D&D 5E Respect Mah Authoritah: Thoughts on DM and Player Authority in 5e

[prabe]

Players can absolutely railroad by leveraging the GM or expecting everyone else to get on board with their explicit vision of how things should turn out. I'm not sure why anyone thinks people that are not overly fond of GM railroads would be fond of player led versions of the same. I am certainly not a fan of either. That does not mean I'm looking for pure sandbox play either (although I do enjoy it). There are all sorts of play techniques that are neither railroads nor sandboxes. In most of the games I run for instance players are expected to engage the scenarios presented, but I'm never going to decide how they should engage with them. The Infinity game (a thoroughly traditional game) I'm a player in is similar.

Yeah. I don't doubt players can/do railroad. I've just never seen it, while I have seen GMs railroad. It's possible I'm seeing a difference between player-railroading and spotlight-hogging that you're not, though.

 

[Aldarc]

If that's the way you want to run your games, that's fine. It's not the way the game is presented by the rules.

Good DMs will, of course, pay attention to what the players enjoy. That has little or nothing with players deciding how rules are implemented or having authorial control over the fiction.

I think that you are glossing over the way the game rules are presented in the PHB and DMG. But as you say, it's fine if that's the way you want to run your games, but doing so does ignore the openness that's in the DMG to the approaches that we are discussing. For example, this snippet is in the DMG intro:

You can also lean on the other players to help you with rules mastery and world-building.

As @Campbell says, this is not necessarily about disputing the authority model in traditional games, but, rather, that the authority is not so dogmatically black-and-white or open-closed as some make it out to be. Again, I doubt that the writers ever intended what they wrote to be taken so dogmatically as some hardliners here make it out to be. I think that, in general, the books and the advice therein emphasize a lot of table cooperation for making the game fun and engaging.

 

[Campbell]

Yeah. I don't doubt players can/do railroad. I've just never seen it, while I have seen GMs railroad. It's possible I'm seeing a difference between player-railroading and spotlight-hogging that you're not, though.

I'm mostly speaking to what Play Passionately calls The Culture of Outcomes. Basically players using their social influence over the GM and/or other players to get the story outcomes they desire. It can also manifest via blatant disregard for fictional positioning of NPCs and other player characters.

So much dialogue is spent discussing GM-driven railroading that I think player-driven railroading is under discussed and under identified. Once upon a time on The Forge we spoke of the Impossible Thing Before Breakfast. That is, it is impossible for the GM to control the story while the players control the protagonists. I would now like posit the OTHER Impossible Thing Before Breakfast. That is, it is impossible for the players to control the story while the GM controls the antagonists. You simply can not have legitimate adversity without legitimate risk.

Going a little further in hyphz’s thread there are people who are questioning the existence of such a hypothetical player. I’m currently running a Sorcerer & Sword game. I was a little surprised when one of my players said to me, “I don’t like how much the dice define my character in this game.” Considering that the character’s choices and actions were 100% under her control I was a little confused by this so I asked a few key questions. What I discovered was that there had apparently been a few key conflicts she had failed. Failing those conflicts had, to her, rewritten her character concept because the character she wanted to play “would have” succeeded at those things.

The amusing thing, to me, is that from the point of view of an external audience member those conflicts didn’t look any different than any other conflict she had failed but had been fine with. To me, all I saw was a character in motion and the outcomes from that motion. There were no cues to suggest to me the same a priori character redefining “it” moments that were so obvious to the player herself. Even if I had the power to “fudge” those rolls there was nothing to suggest that I should do so. This “character via outcome” exists entirely within the mind of the player.

Obviously this is somewhat context sensitive. Just like how a certain level of GM railroading might be acceptable in some games a certain level of negotiation of outcomes might be acceptable in others. I prefer where it exists that it be done openly.

 

[Jmarso]

This has been an interesting thread to read. Moreover, it's pretty clear who the long-term / experienced DMs are, and who have little to no experience at the time / effort it takes to DM a good game. I'm going to post a couple of thoughts on the whole thing:

Leadership (or diplomacy, if you prefer) is, in part, the art of convincing other people to do what you want / need, and making them think it was their own idea. As a DM this is something I try to embrace. As a player, I don't like to be 'forced' down a path either, even though I understand it's 'the story arc.' A really artful DM can plant a plot hook and bait it so the players want to follow it. Do I claim 100% success with this approach? No, but at times, yes. The flip side of this coin is the 'contrary' player whose enjoyment in the game derives in spoiling / disregarding, or DERAILING(!!) all the preparation the DM has put in beforehand. Frankly, my toleration for this is pretty low.

