Why I don't GM by the nose

[Plane Sailing]

Tone down the arguing please guys. It is getting a little personal, and we don't want that. Thanks.

Well, it seems some people don't want to observe a nicely worded warning and so have been threadbanned. It would be a shame to hand out actual bans or close the thread, so lets get back to being nice.

Thanks

 

[Raven Crowking]

Also, it is hard to roll dice with your nose.

 

[Hussar]

In this particular scenario, what power does the DM have? As far as I can tell, the DM set a challenge; the player declared an action to resolve that challenge; the DM set a condition for the player to meet; both parties agreed to abide by an independent arbiter (the dice) to resolve said challenge.

1. The DM exercised his power in creating a challenge and setting the conditions to overcome said challenge.
2. The Player exercised his power in choosing to engage this challenge and how.
3. Both transferred their power to an independent arbiter to resolve this challenge.

The player has the power to choose to engage a challenge, how to engage the challenge, and whether to agree or disagree to a means to resolve the challenge.

Back up a second here. How can the player agree or disagree on "a means to resolve the challenge"? At what point can the player change how a challenge is resolved. It's true, I suppose, that the player can disagree, but, so what? The player disagrees. He can't do anything about it, other than walk away from the game.

I'll give you an example from a game I was playing. I had a 4e rogue with an at-will ability that let him calculate his jumps as if he had a running start, even if he was standing still. And a +11 Athletics. Essentially that means that my minimum jumping distance is 12 feet under 4e rules. We come to a 10 foot pit. I declare that I jump across the pit, sailing with ease.

The DM asked me to roll. "Why?" I asked.

"Because a 1 automatically fails skill checks," was the answer.

Now, I argued this. I disagreed because, in the rules, this isn't true. This was a house rule that the DM had added in. His response was, "It's a common house rule, make your roll."

So, what power over mechanical resolution did I have here?

So, yes, as I said MULTIPLE times in this thread, a player has power over his own character. But, that doesn't change the fact that the DM has 99% of the rest of the power in the game.

It's very pedantic to argue that power is shared when one side has virtually (almost, nearly, but not quite) all the power and the other side's choice is limited to leaving the game.

It's funny though, some people are telling me that DM's don't have authority over their game and control virtually all elements, while at exactly the same time, are telling me that DM's can veto player choices during character generation.

Isn't there a contradiction there?

 

[pemerton]

It's always seemed obvious to me that the DM has the absolute right to exclude any-damn-thing from his or her campaign world. You don't want elves in your world, there ain't no elves and nobody can play one. That's been the case in D&D since the beginning. Likewise, if you want to make up your own races, you can do that too. I have, many times.

The day I am informed that I have to include warforged in my game world is the day I quit running D&D*.

I don't think DMs are under any obligation to incorporate everything from the Player's Handbook (which I assume is what you mean by "the standard list") when building a campaign world. The deal I offer my players is this: I will build a world, populate it, prepare adventures in it. If you want to play in it--within the constraints I have built into it--you are welcome to do so. If not, I will step down and someone else can run a game.

I don't think the notion of "obligation" has any work to do here. We're talking about playing games for a hobby.

My point is that, according to the 4e rulebooks, a game of D&D involves players building PCs from a certain list of game elements. Of course it's possible to play a game of 4e without one or more of those elements, but this is analogous to houseruling. And at least in my view, houseruling - or, to put it another way, working out the precise parameters of the game that will be run - is something that the whole table does, at least in principle. In practice, many players may leave the bulk of it to the GM, which is what seems to be going on when the GM say "OK, here's a campaign world, now build a PC according to the following parameters". Of course, if a player says "Great world, but how about including robots as well - it'd be even better then!" they might try and up the ante in the negotiations over the shared parameters. And there is nothing in the 4e rulebooks to indicate that this is playing the game wrong.

So I agree with this:

This stuff is more about table rules or social contract depending upon your parlance. It isn't about not letting anyone play a robot in my campaign world.

And, just for clarification:

If you object to my excising races from the Player's Handbook, you don't want to know the amount of stuff I cut from the monster books.

