Legends and Lore : The Fine Art of Dungeon Mastering

[The Shaman]

I've always wondered how The First Fantasy Campaign and Wilderlands of High Fantasy were to DM. They're more hex-crawling sandbox right?

Arguably they are the ORGINAL hex-crawling sandboxes.

The Wilderlands was/is the only published fantasy setting I've ever run - I think it's brilliant, and it still strongly influences how I approach roleplaying games.

I won't tell anyone

Dude, old man is old - I don't think that will come as a great surprise to anyone.

Now get off my lawn.

 

[I'm A Banana]

There are rules and of course it is a game. A roleplaying game just happens to have interaction of a roleplaying nature between the facilitator and the other players unlike a game that only uses the rules and requires little to no facilitation. You keep pretending like I am suggesting not to use rules when clearly I have stated how the rules work in a roleplaying game where a facilitator takes those things into account while adjudicating situations.

A game that largely consists of a facilitator "taking things into account while adjudicating situations" is unfulfilling to me as a player and tedious to me as a DM.

There's always going to be some adjudication and wiggle room, and that's part of what makes the game good. But for me, that's not something to rely on. I don't want rules that just say: "Meh. Whatever you feel like."

Let's give a more concrete example: the 4e NPC design rules are explicitly housed in DM Fiat. What you expect the NPC to do determines what ruleset you use to stat them up, from "nothing" for NPC's that are just verbal to "monster stats" for NPC's that are going to be faught to "optional companion rules" if they're going to be party allies.

These rules fail for me, since I don't want to have to decide for my players how they can use a given NPC. They require too much adjudication. I'd much rather give them a concrete rules element, and have them do whatever they feel like to it.

Mearls's proposed skill rules also require too much adjudication for me. I don't want to have to make a judgement call about which of 5 or 6 different difficulty categories a given activity falls into. I want to be able to simply present a situation, and achieve a reaction.

A game that relies too much on DM adjudication is not fun for me.

The key, of course, is "too much," and that's going to vary from table to table. Good DMs (or when you're DMing in your zone) can do whatever they want and get away with it. Everyone else needs rules.

IMHO lengthly rules are more about spelling out exactly what you can't do to the nth degree than anything else. An rpg is the one gaming vehicle with limitless possibilities. Reducing all those possibilities to a finite menu of options defeats the purpose of the medium.

If you believe the rules are the game then why bother with a DM at all? You don't need any judgement, since the rulebook decides all. Just take turns rolling for the monsters.

You're setting up a false dichotomy. I have noted that it's a matter of degrees a few times, now.

More specifically, we have a very different conception of what a rule is. Rather than a prohibition, I see a game's rule as a tool to be used to achieve a goal. "Roll 1d20 + modifiers vs. AC to hit" is a rule that is used to achieve victory in combat.

Now, you don't need that tool, necessarily. You can just say "I jab my sword in between the plates in the knight's armor!" and have a DM adjudicate the result.

But I think I've been pretty clear in pointing out why, for me, that is a deeply unsatisfying way to play the game.

The mere existence of intricate combat rules in every D&D edition speaks to the fact that rules are not necessarily reductive -- they contain all the chaos of twelve or so people trying to kill each other. They are abstract, but that's different.

 

[Dykstrav]

I agree that designing the game around bad GMs isn' the way to go. Not really sure where he is going with this though.

I think I understand this.

Have you ever met someone that spoils an otherwise good or acceptable situation for an entire group? Usually, it's because whoever is in charge of that group doesn't feel like they can directly address the person that is being the problem, they feel that they have to make a ham-fisted, blanket policy to neutralize the situation rather than deal with the one person that's being a jerk.

In an office with a company I once worked at, we had an intern that showed up late. The intern was talked to about it and the office manager considered the situation resolved. The intern kept showing up late, habitually... So rather than deal with that intern, the office manager enacted a new scheduling policy. He started emailing people their schedules every week, and people in the office were required to print out a copy of the schedule, sign it, and include it with their end-of-week paperwork. An entire office of forty people was required to do extra paperwork because of a single intern. To no one's surprise, the intern kept showing up late. The office manager wanted to make a policy requiring everyone in the office to take a picture of the posted schedule with their smart phone and set the photo of the schedule as their phone's background. Fortunately, the intern left the company the week that policy was to go in to effect and everything went back to normal.

That office manager is exactly what I thought of when reading about trying to get the game's design to insulate the game from "bad" DMs. I don't understand why the office manager just didn't get rid of that intern. In the same vein, I don't understand why players stick with games they don't enjoy.

In the game design sense, I think that the column is pretty clear. I've had experiences with the sort of DMs that make you functionally guess until you figured out the solution--particularly some DMs that were being "clever" by using medieval riddles in everything and making you "roleplay" the solution. Of course, the "solution" is always a single approach that's the "right" solution, and they shoot down other ideas.

