#Gorilla Straylight Complains

[gorillastraylight]

There’s some XP To Level 3 video, I think one of the “gigachad DM” series? I usually like XPTL3 overall, but this one part rubbed me the wrong way. It was a group doing character pitches for a Curse of Strahd campaign, and the last player says he wants to be an Adult Red Dragon. There’s discussion (“do you want to be a cursed/transformed dragon?; No”), but when the rest of the players say that they’re okay with having this party member that will severely alter how they interact with NPCs and greatly overshadow them in combat, the DM goes “okay, fine, if you’re all okay I can make it work”.

And like. I don’t know, I think the “chadlier” response in this case would be to veto. Maybe the bit is that this DM is so crazy good that they can just alter the proposed game to accommodate it without any trouble, but it still bugs me. Regardless of if the other players are fine with it, I think “gigachad” practice in this case would be to stand up for your own enjoyment. You are a player as well, and if you have pitched Curse of Strahd, I’d imagine you’re looking forward to horror vibes and dark perils and whatnot, which are pretty incongruous with a full ass dragon in the party - to say nothing of having to significantly rewrite the module and especially the combat encounters. Bending over backwards and sacrificing your own enjoyment to accommodate one inconsiderate player isn’t gigachad shit actually, IMO.

I’m definitely reading into it too deeply but still.

With regards to this post, I think the people saying "a good DM could make it work" do have answer to the question of "but why would they?" But their answer is, basically, because it's a lot of work.

There are a lot of what I would call "hustle culture DMs," people for whom the amount of work and effort they put into their campaign is intrinsically good, proof of them being good DMs. Doing less work, even if it accomplished an equally good (or better!) end result, would be bad. The point is the grind, that's what proves how good they are.

And like hustle culture bros, they're mostly full of shit, they're not actually doing what they advocate for, and those who are doing it are burning themselves out for absolutely nobody's benefit. You should treat people telling you that "a good DM could make it work" the same way you treat people telling you to sleep four hours a day so you can focus on your side hustles.