D&D General DM Authority

[Charlaquin]

Exactly. This is an incredibly important distinction. If there is real thought behind it but even then good DMs will offer an alternative.

That’s what I’ve been getting at though. One side of this argument is acting like the other is being unreasonably authoritarian, while the other side is like “I’m willing to work with my players. I just reserve the right to make the final decision when it comes to rules calls and creative control of the setting.”

Sadly most DMs I ran into during the research for my video heavily restricted PC character creation seemingly based on the vague idea that it made DM work "easier" for them. Most of them seemed to get this idea from watching Youtube videos without having any sort of individual reasoning for the restrictions.

Where did you do this research? I mean, I don’t doubt that was your experience, but it doesn’t seem consistent with what I’m seeing here, nor can I recall seeing any DMing advice on YouTube instructing DMs to be restrictive with player options because it’s easier.

The online DM Hivemind is broken right now according to what I experienced.

Is it? Maybe I’m just not plugged into the DM hive mind but this statement seems completely at odds with what my experience has been.

 

[Oofta]

Literally no one has disputed the first two, AFAICT. The latter is literally not what we're talking about. (Giving one response to save space.)


"Strawman" only applies if the argument is a fake set up to criticize you. If we're operating from an asked hypothetical, or from a story where you didn't tell us everyone else thought the monk was being dumb, it's not a strawman.

More importantly: It's nice to see you recognize that bad-faith DMing actually does occur, and actually can be a problem. I just have a lower tolerance for it, it seems.


Improvisation is a vital DM skill. Why not exercise it with these rulings as well?


The go-with-the-flow-option in D&D is to listen to the DM, not one "strong personality" player, so I don't see the relevance. If the players don't know how the game works, that's an error that should be corrected. The players should know how the game works when they play it!


Your anecdotes are nice, but fail to be more than that. And, as stated above, if you're going to ask that we assume good faith on the part of the DMs in these scenarios, please assume good faith on the part of the players. Asking to have infinite resources or instantly win is bad faith in almost anything.


While I accept that casual players are a thing, and should be worked with, at least a fundamental understanding of the rules should always be a goal for every player. And whether or not the DM is more rules-experienced is both (1) only true some of the time, and (2) irrelevant to the vast majority of good-faith player requests.


You may be surprised to know that others' experience differs. Mine, for example--on both sides of the screen.


Being respectful, good-faith players. C'mon man, you got openly frustrated with people ascribing bad faith to DMs in the race-options thread.


Then why even ask the opening questions? Those are not things you ask if you're treating your DM with respect.


As far as I'm concerned, "Ultimate Authority"--especially when capitalized thus, giving it extra emphasis--SPECIFICALLY means NOT treating others with respect, NOT hearing what they have to say, and NOT taking any form of criticism or discussion. I mean, we literally have in this thread a person saying that any player dispute that doesn't immediately evaporate when the DM says "no" is toxic. That's a pretty big red flag for "you don't actually respect my thoughts or opinions, and you don't trust me to behave appropriately if given any leeway."


Respect of player views, and in particular, the possibility that the player might have an idea in some way "better" than the DM's; actively seeking to meet in the middle whenever possible on disputes; actively facilitating player goals and engagement; and trusting that, barring meaningful evidence to the contrary, the player's requests are made in good faith to try for a more enjoyable game experience for everyone, rather than assuming any player is inherently coercive or abusive.

As stated above: "Ultimate Authority" communicates to me "I claim absolute authority and zero responsibility, and if you don't like that for any reason whatsoever, I have some choice words to treat you with before summarily booting you." Cooperative authority values consensus, diplomacy, compromise, and facilitation, and recognizes that a positive social experience means certain requirements due to respect, appropriateness, decorum, trust, etc.


As far as I'm concerned, you're pretty much NOT acting as an "ultimate authority" here. Yes, "ultimate" can be a synonym for "final," but it can also have other meanings--and I had assumed those other meanings (transcendent, supreme, categorical, and, yes, absolute) were very much intended alongside "final," particularly because people kept capitalizing it. Hence why I said you can fork "final say" apart from "Ultimate Authority," because work-a-day final authority and truly unsurpassable authority aren't equivalent.

