D&D General DM Authority

[Oofta]

All it takes is one person who doesn't buy into the top down approach, and he can spend a lot of time passive-aggressively (or just flat out aggressively) sabotaging process too. Nothing about any theoretical final power on the GM's part stops that.

It's called have a chat with the player and (separately) the rest of the group. If necessary, the problematic person is not invited to the next session. I've been DMing a long, long time it's only come up once. The guy toned it down and we moved on.

In my experience the player that's sabotaging is making the game less fun for the rest of the group as well.

 

[Oofta]

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.

The problem with "rule by consensus" that I see is multiple.

First, it's simply a matter of time and flow of the game. In order to keep the game time moving I'd rather have a rules discussion outside of game time. Want to chat about it after the game? Have a discussion about house rules? Sure. Just not in the middle of the climatic fight against the squirrel of doom, please. Besides if someone is questioning there's times when as a DM (or player) I want time to mull it over and think about the options.

A lot of people simply don't care and they'll go with whatever option is the easiest socially. If given a choice they'd abstain. Oftentimes there can be one person who pushes their ideas on others; if you ask questions where that person does not know who is answering what the answers change. You can get situations where people simply don't understand how the game works.

Players think from their perspective and what will be good for the PCs at the moment. They often don't think about what it means to the balance of the game. Yes, getting a long rest whenever you want is fun, but it also makes any kind of challenge difficult to set up; in addition a lot of people don't enjoy the game on easy mode. I know I don't. I've had people thank me privately when I didn't let a single player push their agenda. The same people didn't really say much when we had the discussion as a group.

Last, but not least there are many times when the DM simply understands the rules better than most of the people in the group. A lot of players are quite casual about the game (I know, shocking!) and don't really understand how the rules work or interact with each other.

Obviously a DM should try to reach consensus, I just don't remember many times when there was such a clear line.

 

[Oofta]

I'll jump into analogy land once again.

Situation: Lorenzo de la Crux, a 3rd lvl Dex-Fighter Battlemaster is sneaking in the shadows and there's a Veteran guard standing on watch, who have failed his Perception check to spot Lorenzo.

Bob, playing Lorenzo says: "So, he doesn't know I'm here, right? I want to sneak up on him and slit his throat."

GM says: "Well, you can try to slit his throat, but amount of damage you gonna deal wouldn't be enough to kill him outright."

And Bob, pretty justifiably answers "Why? That's like classic action-flick move!"

Technically correct answer would be "Sorry, that's just rules."

A better answer would be "Yeah, that sounds reasonable and it's definitely something you can expect to see in a movie, but here's the thing: Alice is playing Assassin. Killing people stealthily in one blow is her thing. If we would overrule HP and attacking rules now, her character will become pretty much useless -- now everyone can one-shot people from the shadows, but Lorenzo've got twice as much HP, better AC and makes two attacks per round. Doesn't sound fair, if you ask me."

It's easy to get upset when you don't understand why things you see as cool and fitting get rejected. But when you understand the underlying design and v i s i o n, explained in clear and honest manner -- you'd probably feel that you are trusted and respected.

So what's to stop the player from doing the same thing to the BBEG? Just make up a narrative where they win?

I mean, if I'm trying to set up an action movie scene we'll either go to narration with minimal dice rolling or the guard will be low level and the sneak attack will work. If it doesn't it's because as DM I know something the player does not. Maybe the guards are illusions, maybe they're hyped up on super juice, maybe they're dark troopers, maybe I rolled randomly and the guard you're attacking is really a high level commander who was inspecting the troops and the group is in for a big surprise.

But no, that 1st level rogue is probably going to have to roll for it. If the guards are level appropriate it will probably work, but they're not a super spy action hero. Not yet.

P.S. Of course both sides should treat each other with respect.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Sure it does: the GM's power to punt said person out of the game.

Is that different from the group’s power to punt the DM if he isn’t listening to the players?

 

[Oofta]

I was thinking about it and I have a confession to make. I have no idea what people mean when they say "Ultimate Authority". I mean, there's a whole range of things that can be done and I separate bad DMing as a separate category. People should treat each other with respect, what people have to say should be heard and so on.

