D&D General DM's: How transparent are you with game mechanics "in world?"

[Chaosmancer]

1. They can accuse the DM of cheating, milking a male cat or whatever else. Accusations are just accusations.
2. They would be wrong. That would not be cheating, but it would be an equally bad situation where the DM is abusing his authority.
3. Abuse of authority breeds a lack of trust in the DM. Sometimes lack of trust is the player's fault. I've seen many arguments here where it's based on nothing more than some sort of personal player fear. That's not on the DM. Sometimes it's the DM's fault and is based on power abuses. That's on him and the players should find a new DM.

And those power abuses seem far more likely when you say that they can never break the rules, never cheat, because it is a very small step from that to never doing anything wrong.

You're drastically overgeneralizing based on the words of a very few people on a forum with a very small percent of the player base, though. Extremes are bad. Trying to change a game based on a few examples of extremes is itself an extreme reaction and is also bad.

I'm not talking about changing the game at all. You seem to somehow think that the DM being an unquestioned ultimate authority who has full power to enact any change they want and perform any action they want is part and parcel of the workings of the game. And, if your claim is so extreme that NOTHING is beyond the DMs power, then the other side can safely go extreme in testing the limits of that claim.

Yet, you hold firm, and I think that leads to more problems in the community than anything helpful. I don't think there is any other RPG that holds "ultimate authority of the GM" as something they encourage, and I don't think anyone has said that that is the best selling point of DnD.

It rarely happens, but when it does it's almost always a character flaw of the DM, which none of your "fixes" actually fix. The solution as I point out above is to get a new DM.

My "fix" is to get a new DM. But to also acknowledge that they were cheating. IF you go to someone and say "my DM was abusing their authority over the game" they are just as likely to think you are a whining player than to think that you have a legitimate complaint. "The DM cheated" is much more succinct and holds much more weight.

Also, shockingly, I never claimed that being a cheater wasn't a character flaw, so saying that "these issues are only a character flaw in the DM" also doesn't dispute anything I'm saying.

If it's impossible to cheat(the DM), it's also impossible to make an attempt to cheat. It's just the DM changing a rule per RAW. In D&D only the players can make an attempt to cheat. They can make an attempt and then either succeed or fail.

And I think the game is poorer if he have a double standard where only one sub-set of players of the game are capable of cheating, while the others can do anything and never cheat.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

And those power abuses seem far more likely when you say that they can never break the rules, never cheat, because it is a very small step from that to never doing anything wrong.



I'm not talking about changing the game at all. You seem to somehow think that the DM being an unquestioned ultimate authority who has full power to enact any change they want and perform any action they want is part and parcel of the workings of the game. And, if your claim is so extreme that NOTHING is beyond the DMs power, then the other side can safely go extreme in testing the limits of that claim.

Yet, you hold firm, and I think that leads to more problems in the community than anything helpful. I don't think there is any other RPG that holds "ultimate authority of the GM" as something they encourage, and I don't think anyone has said that that is the best selling point of DnD.

My experience in discussion GM roles in play is that there is a certain set of people who's position, at least rhetorically, seems to be that this is THE ONLY WAY that things can 'work properly' in RPGs. You mostly see this as a sort of unstated and unquestioned subtext. Honestly, it seems like it is often a case of people who have simply never encountered another kind of play and reflexively take a position that they don't even realize there's another possibility for. In @Maxperson's case I know he's well-versed, and I am not actually thinking he even makes this kind of assumption automatically, but it may be for rhetorical purposes here. That's a perfectly acceptable way to go.

Just IMHO though, regardless of whether you believe that GM's should have 'god-like' power at the table, it is still better to just be transparent. You can still tell people how it is!

 

[Chaosmancer]

What, other than find another DM, are they going to do if he says no? It's not like they have any ability to limit a DM's authority in a game.

And this is exactly the problem.

