Must the DM welcome/reject players input at the game table

[francisca]

No individual can actually dictate the actual operations of a campaign, however, for that is the prerogative of the Dungeon Master, first and foremost, and to the players in the individual campaign thereafter. In like manner, players greatly influence the events of each particular campaign, and they must accept a large portion of blame if it is a poor game, and if the campaign is outstanding, they deserve high praise for helping to shape the game and playing well.
So at best I give you parameters here, and the rest is up to the individuals who are the stuff D8D is made of.

Maybe he's reading a lot into the first part of the first sentence.

[Benoist]

It's a whole series of quotes that are just divorced from their context, or just interpreted in extreme ways, on his side of things. I'm guessing there is a case of Bad DMs who touched him in the wrong places, if you see what I mean, then he blamed the game itself for it, and it's all confirmation bias from there.

Examples of his rhetoric:

DMG page 7: "As the creator and ultimate authority in your respective game, this work is written as one Dungeon Master equal to another."

DMG page 7: "Advanced D&D is more than a framework around which individual DMs construct their respective milieux..."

DMG page 7: "When you build your campaign you will tailor it to suit your personal tastes."

DMG page 7: "To obtain real satisfaction from such effort [building the campaign], you must have participants who will make use of your creations: players to learn the wonders and face the perils you have devised for them."

DMG page 7: "Participants will always be pushing for a game which allows them to become strong and powerful far too quickly. Each will attempt to take the game out of your hands and mold it to his or her own ends. To satisfy this nature desire is a to issue a death warrant to a campaign..."

I haven't even gotten out of the Preface yet - do I really need to continue?

PHB page 7: "This new system provides the Dungeon Master with more and better material from which to devise the campaign milieu, and that in turn means a more interesting and imaginative game for the players."

In other words, the DM creates and the players are the audience. The rules are for the DM and players, just the DM. He's the guy that matters. This in a book for players!

PHB page 8: Gygax is talking about all that the DM has to do - creating the world, balancing it, making it exciting, etc. - and then comes to the players' contribution: "As players, you help immeasurably by participating, by letting the referee know that you appreciate his or her efforts, and by playing well and in a sportsmanly fashion."

In other words, be sure to clap like a good audience.

DMG page 9: "Know the game systems, and you will know how and when to take upon yourself the ultimate power. To become the final arbiter, rather than the interpreter of the rules, can be a difficult and demanding task, and it cannot be undertaken lightly, for your players expect to play this game, not one made up on the spot. By the same token, they are playing the game the way you, their DM, imagines and creates it....Welcome to the exalted ranks of the overworked and harassed, whose cleverness and imagination are all too often unappreciated by cloddish characters whose only thought in life is to loot, pillage, slay, and fail to appreciate the hours of preparation which went into the creation of what they aim to destroy as cheaply and quickly as possible."

Again, the DM is the poor, hard-working person who does all the creating and the players' role, clods that they are, is just to run through the amusement park that's been slavishly created...

DMG Page 230: "As you hew the line with respect to conformity to major systems and uniformity of play in general, also, be certain the game is mastered by you and not by your players. Within the broad parameters of given in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons volumes, you are creator and final arbiter. By ordering things as they should be, the game as a whole first, your campaign next, and your participants thereafter, you will be playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons as it was meant to be."

Again, DM is the exalted creator and the players are an afterthought. And don't give 'em an inch.

[Benoist]

[deleted per later remarks]

[T. Foster]

I mean this in the nicest possible way, but there's a reason why most of us aren't following or participating in that RPGSite thread. The OP was fine, and so is providing a link, but we really don't need the full cut & paste play-by-play, especially of the other guy's posts (I mean, even when I'm at theRPGSite I have Seanchai on my Ignore list, so I really don't need to see his posts here).

[Benoist]

OK. Message received.

[TRP]

I assume some stuff got posted here from the RPGsite, but I didn't see it.

There's a reason I don't visit the RPGsite, because it's full of more useless cow shit than a cattle yard.

[Benoist]

I disagree about the RPG Site - there's a lot of good people there, and a lot of worthy discussion going on, from my standpoint. Sure, there is some amount of BS too, but I prefer that to the crazy heavy-handed moderation of places like RPGnet or ENWorld.

In any case. I actually wasn't thinking that one of the points for this place here to exist
precisely was to get away from these sorts of shitstorms. I apologize, since I crossed a line I shouldn't have. I should have thought things through before posting some more about this. My mistake.

