Another thing I noticed is getting more common among RPG Horror Stories. When once it was common to see entitled players complaining the GM is not running the game like Matt Mercer runs on Critical Role, I have lately seen quite few stories where problem GM tries to use that to deflect criticism. It’s usually the type to be acting creepily towards women, both in and out of game, enjoying juvenile, overtly edgy humor and/or insisting of all kinds of bigotry for “historical accurracy”. And when the players confront him (as it’s almost always a guy) about it, he’s going to say something like “Stop sucking Mercer off, this is real D&D!” or “Go play at Matt Mercer’s table, if you don’t like it!”.
While, as usual, there is possibility these stories are fake, I can see these being true - the kind to engage in those specific behaviors is also the kind to grab on buzzwords or try to twist real problems to deflect criticism.
Used to be, gm rule 1 was “everyone should be having fun”
I, and it’s been awhile, have changed my personal rule 1 to “every player has autonomy”
Nobody came to watch your one person play, it’s a group storytelling game, if it’s not collaborative you’re doing it wrong.
Back in the time of Reddit, I saw someone complaining because, after joining a table that expressively required only good-aligned characters, he couldn’t buy slaves at the market.
His logic was that slavery is not morally wrong by itself, and that he would treat the slave well.
He got tons of upvotes for that one, and I lost yet another small speck of trust in humanity.
EDIT: Ha! I still had the screenshot saved somewhere. Now you too can rejoice in hearing sane and balanced argumentations such as “I planned to be a good owner to them, like a good person in the pre-civil war era might do”. You’re welcome.
At least I misremembered the number of upvotes. He got a few, but not many (although, because of how Reddit works, it’s not possible to separate upvotes from downvotes, so he could’ve gotten a lot of downvotes and an even greater number of upvotes). Granted, the fact that that comment was in the positive still makes me sad…
Idk, I think that might be a bit of an overreaction and a missed opportunity. He has a good point about being from that town and slavery being a normal part of his life growing up. That could’ve turned into an interesting in-character exploration of cultural moral standards: genuine confusion about what’s wrong with being a “good” slave-owner, maybe a conversation about how easily freed slaves are re-captured, it could turn into a whole revelation for the barb that culminates in a quest to dismantle the entire slave trade.
Obviously we’re missing some context, and it’s possible that the player exhibited problematic behavior, but personally I don’t think the scenario is itself that bad. Just sounds like a barbarian from a slave-trading society role playing their character. Some would argue that eating meat would be likewise incompatible with a good-alignment, but our culture sees no fundamental moral objection to slaughtering animals.
The edgelord DMs who say stuff like this tend to forget that D&D is in many ways meant to be a better world. Where slavery exists, for example, it exists as something that evil people do and heroes stop. If you’re participating, you’re not a hero; you’re the asshole the heroes are there to stop.
Bigots exist in our campaign, but its because we utterly enjoy putting them in their place.
D&D has hell. It used to be that the fastest-reproducing races were also evil, sending more and more people to hell.
Looking it up, the creators were Christian, so maybe they thought real life was even worse, but D&D was always intended as a crapsack world. If you want to play one that isn’t, great. Just be prepared to rewrite some major lore.
