Is the DM the most important person at the table

[Nagol]

It depends. Yeah, it’s possible that could be a bit of a spoiler. But it depends on the way it’s positioned. If the prince is an ally of the PCs who they’d likely trust or believe, then it’s kind of baked in.

Also, how severe of a spoiler is it? It’d be like knowing you’re gonna wind up fighting a vampire if your DM says “I’m gonna run Curse of Strahd.”

Then of course there’s also no reason that you have to make it a frame job. Maybe the prince is simply the most obvious suspect, and maybe he turns out to be guilty. Seems a little anticlimactic to run it that way, but I don’t think there’s any reason it must be so.

Here's the positioning:
There were 6 PCs with mixed classes about 7-9th level with about the same number of henchmen a couple of levels lower. One of the PCs was trying to ingratiate himself with the royal family and working to court a younger daughter, The prince was partying cad. The family knew he frequented "bad" areas in town and was involved in shady pleasure activities.

There had been some foreshadowing of the illusionist at court. The group had traveled by ship with her previously as she came to meet her sister (the prince's betrothed) and there was some indication she was more than she appeared.

The rulers turned to the PCs to get an answer before the justice system got involved. They wanted to know if their son and heir was guilty of such a heinous act. They needed a fast and discreet investigation before public accusations spread.

I figured the party would in fact try to exonerate the prince both because he's the freaking crown prince and because that route provides stronger gratitude with the royal family not to mention doing a thorough investigation would be good. Certainly, the PCs had more then enough tools at their disposal to effect such an outcome. The player taking lead on the investigation quickly assumed the prince's guilt and did just enough investigation to surface the framing clues and no more. All evidence that pointed to exoneration was ignored or dismissed, The party reported their investigation and laid out a damning case against the prince to the ruling couple.

 

[Darth Solo]

I hate that GMs need to apologise and defend themselves here, as if, they do less than players do.

Do we?

I mean. After decades of running games for strange players across the hobby, no respect. No consideration. No love.

But, you say the person designing adventures and campaigns is of equal value to people who MIGHT show up with a sheet and dice?

Redefine "importance". If you say a PLAYER is of equal importance to me, as a GM, who literally SLEEPS with adventures ....

Just call me LESS than my players.

 

[Hussar]

The bolded portion is exactly what is wrong with it. Framing is dependent on being unknown and then discovered for its enjoyment. If the players know about it ahead of time, it highly colors their thinking and how they play their PCs as the plot unfolds.
/snip

Huh. There are a whole host of games - like Clue for example - that would disagree with you. Knowing that the prince was possibly framed (note, the DM is free to change anything) but not knowing who did it - and only having 4 suspects which are not necessarily even guilty, means that there is lots of discovery to be had.

The fact that the prince is innocent of the frame or potentially guilty, is hardly the end point of the story. This looks a lot more like a complete failure in imagination on your part @Maxperson. There's a ton of ways the story could unfold from the beginning point of "I need 4 NPC's to frame the Prince for murder".

 

[Maxperson]

Huh. There are a whole host of games - like Clue for example - that would disagree with you. Knowing that the prince was possibly framed (note, the DM is free to change anything) but not knowing who did it - and only having 4 suspects which are not necessarily even guilty, means that there is lots of discovery to be had.

The fact that the prince is innocent of the frame or potentially guilty, is hardly the end point of the story. This looks a lot more like a complete failure in imagination on your part @Maxperson. There's a ton of ways the story could unfold from the beginning point of "I need 4 NPC's to frame the Prince for murder".

You can keep your one true wayism. Disliking what you like is not a "failure" on my part.

 

[Hussar]

My issue isn't with the players creating NPCs. My issue is with knowing it's a frame in advance.

But, you don't.

Sure, the DM said, "I need 4 NPC's for a frame up of the prince". But, again, the DM IS ALLOWED TO CHANGE ANYTHING.

So, it might be that the prince did it or it might be a frame up. The players don't know. They know only what they contributed.

Note, again, @Maxperson, since I think you may have missed it earlier in the thread, this is most certainly meant as a panacea fix of all DMing issues. Of course not. That it might not work at a given table is fine. Use it, don't use it, that's up to you. But, the criticisms that have been brought up have been pretty easy to resolve so far. No one has yet displayed any huge flaw in what I'm proposing.

I don't like it is perfectly fine. But, if you're going to try to argue the point, at least make some effort as to how it could work before you automatically jump on how it won't. Remember, I'm dropping these ideas with about 30 seconds of thought. It's not like I'm looking at a real game and a real table. So, yeah, shock upon shock, the examples I'm bringing up might need work to function. That's not a surprise to anyone. However, the fact that they can be made pretty easily to cover your complaints shows that it's a pretty robust system.

