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

[steenan]

What do we mean by "arbitrarily"?



The GM makes a lot of things up. If it wasn't the case, everything would have to be pre-planned, and that is just impossible to do.
So the question is what guides the ideas the GM introduces.

The GM may make up something that follows from fiction (whatever happened during the game up to this point). It's not fully arbitrary, but still leaves a lot of space to decide.
The GM may be asked by the rules to make up something, with general direction but no specifics. "This result means that the PC succeeds in what they attempted, but a complication is introduced".
The GM may guide what happens in game, in reaction to out-of-game events (like trying to engage a bored player, or having a PC kidnapped/knocked out, because the player just got an urgent call and must leave early).
The GM may introduce new situations, places and characters just because they got a fun idea, as long as they don't contradict what has already been established in game.

Each of the above is fine. That's the GM job, in my eyes. What shouldn't be done is making players' actions meaningless, removing their agency.
In other words, free to make things up, but not completely arbitrarily.

 

[Janx]

In no way is the GM of a roleplaying game a player. And after the game begins the referee behind the screen should never, under any circumstance, "arbitrarily make things up as they go along."

Where in the rules does it tell you EXACTLY where Orc #2 is standing at the start of the encounter?

Does he have his weapon drawn? Which weapon.

What's his motivation? A PC might make him a better offer

What's his name? A PC might ask.

What is his standing in the tribe? A PC might leverage his standing for some advantage.

There's completely different levels of making stuff up. But technically, a GM is always making SOMETHING up.

I don't think many of us want the GM to just decide that there's a trap in the next room.

But the GM has to be deciding on a bunch of stuff the rules just don't cover. Many of those things are such that a normal human might not have considered as arbitrary decisions. But they were.

I often find GMs who espouse your position to be completely hypocritical in not understanding that they do NOT have a system for everything. At some point, their mass of grey matter is just making it up.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I often find GMs who espouse your position to be completely hypocritical in not understanding that they do NOT have a system for everything. At some point, their mass of grey matter is just making it up.

Absolutely. I think that people simply have a natural blind spot for what they themselves are doing. There wouldn't be a game without the DM making a lot of things up, arbitrarily, "fiat", whatever you want to call it. Any position to the contrary is nonsensical.

 

[Janx]

Absolutely. I think that people simply have a natural blind spot for what they themselves are doing. There wouldn't be a game without the DM making a lot of things up, arbitrarily, "fiat", whatever you want to call it. Any position to the contrary is nonsensical.

A GM can have a lot of things systemetized, but there's always final details. At some point, either in writing the adventure or filling in a detail the player asked about that wasn't thought of ahead of time, the GM has to make something up. Failing to do so is as equally bad GMing as totally making up what happens next in an escalating battle of thwarting the PCs' will.

If a town is big enough to have a blacksmith, and the PCs ask about one, and the town map doesn't show one, that doesn't mean there isn't one. Just because the DM didn't think of it during the design stage doesn't strait-jacket him in during the execution. There are zillions a of things a GM won't think of that a player will, so a rule in D&D that says if it ain't written down, it can't happen/exist is going to lead to bad GMing.

The RPG activity doesn't have to devolve into hippies telling stories for this principle of GM right to create/define content on the fly to be important to resolving game situations.

There's a balance to when a GM should make something up/fill in a detail, and when he shouldn't. It seems like that balance depends on the GM and the nature of their game.

 

[Argyle King]

I think there are times when the GM does need to make an arbitrary decision. Simple examples would be giving a NPC guard a name and some general personal information if/when the PCs suddenly take an interest in talking to that guard. (If you're uncomfortable making a completely arbitrary decision, rolls some dice and consult a chart; I hazard to guess there's probably a chart or random generator for what you need.)


However, I also think there is a line that can be crossed which ruins the game... or at least soils the trust the group has in the GM running the game. As a player, I strongly dislike when a GM arbitrarily changes the rules of the game mid-game. I've played in games where mid-battle, a GM decided something worked differently for seemingly no reason other than he didn't like how it was used against his NPCs and monsters, but, earlier in that same battle, it worked as written when he used it against the players. I personally believe that to be cheating. There are many people who feel a GM cannot cheat; if that's your belief, then I'd say what I just mentioned is, at the very least, a poor practice to employ while GMing.

