The DM Giveth and the DM Taketh Away

[KidSnide]

Like so many aspects of GMing, this type of advice depends a lot on the campaign.

Personally, I don't really believe that neutral GMs exist. (It's the philosophy of Legal Realism and Critical Legal Studies as applied to role-playing games.) A GM can be fair (and should be fair), but deciding what exists in the world inherently influences the player experience. Unlabeled deathtraps will feel harsh and unfair, even if adjudicated fairly. Unguarded piles of gold result in the opposite experience.

If you're creating a world, you can't avoid putting your thumb on the scale. It's just part of the job. I prefer GMs that are actively involved in guiding the campaign. I'd rather a GM concentrate on their most interesting material and make sure that the PCs don't have to waste time trying to find it. Likewise, I like a GM have "what would be fun for the game" influence what NPCs decide to do. Other people, prefer a GM who creates many options and let's the players choose which direction to go. Those are both valid design philosophies.

Chris Perkins makes the observation (correct, IMO) that highs and lows are a major part of the D&D experience and - just as importantly - games are more fun if the players have moments of despair and exultation. The steady march of progress is nice for real life, but makes for an uninteresting game. As such, GMs should design their games with that in mind.

How you do that depends on the type of game you're running. A GM that is actively involved in helping decide what the PCs do should plan a course that involves opportunities for extraordinary success and real risks of substantial setbacks. A more sandboxy game should likewise have these opportunities. I think most people would agree.

The key point is that the game will be more fun if they happen. That means the opportunities for extraordinary success have to be easy enough to find and accomplish that - in a normal game - the PCs actually achieve some extraordinary successes. Likewise, the opportunities for setbacks need to be dangerous enough and hard enough to avoid that the PCs probably can't escape them all. Regardless of the game, PCs need to have enough agency that the players perceive extraordinary success as an accomplishment and a setback as the result of their own choices (and maybe the dice too). However, GMs should also to adjust the scenario so this type of enjoyable variation takes place.

-KS

 

[Windjammer]

Looks like a good occasion to share one of my all time favourite blog entries (authored by Jeff Rients), on the topic "How to Awesome Up your Players". Excerpt:

Give the players the sun and make them fight for the moon - What I mean is that you give the players almost everything they want and them put them through a thousand chinese hells to get everything else. Put the PCs on the throne of Aquilonia, if that's what they want, then have ten-thousand angry Cimmerians invade, intent on burning their capital to the ground. Not because you're a sadistic , but because fighting off an army of Conans is one of the cool things kings get to do.

 

[Riastlin]

D&D (all story telling) is inherently about conflict.

I absolutely agree with this. I'm a firm believer that success doesn't mean much if everyone is guaranteed to succeed. Its one of the reasons why I've come to the point where my npcs/monsters are often absolutely ruthless in combat. Sure, PC death sucks for the player, and a tpk could, in theory (though not always) derail a campaign, but if every PC is guaranteed to reach level 30, then levels 1 - 29 really don't matter.

That being said, my concern is that while death in combat can seem like a natural ebb and flow of the game and the luck of the dice, simply taking away a player's toys can feel arbitrary.

I'm not actually arguing against this per se. I guess I'm just concerned as to how do GMs go about making it seem as though the decision wasn't purely arbitrary? This is why for instance, I don't necessarily have a problem with stacking the deck against the PCs, making it likely that they'll suffer a setback, but simply "blowing the ship up" so to speak, smacks a bit too much of arbitrariness to me. Also to be fair, we were only offered part of the story with regard to how the ship blew up. We don't know if, for instance, the harbor the ship was anchored was attacked, etc.

 

[DracoSuave]

I absolutely agree with this. I'm a firm believer that success doesn't mean much if everyone is guaranteed to succeed. Its one of the reasons why I've come to the point where my npcs/monsters are often absolutely ruthless in combat. Sure, PC death sucks for the player, and a tpk could, in theory (though not always) derail a campaign, but if every PC is guaranteed to reach level 30, then levels 1 - 29 really don't matter.

That being said, my concern is that while death in combat can seem like a natural ebb and flow of the game and the luck of the dice, simply taking away a player's toys can feel arbitrary.