[AxeMental]

No individual can actually dictate the actual operations of a campaign, however, for that is the prerogative of the Dungeon Master, first and foremost, and to the players in the individual campaign thereafter. In like manner, players greatly influence the events of each particular campaign, and they must accept a large portion of blame if it is a poor game, and if the campaign is outstanding, they deserve high praise for helping to shape the game and playing well.
So at best I give you parameters here, and the rest is up to the individuals who are the stuff D8D is made of.

Maybe he's reading a lot into the first part of the first sentence.

I'm not following what the original poster is asking. What I get out of the above quote is that the players have to do interesting things to result in a fun game (the DM makes the world the players have to go into it and seek out adventure). If the game "played out" is the campaign then yes, the players are partners in it. If the campaign is only the world created (and places to go within it) then thats purely the DM's territory (at least traditionally).

[TRP]

I disagree about the RPG Site - there's a lot of good people there, and a lot of worthy discussion going on, from my standpoint. Sure, there is some amount of BS too, but I prefer that to the crazy heavy-handed moderation of places like RPGnet or ENWorld.

Wait. Maybe I'm confusing RPGSite with RPGnet. Which is the one with the Pundit? That's the one I was thinking of.

ETA: Nope, I was correct the first time. Just looked and saw the Pundit's lair. Fortunately, it must have been busy sucking on a pipe, as I've returned unmolested.

[THAC0]

Actual quote from the guy:

DMG page 7: "Participants will always be pushing for a game which allows them to become strong and powerful far too quickly. Each will attempt to take the game out of your hands and mold it to his or her own ends. To satisfy this natural desire is a to issue a death warrant to a campaign..."

Remind him that in that particular section that Gary Gygax is NOT talking about shutting down advice or ideas or suggestions from your players. He is talking about NOT letting players dictate terms to the DM. There is a huge difference to the two. Also, remind him that it is bad form to take small sections of a paragraph out of context.

[geneweigel]

Gary Gygax is simply referring to bad gaming trends of the time and how for educated "advanced" players to maintain an air of quality. Its highly visible in post-Gygax D&D as "the rules" but back then bad gaming was omnipresent just not "canon-ized" like it is today where the quality suffers.

There are a lot of people who look at weak rpgs as somehow deserving of the respect of the feeling that classic D&D generates simply because they exist and they just wail and wail about being a victim, etc. Heh, that lame angle I've been hearing since 1982 when some radical "help, I'm a political victim!" twit was slowly vanguarding his homemade rpg (and his retarded political philosophies) into my particular set of friends. Heh, yeah my defense of Gygax goes waaaayyy back and as open-minded as I was I just had it with the whining, grandstanding and criticism so I just starting ignoring him totally. Thats the best way to handle those types.

[Clangador]

Gary Gygax is simply referring to bad gaming trends of the time and how for educated "advanced" players to maintain an air of quality. Its highly visible in post-Gygax D&D as "the rules" but back then bad gaming was omnipresent just not "canon-ized" like it is today where the quality suffers.

There are a lot of people who look at weak rpgs as somehow deserving of the respect of the feeling that classic D&D generates simply because they exist and they just wail and wail about being a victim, etc. Heh, that lame angle I've been hearing since 1982 when some radical "help, I'm a political victim!" twit was slowly vanguarding his homemade rpg (and his retarded political philosophies) into my particular set of friends. Heh, yeah my defense of Gygax goes waaaayyy back and as open-minded as I was I just had it with the whining, grandstanding and criticism so I just starting ignoring him totally. Thats the best way to handle those types.

Sounds like you are talking about Raven c.s. McCracken...

[thedungeondelver]

Seanchai was the first or second person in my killfile at TRPGS. His expressed dislike of 1e, people saying they like 1e, 1e discussion in general that doesn't unfavorably compare it to or dovetail into 4e cheer-leading and so on basically means that he's playing the "clever atheist" card, cherry picking quotes to back up his assertion that ZOMG LOL @ UR BELIEFS.

IOW, I don't want to read him there, I don't want to read him here.

[Benoist]

I have to agree. The guy at TRPGS has been pushing my buttons and I basically gave in. I shouldn't have engaged in the first place, and I made a bigger mistake to bring my argument with the troll here at the Alehouse. I shouldn't have, and apologize for that.