Should a GM be allowed to arbitrarily make things up as they go along?

[howandwhy99]

I don't agree. 'Referee' is only one of the roles a GM has. They are also the storyteller, the players' opponent, the role-playing facilitator, the schedule coordinator and much more!

That's a 5 year old attempt to rewrite history. DMs describe to the players the gameboard behind the screen and move the pieces according to the direction of the players. They apply the rules, a code for players to decipher, but they don't actually get a turn. No improvisation is required. Role-playing, the mastery of a pre-existing role, is actually enabled by the rule design, and scheduling and hosting and table rules and so on should really be up to everyone.

Again, I strongly disagree. D&D is a board game welded to a cooperative storytelling experience. It's not one or the other, it's both. Some groups lean in one direction, others lean in the other, but traditionally D&D incorporates both aspects.

This is because strategic gameplay is in now way antithetical to storytelling. Both can happen, either in different parts of the game or even simultaneously.

Bad games and players can lead to referees becoming "masters" over others, but games don't need to be designed or played that way. I suggest they were designed to remove arbitrary decision making by DMs originally.

And goal setting and planning (strategizing) is defining of games and irrelevant to storytelling.

So anyone who disagrees with your viewpoint is 'confused'? This is exceptionally arrogant. I'm almost impressed.

But not convinced.

Do 2e or 3e D&D books appear confused to a believer in The Big Model? As has been loudly said. They are confused from the point of view of D&D as a strategy game too. But people play them anyways. They have their own points of view.

 

[howandwhy99]

The hell he isn't. I get to play dozens of people per session, if you include monsters. NPCs are the GM's player-bits, if you will.

Oh please, that's half the game. Every time you react to someone's weird off the wall plan, you're making stuff up. Or if you change things simply because of something one of the players says, such as 'Man, I hope there aren't any spiders in those creepy rafters up there....' Well, there weren't until that was said! Now I've made things a lot more fun by playing on one character's dread of large vermin instead of there just being a room you merely pass through.

You need rules for your NPCs. They have been sorely missing for some time. I'd suggest you're actually removing fun from the game by what you're doing with the spiders because you're removing the players ability to play the game. Avoid improvisation as best you can. You're the DM, not a storymaker.

 

[Nellisir]

I've always been taught that a good DM is creative, flexible, willing to make things up on the fly and re-calibrate the game for the maximum fun of the players. But it seems there are players for whom 're-calibrating' for fun will actually make things un-fun.

You sound like someone I'd happily game with. If everyone is having fun, you're doing it right.

And if there ARE a lot of people who find the idea of the arbitrary GM distasteful, may I ask why?

Because a good DM is not "arbitrary". In this context, what "arbitrary" really means is "I don't know why that is happening". So one of two things is true: the DM is following their own script and logic irregardless of the effect on the players (bad DMing) or the DM hasn't successfully explained why his ruling is "more fun" than the RAW - which suggests the DM made a mistake somewhere along the way. Keeping secrets in this context leads to mistrust. That doesn't mean you shouldn't tweak hit points, or make up orcs with special abilities, but either don't get caught, or have a convincing and reasonable explanation that advances the plot, interests the players, and ups the fun quotient.

 

[GMMichael]

The hell he isn't. I get to play dozens of people per session, if you include monsters. NPCs are the GM's player-bits, if you will.

Or if you change things simply because of something one of the players says, such as 'Man, I hope there aren't any spiders in those creepy rafters up there....' Well, there weren't until that was said!

Amen, and amen.

The GM's job is to make the game fun. If that means arbitrarily changing rules, so be it.

Some players (most?) like some structure to their games though - so if the GM's making up rules, they should be either gray-area rules or rules not covered by other rules from the rulebook.

Long live rule zero!

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

The answer to the OP is yes, but...

j/k I rely on the trust of my players, because if I abuse my arbitrary make-up powers they start planning a game to replace mine.

...this post perfectly illustrates the limits of that power.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

After looking up the definition of "arbitrarily", I have determined that the entire purpose of having a GM is so that they can make arbitrary rulings on the game.