I think, what I'm trying to get at is that any changes made should be made consistently. Occasionally, I'm ok with a mid-game change if a game produces counter-intuitive results. However, if that change is made, I feel that should be how it works going forward. If a rule is constantly being changed, how am I, as a player, supposed to make decisions in the context of my character when neither I nor my character have a solid idea about how the world around the character works.

When I GM, I do have house rules. However, when possible, I express what they are before the game begins. For example, I've run GURPS 4th Edition games in which I didn't tie Will to IQ; instead of Will being a derived attribute, I made it its own thing. I've also run games in which Signature Gear worked differently.

There are also times when I've had to make a judgement call during a game the rules either didn't cover a situation clearly or I didn't want to bog down the game by flipping through a book during a tense moment. If I can use GURPS as an example again, an example would be when I was first learning the game and didn't fully understand the rules for quick contests yet. A PC and the main villain of a story arc were fighting over the steering wheel of a vehicle during a pretty intense combat. I made a quick judgement call about what the result would be; it's been a while, but I believe I called for a Quick Contest of Driving skill versus whatever it was that I had the PC rolls against. However, I was open about the fact that I was making a judgement call, and that I'd look it up later. (To my credit, and to the credit of the rules system being consistent, I will say that my judgement call was fairly accurate.)

I may be wrong, but I believe a big part of why the people I game with trust me to make calls like that are because I am generally very open and honest with them about what's going on. I very very rarely fudge*; I strongly dislike doing so, and only do so under the most extreme of cases -which I've mentioned in past threads. When I make a judgement call or arbitrary decision, I do so with a mind toward what I believe creates better results from the rules system and group playing the game. If I'm unsure that I made the right call, I find time to discuss it with the group. If I'm put in a situation where (for some reason,) I don't believe I can trust myself to fairly arbitrate something, I either roll dice or ask for outside input. I do my best to do things in a manner I deem fair. While it seems like everyone would do that, it's not the case. I've been a player in games where the GM made very arbitrary decisions; sometimes blatantly favoring a particular player or a particular pet NPC; sometimes wildly fudging results to an extent that I wondered why I even bothered rolling my dice. Thankfully, those experiences have been few and far between, and I haven't had any of them for a really long time.



*Generally, the only time I fudge is if I feel a new player made a decision based on a faulty understanding of the rules or if the group is playing a game we have little experience with and a player makes a decision based on a faulty understanding of the rules. In rarer cases, I have also fudged when a rules system lead to a result which seemed extremely counter-intuitive; such cases usually lead to a house rule because the group feels an aspect of a game doesn't work properly... that happened quite a bit with Rifts because the rules weren't written in a way which was often clear or in a way which really even worked as written. There was also one time when a D&D encounter had been dragging on for a while, and I just handwaved things; switching to an interacting narrative mode in which the players each took turns adding something to the scene to explain how they won the battle. At the point where I did so, it was pretty obvious the players were going to win, and I didn't feel like wasting the rest of the session having them hack away at a bag of HP.



Edit: I think it's perfectly fine for the GM to arbitrarily change parts of a pre-written adventure if he's worried about players who may have read the adventure or players who may be prone to metagaming. However, that sort of thing should be done before the session begins. It's perfectly fine to decide "in my version of the Tomb of Horrors, the trap is here instead of there." It's, in my opinion, bad GMing to decide during gameplay "he chose the untrapped door, but I'm going to say the trap hits him anyway." It may be that the players don't know the difference from their point of view, but I'd still view it as poor GMing. Sitting behind the screen, I'd know; even if they didn't, and I wouldn't feel right about it.

 

[howandwhy99]

Where in the rules does it tell you EXACTLY where Orc #2 is standing at the start of the encounter?

Does he have his weapon drawn? Which weapon.

What's his motivation? A PC might make him a better offer

What's his name? A PC might ask.

What is his standing in the tribe? A PC might leverage his standing for some advantage.

Marching Order, Alignment, Names, and Organization used to all be in D&D. Cultural rules were suggested in the DMG, but not set down explicitly. Still, they aren't difficult to put in place before play.

There's completely different levels of making stuff up. But technically, a GM is always making SOMETHING up.

When the GM says, "I'm not making it up", then he's passing something along. I take it you don't believe you are devoid of memory? Now think of telling the players what's in your head from what you see on the game map right in front of you.