Now, aside from the above, I DO think you are at least a little overprotective of the world you've established, from the way you've described how you do things. But I'm also of the opinion that exclusively playing in the same campaign world for 20+ years is...maybe not "unhealthy," that has judgmental implications I'd rather avoid, but...I guess "inhibiting"? It discourages a wide variety of opportunities for improvisation, and (IMNSHO) runs far, far too great a risk of Elminster Syndrome or Lord British Syndrome By Proxy. These names are tongue-in-cheek, of course, but I do really mean some serious concerns by using them. That is, invincible (but inactive) retired characters (Lord British), or stupidly powerful and meddlesome ones (Elminster).

Perhaps it's because of generational differences, or maybe our brains are just wired differently, but I'd lose my friggin' mind if I tried to squeeze 20 years of gaming out of a single campaign world, no matter how richly-detailed it was.

And DONE. There. Responded to like, two dozen posts. Hopefully didn't crush anyone beneath TOO large a wall of text along the way.

I appreciate the response. Obviously don't agree with everything, but that's hardly a surprise.

I will say that at our games (I'm including my wife here) when the DM makes a decision it's usually after a minute or two and is final until after the session. It's about time management and keeping the game flowing.

As far as running in the same campaign world, I have a tendency to run multi-year campaigns averaging at least a year or two. That and the stories we tell are different. The world changes because of PC's actions, the style of campaign changes based on player preferences and so on. It's a big world, the current campaign is set in the ashes of the ruins from the campaign before last, the last campaign was in a different region, when eventually this campaign wraps up we'll probably be somewhere completely different.

Having a series whether novels, film or comic books set in the same world is pretty common. How many mods have been written for the Forgotten Realms over the years?

 

[prabe]

It sounds, to me, like you are intentionally twisting the example here. The example given QUITE specifically said that the player was NOT informed about this in advance. Now, it would be entirely fair to say, "I can't comment on that, because I would personally ensure such an event never happens." But to act AS THOUGH you are responding to the hypothetical while changing it to be a different question entirely is a red herring.

I don't feel as though I am twisting the example here, further than it's already twisted. It sounded to me in the original example as though there wasn't any conversation about it at all.

Where in the example does it say they're the first three sessions? I'm making the not-unreasonable presumption these three sessions are sometime after the campaign has already started. If so, there are lots of things that can happen in a campaign that might shift it (probably temporarily, because we are talking D&D) in a less-fighty direction.

So, let's say it isn't you. Let's say it's your friend Alice DMing, and your other friend Bob is the Barbarian in question. Alice goofed pretty hard and never told the group that the campaign would involve little to no combat, despite approving Bob's Barbarian. Bob made the (IMO far more minor) error of not explicitly asking whether the game would include combat, presuming that Alice would either say something, or comment on the character she approved for play, perhaps because Bob is used to your DMing style where you do always explicitly inform the player.

So, if these three sessions are the first three sessions, Alice is either running a particularly bad AP or has no clue how to start a D&D campaign. If these three sessions are not the first three sessions, presumably the barbarian has had fights in which to flex adequately, and there's nothing wrong at all with a session of not-fighting every now and again. Even a couple in succession might make good narrative sense (it's happened in at least one of my campaigns).

What behaviors are appropriate for Bob in this scenario? What responses are appropriate for Alice?

So, if this is the start of the campaign, I think Bob needs to talk to Alice about how things are going and how his character isn't getting any opportunities to shine. If it's the middle of the campaign, I think Bob needs to understand that everyone at the table needs to have fun, but might still accomplish something by talking to Alice about three sessions in a row without a fight being starkly uninteresting to someone who built a character with the idea that there'd be nothing interesting in the campaign other than fighting.

I think the best-case outcome here depends on the rest of the table and how long the campaign has been going. If the other players want more fighting, I think Alice should probably provide it (and should probably rethink her narrative). If the other players are happy with the campaign as it is, I think Bob really has two choices: leave the campaign, or--especially if the campaign is just getting started--adjust his expectations (and probably re-spec his character at least a little).

 

[Minigiant]

Big quoting time

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).

Nothing in the rulebook tells you to build balanced characters.
Some DMs do run all grind,hack and slash.

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.

Again the "Responsibility to your players" part is ignored.

If seems like a large percentage of DMs would rather have DMs filter though all the players for a perfect match (or submissive players) rather than have DMs be responsible to explain their worlds clearly to the players.

And people wonder why players are asking for "weird stuff" at the table.

