D&D General DM Authority

[Oofta]

I thought it was to crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.

 

[Mannahnin]

Isn't collective storytelling, like, the main thing about RPGs?

In a sense.

But there's a big play style difference between games (often referred to as "Storygames") designed as a collaborative "we build a story together" experience, and games where we play a game of discovery and exploration in a secondary world, and then rationalize the events into a story after the fact. PbtA games and so forth some games have explicit mechanics for controlling the narrative and manipulating scenes and so forth. D&D is not designed that way.

Certainly it sounds to me like your group plays in a more collaborative storytelling mode (players inventing fallen kingdoms and so forth for dramatic effect; that sounded like a cool scene. ) than I'm accustomed to, or than the DMG (any of them, of any edition) tells us is how this game works.

D&D can certainly be changed from a game where the players interact with a world defined and described by one single designated arbiter/author player, but that is a pretty significant change.

The play experience of...

Player: "Is this barrel big enough for me to hide behind?" DM (knowing it's a beer barrel, and that there's a zombie hidden in it): "Yep!"

is very different from the play experience of...

Player A: "Is this barrel big enough for me to hide behind?" Player B: "I think it should be; barrels are bigger than people, right?" Player C: "Not always; this is a brandy distillery, right? Isn't brandy usually sold in little casks, rather than big barrels or tuns like beer or wine?" Player B: "Well sure, it's SOLD that way, but I imagine that in the distillery they keep it in bigger casks." Player D: "I was picturing cracker barrels, personally. Do we know this is a distillery? Heck; I must have missed something. Well, ok, to save time let's just take a vote and move on, all right?"

 

[FrogReaver]

I thought it was to crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.

Is there any other way to roleplay?

 

[Campbell]

There are no dramatic editing features in Apocalypse World or most hacks based on it. Games commonly thought of as "story games" are no more likely to have dramatic editing features than more mainstream RPGs.

 

[Mannahnin]

There are no dramatic editing features in Apocalypse World or most hacks based on it. Games commonly thought of as "story games" are no more likely to have dramatic editing features than more mainstream RPGs.

Sounds like you're better informed on this than I am. I thought Moves in AW were designed with a lot of narrative flexibility that allowed the person making the Move to define the game world to some extent.

How about something like Lovecraftesque, or Ten Candles? Would those be better examples?

 

[Campbell]

Sounds like you're better informed on this than I am. I thought Moves in AW were designed with a lot of narrative flexibility that allowed the person making the Move to define the game world to some extent.

How about something like Lovecraftesque, or Ten Candles? Would those be better examples?

There's some of that in Dungeon World (which in many ways is not a very typical example of a Powered by the Apocalypse game). There are also fairly mainstream games like Numenera, Scion, and Mutants and Masterminds that feature dramatic editing.

Lovecraftesque is much more a game of collaborative storytelling in the way you are thinking of it. After all it centers on a single character.
Ten Candles and Dread are very much games centered on your character's perspective.

 

[Maxperson]

Is there any other way to roleplay?

To crush your funions, to see the bowl of funions shrinking before you, and to hear the lamentations of the other players.

 

[Lanefan]

I thought it was to crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.

In other words, role-playing my character.

 

[Chaosmancer]

You can call the Castle Ravenloft board game D&D if you want. I don't. That doesn't mean it can't be an enjoyable game.

Feel free to call what you're doing D&D, I would not. Disagree? Okay.

I will keep that in mind. Next time that you tell me that you don't judge other people's games, that there is no one true way, I'll remember that that only applies to the things you think look like DnD. After all, if they don't play your way, it is a boardgame, not DnD.

 

[Crit]

Exactly my point.

Your original point was that some unknown but large portion of d&d games could not run without a dm as chaos described.

chaos coming back and saying his method works for one smaller subset really missed your overall point.

i wish he would have started off by addressing your original point.

Technically the DMG has a way of playing while not having a designated DM... I don't personally think it's any good, but it's real, so a game can still be DnD without a DM.