"Deat JB" Mailbag #37

Dear JB:

I think I'm going to give up, I'm running a campaign where I made everything really nice, the world map, the cities, stories, dungeons, enemies, but my table doesn't cooperate. The players are my friends, a barbarian, a cleric, a druid and a bard, but they don't collaborate with the campaign, they always make jokes out of character, they make secret metagames, and this all comes from the bard, druid and barbarian, the cleric is the only one who seems to really want to play, I'm thinking about killing their characters in the next session and making a new world from absolute zero, do I do that?

I Will Give Up

Dear IWGU:

Let me see if I have a full understanding here...

1. You've create a world map, cities, dungeons, "stories" (I'll assume you mean adventure situations), and enemies for your campaign. 
2. You're so annoyed by your players that you've all but decided to chuck it all in the bin and start over from scratch (after "killing their characters").

Why on earth would you do something so idiotic? 

I'll get to your "annoying" players in a second, but the only reason to bin a campaign world is because you are dissatisfied with the campaign world. You can ALWAYS find new players...why throw away the work and effort you've already expended? You should be expanding and developing your world, making it deeper and richer, not re-booting. Even if there are things you dislike about your game world, you fix them, you modify, you make adjustments. Why O why would you burn everything down? Are you a child craving attention that you must throw a self-destructive tantrum? Are you going to start cutting on yourself next? 

Dude: grow up. 

Your complaint is that your players "don't collaborate with the campaign" which, frankly, is nonsensical. D&D is NOT a collaborative game. YOU are the Dungeon Master: you create the world, you manage the campaign. Their is no "collaboration." Let's be clear: the definition of collaborate is

"to work jointly on an an activity, especially to produce or create something"

No. You are the Dungeon Master. YOU are the one who does the work with regard to producing/creating the campaign.

If you are laboring under the misapprehension that D&D is somehow a game of "collaborative storytelling," let me burst that bubble right now. It's not. Regardless of what the marketing says. You can TRY to make it that, but you will fail and be miserable more often than not, because it is POORLY DESIGNED for that style of play, mainly because it still bears the fruit of the seeds sown by the original designers and it was never the intention of the original designers to create a collaborative storytelling game. There are other RPGs one can buy that are designed that way, and that function well for that purpose, but D&D isn't one of them, period, end of story.

You want collaborative storytelling? Join a writing club.

You complain that your players "make jokes out of character" and "make secret metagames" (not so secret if you know about it) and imply this is evidence that three of the four don't "really want to play." Are you kidding me? The fact that they metagame implicitly signals that they are engaged with the game as a game...they absolutely want to play! One can only engage with the game in a "meta" fashion by knowing and understanding the game's rules and systems...do you not read all the complaints from DMs about players incapable of grasping or understanding game rules, even after YEARS of play?

And to make jokes is human. You will find all players do this at one time or another. If you're going to let that bug you to the point of quitting, than you're probably not cut out for the job of being a DM.

SO, to sum up: your complaint is nonsensical and your proposed response is childish. You ask the question "do I do that?" referring to killing the player characters and starting the campaign from scratch, and my answer to you is: this would accomplish nothing. 

Presumably, your players would still continue to be humans who are interested in engaging with and playing D&D, so how would re-building the (imaginary) world change that? What...do you think they are so attached to their PCs that this action would be punitive in the extreme and "teach them a lesson" in how to play the way you want them to play? If that's what you think, you're a jackass who doesn't understand the first thing about Dungeons & Dragons. 

Rather than waste your time and effort accomplishing nothing, I'd strongly recommend quitting D&D altogether and finding a creative outlet more suitable to what you want to do. Become a playwright, or start an improvisational theater troupe, or write your fantasy fiction serial using all the "nice" content material you originally hoped to purpose for your D&D campaign. Keep your friends as friends and enjoy their company around board games or video games where (hopefully) their natural human behaviors with regard to game playing won't annoy you.

But stop playing D&D. You're doing it wrong anyway.

Sincerely,

JB