Is the DM the most important person at the table

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[prabe]

Does anyone actually care if the players know a given NPC's statblock? Seriously?

I do. There are NPCs in my campaigns with secrets, and they're in the statblocks. Maybe don't presume that everyone plays the same way you do.

 

[prabe]

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.

(snip)

This is why I ask players for backstories. I at least want something I can tie into the campaign, to make the story actually about the players' characters, rather than some sort of Adventure Path for whichever characters show up. Sometimes I get more than I think I want, but I think I'd rather have that than no one gives me anything.

 

[prabe]

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.

You want to see notes from my campaigns, just PM me. My wife wrote them, not me (which is why I'm reluctant to just post a link), and they're kinda extensive (I think Erkonin #1 is approaching 500 pages), but maybe they'll give you an idea of how one can make character-driven play work in 5E.

Obviously (I guess) the offer is open to anyone interested.

 

[prabe]

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.

Some of the ways that people are suggesting don't seem to me as though they'd make DMing easier for me. Probably others share this feeling, and I suspect that some of the frustration and irritation is (what seems to be) the blithe presumption that we haven't thought of these things or tried these things or given these things any consideration at all, and decided against them (or found they didn't work, in practice, for us).

 

[hawkeyefan]

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 get that there is a distinction, but shouldn't a lot of those elements carry on throughout the entire campaign? They likely will remain relevant for a long time. And if not....if something is resolved in some way, there's no reason you can't replace an existing Bond with another, etc. These things should give the DM material or themes to help shape play in an ongoing way.

In addition to the admittedly meager Traits/Ideals/Bonds/Flaws system that 5E has, what if the players help with worldbuilding prior to the start of play? If they help flesh out NPCs and locations and organizations at the start of play, that means the DM won't have to do as much in play. We once did that for a 3E campaign, and one of the players created his wizard PC's master as a NPC....no stats, just a description and some general goals and attitudes.....and I used that NPC heavily for the first 3 or 4 levels of play. A lot of the adventures the PCs went on hinged on that NPC and were a natural outgrowth of his wants and desires.

So even stuff that's done at the very start can indeed have an ongoing effect on play.

 

[Manbearcat]

IME, people generally do know what they want. They may not want to admit it, perhaps they haven't experienced it, but revealed preferences are a heck of a thing.

More often than not, we need to be very, very, very careful when we make this statement. Because it tends to be spoken with either an implied or explicit additional statement, "People don't know what they actually want (because if they did, they would want the same thing I do ... silly people!)."

It's rarely a good thing to say that other people are the ones that don't know what they want- most people, at a minimum, are pretty confident that they know themselves better than someone telling them that they don't really know themselves.

Couple things:

1) I think (a) people think they know what they want but they haven’t worked through it yet and (b) in the process of doing so, they discover that their feelings or even their perceptions about the nature of a thing either aren’t fully formed or perhaps are slightly askew.

This happens in relationships, in pastimes, in passions, in work, in stewardship...

In basically everything.

2) When I say “people”, I simply mean “people” (of which I am one, so myself included). The inference of “people” meaning “I’m calling out other people but not myself (therefore this conversation is just another tribal squabble) isn’t in play here. This is not a tribal squabble for me. I discover all the time that I need to reorient myself or reconsider things I had thought I had a keen grip on (in both gaming and all other facets of my life). And I make revisions. So “people” doesn’t mean “other people”...at least when I say it. Sometimes I’ll say “humans” or “humankind”. It’s the same in all cases; “these complex biological systems of which I am one.”

No one is immune to what I depicted above (and certainly not me).

That's one way to look at it. Another way is that TTRPGs tend to not be filled with a completely homogeneous group of players/GMs, and as such, games that offer multiple experiences that are pleasing to the entire group usually are preferred to games that intensely cater to a single preference.

Put another way, a place might make the best hamburger in the world. But if you're not in the mood for burgers, or if you're in a group with some vegans, maybe you choose a different restaurant that satisfies everyone in the group.

If everyone always wants burgers, that's great! But not all tables have that luxury.

Sure. Of course there are tables where folks have a collage of priorities and none are so deeply invested in any one of those priorities that play can just churn on despite a wobble here and there.

But I’m not talking about those tables. I’m talking about the tables where that isn’t true (where you have intense priorities and intense discord because of mismatch of participants or mismatch of expectations and the actual output of play).

I’ve been in it, I’ve seen it firsthand, I’ve witnessed it secondhand, the anecdotal evidence for it on this forum with people needing “gaming group therapy”/troubleshooting from strangers is legion. And it’s not all, or even anything bearing majority, of “soandso brought their girl/boyfriend to the game and now x is happening because of social stuff.”

I mean, you’ve been gaming for a long time too. You had to have seen this play out firsthand in your TTRPGing, right? You’ve never seen this happen? You’ve never had a personal epiphany of “I’m not having fun playing this game/system and I can’t suss out why... <fast forward 6 months of play and consideration> EUREKA!”

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Michael Silverbane]

My dream of subsisting only on cookie dough? Alas, discarded.

Never give up on your dreams!

 

[lowkey13]

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