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

[Manbearcat]

I want to share an experience I had as a player in a fairly recent 5E game. I think it's relevant to some of the points in the discussion and may help by presenting a specific example rather than hypothetical.

My PC is a ranger with the folk hero background. He's a bit of a Robin Hood type. The other PCs are as well. We'd recently escaped capture by the archduke, who's kind of our Prince John; he's placed a bounty on our heads. This was as a result of the first few sessions of play; the PCs have effectively become outlaws, but the reigning government is at least corrupt, if not outright evil (there's some hint of possible black magic at play).

So we had to flee the town we had been in, and we arrived in another nearby town. We crossed a dangerous stretch of river in order to throw off any pursuers. So we arrived in the other town with some sense of safety; we'd evaded the law for now, but night was coming, and there was a storm forming. So our rogue scouted the town out a bit, and discovered that the Inn was overrun with the archduke's troops. The last thing we wanted to do was to wind up in another showdown with the duke's men, so we needed to avoid the inn.

I decided to use my Folk Hero Background Feature: Rustic Hospitality. It says:
Since you come from the ranks of the common folk, you fit in among them with ease. You can find a place to hide, rest, or recuperate among other commoners, unless you have shown yourself to be a danger to them. They will shield you from the law or anyone else searching for you, though they will not risk their lives for you.

We went up to a farmhouse on the outskirts of town, and I asked the farmer and his wife if we could take shelter in their barn. We mentioned that the inn was filled with the duke's men, which wasn't exactly safe for us. The farmer took our meaning, and recognized my character, and granted us shelter.

The characters woke in the morning to find the barn surrounded. The duke's men had "discovered" they were in the barn. There was no sign of the farmer or his wife. The GM had essentially overrode my use of my PC ability in order to ensure that there was a fight with the duke's men.

Is this acceptable per the rules as written? Per the spirit of the rules? Per the social contract among the group? For the purposes of discussion, assume that we're a group who knows each other well, and has played together long enough that we're comfortable with each other. Also assume that the GM hasn't yet shared his reasoning behind the duke's men arriving.

What do you all think? How would you have handled it?

I think this one is simple if you look at the GMing Principles and Player Best Practices I've gleaned from this thread:

1) Your GM is the best and this is their game (you would do well to remember this).

2) They have a bitchin' story to tell and by god they are entitled to tell it, Folk Hero Background or no. Submit. Follow. Have fun!

3) You are replaceable and you are probably a bad person to boot.

4) When you game honorable systems (like your friend's, some friend YOU are, awesome story that you tried to evade), do you feel guilty?


I hope this helps!

 

[prabe]

I think this one is simple if you look at the GMing Principles and Player Best Practices I've gleaned from this thread:

1) Your GM is the best and this is their game (you would do well to remember this).

2) They have a bitchin' story to tell and by god they are entitled to tell it, Folk Hero Background or no. Submit. Follow. Have fun!

3) You are replaceable and you are probably a bad person to boot.

4) When you game honorable systems (like your friend's, some friend YOU are, awesome story that you tried to evade), do you feel guilty?


I hope this helps!

On a serious note, it's ... interesting ... that there are folks who run 5E in ways not wildly inconsistent with your sarcasm, here; and there are folks who run it in ways nearly opposite that. I wasn't particularly online when I was DMing earlier editions, and I wonder if the range was always so ... rangy.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled sarcasm.

 

[pemerton]

So, I'm asking these because I've never played Traveler in any form in my life: Would it be possible (rules-legal) for the GM to modify the difficulty to the point of impossibility? Would it be ... tenable (socially) at a table?

I think it depends on context.

Classic Traveller doesn't have a uniform system for action resolution (some people don't like that about it; I think it's a strength), other than defaulting to 2d6 for the throw.

Here is the advice on setting required throws for Streetwise, again quoted from Book1, p 15:

the name of an official willing to issue licences without hassle =5+, the location of high quality guns at a low price =9+ . . . DMs based on streetwise should be allowed at +1 per level. No expertise DM = -5.​

Now I prefer to adjust the numbers to set the base for no expertise at +0, which results in the following:

the name of an official willing to issue licences without hassle =10+, the location of high quality guns at a low price =14+ . . . DMs based on streetwise should be allowed at +6 for Streetwise-1 and +1 per additional level of expertise.​

So you can see that the suggested difficulties make it impossible for those without expertise to find shady gun dealers! That sort of reasoning from the fiction is acceptable: in effect, the game says only someone who "is acquainted with the ways of local subcultures" can find them (whereas even the naive have a 1-in-6 chance to stumble across a helpfully corrupt official!). These examples obviously set a basis for extrapolation to novel cases. What is going to be harder than finding a shady gun dealer? Not nothing, but not a lot either.

