It'd seem to be an interpretation that doesn't bear all that much relation to actual play. Or, it'd put a lot--more than seems reasonable--on things like social contracts and table expectations, to keep play from devolving into "Mother May I."
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D&D 5E Respect Mah Authoritah: Thoughts on DM and Player Authority in 5e
- Thread starter Snarf Zagyg
- Start date
I think so. See my posts upthread about bad GMs! (Two were in AD&D; one was RM.)
As someone - @Campbell, I think - already posted, we have here a hard move without any intimation from a prior soft move, in a context where the player has an ability on their sheet (ie Folk Hero) which has the precise purpose of taking this sort of hard move off the table.
I may now just be parroting Campbell, as I haven't gone back upthread, but I think an appropriate soft move in this sort of context might be Your hosts feed you a rushed breakfast just as the sun is rising. "You'll have to leave," they say. "The Duke's soldiers are searching the countryside, and there's nowhere for you to hide here if they come and search us." Then the resolution framework becomes one of evasion, or skirmish, or whatever else makes sense based on how you leave the house. (Assuming you do. Maybe you decide that you can best defend yourselves from their house, in which case things head in a different direction, which could have implications for your Folk Hero status if you're not careful!)
I am quoting from the Basic PDF:
Page 28: Cunning Action . . . You can take a bonus action on each of your turns in combat. This action can be used only to take the Dash, Disengage, or Hide action.
Page 37: Acolyte Feature - Shelter of the Faithful As an acolyte, you command the respect of those who share your faith . . . You and your adventuring companions can expect to receive free healing and care at a temple, shrine, or other established presence of your faith, though you must provide any material components needed for spells. Those who share your religion will support you (but only you) at a modest lifestyle. You might also have ties to a specific temple . . . While near your temple, you can all upon the priests for assistance, provided the assistance you ask for is not hazardous and you remain in good standing with your temple.
Page 63: Travel Pace While traveling, a group of adventurers can move at a normal, fast, or slow pace, as shown on the Travel Pace table. . . . The travel pace table assumes that characters travel for 8 hours in a day. . . . For each additional hour of travel beyond 8 hours, the character cover the distance shown in the Hour column for their pace, and each character must make a Constitution saving throw at the end of the hour.
Page 69: Combat - Your Turn On your turn, you can move a distance up to your speed and take one action.
Page 71: Actions in Combat When you take your action on your turn, you can take one of the actions presented here, an action you gained from your class or a special feature, or an action that you improvise. . . . When you describe an action not detailed elsewhere in the rules, the DM tells you whether that action is possible and what kind of roll you need to make, if any, to determine success or failure.
Page 37: Acolyte Feature - Shelter of the Faithful As an acolyte, you command the respect of those who share your faith . . . You and your adventuring companions can expect to receive free healing and care at a temple, shrine, or other established presence of your faith, though you must provide any material components needed for spells. Those who share your religion will support you (but only you) at a modest lifestyle. You might also have ties to a specific temple . . . While near your temple, you can all upon the priests for assistance, provided the assistance you ask for is not hazardous and you remain in good standing with your temple.
Page 63: Travel Pace While traveling, a group of adventurers can move at a normal, fast, or slow pace, as shown on the Travel Pace table. . . . The travel pace table assumes that characters travel for 8 hours in a day. . . . For each additional hour of travel beyond 8 hours, the character cover the distance shown in the Hour column for their pace, and each character must make a Constitution saving throw at the end of the hour.
Page 69: Combat - Your Turn On your turn, you can move a distance up to your speed and take one action.
Page 71: Actions in Combat When you take your action on your turn, you can take one of the actions presented here, an action you gained from your class or a special feature, or an action that you improvise. . . . When you describe an action not detailed elsewhere in the rules, the DM tells you whether that action is possible and what kind of roll you need to make, if any, to determine success or failure.
