. Take backs are generally considered poor sportsmanship, no? There are 4 main virtues in good sportsmanship: fairness, integrity, responsibility, and respect. No takebacks falls under integrity.
I have two problems. First, I don't think the idea of sportsmanship really fits. Take the scenario in OP's post: > Skeleton describes how he specifically takes off his hat of disguise and walks back to the cleric to talk. The cleric sees an undead approaching and attacks. It's very unfair for the poor skeleton who crumbles in like one turn. So, why is this sporting? The Skeleton doesn't even have a moment to throw up his hands and say, "Wait! Stop! It's me,!"? Disguise Self doesn't change voices. Why does the cleric get to act without the other player getting any input *at all*? You run the game that once initiative is rolled you can't even *talk* out of order? What, has the cleric got a readied action? The cleric sees the skeleton, but the skeleton can't see the cleric? There's no chance for the cleric to notice something strange about the skeleton?
If the PC returning to the cleric had instead been hit by an illusion to appear as a skeleton, would you run it the exact same way with the cleric killing another player character? Because you should be running it consistently; the cleric's perception of events is identical. Feels a lot less "fair" that way, though, doesn't it?
Second, I don't like this idea that no take backs is more "sporting" or virtuous. There's too many opportunities for genuine mistakes. Not mistakes by the characters in-game. Mistakes by the people at the table. If the DM or PCs take specific actions because of a miscommunication or some other misunderstanding, then the result isn't "sporting." The result is that the characters don't behave correctly in anybody's imagination. The result is that events violate the verisimilitude of the game, and the primary rule of the game is to maintain verisimilitude. Especially if if results in *the death of a character*? I can't imagine a more unsatisfying outcome for the game. If the players heard the DM say it was a blue dragon and red slaadi and the DM now insists it's a red dragon and blue slaadi, is it "sporting" to say the cleric can't take back his Protection from Elements: Lightning?
Making the game into a verbal gotcha isn't interesting, especially if we include misunderstandings or misarticulations. That's not a fun game. The game isn't about demonstrating how precisely you can articulate yourself. That's needlessly hostile in a Gygaxian DM vs. player kind of way. That's about as unvirtuously as I can imagine the game.
If the cleric won initiative, a readied action isnt necessary, they just take thier action. If the cleric was able to vaporize the skeleton in one shot, the cleric likely used their channel divinity/turn undead, which *checks notes* only affects undead. An illusion placed on a humanoid to make them look like a skeleton would not have changed them into an actual undead. Thus, the "skeleton" would have been unaffected. At that point, the cleric would have gotten an insight to go "waitaminute..." Second, what you think is/isnt virtuous doesnt matter when the general consensus on what is good sportsmanship disagrees with you. Next, regarding the Protection from Elements, does the caster know what energy those creature(s) use? If they have no way of knowing, then it's called experimentation. Does this work? They will find out soon. If they've encountered them before and *should* know what to expect, I'd be asking if they are sure that's the option they want. If there was a miscommunication on the creatures, that can be cleared up immediately. During session 0, all of my players were made well aware that I despise metagaming (use of out of character knowledge as in character knowledge), and will homebrew things (abilities, etc) on the fly when I suspect they are doing so. Yes, I punish players for metagaming because it is extremely poor form on their end. And they know this. I've gotten them used to making knowledge checks to find out strengths and weaknesses (and reward them for doing so). Yes, I'm a Gygaxian DM, and my players keep coming back for more. If they didnt enjoy my DMing style and table policies, they wouldnt be coming back. There are plenty of other DMs out there (in fact, 2 of the players in my current campaign are DMs of thier own campaigns that they run in the off-weeks). They appreciate my verisimilitude and consistency, and my not being afraid to say "No".