Nuts, someone beat me to it. Leatherhead has it exactly right.

arbitrary
ar•bi•trar•y
[ahr-bi-trer-ee] Show IPA
adjective
1.
subject to individual will or judgment without restriction; contingent solely upon one's discretion: an arbitrary decision.
2.
decided by a judge or arbiter rather than by a law or statute.​

In an RPG, you're playing with a whole universe around you. There's no way to represent the total mechanics with a finite set of rules. There's no way to completely represent the location/setting/world/culture with a finite number of words. Since players are free to do as they wish, it's not even possible to reliably predict which details of mechanics and setting will be important to play. Giving a single player the power to fill in the holes as they arise is the only reasonable means to deal with this issue. The only other medthod I can think of is to have the players vote on each instance, which has all kinds of problems.

 

[delericho]

And if there ARE a lot of people who find the idea of the arbitrary GM distasteful, may I ask why?

It's about trust. If I'm a player, I need to be able to trust the GM to run the game both fairly and well. That doesn't mean he has to be bound to the letter of that which is written, but it doesn't mean he has carte blanche to just make stuff up either.

Conversely, if I'm the GM, I expect my players to trust me to run the game fairly (I dunno if they should trust me to run it well, though!). So, if I do change something, I would expect them to at least give it a go, rather than crying foul.

As for making changes themselves: it's a bit like baking a cake. If I'm doing so, I'm going to follow a recipe, but I'm not absolutely bound by what is written. If I want to adjust the quantities, add or remove ingredients, or whatever then that's my prerogative. But if I do so without due care, there is enormous scope for disaster - if I replace the chocolate with sprouts, it's not going to end well. Just because I can do something doesn't mean I should.

 

[Derren]

Me: I assume the NPC has whatever abilities needed to play its part in the story.

This is probably the core sentence in your post.

You want to play a predefined story where the PCs follow a plot to its grand finale. But not every player wants something like this. Instead they "just" want to play their character and have him interact with a world and the world with him, unconstrained by any pre-planned plot. A life simulator so to speak. And as with every simulator, the last thing you need is someone who arbitrarily changes the rules, even when the change benefits you.
For such people you basically giving them a temple is equally bad as you telling them they can never have it. What they want is to earn the temple through their actions without any PC bonus.
And to make this interaction fair the price of the temple needs to be fixed and predetermined, either beforehand or based on rules as otherwise it always comes down to "do I want the PC to have the temple or not" when making up the price on the spot.

 

[Ahnehnois]

One of my dilemmas here is how much to push for Billy to join the game. Like I said, it SEEMS like something he would really enjoy, given his background. But if his hang up with 'arbitrary rule changes' is serious, I don't want to force him to play something he won't enjoy.

If he's one of us nerdy types, he ought to understand that great power brings great responsibility. The way I'd explain this is that it's as if you're a movie director (and writer/producer/editor/co-star, this is a low-budget film), and you're inviting him to star in your next movie. It's your show, not anyone else's, and it's important that this is clear. The actor absolutely does not tell his director what is going to happen, he just goes out and does his thing. When the director makes a decision, he is bound by it. But it's still pretty fun to be the star.

However, by inviting people to spend hours roleplaying in your story, you incur an obligation to treat them to an enjoyable and fulfilling experience. So you will set things up to make it interesting for the players, and you'll have some humility and let the game go where their decisions take it, even if it doesn't always play out the way you had thought it would. Sometimes you'll make decisions the players don't like, and sometimes you'll make bad decisions (and occasionally those categories overlap), but you're an experienced and knowledgeable DM, and you'll always try to satisfy your obligation to the player.

The player needs to understand that the DM is the rules (you can show him some of the DMG text that says the DM is always the final arbiter of everything), and a player dictating things, even if he is only dictating rules as written, is the equivalent of entering in a cheat code in a video game. Sometimes it's fun to get what you want, but removing the stakes can also take the fun out of it. In D&D, the stakes are you against whatever the DM comes up with, which sometimes requires him to change what's written in the rulebooks. A player is roleplaying a character, and his job in this game is to assume the character's perspective. Anything outside of that is the DM's playground.

I also want to make sure that I don't have bad habits as a GM which are in fact rubbing my players the wrong way.

Well, you do want to make sure you're doing your job and satisfying the players. In my early DMing days, I created online surveys and open-ended questions after sessions and really aggressively solicited feedback. Learning to DM is about learning to listen.

 

[Ahnehnois]

You want to play a predefined story where the PCs follow a plot to its grand finale.

I wouldn't draw that conclusion at all. For one thing, the DM making stuff up as he goes allows him to be improvisational and react to what he sees at the table, resulting in the opposite of a predefined story. For another thing, that's why we have dice.

It's certainly possible to play a predefined plot, but that is hardly the natural consequence of even the most ambitious and authoritative DM.