Is the DM the most important person at the table

[Fanaelialae]

But, even then, no one is saying that the DM can never prepare anything. So, none of these scenarios are impossible. The DM can still do stuff too. It's just that, in my proposed method, the DM isn't doing 99% of the work.

Let's say, though, that one of the players proposed the crown prince scenario. And as part of that, the player introduced the sister that was a 7th level illusionist. Remember, the DM is SUPPOSED to change stuff. So, wouldn't the simplest solution be to use that scenario but change who the illusionist is? Or, hey, even more interestingly, add a second illusionist that is the actual culprit? So, now the party is chasing down the sister, who is being framed for framing the prince. Layers of the onion to peel back.

It doesn't seem to me to be too much work to keep things interesting. You've got the stat block of a 7th level illusionist already since the player gave you one. Change up a couple of spells, and poof, now you have two. Several sessions worth of prep all done for you.

I don't have a problem with players making up NPCs or places (for example, as part of their background). I'm glad when they do it, since it's something to hook on to that they're invested in.

That said, I don't really see the benefit to what you're describing. I could go on the internet and get an adventure or NPC with less effort than assigning "homework" to the players. With the added benefit that there's a very high chance that it will be something the players haven't read and will therefore be able to explore without having to suspend their disbelief. Either way, I still have to analyze the material, and make any desired adjustments. I just don't see how this would save me work. I don't even usually run modules since in the time it takes me to prepare one module, I can come up with multiple adventures for personal use.

 

[pemerton]

I think a big part of this question can be in the world building stage. If the players have contributed prior to the start of play, and then continue to contribute during play, toward world building, then I think that can help a GM greatly.

<snip>

If the players are helping to craft and populate the world, then the Gm doesn't have to do all of that.

<snip>

The players may even initiate the kind of adventure they'd like to go on.

I think there's a lot to be said for asking the players to tell you why their PCs are where they are, and/or what they hope to be doing.

The strongest version of this (that I know, at least) is the "kicker": a player-authored event that is part of PC-gen, and which the GM is obliged to make central to play, that makes an evocative or thematically-significant choice necessary for the player who authored it. I used this technique to start a 4e Dark Sun game. Here's how it went:

The main constraint I imposed was that each kicker somehow had to locate the PC within Tyr in the context of the Sorcerer-King having been overthrown. The reason for this constraint was (i) I wanted to be able to use the 4e campaign books, and (ii) D&D relies pretty heavily on group play, and so I didn't want the PCs to be too separated spatially or temporally.

The player of the barbarian came up with something first. Paraphrasing slightly, it went like this:

I was about to cut his head of in the arena, to the adulation of the crowd, when the announcement came that the Sorcerer-King was dead, and they all looked away.​

Notice how this also answered the question that another player had asked, namely, how long since the Sorcerer-King's overthrow: it's just happened!

The other gladiator - whose name is "Twenty-nine", that being his number on the inventory of slaves owned by his master - had been mulling over something about his master having been killed, and so we settled on the following:

I came back from the slave's privies, ready to receive my master's admonition to do a good job before I went out into the arena. But when I got back to the pen my master was dead. So I took the purse with 14 gp from his belt.​

(The 14 gp was the character's change after spending his starting money on gear.)

Discussion of PC backgrounds and the like had already established that the eladrin PC was an envoy from The Lands Within The Wind, aiming to link up with the Veiled Alliance and thereby to take steps to save his homeland from the consequences of defiling. So his kicker was:

My veiled alliance contact is killed in front of me as we are about to meet​

(A lot of death accompanying the revolution!)​

In our Cthulhu Dark sessions we haven't used kickers as such. But in our first session I asked each of the players to explain what their PC was doing - we had a report, a longshoreman and a law firm secretary. The reporter's player decided that he was investigating rumours of financial irregularity in a prominent shipping company. The secretary's player decided that she had been sent out to collect some important documents - from a manager at the docks, naturally! And while the reporter was snooping around at the docks I got the longshoreman's player to introduce his character - he started narrating his side of an argument with an employer about danger money given that two men had already disappeared while working on a particular vessel. (Or something along those lines - it's been a little while.)

