Down For The Count 🧛🏾‍♂️😩💦Nov 15, 2018

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, since I'm very lucky to be playing a TON of games with different DMs and I'm coming up on DMing my first game next week (very excited, absolutely terrified).

My big problem with a lot of DMs (especially male DMs, I'll say it), is that they really want to solve your characters problems/flaws for you.

Show threadDown For The Count 🧛🏾‍♂️😩💦
I have a paladin with a crisis of faith b/c she made an 8 WIS move and nearly got killed. My DM gave me a vision from my god and a "blessing" - a boost to 12 WIS. I PURPOSEFULLY dumped WIS because I think having a neg ability score is fun and interesting to play. I was toying with letting this character walk away from the party for a bit, or even going Oathbreaker, which the DM knew. But instead - voila, very next session, a fix for all my problems!
Nov 15, 2018 at 12:28pmWeb
Show threadDown For The Count 🧛🏾‍♂️😩💦Nov 15, 2018
Another DM has talked to me repeatedly about "whether I want to change the direction my character's going" because I talked about how she's stuck in a stasis of trauma. He gave my warlock a vision of my patron, Cthulhu (who I specified was indifferent to me!!!) to encourage my character to do the right thing. My CN pickpocket Warlock. This is very early in the campaign, we're maybe two weeks into the party knowing each other.
Show threadDown For The Count 🧛🏾‍♂️😩💦Nov 15, 2018

Another DM once gave us a "Zone of Truth candle" because in the middle of party conflict, my low WIS (i dumpstat WIS a lot, sue me) fighter expressed that she couldn't trust our high charisma bard because I could never tell if she was lying.

To me, all of this is such bad faith DMing. It shows a lack of trust in me to solve my own problems, and it shows a lack of trust in both of our narrative abilities. Let problems be problems!!! You don't NEED to fix it!

Show threadDown For The Count 🧛🏾‍♂️😩💦Nov 15, 2018
Also, DMs, let yourself off the hook. Set up the story and let it happen. I'm not exploring these character threads so that you have another problem to solve, I'm doing it because I want to play around, and your narrative has created an internal conflict! Good for you! That's good storytelling! Now let me do my part and work with it! Like, god, I appreciate DMs so much, it's so hard. But like, I'm not playing this game so you can fix me.