I often find GMs who espouse your position to be completely hypocritical in not understanding that they do NOT have a system for everything. At some point, their mass of grey matter is just making it up.

Absolutely. I think that people simply have a natural blind spot for what they themselves are doing. There wouldn't be a game without the DM making a lot of things up, arbitrarily, "fiat", whatever you want to call it. Any position to the contrary is nonsensical.

A GM can have a lot of things systemetized, but there's always final details. At some point, either in writing the adventure or filling in a detail the player asked about that wasn't thought of ahead of time, the GM has to make something up. Failing to do so is as equally bad GMing as totally making up what happens next in an escalating battle of thwarting the PCs' will.

You both sound utterly inflexible in your opinions. But I don't think you are that close-minded. It's a matter of playing the game differently than you may have been. Think of all the storygames that exist now that don't hold any characteristics to the first 30 years of RPGs.

Needless to say, it is not necessary for a referee to improvise when running a game. D&D is uniquely designed with 100s of pages of rules to cover almost every possibly imagined act and yet still covers when a player tries to do something the rules don't by incorporating those actions into the rules too. I've said before the game is a reality puzzle, a kind of dynamic situational puzzle where the code / rules for the players to game are set up prior to play. This is to put the players in a gameable place where they can improve at the game. Think of how every other game enables player improvement within it and how addictive that is (e.g. MtG or Pokemon).

People try and say "that's impossible!" without knowing otherwise. I'm telling you that, just like monsters created within the 4e monster creation rules are game constructs fully covered by the rules of the game, so can be practically everything else you can imagine. I think game designers have simply forgotten why RPGs were designed the way they were in the first place, with an economy of rules, a preponderance of game constructs, and all of those elements hidden from players so they might not have any advantage when they play to win the game.

 

[Piston Honda]

Needless to say, it is not necessary for a referee to improvise when running a game. D&D is uniquely designed with 100s of pages of rules to cover almost every possibly imagined act and yet still covers when a player tries to do something the rules don't by incorporating those actions into the rules too.

So in the event I have an upcoming difficult battle for a party, and one player has to leave in an emergency just beforehand, and everyone wants to keep going, I should simply keep it as is and slaughter them like animals?

Not totally sure how the player's creative solution would work? Don't make a judgment call, dig through rulebooks, everybody loves when their game is stopped and nothing is happening. That guy should have known the correct answer to the module to start with.

If I want a game with a static world where the path ahead is set in stone, I have an XBox.

 

[howandwhy99]

So in the event I have an upcoming difficult battle for a party, and one player has to leave in an emergency just beforehand, and everyone wants to keep going, I should simply keep it as is and slaughter them like animals?

Not totally sure how the player's creative solution would work? Don't make a judgment call, dig through rulebooks, everybody loves when their game is stopped and nothing is happening. That guy should have known the correct answer to the module to start with.

If I want a game with a static world where the path ahead is set in stone, I have an XBox.

I don't railroad, I use modules. There is no rewarded activity other than game mastery, or role mastery in the case of D&D as a roleplaying game. Player isn't there? Her character is no longer there either. She's in limbo. Besides, combats are not designed to be won. They are challenges in and of themselves. If you left last session with 6 players and are playing this session with 3, you want to bug out. Do something you can handle by who you have with you. Combat is hardly a necessary component of the game. And the idea that "all combats must be completed and won to advance the plot or die / game over" probably came from a computer game.

 

[Nellisir]

There is no rewarded activity other than game mastery, or role mastery in the case of D&D as a roleplaying game.

I dunno, I feel pretty good when I have fun during D&D; that seems like a reward.

Also, because I'm wondering, what's the marching order of two minotaurs, an ogre, and a beholder?

Not everyone uses modules. Many people homebrew.

 

[howandwhy99]

I dunno, I feel pretty good when I have fun during D&D; that seems like a reward.

Also, because I'm wondering, what's the marching order of two minotaurs, an ogre, and a beholder?

Not everyone uses modules. Many people homebrew.

yeah, yeah, yeah. You know I mean game rewards. And assuming the beholder is in charge of the others I imagine it's placed itself in the middle. It depends on the tactics the specific creatures know and use. And yes, many people homebrew modules to use in their games.