The players have no recourse other than to find a new DM. And the DM is going to sound perfectly reasonable calling them entitled, because DMs have ultimate authority to do anything they want, for any reason they want. And of course the DM wasn't doing anything wrong, the rules allow them to make these decisions, so of course the players were just whiners when he maximized every die result and every hit was a crit, and they all critically fumbled every roll. There was a story reason for it, they just didn't stick around long enough to find out, if they had just waited til all their characters died he would have totally had them revived to serve the good king and it would have been a great adventure. They just were too entitled to play the game.

Clearly I'm hinting at the fact that the DM is to blame here, but since the premise we start from is that the DM cannot do anything to cheat and break the game, then we put the burden on the players to just.. deal with people who abuse their power. Because they have the authority to use that power however they want, and you just have to hope they are a benevolent tyrant.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Just IMHO though, regardless of whether you believe that GM's should have 'god-like' power at the table, it is still better to just be transparent. You can still tell people how it is!

Agreed

 

[Maxperson]

And those power abuses seem far more likely when you say that they can never break the rules, never cheat, because it is a very small step from that to never doing anything wrong.

No they don't. It's likely or unlikely only depending on the character of the DM. The fact that the DM can't break the rules doesn't make it more likely, or it would happen a lot since the DM can't break the rules. Instead such abuses are rare.

I'm not talking about changing the game at all. You seem to somehow think that the DM being an unquestioned ultimate authority who has full power to enact any change they want and perform any action they want is part and parcel of the workings of the game.

Granted BY the game, not part of the workings OF the game, or it would happen a lot instead of being rare.

And, if your claim is so extreme that NOTHING is beyond the DMs power, then the other side can safely go extreme in testing the limits of that claim.

Take it up with RAW, not me. I'm just telling you how it is by RAW, not making an extreme claim.

Yet, you hold firm, and I think that leads to more problems in the community than anything helpful.

Of course I hold firm. I'm not a liar. Since I understand the authority given to the DM by RAW, I can't be mistaken in my belief the way you are. That means that if I say the DM can cheat, I would be lying.

I don't think there is any other RPG that holds "ultimate authority of the GM" as something they encourage, and I don't think anyone has said that that is the best selling point of DnD.

I suspect, but don't remember for certain, that all of the old TSR era games were like that.

My "fix" is to get a new DM. But to also acknowledge that they were cheating. IF you go to someone and say "my DM was abusing their authority over the game" they are just as likely to think you are a whining player than to think that you have a legitimate complaint. "The DM cheated" is much more succinct and holds much more weight.

You are mistaken, though, in your acknowledgement. It's literally not possible to cheat when you cannot break a rule.

And I think the game is poorer if he have a double standard where only one sub-set of players of the game are capable of cheating, while the others can do anything and never cheat.

As I said before, I've been in dozens of very high quality games where the DM could not cheat, and 0 where he could. I have been a very few bad games where the DM abused his authority, though. Your belief isn't borne out by my experiences, so it's going to take a lot more than your simple declaration that the game is poorer when a DM has that power, for me to even think about changing my position.

 

[Maxperson]

My experience in discussion GM roles in play is that there is a certain set of people who's position, at least rhetorically, seems to be that this is THE ONLY WAY that things can 'work properly' in RPGs. You mostly see this as a sort of unstated and unquestioned subtext. Honestly, it seems like it is often a case of people who have simply never encountered another kind of play and reflexively take a position that they don't even realize there's another possibility for. In @Maxperson's case I know he's well-versed, and I am not actually thinking he even makes this kind of assumption automatically, but it may be for rhetorical purposes here. That's a perfectly acceptable way to go.

Just IMHO though, regardless of whether you believe that GM's should have 'god-like' power at the table, it is still better to just be transparent. You can still tell people how it is!

Right now I'm arguing what RAW gives the DM. In 1e, 2e, 3e and 5e, the DM has the power to change rules on the fly. That as written is absolute power. 3e was a bit different in that it was also very rules heavy and spelled out(or tried to) every little thing, so some players were a bit more resistant to DMs changing things. I excluded 4e since I really don't know that edition well enough to comment.

