D&D General How much control do DMs need?

[pemerton]

Oh! It's just all of the things we discussed in Help Me Get "Apocalypse World" and PbtA games in general so many moons ago. At least when we look at it the MC's side of the equation.

From the PCs side, I think this one tends to throw people off:

An arresting skinner: when you remove a piece of clothing, your own or someone else’s, no one who can see you can do anything but watch. You command their absolute attention. If you choose, you can exempt individual people, by name.

Many would be uncertain about the extent of the hypnotic influence on the NPCs. Those of us with some experience know that we want to grant the Skinner the full extent of what the move does, as it honors the spirit of the game. Still I hope you can see how new people to the system might want to immediately intervene to patch it.

I see what you mean. So not ambiguity in the rules text, or uncertainty about how rules interact, but uncertainty about how to decide what happens next while giving effect to the rules text?

 

[pemerton]

Anyway, here's one answer to the question this thread poses:

You need to have a system by which scenes start and stop. The rawest solution is to do it by group consensus: anybody moved to can suggest a scene or suggest that a scene be over, and it's up to the group to act on the suggestion or not. You don't need a final authority beyond the players' collective will.

You need to have a system whereby narration becomes in-game truth. That is, when somebody suggests something to happen or something to be so, does it or doesn't it? Is it or isn't it? Again the rawest solution is group consensus, with suggestions made by whoever's moved and then taken up or let fall according to the group's interest.

You need to have orchestrated conflict, and there's the tricky bit. GMs are very good at orchestrating conflict, and it's hard to see a rawer solution. . . .

In our co-GMed Ars Magica game, each of us is responsible for orchestrating conflict for the others, which works but isn't radical wrt GM doage-away-with. It amounts to when Emily's character's conflicts climax explosively and set off Meg's character's conflicts, which also climax explosively, in a great kickin' season finale last autumn, I'm the GM. GM-swapping, in other words, isn't the same as GM-sharing.​

So the GM needs enough control to orchestrate conflict. This probably means enough control to introduce antagonism, whether in the form of NPCs or in the form of external/impersonal forces.

 

[clearstream]

So the GM needs enough control to orchestrate conflict. This probably means enough control to introduce antagonism, whether in the form of NPCs or in the form of external/impersonal forces.

That's a great observation. I was thinking about how folk get from there to the additional power over the meaning of rules?

My conjecture is that there exists at times decisions to make about the meaning of rules during conflict, and the same considerations that suggest giving adversity to one participant suggest giving that participant the job of making said decisions. Who else can do it? In the Arresting Skinner example, if it's used to resolve adversity who gets the job of settling what its effect on adversaries should be?

That seems to be saying that the ur-justfication for "GM power" is the Czege Principle. There are naturally a number of jobs to do, and conforming with the CP results in appointing a "Game Master".

 

[clearstream]

I see what you mean. So not ambiguity in the rules text, or uncertainty about how rules interact, but uncertainty about how to decide what happens next while giving effect to the rules text?

Perhaps then one puts Visions of Death in the same bucket. That wording "if it’s even remotely possible." What effect should one give to "remotely possible"? What's excluded from "remotely possible"? That creates uncertainty about how to decide what happens next.

Semantic ambiguity might then be differentiated from uncertainty. In ambiguous cases, each party can feel certain about how to decide what happens next, even though two different parties may be certain of two different things. One example from 5e is Long Rests. There was debate on whether a conditional applied to a list or just the first item on that list. Each side felt certain they knew what effect to give to the rule, they disagreed on how to read the rule.

Does that difference matter, or does it amount to the same thing?

 

[clearstream]

Yeh... given the number of times I've had to say something about this, and given how easy it is to do, your continued choice to comment about FKR while displaying a level of ignorance about it continues to befuddle me. Again, there's a lot of resources- I recommend just running it for a while, and it will make a lot more sense.

Well, a lot of people live history- the thing is, actual history is a lot more varied than a single person's experience.

While reading The Elusive Shift this morning, I noted "it does not appear that Arneson played by his own rules, but this was in keeping with remarks he made elsewhere that year about the insignificance of "rules" to the invention of role-playing games". An essay by Arneson is referenced where he characterised his attitude toward rules during his Blackmoor campaign as "Rules? What rules?" Arneson wrote that "applying a fantasy setting to RPG was merely another outgrowth of an already established tradition (abet one without any real rules) in various non-fantasy settings."