Player: "We've been trying to figure this riddle out for two hours. The heck with it, I'm going to kick the door in."
DM: "What, are you just going to give up? Why don't you try roleplaying to solve the riddle?"
Player: "I don't know the answer and you won't allow me to make any sort of check to see if my character does. I want to do something else today besides stare at the miniatures clustered around this door. I'll kick it in."
DM: "You try to kick the door in and your foot bounces off. It's banded with adamantine and you can tell that it's reinforced from the other side. You know that you won't be able to kick it in."
Player: "Fine. What are the walls made of?"
DM: "Uh, stone, I guess."
Player: "I take out my pickaxe and sledgehammer and chop through the stone wall."
DM: "You chip away about an inch of stone and find a thick sheet of adamantine in the wall. You can't make a hole around the door. You have to guess the riddle and open the door to get in."

(Yes, this is paraphrased from an early 3E game that I played.)

In this sense, I think that what Mike Mearls means is that the game shouldn't flat-out tell the DM that they are "not allowed" to make an impenetrable adamantine vault in an adventure designed for 3rd-level characters that can only be entered by figuring out an obtuse 11th-century French riddle. Depending on inclination and ability of the DM, a skill challenge or even the rules design of adamantine can be interpreted as binders or straightjackets on a DM's options for how the players are challenged, both mechanically and narratively.

Rather, the DMG (or equivalent) should advise the DM to make several possible solutions to any given challenge and not to force the characters (or their players) to "guess" at what they have to do. The rules shouldn't necessarily force a DM to use a skill challenge for any challenge that's not a combat encounter, for example.

 

[Mark CMG]

I don't want rules that just say: "Meh. Whatever you feel like."

They never have and it's not what anyone is suggesting.

 

[I'm A Banana]

They never have and it's not what anyone is suggesting.

I gave you some specific examples of what I was talking about in the post: the Monte-Mearls skill system, which brought the topic up, and 4e NPC generation, to add a further example, both lean too much on DM judgement calls for my fun-level. They both use "The DM makes the judgement call" at the wrong points for me. This makes it seem that, to me, they are saying "Meh. Whatever you feel like." at a time that I would like the rules to provide some guidance.

Hence, er, my point. Too much DM judgement. Not Fun For Me.

It's a matter of degrees because some DMs and players would be perfectly fine with that level of DM judgement, because they don't need or want the rules at that point. I'd like rules there, myself.

I know that you are mainly aiming at having "laws" in place for doing things, but sometimes I wonder if D&D isn't too married to a fondness for dice and "rolling for it". For the most part, dice are there to determine whether something passes or fails. It's one way of determining outcome, but certainly not the only, or best one*. They have the advantage that they are impartial, but that's also a downfall - over the years I've seen many an occasion where bad dice rolls are worse than recticent DM's. Something great story-wise actions got shot down because the dice simply wouldn't cooperate. Overall I'd rather see a system that marries narrative control and impartial resolution that allows the players (and DM) some leeway in task resolution. For most stuff, impartial resolution creates tension, but there needs to be a way to occasionally overrule the impartial system for elements that drive the story forward.

I'm not so sure a way to overrule the system needs to be hard-coded into the rules any more extensively than "The DM has the authority to change or ignore the rules presented whenever they choose, for whatever reason they desire."

Coupled with some solid DMing advice on how to make good house rules (and some solid rules and variants that they might want to use in place of some or all of their own judgement), it sounds like this would meet the needs of those who want to overrule the system fairly adequately.

As for the "bad dice rolls" and the like, for me, this falls into the game design trick of making failure fun. With good rules design, failing might not be desirable, but it is fun enough to keep you going, it presents interesting options all its own. A legit stumble or flop from an otherwise competent character can take the game in an interesting new direction, if you develop it for what it is, rather than regarding it as a failure to advance the plot. This is part of why I'm an improv-heavy DM. I do enjoy the fun that can fall out of a catastrophic failure as much as I enjoy seeing the party triumph over their enemies.

 

[Mark CMG]

This makes it seem that, to me, they are saying "Meh. Whatever you feel like." at a time that I would like the rules to provide some guidance.

I get you reading that into it. It also seems that they are saying that you could make a different call or no call if you like but that having the opportunity within the structure of the rules allows for individual games to be adjudicated in different ways rather than having hard and fast rules that negate that level of adjudication. That's guidance rather than rules, as opposed to rules that would have to be ignored or changed that might be hardwired into the game.


BTW, When you quote me and remove the space, I don't get a notice that I was quoted. I just happen to be seeing that you have done so when checking the thread. If I don't respond to some future post of yours when you have removed the space in my screenname, it's because I missed that you have done so.