Because Cthulhu Dark doesn't particularly depend upon party play, it was enough for the players to somewhat co-locate their PCs and I then worked with what they gave me to weave their various storylines together. They did end up cooperating towards the end of the scenario, as increasingly shocking events through them together. Which had a good feel for a Cthulhu game.

Anyway, if this sort of thing can be done in 4e D&D and in Cthulhu Dark, I don't see why it couldn't be done in 5e D&D also.

 

[pemerton]

harking back to some half-remembered detail that for whatever reason has suddenly gained greater (potential) sgnificance is commonplace. And it's not at all unreasonable for them to expect that if they go back to it the information will be consistent with what they got the first time because the GM actually has something to reference beyond just her own memory.

If it's half-remembered, how are the players going to know that what the GM says now differs from the other (forgotten) half?

I seriously think this concern is being exaggerated. Yes, notes are generally necessary to support continuity. But they don't have to be extensive. And it's not a reason in favour of extensive notes that people might want to go back to something later on - at that point it can be recreated together if necessary. (I've done this in actual play. It's not a big deal.)

These play reports from your games that you post now and then - if you do those in that kind of detail for every session and post 'em where you and your players can read 'em, you're already in much better shape than most.

Those are done from memory, not notes, and their main purpose is to provide material for reflection on/discussion of actual play. That's why they're not just records of the fiction, which would normally be quite a bit briefer.

 

[Sadras]

Anyway, if this sort of thing can be done in 4e D&D and in Cthulhu Dark, I don't see why it couldn't be done in 5e D&D also.

5e has backgrounds, personality traits, ideals, bonds and flaws and many of their AP's provide backgrounds that strengthen the ties between characters and the AP's. The current debate is about sharing ongoing prep not only at character creation.

 

[pemerton]

The players creating NPCs unless the NPCs are fluff to begin with, grants too much insight and ability to build in their own entry paths.

A player could come up with the name, position, relationships, and general skillset of an NPC without actually writing the NPC's character rules. That, for me, reflects pretty well what the player's character would know about the NPC, without knowing precisely what the NPCs stats are.

In D&D 4e, at least, it's generally not a big deal if a player knows a stat-block. What's dramatic in 4e is the way things play out, not the sprigning of surprises. I don't know how different 5e is in this respect.

But in any event in 5e, as in 4e, I think statblocks are mostly interesting for combat. (Generally when I see 5e statblocks they don't include Ideals, Bonds or Flaws that would form part of social resolution.) The stuff that Fenris-77 has suggested is ample to run a NPC in a D&D non-combat situation.

 

[Fenris-77]

I wasn't suggesting that the stat block somehow needs to remain incognito. If the NPC were someone the PC knew well, then I'd be more than happy for the player to also write the stats. It would make sense for that PC to know the NPC well enough to, say, know how they fight, or have a pretty good idea how smart or strong they are. For NPCs who the PC doesn't know that well I'd probably move the stat part over to the GM as it allows for a little more uncertainty about the NPCs exact capabilities. The reason I like this whole idea so much is that is does a great job baking PC knowledge in right from the start and in a way that reflects pretty accurately the ranges of how well you might know a major actor in the setting.

I can see why some people might struggle with this whole notion if the games they play and enjoy are things like mega dungeons and hex crawl exploration. Those games are cool too, but they often lean in to the simulationist roots of the game pretty heavily, and quite often don't put a huge premium on character background and personality. That's not a criticism at all either, just the nature of those games.

@pemerton - yeah, the backgrounds and inspiration system is where I'd look to support 3rd pillar play for sure. I think that system could use some help too, which is when I'd start looking at a game like FATE maybe, or perhaps PbtA, to buff that up and provide some stronger tools for non-combat play and action resolution.

 

[pemerton]

No one remembering right now doesn't mean no one remembers on their way to the fridge for a drink.

Nor does it mean that the fact isn't salient in undershoring a whole bunch of previous precedents and actions.

Nor does it mean the it won't become pivotal again in the future.

If someone remembers it on their way to the fridge, then why can't they write it down? Or just commit it to memory?