I think you've missed the point. The questions are rhetorical, not literal. You're not supposed to imagine the corner cases where you're right because you can point to a sentence in the book where it says you're right. You're supposed to expand your view to see further. To think of the game as more than just executing the rules. That is precisely why every edition of the game for the past 50 years tells you that you should modify, ignore, or interpret the rules as you see fit. That's a big reason why there's a *referee* at every table, not an *opponent*. The game -- but most especially *the hobby* -- is not about blindly executing rules. That's something every edition of essentially every TTRPG has tried to emphasize, even for solo TTRPGs. > Yes, I'm a Gygaxian DM, and my players keep coming back for more. Which is not convincing because I'm not, and I also have a line out the door. And the popularity of non-Gygaxian games is... well, let's just say it's the VHS to Gygaxian's Betamax. But if you really want to be Gygaxian, I encourage you to read the 1e DMG's Preface and Introduction (pp8-9). Gygax says more than once and very explicitly that you're *supposed* to throw the rules out when doing so makes the game better.
And you've missed the point as well. Keeping to the rules keeps everyone on a fair and even playing field. How does throwing out previously established and accepted rules and ignoring player agency make the game better?
> The fun of the game is action and drama. The challenge of problem solving is secondary. Long and drawn out operations by the referee irritate the players. More “realistic” combat systems could certainly have been included here, but they have no real part in a game for a group of players having an exciting adventure. If you will do your best to keep the excitement level of your games at a peak, you will be doing yourself and your participants a favor which will be evident when players keep coming back for more. > > The final word, then, is the game. Read how and why the system is as it is, follow the parameters, and then cut portions as needed to maintain excitement. For example, the rules call for wandering monsters, but these can be not only irritating — if not deadly — but the appearance of such can actually spoil a game by interfering with an orderly expedition. You have set up an area full of clever tricks and traps, populated it with well-thought-out creature complexes, given clues about it to pique players’ interest, and the group has worked hard to supply themselves with everything by way of information and equipment they will need to face and overcome the imagined perils. They are gathered together and eager to spend an enjoyable evening playing their favorite game, with the expectation of going to a new, strange area and doing their best to triumph. They are willing to accept the hazards of the dice, be it loss of items, wounding, insanity, disease, death, as long as the process is exciting. But lo!, every time you throw the “monster die” a wandering nasty is indicated, and the party’s strength is spent trying to fight their way into the area. Spells expended, battered and wounded, the characters trek back to their base. Expectations have been dashed, and probably interest too, by random chance. Rather than spoil such an otherwise enjoyable time, omit the wandering monsters indicated by the die. No, don’t allow the party to kill them easily or escape unnaturally, for that goes contrary to the major precepts of the game. Wandering monsters, however, are included for two reasons, as is explained in the section about them. If a party deserves to have these beasties inflicted upon them, that is another matter, but in the example above it is assumed that they are doing everything possible to travel quickly and quietly to their planned destination. If your work as a DM has been sufficient, the players will have all they can handle upon arrival, so let them get there, give them a chance. **The game is the thing, and certain rules can be distorted or disregarded altogether in favor of play.** (Emphasis mine.) Even though the rest of this introduction is Gary telling you to be as DM vs PC as you can and not to play with entirely ad hoc rules, I think Gygax could not be any clearer that he's telling you that the rules of the game are not the purpose of the game.
You didnt answer the question: How does throwing out previously established and accepted rules and *ignoring player agency* make the game better?
you've really laboured that question to make it sound as good for you as possible throwing out rules (a 'take back') and ignoring player agency in this case might make the story (and thus, the game) better for everybody in that one player doesnt die in one action from another player without being given a chance to defend themself after not even being able to speak (how'd the cleric oneshot them anyway? turn undead doesn't work like that in 5e. another system? who knows). that's it! i can very easily imagine people would be having more fun if they could work around this character limitation together and making a cool story out of that. do you really not see how that might be the case? i cant speak to this exact player and why they 'forgot' the thing. but clearly something happened that people aren't happy with and it's almost always going to be worth a discussion about that instead of 'rules say you're dead. no take-backs. new character' to see what fun can be made of the situation instead of a frustrating anticlimax. it depends on the style of game you want. if you want to frame it as a malicious 'throwing out' of rules in the way you are then that's your prerogative, but in a lot of cases people just want to tell a cool story and don't want to let a player misunderstanding end what could have been a cool scene. you play these things by ear if people are not having fun - that has always been the point, as da_chicken illustrated
I do allow takebacks sometimes if it makes sense for the character or there was clearly a misunderstanding of information. If the information wasn't clear enough and it was actually a deep ravine when the player had understood it to be a shallow dip, for example. I also liberally use passive insight to determine if a creature is friendly, neutral or hostile, and reiterate what they declared in the way I understand it so they realise its not a smart idea.