But I do think the DM is the referee and makes the final call. There's nothing wrong with a DM establishing the campaign world and it's restrictions. If nobody is interested in the campaign you change direction.

Nobody is forcing anyone else to play a game. There will always things I think I could do better as a DM and every game I play in there are probably things I disagree with the DM and think they could be done better.

So what's the difference between "Ultimate Authority" and "Referee that creates the campaign world people will be playing in"? Is there one?

 

[Umbran]

If there's some kind of house rule and reasonable limitations, that's fine.

Rather more than house rule. Fate has "establish a minor fact" as one basic function of spending a Fate Point. Or, alternatively, they have taken the action, "create an advantage," and the narrative they use is "Uncle Trapspringer gave me this key...". Either way can end up with the narrative of, "Hey, I have this key..."

But I know people that would have abused it if there was no limit.

Every game style needs setup. I admit that this sort of thing doesn't fit well into the default tactical approach of, "I have set up the world as a set of challenges that are here to test you/your characters, let us see if you WIN!" Because then the point is, "use whatever rules you are given to WIN!". If you don't shift the player mindframe, this won't work well.

 

[Minigiant]

I'm beginning to think I'm the only DM who states the setting, theme, tone, and style of the campaign they are running beforehand.

Because these discussion constantly come down to people disagreeing on setting, theme, tone, and playstyle after Session 0. And when I mention it,many say "No no no no. That's not it." then go back to arguing setting, theme, tone, and playstyle.

---

Anyways here's a question.

If a campaign didn't have meaningful fighting in 3 sessions, can a pure-combat barbarian player DEMAND more big fights if he or she was not informed that this was a low combat storytelling game?

Does the DM have the authority to say "No" in that case?

 

[Oofta]

Rather more than house rule. Fate has "establish a minor fact" as one basic function of spending a Fate Point. Or, alternatively, they have taken the action, "create an advantage," and the narrative they use is "Uncle Trapspringer gave me this key...". Either way can end up with the narrative of, "Hey, I have this key..."

How would it work in D&D 5E? I may or may not use it, but currently there is no rule for it unless there's an optional rule in the DMG I'm not remembering.

 

[Maxperson]

I'll jump into analogy land once again.

Situation: Lorenzo de la Crux, a 3rd lvl Dex-Fighter Battlemaster is sneaking in the shadows and there's a Veteran guard standing on watch, who have failed his Perception check to spot Lorenzo.

Bob, playing Lorenzo says: "So, he doesn't know I'm here, right? I want to sneak up on him and slit his throat."

GM says: "Well, you can try to slit his throat, but amount of damage you gonna deal wouldn't be enough to kill him outright."

And Bob, pretty justifiably answers "Why? That's like classic action-flick move!"

Technically correct answer would be "Sorry, that's just rules."

A better answer would be "Yeah, that sounds reasonable and it's definitely something you can expect to see in a movie, but here's the thing: Alice is playing Assassin. Killing people stealthily in one blow is her thing. If we would overrule HP and attacking rules now, her character will become pretty much useless -- now everyone can one-shot people from the shadows, but Lorenzo've got twice as much HP, better AC and makes two attacks per round. Doesn't sound fair, if you ask me."

If the player is willing to lose his PC under the same circumstances, I'm okay with allowing that to happen. In my experience, though, most players just want that sort of realism to work in their favor, not against it.

 

[prabe]

If a campaign didn't have meaningful fighting in 3 sessions, can a pure-combat barbarian player DEMAND more big fights if he or she was not informed that this was a low combat storytelling game?

Does the DM have the authority to say "No" in that case?

The player can demand anything they want. The DM isn't under any obligation to provide big meaningful fights (in your example) but the DM would be wise to listen when the players complain about things like that. If the campaign is at a place narratively where big meaningful fights don't make sense, some assurance to the barbarian's player that this is a temporary state would be in order (and this sort of thing is why I encourage players to build characters with things to do out-of-combat as well in in-combat).