It's not about objecting to what the parameters are for PC creation. The issue is about how we describe what goes on when these parameters are set. Is it an issue of GM power, or shared power? My point (and as far as I can tell howandwhy99's point also) is that the setting of parameters is a shared endeavour that happens at the social contract/table rules level. It's not a power that the rules of the game give to the GM.

The use and placement of monsters is a different matter. The rulebooks are pretty clear on this - the DM's kit says to the GM "It's your world" and the Rules Compendium says to players "It's your GM's world". The text under these headings makes it clear that it is up to the GM to determine the geography and the population of the world. But there is no suggestion in these texts that the GM's power over geography and population extends into the domain of PC building.

 

[Hussar]

Pemerton - as much as I want to agree with you, I don't think I do. I know I've certainly argued in the past that DM's should consider player wishes during character generation (and the sticking point with me was when a DM uses solely his own preferences to veto a player choice), I'd say the rules are pretty clear that a DM's campaign setting is the DM's.

The DM is expected, by the rules, to create the setting in which the campaign will be played (or, if not create, then use a published one) and the DM has pretty much total control over that setting. If the DM decides that he doesn't want elves, the players don't really have much say in the matter. They can bitch and whine, but, at the end of the day, they certainly can't tell the DM to include elves.

And there are many perfectly good reasons why a DM will exclude particular choices - both thematic (no robots in my Middle Earth please) or mechanical (no, you can't bring your Battlemaster into my Middle Earth either). I would never argue that a DM can never veto player choices during chargen.

Heck, most groups don't even get to choose the rolling method of chargen. That's almost always dictated by the DM.

 

[pemerton]

The DM asked me to roll. "Why?" I asked.

"Because a 1 automatically fails skill checks," was the answer.

Now, I argued this. I disagreed because, in the rules, this isn't true. This was a house rule that the DM had added in. His response was, "It's a common house rule, make your roll."

So, what power over mechanical resolution did I have here?

<snip>

It's funny though, some people are telling me that DM's don't have authority over their game and control virtually all elements, while at exactly the same time, are telling me that DM's can veto player choices during character generation.

Isn't there a contradiction there?

I don't think I'm a target of this post, but I'll reply anyway!

The example of the house rule about 1s strikes me as a fairly common example of how D&D is played. It assumes that the GM has the power to set or vary the rules. Nothing in the 4e rulebooks supports it. It's an approach to play that I hope will die out over time, assuming that 4e (and other RPGs) have some lifespan beyond the current batch of aging D&D players who carry this legacy of earlier editions with them.

As to your diagnosis of contradiction, I agree. I avoid the contradiction by denying that the GM has any power, under the rules, to veto PC build choices. The legacy of earlier editions means that, in practice, the GM probably has a disproportionate voice at many tables when it comes to negotiating houserules/table variations from the rules as written (which includes PC build rules) but again my hope is that this will die out over time.

For a sensible discussion of how give-and-take can work beteen players and GM in setting the parameters of PC build, see (for example) the Burning Wheels rulebooks. These in fact go further, extending the same sort of give-and-take to monster building. In 4e, monster building is reservedby the rules to the GM , but a set of fairly tight parameters is established in order to ensure that the GM's decisions aren't arbitrary.

EDIT FOR CROSSPOSTING: Hussar, I entirely feel the force of your follow-up post. But as I said above in this post, I really think this is a legacy thing. Someone who came to D&D with the 4e books and no legacy wouldn't get the sense at all that the GM is free to exclue elves, or dragonborn or whatever. The "It's your world" section of Essentials is about geography and monsters, but not PC build. The Dark Sun rulebooks have a sidebar expressly discussing how to handle the issue of nonstandard races, making it pretty clear that it's a player/GM negotiation issue - and this is even after everyone's agreed to play a Dark Sun game.

 

[pemerton]

You can easily create a game experience where the optimal choices are not readily apparent, and player decisions are important, because they must determine what they should do. You can easily create a game experience where the optimal choices are obvious, and player decisions become unimportant because the players know what they should do; not following those optimums isn't really going to happen. You can make a game experience in which some decisions are obvious and some are not; the ones that are not are going to be the ones in which player decisions matter.