I'm not actually arguing against this per se. I guess I'm just concerned as to how do GMs go about making it seem as though the decision wasn't purely arbitrary? This is why for instance, I don't necessarily have a problem with stacking the deck against the PCs, making it likely that they'll suffer a setback, but simply "blowing the ship up" so to speak, smacks a bit too much of arbitrariness to me. Also to be fair, we were only offered part of the story with regard to how the ship blew up. We don't know if, for instance, the harbor the ship was anchored was attacked, etc.

The thing is, at the end, any justification can be used.

Where the issue is solved is in the realm of DM trust. You have to be able to trust that the DM is going somewhere with it. The idea isn't that you're blowing up the boat either... it's that blowing up the boat leads to a future reward.

 

[KidSnide]

I'm not actually arguing against this per se. I guess I'm just concerned as to how do GMs go about making it seem as though the decision wasn't purely arbitrary? This is why for instance, I don't necessarily have a problem with stacking the deck against the PCs, making it likely that they'll suffer a setback, but simply "blowing the ship up" so to speak, smacks a bit too much of arbitrariness to me.

Where the issue is solved is in the realm of DM trust. You have to be able to trust that the DM is going somewhere with it. The idea isn't that you're blowing up the boat either... it's that blowing up the boat leads to a future reward./QUOTE]

I agree that it's GM trust, but it can be GM trust in a couple different ways.

In a more GM-guided game, you can trust that the GM took away the boat with the intent of offering a future reward. In a less GM-guided game, you can trust that the PC chose to lead the fleet into danger and either the dice or a pre-existing unknown danger ended up destroying the boat. Alternatively, the GM could create some fleet combat gameplay. In that scenario, the PC could be put into a situation where sacrificing the boat may have been necessary to save the greater objective.

Speaking just for myself, my two favorite ways of taking away a beloved item are:
(1) Strictly enforcing the side effects of another PC's action. E.g. PC 1 uses a powerful anti-magic effect and PC 2's item gets caught in the burst.
(2) Putting PCs in positions where they can sacrifice a beloved item to turn a likely failure into a victory.

Those techniques help the up-and-down emotional dynamic of the campaign, but make the major victories and defeats feel like the result of player decisions.

-KS

 

[DEFCON 1]

Those techniques help the up-and-down emotional dynamic of the campaign, but make the major victories and defeats feel like the result of player decisions.

-KS

Although for my point of view... not every good or bad thing that happens to a PC should necessarily happen because of the PC.

Sometimes unforeseen crap happens. That's life. So not everything bad that occurs should (from my pov) be because the PC screwed up somewhere along the line.

The biggest thing to remember here though, is that a particular group makes a particular social contract to work together to tell the particular story of these characters. If the PCs trust the DM is working to make the best story possible, and the DM is trusting the PCs to make the best story possible... both sides can do whatever they want and have the fullest of faith that the other side will catch the ball thrown to them and run with it as well. It's the ultimate improv "Yes, And..."

 

[Barastrondo]

I absolutely agree with this. I'm a firm believer that success doesn't mean much if everyone is guaranteed to succeed. Its one of the reasons why I've come to the point where my npcs/monsters are often absolutely ruthless in combat. Sure, PC death sucks for the player, and a tpk could, in theory (though not always) derail a campaign, but if every PC is guaranteed to reach level 30, then levels 1 - 29 really don't matter.

A lot of different opinions on this one. If a character dies at level 17, did levels 1-16 matter? And if you bring in a replacement level 17 character, does this character's unplayed levels 1-16 somehow matter? I don't think there's a correct communal answer. For my opinion, I figure that the only thing that makes any level "matter" is what you do with it: if the players have had an effect on their environment, both in successes and in failures, then death has nothing to do with whether or not their investments have paid off.

I'm not actually arguing against this per se. I guess I'm just concerned as to how do GMs go about making it seem as though the decision wasn't purely arbitrary?

I'd guess that the answer always has to do with immersion in the world, or at least in the sense of plausibility. If a castle falls, or a ship is lost, or a useful ally at court falls to an assassin's knife, it should seem that this is a logical consequence of events in the campaign. That may require the PC actions to produce a loss, or it may require foreshadowing of another sort. If the players react to news of an assassination with "What? It's the Turgeyevs, it has to be. I can't believe they've gotten this bold!" then it won't seem arbitrary. Rather, it seems a natural consequence.