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Guest 6801328
Guest
Surely this is meant as parody....?
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D&D General DM Authority
- Thread starter Oofta
- Start date
Almost certainly. Second-person narrative is hard.
Charlaquin
Goblin Queen (She/Her/Hers)
You know how lots of players like to just come up with lots of characters? Maybe they’re between games and they have ideas for characters they want to play at some point. Maybe they have an ongoing game but they want to make a backup or three, or sixteen. Maybe they just want to theorycraft a build they think sounds like fun. Most of these characters don’t get a chance to see play, but the player makes them anyway, because it’s fun for them, and it’s a way to engage with D&D when they aren’t actively playing.
A lot of DMs are the same way with homebrew and world building. I have spilled an incredible amount of digital ink on ideas for extensive race, class, and equipment overhauls that, when it comes time to actually run a game, I almost always end up deciding against using. I’ve spent incredible amounts of time thinking about and jotting down ideas for my setting, most of which I know will probably never come up in game. It’s fun for me to do, and it’s a way to engage with the game when I’m not actively DMing.
I think the conflict here ultimately arises from the tension between these two tendencies. The player has all these cool and quirky characters they’ve thought up, using all these shiny rules options in all these books they’ve bought, and when they finally find a game, the DM says “We’re using the PHB+1 rule. No monks, no gnomes, and we’re using the Slow Natural Healing and Gritty Realism rules. I have a house rule that you take two levels of exhaustion every time you fail a death save, or four levels on a critical failure. Resurrection spells are banned.” On the other side of the screen, the DM has all their really amazing setting they’ve cooked up, where everything has a really well thought-out place in the setting, and here comes a player with a Grung Bloodhunter multiclassed with some rando 3rd party class saying “I want to use this material I found on the internet. I had my friend who DMs look it over and he said it seems pretty balanced.”
Now, both of these are pretty extreme examples, and I suspect neither happens as much as the other fears. But it’s that fear that leads some folks to be so critical of any kind of DM authority and others to be so protective of it. People want to exercise their creativity, and will often do so in a vacuum, and then get frustrated when the thing they created clashes in a group context. That’s why it’s important for both parties to be flexible. That extends both ways. Players should be willing to work within the framework set by the DM, and discuss exceptions to that framework on a case by case basis. DMs should be willing to work with players to accommodate the fun they want to have, without being expected to cater to their every whim.
A lot of DMs are the same way with homebrew and world building. I have spilled an incredible amount of digital ink on ideas for extensive race, class, and equipment overhauls that, when it comes time to actually run a game, I almost always end up deciding against using. I’ve spent incredible amounts of time thinking about and jotting down ideas for my setting, most of which I know will probably never come up in game. It’s fun for me to do, and it’s a way to engage with the game when I’m not actively DMing.
I think the conflict here ultimately arises from the tension between these two tendencies. The player has all these cool and quirky characters they’ve thought up, using all these shiny rules options in all these books they’ve bought, and when they finally find a game, the DM says “We’re using the PHB+1 rule. No monks, no gnomes, and we’re using the Slow Natural Healing and Gritty Realism rules. I have a house rule that you take two levels of exhaustion every time you fail a death save, or four levels on a critical failure. Resurrection spells are banned.” On the other side of the screen, the DM has all their really amazing setting they’ve cooked up, where everything has a really well thought-out place in the setting, and here comes a player with a Grung Bloodhunter multiclassed with some rando 3rd party class saying “I want to use this material I found on the internet. I had my friend who DMs look it over and he said it seems pretty balanced.”
Now, both of these are pretty extreme examples, and I suspect neither happens as much as the other fears. But it’s that fear that leads some folks to be so critical of any kind of DM authority and others to be so protective of it. People want to exercise their creativity, and will often do so in a vacuum, and then get frustrated when the thing they created clashes in a group context. That’s why it’s important for both parties to be flexible. That extends both ways. Players should be willing to work within the framework set by the DM, and discuss exceptions to that framework on a case by case basis. DMs should be willing to work with players to accommodate the fun they want to have, without being expected to cater to their every whim.