But setting an impossible difficulty for the purpose of stopping the player getting what they want would not be acceptable in my view. That is not reasoning about the fiction. It's just blocking the action declaration.

 

[Manbearcat]

On a serious note, it's ... interesting ... that there are folks who run 5E in ways not wildly inconsistent with your sarcasm, here; and there are folks who run it in ways nearly opposite that. I wasn't particularly online when I was DMing earlier editions, and I wonder if the range was always so ... rangy.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled sarcasm.

It is interesting. Also by design with the DIY, make the game your own, heterogeneity ethos the devs designed into the game (given the reaction against 4e + heavy OSR and Neotrad influences at the time, it’s not very surprising!).

It’s like the Dungeon World of design:

Make rulebooks..leave blanks!

 

[hawkeyefan]

This is a good example, because it is entirely within the DM authority to pull this move, but is not "good" DMing, in that it feels forced and does not lead to interesting or creative gameplay. Per the core loop of 5e, the DM described the situation, the players narrated their solutions to the situation, and the DM narrated the result, all a few times over. The players expect that their choices would be meaningful within the context of the situation, but the fact that it resulted in a fight made them seem not meaningful. You don't trust that the DM is not using their authority over the fiction ("DM narrates...") to force their encounter on to you no matter how you try to avoid it. Nothing in the rules, not even the folk hero background, makes you able to assert agency over the fiction of what the DM narrates, but it is probably the expectation of everyone at the table that a good DM would not do that. And if a DM does that sort of thing often enough, the trust between everyone at the table is broken, leading to problems.

Yeah, that's a good summary of why it seemed problematic in play. There was no indication that anything we did resulted in any real risk. Quite the opposite, actually. Each action we took seemed to go well. We managed to cross the river, limiting the chance of being followed. The rogue went into town on his own and his rolls to gather info went well. The duke's men that were in the Inn were there for something unrelated to the PCs. No rolls were called for at any point to avoid detection. No threat of anyone monitoring the rogue's actions or somehow noticing the party hanging on the outskirts of town.

Nothing was established by the GM that there was a risk of an ambush occurring. So when it did occur, yeah, it felt forced.

I have two thoughts
1. Would anything have made this situation plausible, for example something in the DMs notes about how the farmer was a loyalist, or maybe just that the rogue failed their stealth check without noticing and was followed? If there was something in their prep, they could at least point to it and say they had predetermined something about this particular farmer irrespective of your decisions; aside from that, it's hard to trust that they are truly being neutral, if they are just making that up about the farmer on the spot (even though, again, it's technically within their purview as DM)

I think absolutely there could have been elements that had existed either before hand in the GM's notes on the town, or as part of narration and establishing the scenario. I think they likely would have revealed themselves in some way before the ambush. That there would have been some sense of risk, or at the very least that rolls had been made poorly, indicating that perhaps we missed something important or relevant along the way.

2. Would this situation feel any different if there was not a specific rule for the "folk hero" background? Let's say it's been established that you are a robin hood type, and can sort of tell what kind of common folk would see you as a hero. It seems that your group could take all the same steps and precautions, even without the explicit background feature. The background feature just allows you to skip over some of the roleplay, and establish a little more firmly that, yes, you are objectively recognized by some as a "folk hero." And yet, whether or not there is an explicit rule or feature for your character, you have to trust that the DM won't railroad you into a combat.

That's an interesting question. I think the fact that this is a specific ability does make it seem worse. I mean, this is the rules saying "you can do THIS THING" and it's something I picked as part of character generation, meaning that I want THIS THING to be part of the game.

Would I feel the same as if this had just been action declaration without evoking a specific ability? Maybe not, but in considering it, I probably should.

In sum: no set of rules in the game can really give you player agency in 5e. That can only come with a DM that is not antagonistic and can be trusted to play the world fairly.

