D&D General D&D as a Curated, DIY Game or "By the Book": Examining DM and Player Agency, and the DM as Game Designer

[Oofta]

I've seen some of the ads for people being paid on Roll20 and my god to they make me want to cringe.

DM as customer service role!

Huh. First site I found ... $15-20 per per seat for 4 hour session and they just run the same game over and over again. Maybe I should consider this as a retirement job.

 

[Minigiant]

'm not sure--at least, it's not happening yet.

Give it time.
D&D as a hobby to D&D as a ruleset to D&D as a service foundation.

Once game publishers decided to make more money be expanding their audiences, they were just waiting for technology to catch up to run the interface.

 

[Charlaquin]

Everything is a market! Monetize your hobbies! Produce, produce, produce!

 

[Dausuul]

I t goes to to the idea of seeing D&D as a game or a hobby.

If seen as a game, one the a game company can make money off, it will expand. This expansion will push for services to help players match with DNs who share their desires.

Therefore DMs will end up having to market and advertise. And services for that will develop.

"Having to market and advertise" is a weird way to put it. I mean, I guess it is technically advertising to go to an online meetup and say "DM seeks players." But there is no reason to believe DMs will have to do much more than that.

Give it time.
D&D as a hobby to D&D as a ruleset to D&D as a service foundation.

Once game publishers decided to make more money be expanding their audiences, they were just waiting for technology to catch up to run the interface.

Until someone comes up with technology to increase the ratio of DMs to players, D&D will remain overwhelmingly a DM's market.

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

Huh. First site I found ... $15-20 per per seat for 4 hour session and they just run the same game over and over again. Maybe I should consider this as a retirement job.

There's an idea, a retirement home for grognards, where they pay their way by running games.

 

[Shiroiken]

Normally, I think of these debates as being about DM Agency/Empowerment or Player Agency/Empowerment, but the more I have reflected on it, I think there is another factor at work. At least when it comes to D&D as a ruleset. Fundamentally, it is a difference in how people are approaching D&D as a game. I think that this difference can best be explored in two different approaches that we can see exemplified by the following quotes:

I agree with the bold statement, but not with your conclusion. It's not just DIY vs. RAW, although that is part of it. In the early part of the game the DM was author, storyteller, and referee (often called judges) which included all aspects of the game, from DIY to RAW. In fact part of the purpose of AD&D (1E) was to codify rules from the many DIY rule of D&D (OD&D), pushing things away from DIY towards RAW. Of course people still picked and choose what to use, because it was still assumed that the DM's rule was law.

There are several aspects of the game that people use as fundamental differences: Roleplay vs Game, DIY vs RAW, DM vs Player Agency, etc. It is the combination of these differences that determine one's ultimate view of the hobby. None of them are mutually exclusive, allowing for a DIY DM that builds his setting/homebrew to accommodate the players desires, while keeping the focus on the balance of the game. Or you can be a hardnose RAW DM who believes their interpretation is infallible, but gives bonuses/benefits for those who roleplay well. Some tend to lean towards similar ones (RAW tends to lend itself more towards Game, for example), but this doesn't combine them or make other options impossible.

 

[Krachek]

Personally I would gladly play in a setting where the DM place restrictions on Classes, races, spells to help make the immersion better. Some DM have their own good ideas to share. Some DM prefer to use players stories. And even then, some players like that the DM write for them some backstory and even choose class, and some players like to play the black sheep and are clever to add some twist in more narrowing setup. everything can help improve to overall game.

I also see no problem if a dm ask certain players to restrain themselves. « Look, we are already six players, don’t conjure 8 wolves at each fight, fight last already long enough. »
Individual player fun is important, but overall table fun is also important.

 

[Jack Daniel]

I've long realised the difference - and it is not at all the one you are claiming. It's a matter of whether the DM is someone who sits on an almighty throne and everyone else should kowtow to them or whether the DM is the chair and the first among equals but every player at the table is important.

I do agree that the divide is more where you say it is than the OP. (Which is not to say that @Snarf Zagyg is wrong to notice a correlation between the belief that the DM should not exclude game options and the belief that the RAW have some special status. That's totally a thing.) Authoritative DMs can be DIY or RAW; collaborative DMs can be DIY or RAW. But—just because a particular group adheres to a more traditional model where the DM owns the rules, the setting, and the table and has authority over the game-world as well as the in-game adjudication of the rules, that does not automatically make the DM a tyrannical Viking Hat who forces players to "kowtow." You do not have standing to be offended on behalf of DMs and players who prefer this way of playing.

D&D is a ruleset. Tabletop roleplaying is the overarching hobby.

I consider myself to be a D&D player, not a tabletop role-player. Playing D&D (and specifically OD&D) and creating content for D&D is my hobby; playing RPGs is not my hobby.

As long as you accept that the side that's interested in DIY are the inclusionists. And the side that wants to exclude as a default is those who don't want to DIY things. That's far more reflective of the whole picture.