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Charlaquin
Goblin Queen (She/Her/Hers)
In my experience second-person narrative is the go-to narration style for most DMs. “As you enter the dungeon, your torches illuminate seven skeletal corpses. You feel a chill as the rush of air disturbs the dusty bones, and you see them begin to rise.” I try not to do this any more because I find the pattern of play runs more smoothly when I keep my narration to the environment and leave the players to narrate their own characters’ actions in first or third person, but I have to actively remember avoid starting sentences with “you” because I got so used to doing it that way over the years.
Yeah. I was thinking written narrative. "Bright Lights, Big City" not withstanding, it's really, really hard to sustain second person in writing. I concur about DM-narration tending to default to second-person; like you, I try to keep my narration out of player characters' heads, and stick to sensory details (that don't involve stuff like "the hairs on the back of your neck stand up").
Charlaquin
Goblin Queen (She/Her/Hers)
It is very difficult, but very cool when the author pulls it off well. A Story About You is one of my favorite episodes of Welcome to Night Vale, or any podcast for that matter.
Even sticking to sensory details, I sometimes have to fight my own instincts to avoid framing things in terms of the characters’ experiences. “A chill wind rushes past” as opposed to “you feel a chill wind.”
I'm not a big podcast guy (too much time working recording spoken-word) but I suspect it's easier to sustain as a spoken narrative than a written one. And that's probably as far as we should take this particular tangent. ;-)
When I'm thinking about it (and I'll admit I'm not always thinking about it) I try to keep my descriptions as third-person-objective as possible. It takes some thought/effort, I'll agree.
Michael Silverbane
Adventurer
In my experience, the DM has almost unlimited (what I'm going to call) Soft Authority.
That is to say, the DM makes a decision about the game rules or the setting or the allowable options for the campaign, and the other players go along with it. They may not necessarily like it or agree with it, but they go along to get along, as it were. As long as the DM bends a bit when coming up against input from the other players, this works out fine. The vast majority or rulings or rules interpretations made during play are Soft Authority, at least in some part because those decisions are backed up by the rules of the game.
When the DM won't bend, or comes up against a particularly asynchronous player, then they must exercise Hard Authority. This is in much much more limited supply. A DM who exercises their Hard Authority too much will eventually get punched in the junk (usually this is metaphorical), and in extreme cases, will get exercised right out of the DM seat. Hard Authority is things like, "No, [player], you cannot play [character option], because there is no [character option] in [thing]." It doesn't particularly matter what [character option] is, though race, class, and alignment choices often top that list. And it doesn't really matter what [thing] is, because by the time the DM gets to that, the other player has typically stopped listening anyway. Another, though less common type of Hard Authority is the, "No, [player], your [action] fails." Sometimes this is followed by, "[arbitrary reason]," but is just as often not followed by anything at all. Rarely, it is followed by [previously established fiction], which can (but doesn't always) turn it back into an exercise of Soft Authority.
Where that line is, between Hard Authority and Soft Authority, and how much is too much varies from group to group, and player to player, and sometimes even session to session.
That is to say, the DM makes a decision about the game rules or the setting or the allowable options for the campaign, and the other players go along with it. They may not necessarily like it or agree with it, but they go along to get along, as it were. As long as the DM bends a bit when coming up against input from the other players, this works out fine. The vast majority or rulings or rules interpretations made during play are Soft Authority, at least in some part because those decisions are backed up by the rules of the game.
When the DM won't bend, or comes up against a particularly asynchronous player, then they must exercise Hard Authority. This is in much much more limited supply. A DM who exercises their Hard Authority too much will eventually get punched in the junk (usually this is metaphorical), and in extreme cases, will get exercised right out of the DM seat. Hard Authority is things like, "No, [player], you cannot play [character option], because there is no [character option] in [thing]." It doesn't particularly matter what [character option] is, though race, class, and alignment choices often top that list. And it doesn't really matter what [thing] is, because by the time the DM gets to that, the other player has typically stopped listening anyway. Another, though less common type of Hard Authority is the, "No, [player], your [action] fails." Sometimes this is followed by, "[arbitrary reason]," but is just as often not followed by anything at all. Rarely, it is followed by [previously established fiction], which can (but doesn't always) turn it back into an exercise of Soft Authority.
Where that line is, between Hard Authority and Soft Authority, and how much is too much varies from group to group, and player to player, and sometimes even session to session.