And I still don't see how this is an argument in favour of prep. However much prep is done, there will be stuff that happens during play - outcomes of situations, details made up on the spot, whatever - that someone might later care about, but that weren't written down in the course of prep.

These things can have significant bearing on the campaign. So at least part of it is about keeping the game on track. Not in the sense of a railroad, but rather in making sure that the players don't declare the score 3:2 when it was in fact 2:3 (or whatever).

Maybe you'd be fine with retconning the score if that's how your players remember it and you aren't sure, but not me. You're opening yourself up to someone remembering at any time that it was in fact 2:3, and then having all sorts of inconsistencies that cascaded from there (generally, at that point, it's better to accept the retcon and just go with it, but that undermines the consistency and verisimilitude of the campaign).

I think I'm missing something here. Misremembering the score is a metaphor - what is it a metaphor for?

If everyone at the table accepts that Bernard, who was introduced as a gnome, is actually a halfling, what's the problem? If someone remembers part way through the scenario that something got mixed up that's a different story obviously, but how big a risk is that? How often does it happen? If we're talking about whether GMing needs to be hard or not, what level of prophylaxis against possible problems do we think is appropriate?

In my Traveller game, when the PCs assaulted a military outpost, it was important to know what range various people were from one another, because Traveller needs that information for its combat resolution system. It was generated randomly, during play, using the appropriate mechanical process. But once the combat is resolved, there's no need to have that information any more. It's almost certainly never going to come up again.

The PCs have bribed NPCs, tricked them and in some cases swindled them. But from my point of view most of those NPCs are done - I've got no interest in re-introducing them into the game, and the players don't seem to either. Of course if a player were to wonder, "What ever happened to that guy who we screwed out of such-and-such" then that might be my cue to bring the character back in. But at that point, why would I not follow the player's cue all the way? Even if their memory is faulty, if mine's no better then nothing is lost by going along with them.

Perhaps I'm underestimating the intricacy of some of these games that you and others are talking about. My judgements are based on what I've played myself, and what I've read (both modules for games, and reports by others of their play). I just don't see how extensive note-taking is necessary. And I don't see how, if the players aren't taking note of things that they might want to leverage, the GM taking notes is somehow necessary or even helpful to bringing about such leveraging.

 

[pemerton]

Many of the posters who ONLY advocate for the so-called player-driven games (@Manbearcat and @Ovinomancer have their feet planted firmly in both camps so not them) do not seem to understand this desire by players.

I feel they're always entering threads with their singular axiom 'GM Force = negative = bad DM' but are not willing to accept that many players out there are actually reluctant/resistant to games where the driving force of the game becomes the players' responsibility with much less overhead expected by the GM.

To me, this seems to reinforce the points being made by @Hussar and @Ovinomancer: if the reason GMing is hard is because no one wants to adopt play techniques that might make it easier, then those people only have themselves to blame.

Conversely, if people want to make GMing easier there are obvious ways to go about that that (as far as I can see) are easily adaptable to 5e D&D.

 

[pemerton]

5e has backgrounds, personality traits, ideals, bonds and flaws and many of their AP's provide backgrounds that strengthen the ties between characters and the AP's. The current debate is about sharing ongoing prep not only at character creation.

I gave concrete examples of techniques that (i) I think are usable in 5e D&D and (ii) relieve the GM of the need to spend time "planning the adventure". It was intended to reinforce a post by @hawkeyefan which was (if I'm remembering properly) a response to some doubt that such stuff can be done in 5e D&D.

As far as I can tell there's nothing about 5e D&D that makes it, by default, more prep dependent than 4e D&D. When I used kickers to get things going in our 4e Dark Sun game I didn't need to do any prep. I already had some Monster Manuals with me, and so when I needed stat blocks I just opened them up. As far as the actual situation was concerned, well I got that from the players' kickers.

So what I have done is give a concrete example of how someone might run a 5e D&D game without having to prep an adventure. Which is answering the request put out by @GameOgre and @Nagol.

Obviously it is not going to be an exploration-heavy game in Nagol's sense. But if someone is asking how can I have a prep-dependent game that doesn't depend on prep then obviously I've got nothing to give them. But the task specification I was responding to was 5e D&D game, not prep-dependent game.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*