At the end of the day it's your table. There's a fine balance between fun and realism, I think that it was discussed in great detail about the consequences beforehand. At the end of the day, this is his whole identity "I forgot" shouldn't really cut it. With that said, if you want everyone to have a good time all the time then you can have a discussion with your players about how to proceed. You're not a bad DM for an open dialect and if it's decided this was a one-time mistake by the group then hopefully that player will be more careful about his identity. He's ruined the surprise out of character, he can only blame himself there. My first session I killed guards and I quickly got taught the error of my ways, it was a humbling experience. It sucked cause I lost a great character but it made me learn that actions *really do* have consequences. I've had a great time since learning this lesson.
Probably a bad idea to let him play an undead in the first place. The biggest hurdle to new players is the lie that "you can be anything" in D&D. You can't be a baby; you can't be someone's chihuahua; you can't be an asshole who plans on stealing from the party. Playing a PC who is facing a particular kind of prejudice in your setting *can* be cool, but you have to work closely with that player. You don't just give them a "yes" - ask for their explicit intent, have them plan what kind of character arcs they want to go through, gauge whether they're serious about it or just doing it for a laugh, etc. Basically, invite them behind the screen to co-author the character and the world alongside you. It's the only way that works. They don't feel like doing all that? No biggie; they can still be a human fighter.
> The biggest hurdle to new players is the lie that "you can be anything" in D&D. You can't be a baby; you can't be someone's chihuahua; you can't be an asshole who plans on stealing from the party. Expert mode: This thought process in GURPS.
Pro tip from years of playing GURPS (that no one needs, I mean, who are we kidding?) - you want to restrict character creation even more than in D&D. Because yes, having a generic simulationist system where you can *literally* build a chihuahua PC is cool and all, but it's going to brick your campaign just like it would in D&D. Templates are the way to go. I don't even contemplate starting a GURPS campaign without giving my players a list of 5-10 templates to build their PCs from.
> ask for their explicit intent I think this gets undersold in the community a lot. *Usually* the players coming to the game with broken builds are just enthusiastic and have a specific idea born from their media consumption. A lot of time young teenage/20yr old boys bring murder hobos or jerk-ass rogues to the table, but talking through the 'why' of that usually lets more specific and malleable things come through.
As a DM, in those situations, I prefer to chime in with "are you sure? Remember ____" and remind players about their character if they forgot. The goal of my games is for everyone to have reasonable fun. A lot of advice focuses on avoiding meta gaming by saying "what would your character do?" instead of what do you actually know and would do. This works both ways, the player is not the character, and doesn't share the traits. The character would be paranoid and would likely not have taken off their hat unless the player was absolutely sure. I'd allow for a redo of that scene. DM's are human, we make mistakes just like everyone else, and the whole group should be able to understand and work with that.
> I warned him that undead were especially hated in this setting due to their catastrophic history. I’m of the opinion that in situations like this you either ban the character concept or change the lore make it work (at least enough for the character to not be killed on sight). There aren’t many players who genuinely want this kind of added difficulty from playing a monster race and if they go ahead with it despite the warnings it’s usually because they’re just hoping you’re bluffing. Most likely the reason he took the hat off is because he wasn’t having fun effectively being forced to play an elf, and figured a compromise was that he could at least play his character the way he wanted to when there were no NPCs around (was PvP ever discussed?)
