D&D General DM Authority

[prabe]

It isn't specifically you, and it is less about offending me as it is... look about how you are talking about a thing that is supposed to be fun?

It isn't odd at all. You think that analogy was chosen at random?

Hosting people for dinner is, at least for me, more stressful than just cooking for my wife and me. Some of that is the responsibilities of hosting. I can tell you that at least some GMs stress at least a little over it, because they take the responsibilities seriously. That doesn't mean it isn't fun--it is!

 

[prabe]

Of course the DM and players should talk.

But it is clear to me that many think DM Authority comes with zero responsibility to the players.

I don't think I've said that, primarily because I don't believe it.

Consequences the playerwere not informed of.

Consequences they should have foreseen.

Says so in the DMG that there are 3 playstyles of D&D. Players should be informed which one they are participating in before they roll up their PCs.

I don't expect players to read the DMG (though I don't mind if they do). I strongly recommend that players make characters with something they can do out of combat, because there will likely be sessions where fighting doesn't happen. I also strongly recommend they at least consider combat capabilities, becuase it's D&D and fights happen and most of the new things characters get as they level up are about fighting.

So the DM has no responsibilites to the players and can change up the game whenever they want to suit their desires?

The DM has responsibilities to all the players, including the DM. The DM can and should come up with things that all the players around the table will enjoy. That barbarian player complaining about a couple-three sessions without any fights isn't remembering the 5-hour session that was one fight or the other sessions that were one fight after another as the PCs ran a series of gantlets. The players who built their characters to have out-of-combat things to do presumably didn't mind when the barbarian was dominating the combat sessions.

 

[Guest User]

he DM has responsibilities to all the players, including the DM. The DM can and should come up with things that all the players around the table will enjoy.

After 20 years of exclusively DM-ing...I am burnt out. The Authority/Responsibility of being the "Architect" and "The Ultimate Authority"...is not fun.
It winds up being hours spent prepping.

In a game as described by @Quickleaf and @Umbran, the DM is sketching outlines, and reacting..which is much less labor intensive, and frankly fun.

It brings the DM experience more in line with the experience the players of PCs are having. 5e is fun to play as a player. It is not fun, to prep.

Anything, that grants players more authority, and thus more responsibility for the game, is something I welcome.

Like Madeline Kahn's character in Blazing Saddles...
"I'm Tired, of the same old game"-Styles....

 

[prabe]

After 20 years of exclusively DM-ing...I am burnt out. The Authority/Responsibility of being the "Architect" and "The Ultimate Authority"...is not fun.
It winds up being hours spent prepping.

Burnout is real. I've been there myself.

In a game as described by @Quickleaf and @Umbran, the DM is sketching outlines, and reacting..which is much less labor intensive, and frankly fun.

It's possible-ish to run 5E that way. Most of my prep involves reminding myself of what's going on in a campaign, and the rest is figuring out a couple things that might happen. When I was running in game stores, I spend time writing up index cards for monsters (because it meant hauling fewer books around); running online I'm more likely to just open a book and go.

I'm having loads of fun running 5E, but people are different and YMMV. I am not saying you're doing it wrong, to be clear.

5e is fun to play as a player. It is not fun, to prep.

I dig worldbuilding, and I really enjoy seeing ways to connect things from prior events to the present or maybe the future. Those "aha" moments are a treasure.

Anything, that grants players more authority, and thus more responsibility for the game, is something I welcome.

I ... tried that. Turned out that when everyone got a say in the setting, the setting felt mishmashy and borderline incoherent, and I gradually-then-suddenly stopped enjoying running it. Again, that's me--it's not an argument against sharing out parts of the gig.

 

[Minigiant]

I don't think I've said that, primarily because I don't believe it.

But many do. Many have stated that they believe that DMs have Ultimate Authority, Zero Responsibility, and the only thing a player can do is leave.

They then chock any failure to the DM being bad and deny that this mentality is what fuels many of the mismatches.

Consequences they should have foreseen.

How could they if the DM doesn't inform them.

If the DM has full creative control of the word, how can players be informed of things they are not told about?

 

[Thomas Shey]

Why wouldn't it be? Unless you are playing at that player's home or they rode to the game with someone else...

Otherwise, not an issue at all.

You answered your own question; there can be social constraints on kicking someone. But when that's true, nothing stops the person being kicked by the group as a whole, either; that's not unique to having top-down authority.

 

[prabe]

How could they if the DM doesn't inform them.

How could the player foresee the consequences of their decisions? I dunno. Maybe reading the rulebook? They built a character who's only interesting to play if there's a fight going on. It's hard to muster much sympathy for that (especially since I would have specifically encouraged them not to do that).

If the DM has full creative control of the word, how can players be informed of things they are not told about?

Even in a context where the DM has full control of the world, they might not have full control of the narrative situation, and they'd better not have full control of the PCs. If the other PCs aren't looking for fights--especially if they're looking to avoid fights--I don't think the DM would be honoring their responsibilities to the table as a whole to drop nonsensical fights into the game to satisfy one player. You're talking about this player with the barbarian built solely to fight things as though that's the only player (other than the DM) at the table; I'm talking about them as though there are three or five other players at the table, at least some of whom are really digging the hell out of the noncombat sessions--some of those characters might in fact be as built for them as the barbarian is built for fights.

 

[Oofta]

But many do. Many have stated that they believe that DMs have Ultimate Authority, Zero Responsibility, and the only thing a player can do is leave.

They then chock any failure to the DM being bad and deny that this mentality is what fuels many of the mismatches.


How could they if the DM doesn't inform them.

If the DM has full creative control of the word, how can players be informed of things they are not told about?

Having had "bad" players, I've come to accept that I'm just not the DM for everyone. In other cases, I played with a DM for a while and it just wasn't for me. So losing a player (whether DM or player choice) is often just a matter of not connecting. It rarely means that the other side is wrong.

Unfortunately there are exceptions to the rule. Like the guy who purposely ignored plot hooks that were designed for the PC based on previous preferences and choices because he thought I had spent a lot of prep time setting up an adventure and thought it was funny to make me waste my time. I mean ... if you don't like the direction a campaign is going, tell me. But to go out of your way to waste the DMs time on purpose? Nah.

So nowadays I let the players set the direction. I set the stage and place events/NPCs/possible directions and they tell me what we're doing next time (including a direction I hadn't considered) at the end of each mini-story-arc. So while I do consider myself the ultimate authority and acknowledge that sometimes I'm going to lose players (you can't please everyone), the PCs pretty much have free reign over what they do. On the other hand some people seem to have a different definition of "ultimate authority" than I do.

 

[Thomas Shey]

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.

Yup. Though you do have to address the issue that a lot of players have internalized not bucking the GM whether they disagree or not, which can make that picture less clear.

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.

And to be fair, sometimes they're probably right. I've just observed that in the wild, the certainty people present about that does not always match up with what players say when the GM is not in earshot.

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.

I've seen people outright say they'd either tell someone else to GM or go find different players in that situation, however.

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.

And that would probably make it moot if there wasn't a lot of pressure for players not to rock the boat too hard.

 

[Thomas Shey]

How would it not be viable?

There can be exterior reasons when kicking out a specific player is impractical, at least if you expect the game to go on. As noted, an example is "the game is run at their house", but a number of other things can produce the same result.