this post was submitted on 27 May 2025
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You should really try to understand what game you're playing. Ttrpg are not competitive games, so your comparisons with competitive games are missing the point entirely.
I'll state bluntly : if you consider the game as a competitive game, you are a problem player.
It is a good thing to show the players that the game is not a competition because as a dm you are the one to decide how hard it will be.
The game cannot be competitive. Do you get that?
It's just an analogy. Here; let me try one more time.
If you're playing a horde shooter and your friend reveals they can just spawn a boss on top of you at any time, it kind of kills your desire to keep playing - at least with them.
No offense, but you seem overly fixated on all the wrong things.
you still don't get it.
you must be a miserable person to TTRPG with.
I guess I should stop using analogies then.
The point isn't whether the players are competing with the DM. The point is that there's two people playing a game and one person can just screw over the other whenever they feel like it. Painting that in a competitive setting hits closer to home for a lot of people since they're more likely to have experienced that themselves. It wasn't meant to be indicative of how I perceive a good player/DM relationship.
I'm sorry, I had no idea it would confuse so many people so badly.
you've made it abundantly clear you believe this, and then double down by following it up with:
the DM is not there to 'screw over' the other players, and the players aren't there to 'beat' the dm.
Have you ever actually played a TTRPG?
I'm beginning to wonder if anyone would even sit at a table with you.
Do you understand the context of the discussion?
Maybe I'm in the minority here, but to me I'd consider throwing a god-level NPC at your players explicitly to punish them for their behavior to fall pretty squarely under "screwing them over". Not to say players should be allowed to do whatever they want, but I'd expect a smoother escalation than that.
yeah obviously that's how you see it because you only see things one way, throughout this entire convo.
I get that.
the rest of us playing ttrpg's don't see it as 'oh they've sent punishment' - no, the dm is tailoring the world to react to the player's shenanigans. should the DM just drop everything and cater to whatever whims the PCs devise?
you really don't understand any of this shit.
If that's the expectation that's been set up for the table, sure. But jumping straight from murderhobo shenanigans to "Ok here's a god to stop you, roll initiative" isn't the way I'd handle people playing the game in a way I don't like. I've been over this all already with another poster; it causes problems and might not even solve the ones you're using it to solve.
never dm'd shit but insists they know better.
... and now you're making wild assumptions just to discredit my point of view instead of making any actual counterargument.
I guess even if you were right (and you aren't) I'll never learn. Not with people like you around who refuse to explain their side of the debate.