See above. You can have restrictive or inclusive DIYers. I suspect that most of the OSR (which prides itself on its DIY ethic) would scoff at the notion that the DM isn't the absolute authority over the setting, the rules, and the game-table. And rightly so—in that sub-culture, holding that kind of authority over both the campaign and the design of the rules is definitionally what it is to be the DM.

(This, incidentally, is completely orthogonal to the oft-cited quote from the Holmes Basic Set that a player character in D&D can be practically anything, like a werebear or a dragon, so long as they progress in levels. One has little to do with the other.)

The DM enforcing their role as sole curator against the wishes of the players absolutely deserves tyrannical undertones.

The DM being willing to be sole curator because that's what suits everyone is a different story.

Then maybe rein it in with the needlessly provocative "throne" and "kowtow" business, because that isn't at all what you implied with your earlier post.

The problem with this framing is that it implies that the one who is making the choice of curation is solely the DM, and is imposing it on the players. That's neglecting the fact that there are a lot of players who are actively looking for the DM to be the one to do the curating. Lots of players have a play expectation that they will be passengers on the DM's carefully crafted railroad.

We do ourselves a disservice trying to build an analytical framework that treats this playstyle as invisible or as degenerate. Maximal DM force is a fully coherent RPG playstyle.

Others have already pushed back against this, but—lots of players also have a play expectation that they'll be tourists in the DM's carefully crafted sandbox. (Tourists, that is, until they amass enough wealth and power to be lords and masters of their particular corner of said sandbox.)

That is why I boggles my mind on the concept of DMs not explaining or giving details of a world before players agree to play. I can't stress how important campaign clarity is.

Not every gaming situation is five bros sitting around a dining-room table deciding on how they'll build a campaign world and a cast of four plot-invincible main characters from the ground up.

A typical campaign for me does not start with me and my friends having a session zero. It's me and my friends setting up a table at the ol' FLGS, laying out blank hex-paper and graph-paper and a stack of more blank character sheets than we think we'll need. They roll up characters (3d6 in order, natch), we start playing, and anybody else curious enough to ask about the game or sit down can do the same. Maybe the campaign has been going on for weeks or even months; doesn't matter, there's always room for one more.

If a player asks what they can play, and they look like they've never played D&D before (which, frankly, many haven't), we keep it simple. "Fighter, thief, cleric, or magic-user. There are other classes, like elf, but it's best to wait until you've got a handle on the game before trying one of those. For now, just roll up some stats, pick a class, and dive right in." And less than three minutes later, they're crawling the dungeon alongside the old pros and having an grand old time. Details are always a thing that can come later.

 

[NotAYakk]

The idea that 5e doesn't have a structure to build on and customize on is strange to me.

The shadow of the skeleton they used to make the rules is all over the place.

I mean, go and make a class-by-class graph of gear-less characters damage output against AC 12+level/2 monsters (save +level/2) from level 1 to 20 fighting a set of 7 encounters with 2 short rests, aoes hitting 2.5 monsters, and each encounter 5 rounds long.

Then slide the length of encounters forward and back, the short rests forward and back, and look at the lines dance.

5e has piles of math under the hood.

The monsters are a combination of surprise puzzle creatures and the rest. For the rest, the DP3R, accuracy, defence and HP gives a pretty good estimation of the monster's CR, for all of people's complaining.

The system of subclasses, which has permitted 5e to keep to its core 12 (now 13) classes while allowing a huge wealth of different PC "flavors", is also pretty easy to eyeball.

The DMG optional rules? You'll note how little they change the above math. They are examples of fiddling around the clothing hanging on the skeleton of the game.

 

[Minigiant]

Not every gaming situation is five bros sitting around a dining-room table deciding on how they'll build a campaign world and a cast of four plot-invincible main characters from the ground up.

A typical campaign for me does not start with me and my friends having a session zero. It's me and my friends setting up a table at the ol' FLGS, laying out a blank hex-map and a stack of more blank character sheets than we think we'll need. They roll up characters (3d6 in order, natch), we start playing, and anybody else curious enough to ask about the game or sit down can do the same. Maybe the campaign has been going on for weeks or even months; doesn't matter, there's always room for one more.

If a player asks what they can play, and they look like they've never played D&D before (which, frankly, many haven't), we keep it simple. "Fighter, thief, cleric, or magic-user. There are other classes, like elf, but it's best to wait until you've got a handle on the game before trying one of those. For now, just roll up some stats, pick a class, and dive right in." And less than three minutes later, they're crawling the dungeon alongside the old pros and having an grand old time. Details are always a thing that can come later.

Choosing to start with a blank map is campaign clarity. The point is whoever is the DM clearly tell the player what the campaign is going to be about, the tone, theme or genre it is, what is added, substracted, or taken away, and why the campaign will be fun.

It could be a standard game, a kitchen sink, an empty map, or a curated world. The key is DMs tells the player's where the fun is. It's their world, they are supposed to know where the fun is because the DM created it and is going to run it.

And that goes back to the hobby vs ruleset. When D&D's a hobby, the fun is just being there. When D&D's a ruleset, then the fun comes from a rule or rules somewhere in the game.