I was fortunate in that up to a couple of years ago, all of my experience with TTRPG's has been in the company of family and friends, which creates a different social dynamic for a game. (I've been playing since 6th grade in 1979) After all, you do other things with your friends and family, and the gaming table isn't your sole focus of association with them. For that reason, problems and problem-play can more easily be addressed and corrected, and to an extent, you can see (and sometimes even participate in) the effort it takes when someone you know / associate with other than at the game table is expending large amounts of effort in adventure / world building. In the most recent campaign that I ran, I put in over 40 hours of prep time for what was going to amount to about 12-16 hours of play time (about 4-5 sessions)- part of the reason it was so extensive was that it was an urban adventure (requested by the players after a few sessions of dungeon crawling) with a ton of interconnected but separate plots / mini-adventures, specifically to give them some of that 'sand boxing' feel, even though the whole thing was set in and around a single city, and was therefore in-and-of-itself a form of 'railroad', right? For players who have never run a game, stop and think about that for a moment about what would happen if they all showed up and said 'F that. We're going to leave the city and head back to the forest. And by the way, you suck as a DM.' That's the sort of thing that sends DM's looking for new players, or to say 'screw it' and move to the players' side of the screen permanently. I'm just sayin'.

Since I've started also playing with 'strangers', for lack of a better word, I have to say that I've run across a couple of really weird / d-bag / entitled players- the sort I wouldn't want in a game I was running, much less over at my house. I honestly have to say that I've seen some of that attitude expressed in this thread. These folks tend to have one overriding trait in common: they've never run a game themselves. Although not everyone is necessarily 'suited' for it, I believe it would make everyone who plays the game grow as a player to DM a game at least once, even if it's just a one-shot. I know being an almost life-long DM has made me a better player as well- I'm better at picking up subtle hints being thrown our way, and I understand that we don't have to spend 20 minutes on every door because the DM isn't out to 'save or die' us every three minutes- stuff like that. Also, I don't get offended by a little bit of 'railroading', the way some people do, as long as it's well-handled. I get that it's to move the story along and make the game better and more fun, not to trample on my 'rights' as a player.

Anyway.

 

[Oofta]

I think that you are glossing over the way the game rules are presented in the PHB and DMG. But as you say, it's fine if that's the way you want to run your games, but doing so does ignore the openness that's in the DMG to the approaches that we are discussing. For example, this snippet is in the DMG intro:


As @Campbell says, this is not necessarily about disputing the authority model in traditional games, but, rather, that the authority is not so dogmatically black-and-white or open-closed as some make it out to be. Again, I doubt that the writers ever intended what they wrote to be taken so dogmatically as some hardliners here make it out to be. I think that, in general, the books and the advice therein emphasize a lot of table cooperation for making the game fun and engaging.

So quote chapter and verse, so to speak. I included quotes from the book, can you?

I agree that a DM should take their players into consideration. I can't imagine why you would not if you want to continue to DM, although I'm sure some DMs do not. But several posts talk about players controlling fiction and deciding how the rules work, not just having input.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'm not the right DM for everyone. I can't be, no one can be. I can't always satisfy all 6 players at my table, although I try my best. I've probably had over a 95% retention rate of players over the years unless people move (or we do) or have some other life event meaning they can no longer play. Following the clear rules of the book seems to work for me.

As far as cooperation? Well, I tell people what kind of games I run. I throw out ideas and listen to input. I give people meaningful choices with information that their PCs would know, which may occasionally mean an NPC or situation is not what it seems. But rules? I make the final call. Campaign world fiction? Yep, that's in my control as well while I don't write their PC's fiction for them I am the final editor and reserve the right to veto.

There's a difference between handing over rules adjudication and creation of fiction of the world and running a cooperative game.

 

[Lyxen]

You seem to be saying the alternatives are "sandbox" and "get on the plot train." I disagree with that. There seems to me to be more middle ground than I get from what you say.

These are two extremities on a scale, But note that I've always been saying that it's very rare that games are at one extremity, for me it's always shades of gray along the axis.

What I absolutely refuse is people badwrongfunning people playing towards one end of the scale, namely the more railroading part of it.

For example, I've ran ton of games for kids and beginners with any edition, these were in no way inferior to anyone else's game as everyone had great fun with the game. But these were decidedly more on the railroading side of the scale.

The story belongs to the PCs. Maybe you present them with several possible things to do, and maybe some of those are from one backstory or another. They'll still choose what appeals to the party overall, and that's fine. I haven't found "This is (for example) Taman's nemesis" to skew intra-party balance in any meaningful way, so long as it wasn't for the whole campaign. Experiences and tastes vary, of course.

And yet, in at least two major campaigns that I ran (I'm saying campaigns running for scores of sessions over more than one year), the backgrounds and the resulting intrigues became preponderent, which in a sense is good as it gave player "centricity" but every time we focussed on one player's story, it was at the detriment of all the other players stories. And these were nice people, playing fair, and wanting to share the fun. But in the end, our common agreement was that it was in general better to run a central DM-led story with large contributions from players with side stories.

Note that this is a topic that we studied in length in our LARP association, when you have 250 people playing, you need to control the stories, because we had some cases in which players either invented something completely and derailed (sometimes on purpose) other teams, sometimes for hours (when you are playing over 10 km^2, with that many people spread all around the place, it's hard to control everything), or cases where some players just started following another team's leads and spoiling/destroying the quest.