Chaosmancer
Legend
I think some incredibly interesting points were brought into the light by the intersection of @Charlaquin and @Thomas Shey
Because when I first read Charlaquin's example of the player pulling out a key that never existed, and the rest of the table agreeing with them, I laughed. Because, in my experience, the rest of the table is either silent (and expecting the DM to handle confronting someone, because they are mostly people who do not want a confrontation) or they are telling the other player to shut up and stop trying to cheat.
And, like Thomas said, if you are making a ruling, and 4 out of 6 players disagree with your ruling... that's a problem. But, if you make a ruling and 5 out of 6 players agree with you... you almost didn't need to make a ruling at all.
And this is the part of the debate that gets twisted all around on itself. These arguments and debates usually focus on 1 DM and 1 player. And in that scenario, it is a 50/50 split of opinion. Except, it often then comes up that "My players all enjoy my games" or "I've been running for the same group for years and they all agree with me" or some other way to indicate that the "real" situation is the DM and five players against a single player, making it a 84/16 split in opinion, favoring the DM. Which obviously is a very different scenario.
That makes these discussions so difficult though, because you are either in a true 50/50 split, or you are assuming that the majority of the table is agreeing with you.
But how many DMs here would actually overrule a majority of their players? If you wanted to run a campaign about being in the Roman Republic, and 5/6's of your players said no, would you run the game? No. You've been overruled.
If you say that the stealth rules work X, but 5/6's of your players say it is Y, do we really think that the DM is going to insist on overruling their table, or do we think there is going to be a discussion as they try and convince the rest of the table to agree with them?
I think this is why the idea that the DM is actually the ultimate authority is losing traction. Because the authority the DM is deriving is from the rest of the table agreeing with them. If the table disagrees with them, then the authority vanishes.
Because when I first read Charlaquin's example of the player pulling out a key that never existed, and the rest of the table agreeing with them, I laughed. Because, in my experience, the rest of the table is either silent (and expecting the DM to handle confronting someone, because they are mostly people who do not want a confrontation) or they are telling the other player to shut up and stop trying to cheat.
And, like Thomas said, if you are making a ruling, and 4 out of 6 players disagree with your ruling... that's a problem. But, if you make a ruling and 5 out of 6 players agree with you... you almost didn't need to make a ruling at all.
And this is the part of the debate that gets twisted all around on itself. These arguments and debates usually focus on 1 DM and 1 player. And in that scenario, it is a 50/50 split of opinion. Except, it often then comes up that "My players all enjoy my games" or "I've been running for the same group for years and they all agree with me" or some other way to indicate that the "real" situation is the DM and five players against a single player, making it a 84/16 split in opinion, favoring the DM. Which obviously is a very different scenario.
That makes these discussions so difficult though, because you are either in a true 50/50 split, or you are assuming that the majority of the table is agreeing with you.
But how many DMs here would actually overrule a majority of their players? If you wanted to run a campaign about being in the Roman Republic, and 5/6's of your players said no, would you run the game? No. You've been overruled.
If you say that the stealth rules work X, but 5/6's of your players say it is Y, do we really think that the DM is going to insist on overruling their table, or do we think there is going to be a discussion as they try and convince the rest of the table to agree with them?
I think this is why the idea that the DM is actually the ultimate authority is losing traction. Because the authority the DM is deriving is from the rest of the table agreeing with them. If the table disagrees with them, then the authority vanishes.
Campbell
Relaxed Intensity
Here's my personal hot take : I just do not think that the authority the game grants GMs in service of fulfilling their unique role supersedes how adult relationships should work. I think we all have the right to set boundaries and have those boundaries respected. In the event that our desires are incompatible we should step away.
I am personally not super enamored of set static groups with a constant GM because I find it can lead to confused social relationships where stepping away from the game comes with social costs and gives one person outsized social influence that often extends beyond the activity. I vastly prefer the situation I am in now where I have extended group of friends who play a variety of games together where almost everyone in the social group runs games or at least has in the past.
I am personally not super enamored of set static groups with a constant GM because I find it can lead to confused social relationships where stepping away from the game comes with social costs and gives one person outsized social influence that often extends beyond the activity. I vastly prefer the situation I am in now where I have extended group of friends who play a variety of games together where almost everyone in the social group runs games or at least has in the past.