Well, there's always the problem that you can do that, and people, for various reasons, don't internalize it; either they don't see those things as you do, or don't (from a lack of a better term) really believe you on one or more of them. And that's not counting the people who've gotten used to having to slowly drag campaigns in the direction they want if they're ever going to get that anyway

That's why I belive in using the clear descriptive terms in the DMG so that everyone understands what's going on.

Everyone knows what a wizard or gnome is.
Everyone should know what Mythic or Hack and Slash is.

Well, I'd have to ask a question first: when the GM observed the character created, how did his interaction with the player go? Until I see that, I cannot answer the question properly.

They let it slide and said nothing.
Hence the problem.

Well, I mean, I've repeatedly tried to say that I wanted to talk about how you discuss those things DURING Session 0, and how you work to AVOID post-S0 problems. No one bit. In fact, the post was almost completely ignored.

Unfortunatley there are calls forDM help but no one wants to talk about it due to risk of revealing their own faults.

"Demand" is always extreme, and thus not respectful. However, I do think the player should be empowered to say, "Hey guys...like, I specifically put together a combat-focused character, and y'all knew about that well in advance. I'm pretty frustrated that we seem to be in a low-combat game, and I'd like to request that we do some actual fighting, because otherwise I feel pretty cheated."

If you have a bad-faith player pounding his fists on the table and making a scene, the DM almost certainly already has the rest of the players on her side anyway. But if we don't presume bad-faith players, and instead presume something like the above? It's complicated. I expect the DM to be respectful in return, something like, "You know, you're right, I should have let you know about that sooner, especially since you clearly didn't take any options that would work well in a social setting. Let's talk about how we can fix it." And there absolutely are ways to fix it; perhaps it is an overall low-combat game, but the Barbarian gets to have some fun set-piece "duels" regularly, justified as being a rising star in the gladiatorial ring or a hot-tempered youth with a penchant for challenging foes (a la Romeo and Juliet). In the end, the DM may need to say, "No, I'm sorry, that's not the game I'm willing to run," but I really, genuinely do think that that is a SERIOUS mea culpa from this DM.

Demand is a strong word.
Could not think of a lighter way to say "Hey buddy. You did not tell me that this campaign would barely have real fights."

Yeah, that's exactly what claims of (specifically capitalized) "Ultimate Authority" communicate to me. That the DM has absolute power and zero responsibility.

It feels like many are usingDM scarcity, the large player pool, and the amount of work in DMing as an excuse for DMs to ignore player wishes and allow for DMs to simply filter through players until they find ones with the same ideals or one that will simply accept the DM's.

I don't think it's healthy for D&D at all.

 

[generic]

It feels like many are usingDM scarcity, the large player pool, and the amount of work in DMing as an excuse for DMs to ignore player wishes and allow for DMs to simply filter through players until they find ones with the same ideals or one that will simply accept the DM's.

I don't think it's healthy for D&D at all.

I don't give a flying fig what's healthy for D&D, I'll DM for my table because I enjoy the game god dammit. If people hate the way I run games, they can bugger off. If they want more combat, they can ask me for it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

They let it slide and said nothing.
Hence the problem.

I think at that point there has been a really major communication breakdown that needs to be addressed over and above the issue at hand.

(And, by the by, I think if you think using the terminology the game uses to describe a campaign will automatically prevent communication problems with getting the players on the same page, you're an incredible optimist.)

 

[prabe]

Nothing in the rulebook tells you to build balanced characters.
Some DMs do run all grind,hack and slash.

The rulebook has rules for lots of things that aren't combat. It seems reasonable to take at least some of those into account when making a character.

If the player isn't sure about what kind of game to expect it makes sense to me to talk to the DM.

 

[Minigiant]

I don't give a flying fig what's healthy for D&D, I'll DM for my table because I enjoy the game god dammit. If people hate the way I run games, they can bugger off. If they want more combat, they can ask me for it.

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If people hold the idea that fosters Jerk DMs and players and Accidentally jerk DMs and players then those Jerks will come to your table.

 

[generic]

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If people hold the idea that fosters Jerk DMs and players and Accidentally jerk DMs and players then those Jerks will come to your table.

I cannot sympathize with this idea.

I play with friends, and we all try, together, to have fun playing role-playing games. But, ultimately, it's my campaign.

No one is entitled to a DM. In fact, I started DMing because I couldn't find anyone to play with. I'm not under some sort of legal obligation to accept everyone at my table or run games for the majority. It's a f---ing game, not a job, or a public service.

 

[Lanefan]

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

Not at all.