It's no different than showing up to a game and finding out the GM sucks at GMing and no real game session ever starts at the table.

If you or estar or pundit or bedrock did it fine I'm in.  (Or gorm but gorm never would gorm is always going to run a fun house with a McD's on level 7, or Crine or....)

I signed up to play your game I am along for the ride (you change systems on me you have to convert the character).   Some fucker I don't know?  The first thing you do is lie to me?  No.

In the right situation it would be fun to go through the looking glass.  Lots of books like that.  Wisard or Oz, Amber, Keepers of the Secret ways (Joel Rosenberg) John Carpenter, Never Ending story.   Lots of books like that.  

Fuck the Xfiles and Call of Catholu should be like that.  When you pull that king of bait and switch, the through the looking glass kind make sure your players are clued in (just a bit) and look over the character sheets and make sure they have built someone that can operaye in the new environment.  

But if you just want to play Amber but no one wants to play Amber so you advertise pathfi der 2.0 instead and then say "suprise it's Amber!"   Fuck you.  Suprise I'm not coming back next week.

A full on bait n' switch is generally not going to go over well, but I think there are BIG twists that can fit within a game's purview that wouldn't bug me at all, if done well.
Like, for Call of Cthulhu, even though it's generally assumed to be a modern horror/investigation setup... it's still totally within the scope of the source material to find yourself on an alien planet, or time-traveled to another eon... or dipping into the dreamlands.
A historical western could take a turn toward a murder mystery or a nautical voyage to exotic locales.
Traveller PCs could end up on all sorts of odd planets that pushed a particular sub-genre of scifi.
Most of the D&D games I've played have been wide open to possibilities of crossovers with other genres.

There are also a few games, like Kult that have an internal bait n' switch in the form of BIG secrets, that, when you finally discover the truth of what's going on, change the nature of the game.

But yeah, telling me we are going to play Vampire and then springing some microbrew Fate game on the group... I'm probably out the door.

Total n00b.  

Everyone knows the play is: you get them to kinda like you, then you engineer a TPK and tell them sorry you don't GM all that much D&D, but you're an expert at this other game...wanna try it?

What's the point of Illusionism if you dispel the Illusion?  The kids these days, sheesh.

I suppose I've been guilty of pulling a bait-and-switch before on a group of friends who have never done gaming of any sort (or at least only very superficially), so when I tried to explain to them what I was hoping they'd be down to do, they had no idea what the hell I was talking about. So instead I just told them  "It's D&D" and they were much more receptive to it. In my mind that doesn't truly count as a bait-and-switch though, but I agree with the consensus.

Quote from: Thegn Ansgar;1033080So instead I just told them  "It's D&D" and they were much more receptive to it.

I did something kinda similar with some kids I knew who wanted to play 'D&D'. They'd never seen the books or read them... had no specific knowledge of the game's rules... and I hadn't played any form of D&D for years... so I just ran games for them using Stormbringer/BRP and they were none the wiser and we had a great time of it.
As far as I was concerned their usage of 'D&D' was a synecdoche for 'RPG', rather than a specific brand.

It's bait and switch gaming that creates the 'horror' stories you hear about.  The Kenders Thieves, the Lawful Stupid Paladins and all others.  It's because the trust between players has been damaged.  And Bait and Switch destroys trust.

Quote from: jeff37923;1032962I'm having a small discussion with a couple of guys on Reddit on finding players for games that don't have a lot of exposure. The suggestion was made that the GM should advertise for a campaign game of D&D and then during the first session tell the group that this was going to be the only D&D session, but that the GM would happily run their (insert other game here) campaign for them instead. I told them it was a Bait-And-Switch that would probably result in some pissed off players and a poor reputation in their local gaming community.

What do you think? How would you react if you were the player in this situation?

Well, I wouldn't mind, much. What's the difference with a GM that decides to try a new system and then during the first session decides it's not for him:)?
Granted, I might decline to participate, if I wanted to play D&D specifically, but the odds of that are so low it's not worth bothering about:D!

Quote from: jeff37923;1032962I'm having a small discussion with a couple of guys on Reddit on finding players for games that don't have a lot of exposure. The suggestion was made that the GM should advertise for a campaign game of D&D and then during the first session tell the group that this was going to be the only D&D session, but that the GM would happily run their (insert other game here) campaign for them instead. I told them it was a Bait-And-Switch that would probably result in some pissed off players and a poor reputation in their local gaming community.

What do you think? How would you react if you were the player in this situation?

It is a poor form, IMHO. You should be upfront about expectations. Otherwise, you compromise your most valuable asset, trust, at the beginning.

Dick move...period

Yeah. This would be a career killer for a DM as word of mouth will spread that they lie about what they are really running. Ive seen this all of once and its how I ended up inheriting a whole gaming group way back.

Weird thing was I ended up in the reverse. The PLAYERS kept wanting me to run different games. This went on for years. Robotech, Beyond the Supernatural, TMNT, TORG, Marvel Superheroes, Universe, Star Frontiers.

Quote from: cranebump;1033188It is a poor form, IMHO. You should be upfront about expectations. Otherwise, you compromise your most valuable asset, trust, at the beginning.

Quote from: rgrove0172;1033437Dick move...period

I mean, that about covers it, doesn't it? Why be wordy?

It's dishonest at best. If you are playing with long-time friends and know how they'll respond if you take these fantasy characters through a wavy portal into modern day New York, well, then you might just have a good time there. But using the promise of D&D as a way of suckering people into a different game would make me leave out of principal.

//Panjumaju

So I think we all agree that a full on bait and switch is a shit move.  But how do you go to OZ?  Or discover you are a shadow walking Prince of Amber.  Or follow the wizard in to Finavar?  Or walk the Glory Road with the Empress of the multiverse.  

How do you show the players the wider universe beyond their tiny corner so that they are surprised but don't feel cheeted or mislead.

Run a D&D campaign and run the other game next.