 

[MrMyth]

I gave you some specific examples of what I was talking about in the post: the Monte-Mearls skill system, which brought the topic up, and 4e NPC generation, to add a further example, both lean too much on DM judgement calls for my fun-level. They both use "The DM makes the judgement call" at the wrong points for me. This makes it seem that, to me, they are saying "Meh. Whatever you feel like." at a time that I would like the rules to provide some guidance.

While not quite the same time, this brings to mind a favorite quote of mine from one of the fellow GMs in the group. "I hate random item/encounter/event tables where rolling 100 is "DM's choice". If I wanted to simply choose, I wouldn't have rolled on the table in the first place!"

I agree that my ideal is a system that is flexible and has room for DM fiat, but has solid guidelines that can give you whatever you need when you have it, without any work required on your own end.

I've run into this recently with my current 4E game, which is relatively low-magic, etc - meaning that most of what PCs are spending money on is mundane equipment and services. Which 4E doesn't do a great job of providing guidance for, leaving it up to me to make up numbers on the fly. Doable, but not the ideal. It doesn't help me as the DM (since it is more work, and slows things down when I have to look stuff up / make stuff up), and doesn't help the players (who don't have as consistent an expectation as to what they can get with their money.)

 

[Crazy Jerome]

If you deliberately set out to design a set of rules that can be easily tweaked to cater to both those who want something hard and fast, versus those who want to let the DM roll with it ... you could do a whole lot worse than some tiered labels.

If a skill level is "Journeyman" or "Expert" or "Master"--obviously that raises the question of what does each label mean in the game. But since the game is simply slapping that label on each place that it applies, the meaning is indirect. Being indirect, it can be supplied elsewhere, in one good place, and thus easily swapped for something else.

If you want it to mean details, then you reduce each label down to a mathematical formula (or in a pinch where the formula doesn't quite work on the edge cases, a chart). Then "Expert" means "DC 20" or "DC 25" or whatever. OTOH, if you want the DM to roll with it, then "Expert" means "Hey, I the DM eyeballed this and decided for some reason that it was an Expert level task." The default as suggested by Monte and presented by Mearls is inbetween these two. It expects some DM judgment, but it is providing guidance. If a module shows an "Expert" task, and the player has "Master" skill, you, more often than not, "Say Yes" and let them autosucceed.

I believe what has been missed in a lot of this discussion, here and elsewhere, is this level of indirection and what it means. Despite that someone besides me specifically called it out, at least once. Yes, the indirection makes the whole thing slightly less wieldy for those that move away from the default. There is that powerful urge to say, "What's wrong with simply doing X and saving me having to think what 'Expert' means?" The anwser is there is nothing wrong from your perspective--provided that you win--that the game is collapsed into the level of detail (or not) that you want. I think history has shown pretty firmly that a lot of people are not going to win, no matter which way such a collapse happens.

The same thing would apply to equipment costs and details. Here, it is a lot more tricky than skills, because the obvious, middle ground leaves out details that need to be handled somehow. To make them indirect, you'll likely need to abstract costs, and this is necessarily going to leave out the people who want the extreme. So in the presentation, you might need to combine both methods. For a sword, you might have to say Encumbrance was "medium (4 pounds)" and cost was "moderate (10 gp)". OTOH, it is possible that the abstract method could be the default, and the long list with details would only be relevant to people who wanted that level. In effect, the big equipment list is part of the detailed option.

My only issue with listing keywords and a more detailed version at the same time (e.g. Expert (DC 25)) is that we'll never hear the end of it. Someone will complain at least once a week that the "expert" part is redunant. But I guess we will get complaints no matter what. So it might as well be something that can be answerd in a FAQ and then linked to each week.

 

[JoesephBear]

"Sokath, his eyes uncovered!"



(No new poll?)

Temba, his arms wide!

 

[Odhanan]

I wish I knew where he was going with this one. I've seen these points brought up on debated multiple times on EN World already, and some of them very recently. I know what he says isn't necessarily new or anything, but I'm not sure what he's trying to point out. Maybe that in the future he'd like to see the game include rules aimed at good GMs, with advice on how he thinks good GMs should be?

The point is that there are issues, such as bad DMing, which you cannot solve with mechanics, and worse, that such attempts to "fix" bad DMing with rules actually have an impact on the game that makes it poorer for it.

And I agree.

I wish people would realize that the rules are a tool. They are not the game. They cannot fix people. It's people who make or break the game. It's people who are pouring their imaginations into it that create the game itself. The rules books are just tools. Numbers. Dead equations on paper.

The rules are not the game. The game is not the rules.

What the manual should do in that regard is provide sound advice to prospective players and DMs that lays out what skills will serve to make for a great game, and how to develop these particular skills from there. After, if players and DM decide instead to just use the tables in the book and discard the actual advice around them, the fault's on them, not on the rules book.