What I found interesting though was that - in reference to ongoing rules-free play - "by the end of the 1970s some referees had begun to remove themselves from this [rules-free] most versatile expression of the role-playing game." (Emphasis mine.) So here Peterson is laying out a history of not only FKR (a label I use for convenience) but additionally GM-less FKR.

 

[Maxperson]

I don't think time invested by the GM matters, really. From the outside, the difference between carefully planned assassination where the GM took sniper's capabilities into the account, rolled dice or whatever the same way she would do for the PCs, and a decision to screw that player in particular on a whim is non-existent.

An ambush kill in a game like D&D will always look cheap, and being completely unrepeatable and unverifiable, this means it will always be cheap.

You're making a false assumption there, though. I DM who carefully planned the assassination will probably have had subtle clues out there for quite some time that the players will suddenly see now that the event has happened. They will be able to do research into who the person was and why he did what he did and come up with all the carefully planned details, which a DM who decided to do it on a whim won't have.

It is both repeatable and verifiable if carefully planned, and not being done on a whim, won't be a decision to "screw that player."

I mused about it upthread, it was something along the lines of "if you have infinite dragons, there's no thrill in using this specific one to the best of your abilities".

Again a false assumption. Since you are not using infinite dragons(or even bunches and bunches of them), using this one that you carefully planned out to the best of your abilities does come with a thrill. At least for many DMs it does. Your personal experiences aren't automatically the ones that any other particular DM experiences. While you may not experience the thrill, others do.

I do believe that a game like D&D would work infinitely better if there was some kind of roster-building mechanic, where GM has to pay resources to do stuff, conforming narrative to the rules rather than vice-versa, both way more fun to run and, obviously, way more fun to play.

Maybe, but then it wouldn't be D&D. It would be one of those other games that you personally enjoy. I enjoy D&D the way it is and such a change would be "infinitely" worse for me. That's not the sort of play experience that what I want when I play D&D.

 

[Maxperson]

If the warrant is determined by the prep, then it's hard not to see this as pulling punches.

The prep doesn't determine it, though. Game play does. Prep determines if there is an ancient red dragon on the mountain 100 miles north of the town of Wefrysometimes. Prep determines that the dragon being there is marked on maps of the area. Prep determines that there is local gossip about the 10 adventuring companies that have vanished in the last 6 months after going to "handle the dragon." Game play determines that if the 5th level group heads there despite all of those things that the DM not pull any punches and fry the party.

Prep just sets up situations. Punches pulled or not pulled aren't required by the prep.

 

[Mort]

I do believe that a game like D&D would work infinitely better if there was some kind of roster-building mechanic, where GM has to pay resources to do stuff, conforming narrative to the rules rather than vice-versa, both way more fun to run and, obviously, way more fun to play.

5e has this, at least a form of it.

When building encounters, the DMG has a suggested daily XP budget to spread among the encounters for the "day."

It's somewhat derided, but I've found it can provide a pretty challenging experience to the players if applied with some care.

 

[Maxperson]

Exactly. Absolute power that is never used because doing so would have deleterious consequences is not absolute power. It is conditional power--by definition.

This is very wrong. Conditional power has those conditions imposed upon you by an outside authority. If I own a business and I hire a manager that can tell other workers what to do and write them up, but not hire or fire anyone, that is conditional authority. If I as a business owner cannot hire or fire someone based on gender, religion, age, etc. because the government won't let me, my authority is conditional. If I as a business owner have no such restrictions by I personally CHOOSE to not hire or fire someone based on gender, religion, age, etc. because I think my other workers might quit, that is not conditional power. I still retain such authority even if I opt not to use it.

If the power is going to be conditional either way, why not make those conditions knowable?

Because if you do you are taking unconditional power and making it conditional. The "conditions" become imposed by the game instead of being 100% optional.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

This is very wrong. Conditional power has those conditions imposed upon you by an outside authority. If I own a business and I hire a manager that can tell other workers what to do and write them up, but not hire or fire anyone, that is conditional authority. If I as a business owner cannot hire or fire someone based on gender, religion, age, etc. because the government won't let me, my authority is conditional. If I as a business owner have no such restrictions by I personally CHOOSE to not hire or fire someone based on gender, religion, age, etc. because I think my other workers might quit, that is not conditional power. I still retain such authority even if I opt not to use it.

Because if you do you are taking unconditional power and making it conditional. The "conditions" become imposed by the game instead of being 100% optional.

I'm not going to revive our previous discussion, Max.