I agree for the most part. The distinction I would make is that the rules actually do grant player agency. They also give the ability for the GM to undermine that agency, which to me should only happen when there is a truly compelling reason to do so.

edit: so far the responses range from "totally acceptable" to "plausible" to "clear negation" which maybe gives insight as to why we might be talking past each other in this conversation

Yeah, people have different takes on it, for sure. My preference in the scenario I described is that the GM allow the use of the Folk Hero ability because everything about the fiction and the group and the rolls indicated it should work.

Absent some mitigating factors such as those that have been suggested here in this thread (but which didn't come up in play), I don't know why a GM would not honor it other than to assert their will on the game.

 

[prabe]

I think it depends on context.

So you can see that the suggested difficulties make it impossible for those without expertise to find shady gun dealers! That sort of reasoning from the fiction is acceptable: in effect, the game says only someone who "is acquainted with the ways of local subcultures" can find them (whereas even the naive have a 1-in-6 chance to stumble across a helpfully corrupt official!). These examples obviously set a basis for extrapolation to novel cases. What is going to be harder than finding a shady gun dealer? Not nothing, but not a lot either.

But setting an impossible difficulty for the purpose of stopping the player getting what they want would not be acceptable in my view. That is not reasoning about the fiction. It's just blocking the action declaration.

First, I apologize. Either I have forgotten how to snip gracefully, or there's been a software/site change that makes my former approach not work.

Second, I think I understood you to say there's no consideration in the rules for the GM to say that there's not, e.g., a corrupt official around. That there should always be a chance to find one. (Says something interesting about the presumed setting ...) So, if for some reason the GM reasons from the fiction that there's not one, the only option is to set the difficulty to find one impossibly high. Is that "setting the impossible difficulty for the purpose of stopping the player from getting what they want?"

Third, and I think this is what's tickling in my brain so relentlessly: It seems to me there's a difference, at least in what I guess I'll call intent, between "that doesn't make sense, given what's established in the fiction" and "I don't want that to happen." As GM positions, I mean.

 

[pemerton]

Not sure why this is so contentious. The DM is responsible for everything but what the PC thinks and what their declared actions are.

So does that mean that the action resolution rules - everything from class features like Cunning Action and Second Wind, to spells, to the combat mechanics, to the system of ability checks - are all just suggestions to 5e D&D GMs as to how they might choose to exercise their authority?

Personally I would find that strange, indeed strained, reading.

 

[pemerton]

I think I understood you to say there's no consideration in the rules for the GM to say that there's not, e.g., a corrupt official around. That there should always be a chance to find one. (Says something interesting about the presumed setting ...) So, if for some reason the GM reasons from the fiction that there's not one, the only option is to set the difficulty to find one impossibly high. Is that "setting the impossible difficulty for the purpose of stopping the player from getting what they want?"

I think that's violating the setting. Or rather, if the GM wanted to change the setting so it was less "interesting" (to borrow your parenthetical word), I think this would need to be explained (the game uses the onboard Library program as the in-fiction device for that sort of thing) - or maybe the Streetwise check, when it succeeds, instead of finding the official learns that on this utopic world no officials are corrupt. (That tends to honour the success after a fashion, while conveying the wonder of this particular part of the universe.)

Am I making sense?

 

[prabe]

I think that's violating the setting. Or rather, if the GM wanted to change the setting so it was less "interesting" (to borrow your parenthetical word), I think this would need to be explained (the game uses the onboard Library program as the in-fiction device for that sort of thing) - or maybe the Streetwise check, when it succeeds, instead of finding the official learns that on this utopic world no officials are corrupt. (That tends to honour the success after a fashion, while conveying the wonder of this particular part of the universe.)

Am I making sense?

You are, and you intuited that I was thinking about the possibility of "no corrupt official here" and not "no corrupt official." I live near Washington, DC, and the latter is implausible to me.

 

[hawkeyefan]

So does that mean that the action resolution rules - everything from class features like Cunning Action and Second Wind, to spells, to the combat mechanics, to the system of ability checks - are all just suggestions to 5e D&D GMs as to how they might choose to exercise their authority?

Personally I would find that strange, indeed strained, reading.

That interpretation of the rules would seem to render 5e the epitome of the "Mother May I" label that sometimes comes up and which everyone insists is not true.