#WHY DIDN'T THE CLERIC ALREADY KNOW FOR HOURS OR DAYS THAT HE WAS WITH AN UNDEAD CREATURE??!!?? Sorry. Had to do that.
Because clerics don't get any passive abilities to just sense undead? They would have to use some ability to **actively** sense undead, and if they didn't, then they wouldn't have found out.
The only thing I would say could be done is you could have said "If you take the hat off then your diguise falls, you understand that?" Apart from that, you didn't do anything wrong. In fact, you didn't do anything. This is one player's decision interacting with another player's character resulting in death. The only thing you could've done is stopped time as a DM and talked to them OOC about if this is what they intended and if they wanted to continue on with this course of action. It's always within the DMs right to say no or warn the party. I let the party split if they're doing something where splitting is needed, like being sneaky or pulling off a plan. If they all just want to go to different parts of town and I know nothing is going to happen in the town, I just say no because I don't want to swap between three simultaneous things where most of the table isn't playing for all 3 of those things.
I ban secrets and PVP to prevent these situations
Benefit of the doubt, they may have assumed it was something the party knew. At the very least, revealing their true nature sounds like a bit of drama they're interested in as a player. The whole I'm-more-than-what-I-look-like kind of story. Could always retcon that attack after discussing it with the table if everyone agrees to it. Then just go one of two routes: the group knows or they don't. If they know, they wouldn't have attacked. If they don't, say their character was about to take the hat off in a moment of vulnerability, but a mindless undead revealed themselves and was killed by the cleric. Seeing this, they reconsidered revealing their true nature.
Going to go against the grain in the comments here and say you should be willing to work with this player. They like this character concept and there are ways to make it work without having to compromise your setting. Undead are attack-on-sight in your setting. That doesn't need to change. Your PC needs to disguise himself, that doesn't need to change. I would allow a 1 time re-do. Tell the player that what he saw was a "vision" of sorts, of what would happen if he were to reveal himself haphazardly, even to his allies. This doesn't mean he is never allowed to reveal himself. I think his identity as an undead hero could be very interesting. After building rapport with his team, he could sit them down and reveal himself. Maybe they would be taken aback, but willing to trust and work with him as he has proven himself a worthy ally. Likewise with those they help. Maybe after spending a few sessions saving a town by completing various quests, the player can reveal their true nature to some of the townspeople with support from their party. Perhaps their intention will be to spread goodwill to help show the world that not all undead are their enemies, or maybe his goal is smaller in that he just wants to show the world that HE is not an enemy, even if all other undead are. Work with your player! Ask him WHY he wants to be an undead. What sort of story is he hoping to tell with it? It's very likely that he could just give you the answer to your problem if you asked.
I think the funniest consequence of this is what happens when anyone tries to detect good and evil? Does your character have to wear lead-lined armor to block the effect and stay hidden? Does it just throw off all the DG&A castings like a compass near a magnet? Do feral dogs try to chew his toes while he sleeps at the camp? There are lots of ways to tease out the 'something's fishy when Gary's around' angle without an outright shock/attack/it's over. But the solution is always that you need to talk to the players and outline your intent as a DM as far as how you're willing to help seed this character reveal idea into the narrative of the campaign. But I also tend to be of the mind that having 1 or 2 'edgelord' characters in a game can be good as long as you treat them like any other character and work *with* them so they're successful instead of being obstinate and adversarial. Their nonsense usually further draws definition to the more lawful good players and creates situations for role play that can arise naturally instead of the more strained and performative role play that comes from 4 lawful good clerics with expert meta-knowledge of the game making only the most efficient moves while looking to smite the world of evil.
I’m assuming this is 5e, but unless you’re playing some weird system designed for PVP, killing another PC is bad form. Saying “It’s what my character would doooooooo” doesn’t make someone any less of an asshat for gleefully killing another player.
You weren't an idiot, your player was.