When it comes to how I run my personal game, I take the players and their desires into consideration. For the 5e campaign I just started I had a list of 14 or so new house rules I wanted to try out. I gave the list to the players and had them vote on them. Anything that got a majority or unanimous vote was in. If it got less than half it was out. If it was a 2-2 tie, I broke the tie. If I didn't really care about the rule and just put it out there for the players, I voted against it and the rule wasn't put in. If I did care about it, I voted for it and it was added.

ONE rule was voted down by the players and then enacted by me anyway. It was the rule that said that creatures resistant or immune to non-magical weapons could not be hurt by a magical weapon without a plus. Their reasoning was that it was an added complication to the game. My reason for enacting it anyway was that without that rule, they weren't going to be finding little or no magical weapons. In the last campaign I ran I gave out some +1 weapons and the PCs ran roughshod over creatures that were intended to be more of a challenge due to their resistances. It unbalanced those fights and a very large number of creatures are balanced around that mechanic. I let them know that this way they can still find cool magic weapons. They understood my reasoning and that was the end of it.

My rather long winded point is that the ultimate authority is there for me to use, but it should not be used in that manner without good reason and/or without taking the players into consideration. And in my experience, the vast majority of DMs understand this and don't abuse that power.

 

[Maxperson]

The players have no recourse other than to find a new DM. And the DM is going to sound perfectly reasonable calling them entitled, because DMs have ultimate authority to do anything they want, for any reason they want.

No. The second sentence does not follow from the first. A DM who has abused his authority and lost his players is not going to sound like anything other than a douche if he calls them entitled.

And of course the DM wasn't doing anything wrong, the rules allow them to make these decisions, so of course the players were just whiners when he maximized every die result and every hit was a crit, and they all critically fumbled every roll. There was a story reason for it, they just didn't stick around long enough to find out, if they had just waited til all their characters died he would have totally had them revived to serve the good king and it would have been a great adventure. They just were too entitled to play the game.

Literally nobody has argued that a DM who is abusing his authority isn't doing anything wrong. Not being able to cheat =/= unable to do anything wrong.

Clearly I'm hinting at the fact that the DM is to blame here, but since the premise we start from is that the DM cannot do anything to cheat and break the game, then we put the burden on the players to just.. deal with people who abuse their power. Because they have the authority to use that power however they want, and you just have to hope they are a benevolent tyrant.

Holy crap. That was a hint? I'd hate to see what it sounds like when you're direct about something.

 

[iserith]

I excluded 4e since I really don't know that edition well enough to comment.

This is the internet - why let that stop you?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

No they don't. It's likely or unlikely only depending on the character of the DM. The fact that the DM can't break the rules doesn't make it more likely, or it would happen a lot since the DM can't break the rules. Instead such abuses are rare.

Granted BY the game, not part of the workings OF the game, or it would happen a lot instead of being rare.

Take it up with RAW, not me. I'm just telling you how it is by RAW, not making an extreme claim.

Of course I hold firm. I'm not a liar. Since I understand the authority given to the DM by RAW, I can't be mistaken in my belief the way you are. That means that if I say the DM can cheat, I would be lying.

I suspect, but don't remember for certain, that all of the old TSR era games were like that.

You are mistaken, though, in your acknowledgement. It's literally not possible to cheat when you cannot break a rule.

As I said before, I've been in dozens of very high quality games where the DM could not cheat, and 0 where he could. I have been a very few bad games where the DM abused his authority, though. Your belief isn't borne out by my experiences, so it's going to take a lot more than your simple declaration that the game is poorer when a DM has that power, for me to even think about changing my position.

It's completely wild to me that you think a person can't create the rules of the game, be the arbiter of said rules, and cheat.

 

[Maxperson]

It's completely wild to me that you think a person can't create the rules of the game, be the arbiter of said rules, and cheat.

What rule is he going to break in order to be cheating?