You want a scenario where someone has been killed and the prince is being blamed for it. Ok, simple solution, "I need 4 members of the court before next session please". Done. How much information and how much you want to draw the players in is up to you.

But, please, do not accuse me of one true wayism here. That's a total misread on what I'm saying. The question was asked, "How can we reduce DM workload". I gave an answer to THAT question. If you don't like my solution, groovy. No problems. Propose your own method for reducing DM workload.

 

[aramis erak]

Just a quick statement.

“Action Adventure (AA)” is not the same gaming subtype of TTRPGing as (I’m just going to call it) “Asymmetric Obstacle Course Marathon (AOCM).” We need a better name for that latter one!

Traps And Monsters Marathon. TAMM... Really, tho, we don't need more acronyms.

Two problems that occur are:

1) People don’t know which they actually want! They think they want AA, but they really want AOCM...or vice versa.

Right there, you've jumped the shark, sir. The moment you start accusing people of being clueless about their own desires, you basically disconnect anything following from serious consideration.

Most people do have a pretty good clue as to what they want. Many don't have the terms to express that cogently, but they generally do know what they like, and what is or isn't working for them.

Asking players after session if there was anything that didn't work well is often better than assuming they don't know what they actually want.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Huh. There are a whole host of games - like Clue for example - that would disagree with you. Knowing that the prince was possibly framed (note, the DM is free to change anything) but not knowing who did it - and only having 4 suspects which are not necessarily even guilty, means that there is lots of discovery to be had.

The fact that the prince is innocent of the frame or potentially guilty, is hardly the end point of the story. This looks a lot more like a complete failure in imagination on your part @Maxperson. There's a ton of ways the story could unfold from the beginning point of "I need 4 NPC's to frame the Prince for murder".

Clue is not an RPG. Although there are RPGs where the players knowing or contributing to the plot is perfectly legitimate and expected. Of course, not everyone enjoys that style of RPG (for example, I do but many of my players do not).

D&D has traditionally taken a different approach from that aforementioned style, hence players will have different expectations by default. Of course, it's fine to play however you want, but if you're changing the default settings it's a good idea to establish that in a session zero. And I can tell you right now that if you tried to sell my group on it, they'd give it a hard pass. Not everyone likes playing that way (and no, it's not that they're lazy or passive players; it's that this style is basically the opposite of what they want from D&D, which boils down to discovering something new and unknown).

As I've said before, giving players ownership is a good way to get them invested, as long as it doesn't interfere with their enjoyment of the game. In my experience, however, it doesn't save the GM work. If I come up with an NPC, I can create what I need, quickly and efficiently. If I ask the players to do it, I have to work with what they give me, which results in me having to bodge square pegs into round holes. Certainly, you are free to alter the NPC, but the more you change about the NPC the more likely you are to diminish the player's sense of investment and ownership (which, IMO, is the best reason for doing things this way).

How is not wanting to diminish the players' enjoyment of the game (by revealing that it is a frame job in advance) a failure of imagination? Some groups might be fine with knowing the plot of the adventure in advance, and there's nothing wrong with that. However, knowing the plot would completely ruin the experience for other groups with different preferences.

Understanding your group and their preferences is part of the GM's role (IMO). Since ruining the experience for your players is rather counter productive, avoiding things that would ruin the game is also part of the GM's role.

There's nothing wrong with doing things as you suggest provided that your group enjoys playing that way, but suggesting that others do not play the way you do due to a lack of imagination is absurd.

 

[pemerton]

You can have threats and factions and all sorts of things, but you can't have "the Illusionist did it".

<snip>

Those NPCs in the thread above shouldn't be designed to fill a plot hole, they should be designed to fill the characters circle of people they know or know of

<snip>

Those NPCs haven't 'done anything' when they're created, they just flesh out groups and factions the character would reasonably know about.

One of the best things I've read on GMing techniques is this by Paul Czege:

I frame the character into the middle of conflicts I think will push and pull in ways that are interesting to me and to the player. I keep NPC personalities somewhat unfixed in my mind, allowing me to retroactively justify their behaviors in support of this.​

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Fanaelialae]

Hey, I'll cop to that. I resemble that remark!

I mean, when I play, on those very rare occasions when I get to, I'm really lazy. Don't make me author or narrate or frame stuff. I do enough of that 99.9% of the time!

I don't need a bus driver's holiday.

Fair enough; correction to my previous post:
*it's not necessarily that they're lazy or passive players, unless we're talking about @lowkey13 for whom that's totally the case