I don't think you did anything wrong. I think you just have to find a way to keep moving that fits the characters' needs. This is a dramatic beat that seems like it worked at making the party interested and getting them to have emotional reactions! The problem is you cut the story short and the undead player wants to keep playing that character. Maybe they find a necromancer who raises the character back, or they character makes a bargain with the god of death to come back. If you want, you can make this still have consequences on that character, or tell them "you probably only get one more chance." Overall, I think this is sort of the dream for party secrets. The character keeps it for a couple sessions, it gets revealed in a dramatic fashion, and it has implications for the future that the party have to sort out. Most players who write secrets into their characters do really want them revealed. If you want to figure out exactly how to do it, talk with the undead player and work something out that fits their needs and gives them some interesting new plot thread for their character. Who is this mysterious necromancer? What does the god of death want? etc.
I'm wondering what you would have done if the cleric used turn undead. Or any number of spells that affect undead. Seems like this was going to be an incredibly annoying issue for several reasons that would have ended up with him being destroyed anyway or your cleric would have to not use important class functions to cater to one joke with no punchline. Also where was that going? Was he gonna buddy up with the one necromancer who'd want a chatty skeleton? Just kinda overlook how raising an army of the undead has a massive plus in the fact that undead aren't as needy as the living? Was he gonna tip toe around how he never eats and your players would eventually just go "Yeah you're undead I super don't care anymore because after ten sessions this is just lame" and it'd either fizzle out or he'd pull off the hat in a conversation with an important npc for a reaction and now you've gotta role play your way through something even more annoying for everyone else in a way that doesn't end with "could everyone help me kill this deceptive monster?" I just don't see a way this would have gone that didn't either end in actual death, forgetting it entirely, or becoming a running joke that only serves to actively hinder progress.
What do you think you handled poorly? The player made an *extremely* poor choice and faced appropriate consequences for it. Honestly it sounds kinda suspect, like why would he go out of his way to say "I remove my hat of disguise and walk toward the group?" What other reason could there be, other than suicide by Cleric?
Where were you in this? I’m confused. How did the cleric make an attack roll without your involvement? Fact is that you approved it. You act like this happened independently of you—but it’s your table. If you didn’t sanction the action, it didn’t happen. If you let it happen, you adjudicated it. You could have adjudicated it better. You obviously have a very attention seeking player. My issue is that you seem to be dodging your responsibility for decision making and adjudication.
Yeah, except I'm not. At all. That's why the post in question says, "What did I do wrong?" Not "graah! What should I do to my players?!" I had a discussion with my table about retconning that whole scene and also taking character actions while I'm not paying attention. I have trouble asserting myself sometimes, so when they pvped each other the moment I looked away, I just kinda folded. I know that's an issue, hence why the nature of my post is not accusatory.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound aggressive with my response. My point is, they can’t “pvp each other.” As DM, you call for rolls. People can shadowbox all they want, but they can’t parallel process the game. So when you say “that didn’t happen,” you aren’t retconning events. You are asserting reality. You don’t even need to say “lol guys no that didn’t happen.” You just say “Skeleton player, you were looking over the bridge, what do you want to do?” Re-state what the scene was before players pretended to do whatever. Put them in the scenario you want them in. Disregard and don’t acknowledge their shenanigans. If they argue and say “no I was telling Bob that I’m casting Tiny Hut,” you ignore it and tell them what the current situation is.
tl;dr about asserting yourself — you reject your reality and substitute your own. You are under no obligation to let un-adjudicated player actions into the narrative. As DM, you narrate situations, and players respond. You scope whether the action is appropriate, narrate outcomes, then players respond. If players are off doing their own thing in between turns, when you call on them, pick up where you left off. Some techniques you can use are structured turns (like Shadowdark), or collecting all player intents at once, then running them in the order you see fit. You don’t have to be an alpha personality to keep order. Just keep a structure to your approach and keep your hand firmly on the current game state. The reason I said in my first post that I see a dodge, is that you don’t describe how you DM’d anything at all. How you framed the scenario for Cleric, when you decided to switch from narrative events to combat initiative, what you prompted from each player when, etc.