So we needed ways to make sure that the stories were used properly, and invented a number of structures, the pyramid, the pierced pipes, the double torus, etc.

While too much is too much, I want the players to put stuff in their characters' backstories I can pull from, to tie them to the setting and the campaign--to make the latter ahout the PCs.

Note that is a somewhat different matter, a perfect railroad can totally be completely about the PCs...

I have never seen a player railroad a D&D (or D&D-alike) campaign. Not one time. Every published adventure I have taken part in has been (or felt like) a railroad. Every GM-authored "uber-arc" in any game I've been in has been (or felt like) a railroad.

Collaborative experience. Shared responsibility. My gig is to bring a world and scenarios.

So you do have scenarios. So if they follow such a scenario, are they being railroaded ?

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Perhaps, just perhaps, some folks are interpreting “ultimate”, “absolute”, and/or “total” slightly differently in the context of “authority”. And so we have a few people talking past each other.

If these adjectives mean that the 5e DM’s authority is over every aspect of the game including - whenever they want - the thoughts, speech, and what the PC is attempting to do, then I’d say this take on DM authority is a bad approach to 5e. So much so, that it is not really 5e anymore.

If these adjectives simply mean that the 5e DM’s authority is over rulings and rules interpretations, the setting, and the thoughts, speech, and attempted actions of the NPCs, well then I’d say this is a good approach. And the DM can certainly cede a sliver of this authority at their whim or if a spell/ability mechanic dictates it.

 

[prabe]

This has been an interesting thread to read. Moreover, it's pretty clear who the long-term / experienced DMs are, and who have little to no experience at the time / effort it takes to DM a good game.

I don't disagree with what you have to say about GMing and playing--I happen to agree that even trying to GM can make one a better player--but I will say that I would be careful presuming that anyone posting on this site is an inexperienced GM. Among other things, the demographics here trend old.

What I think there is, is people have had lots of experience, and different people have had different experiences.

 

[Aldarc]

So quote chapter and verse, so to speak. I included quotes from the book, can you?

You're throwing this at me after I told you that the quoted snipped came from the introduction of the DMG?

 

[Lyxen]

Leadership (or diplomacy, if you prefer) is, in part, the art of convincing other people to do what you want / need, and making them think it was their own idea. As a DM this is something I try to embrace. As a player, I don't like to be 'forced' down a path either, even though I understand it's 'the story arc.' A really artful DM can plant a plot hook and bait it so the players want to follow it. Do I claim 100% success with this approach? No, but at times, yes. The flip side of this coin is the 'contrary' player whose enjoyment in the game derives in spoiling / disregarding, or DERAILING(!!) all the preparation the DM has put in beforehand. Frankly, my toleration for this is pretty low.

So is mine. What I must say is that is also what being a good player is, it's understanding that work, and looking with benevolence on the minimal level of railroad necessary to make it work, and even better integrating into one's character and roleplay as if it had already been there. Because this is what collaboration means, everyone contributing to having a good game, it's much more important than everyone contributing to the story.

part of the reason it was so extensive was that it was an urban adventure (requested by the players after a few sessions of dungeon crawling) with a ton of interconnected but separate plots / mini-adventures, specifically to give them some of that 'sand boxing' feel, even though the whole thing was set in and around a single city, and was therefore in-and-of-itself a form of 'railroad', right?

This is by far my favourite type of game, but I also like it when the various stakeholders have their own plots that will advance (and I suppose this is what you did). And is that railroading in any way ? Certainly not for me.

For players who have never run a game, stop and think about that for a moment about what would happen if they all showed up and said 'F that. We're going to leave the city and head back to the forest. And by the way, you suck as a DM.' That's the sort of thing that sends DM's looking for new players, or to say 'screw it' and move to the players' side of the screen permanently. I'm just sayin'.

Yep, I agree 1000%

Since I've started also playing with 'strangers', for lack of a better word, I have to say that I've run across a couple of really weird / d-bag / entitled players- the sort I wouldn't want in a game I was running, much less over at my house.

Yep, I wish there was a "AIrBnB" of D&D tables where players can leave their impressions of DMs and the reverse, I'm pretty sure that some players would change their attitude quite a bit, in particular online, after some clear review of their behaviour.

I honestly have to say that I've seen some of that attitude expressed in this thread. These folks tend to have one overriding trait in common: they've never run a game themselves. Although not everyone is necessarily 'suited' for it, I believe it would make everyone who plays the game grow as a player to DM a game at least once, even if it's just a one-shot. I know being an almost life-long DM has made me a better player as well- I'm better at picking up subtle hints being thrown our way, and I understand that we don't have to spend 20 minutes on every door because the DM isn't out to 'save or die' us every three minutes- stuff like that. Also, I don't get offended by a little bit of 'railroading', the way some people do, as long as it's well-handled. I get that it's to move the story along and make the game better and more fun, not to trample on my 'rights' as a player.

Exactly, and then, we are old school and I think it colors our way of thinking and playing.