This seems to me to assume a certain approach to play - that the goal of play is something like "operationally successful exploration", and thus that "optimal choices" are those that maximise territory explored and loot acquired relative to attrition of PC resources.

If the goal of play is something different, then the notion of the GM making the "optimal choices" obvious doesn't have so much bite. To revisit an example I used upthread: if I deliberately place a statue of Orcus in the crypt rather than a statue of some other god or spirit, because I think the player of the paladin of the Raven Queen will enjoy interacting with it, it doesn't seem that I am making any choice obvious. Does the paladin destroy the statue? Try to cleanse it? Try to divine it's inner secrets, at the risk of being corrupted by it? No one knows until the game is actually played and the player actually makes some choices!

Similar considerations apply to including NPCs in the game. I tend to give detailed descriptions only of NPCs who will be interesting for the players to have their PCs engage with, but this doesn't mean the manner of engagement is obvious. I've certainly had players be hostile to NPCs whom I had thought might make good allies, and negotiate with NPCs whom I had assumed they would attack. These are the sorts of surprise outcomes of play that help make the game worth playing.

Anyway, in this sort of play it makes perfect sense to include only relevant details - ie statues, NPCs etc who connect to ongoing dynamics and themes of the PCs and the unfolding gameworld - but in which doing so does not foreclose meaningful choices by players.

 

[Hussar]

Pemerton - Totally agree that other games approach the idea of table power sharing differently. I do disagree though with your assessment of 4e and it's power sharing.

For example, looking at page 151 of the 4e DM (I just happen to have that one in reach) and it details how to approach building your setting. The quotes are pretty specific here:

Title: It's Your World
...
You can do the same to create a world that's uniquely yours
...
you might decide that the tieflins of your world have a culture reminiscent of medieval Russia
...
You can build an interesting campaign concept by altering one or more of those core assumptions. Ask yourself, "What if this wasn't true in my world?"
...
What if your characters all use the martial power sourse, and magic is rare and dangerous? What if your campiagn is set in a version of historical Europe?
...

On and on. They're pretty much handing the DM carte blanche to over rule any implied setting element in the game. And I would rather hope they would. I don't want campaign building by commitee where I have to ask permission for every single baseline change. It's my campaign, and I should be able to do with it as I see fit.

Again, my personal take on this, the only limitation to that is enforcing things that are purely my own personal preference. If I can't come up with a better reason for disallowing something than, "I just don't like it", I will personally allow it. I think it makes for better games. Others, obviously, disagree.

 

[pemerton]

Hussar, maybe it's me (wishfully) reading some stuff as non-canonical again!

Point conceded.

EDIT: I seem to have polymorphed from a Githyanki into a Gorilla Bear! At least I'm still a Fiend Folio monster (at least if memory serves me rightly).

 

[Mal Malenkirk]

So the DM is never supposed to throw out a red herring; to describe something that's in fact completely mundane in order to throw you off the track?

It gets mighty predictable (and thus, gawdawful boring) if you can tell something's relevant and-or needs to be examined closer only because the DM bothered to describe it.

When you read A Song of Fire and Ice, whatch Dexter or write your own story, how many scenes are irrelevant?

Send me a curve ball... As long as the curve ball is relevant to the story!

Taking me on a ride through a few scenes that add nothing to the tale we are weaving, that is gawdawful boring to me. These are the scenes I edit out of my stories and I'd rather not suffer through them when I'm playing.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that richness of setting doesn't matter much to you.

Yeah, you're on a limb.

What I simply don't understand is the reluctance to allow the DM to flesh out the game world...

If the scene truly fleshes out the game world, it is somewhat tolerable, it has a minimum of relevance. But seriously, I have only 4 or 5 hours a week to game so just give me something to read instead. This accomplish a lot more 'fleshing out', you tend to remember what you read better than what you hear and it comes at no expense in gaming time. Write your own stuff or provide interesting passage from published material that you want the player to be familiar with.