That's obviously just a tiny smattering of what I could have quoted. Those are rules of the game. They clearly give players agency over the content of the shared fiction.
hawkeyefan
Legend
Yeah, that's a good way to put it.
Yup this is exactly the kind of thing I'd want to see. The danger should somehow be made manifest....a soft move prior to the hard move as you guys have described it.
The fact that you just rattled off 3 or 4 possible ways to handle this that put things back in the players' court, presenting them with meaningful choices while the danger looms, is in my opinion a much better way to handle the situation. The danger has now been established as looming, and they have to decide how to address it.
Just having the duke's men show up and forcing a fight is just bleh, and doesn't justify negating the use of a character resource.
Per my earlier post
This is a somewhat pedantic discussion as its about how the rules formally apportion roles and whether player agency comes from the rules or the social context of playing a game with friends. Your view, between this and the other thread, seems to be that whatever agency the players have come from the 300 pages of rules. Further, for you, adjudication of a rule seems to be contained in step 2, "the players describe what they want to do." If a rule says a thing then the PC does that thing, no questions about it. That is how a lot of people view the game, hence the concern for how rules are worded, the dislike of "natural language" that introduces possible contradictions or complications, and the focus on Jeremey Crawford's sage advice to clarify how rules are meant to function. It's also the view of the game that leads to players carving out rules exploits and such, because the rules are inviolable.
My view is that the player can declare what they would like to do, but it is the DM that is interpreting adjudicating what that means within the context of the situation and their reading of the rule text. (In your cunning action example: does the player have a bonus action remaining? If they want to hide, is there a place available for them to hide?* Are they suffering from a condition that would prevent them taking a bonus action? Is there a homebrew spell effect in the area preventing bonus actions?) Since the DM is acting in good faith and using the rules, in practice that means when a player uses cunning action to hide, the same thing happens whether they are at your table or at my table, even though we have a small disagreement about the phrasing of the core gameplay loop as described in the introduction.
* for example:
The rogue uses their cunning action to hide: "I hide behind a nearby pillar" (step 2)
GM: "there isn't a pillar close enough for you to try that" (step 3)
--> it doesn't matter that the rogue is invoking their special ability, the dm is ruling they can't do that
My general point is that "no set of rules in the game can really give you player agency in 5e" by themselves. A game of 5e will involve interpretations and adjudication of rules every session. As stated previously:
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
It's not true in practice. If the DM was massively abusing his power, then yes it would become Mother May I.
Not really. The players "describe what they want to do" (ie declare actions for their PCs). Then these have to be adjudicated and the outcomes of those actions established. I don't think it's super-crucial to allocate that to any particular step - we're not talking about a statute whose provisions, for some reason, might have to be interpreted and applied separately from one another - but if I had to allocate it to a step I would allocate it to Step 3. That is, the adjudication of action resolution is a precursor to and an essential incident of the GM narrating what happens
To me there is a degree of non-sequitur in this. Whether rules should be read in a literal, richer textualist, intentionalist, or purposive fashion (just to call out some possibilities) is separate from thinking that there are rules. Jeremy Crawford's remarks may be helpful for some interpretive methods, but may be irrelevant to others.
As far as "natural language" is concerned: Apocalypse World is written in natural language, except for its use of "tags", which are analogous to keywords in 4e D&D. 5e also uses keywords in places (many PC build elements have keywords; there are more damage-type keywords than in 4e D&D; there are spell schools; there are weapon types; etc). 4e D&D uses natural language plus keywords also, but in the case of its power formatting relies more heavily than 5e in its spell formatting on standardised bundles of information.
My favourite RPG rules are the Burning Wheel rules, which do use natural language, have very few charts, and use far fewer keywords than 5e D&D (weapon lengths, range bands, and spell elements are the ones I can think of at the moment).
These issues of drafting style and approaches to rules interpretation don't really bear upon whether or not the rules of the game contemplate players enjoying agency in respect of the shared fiction.
There's a reason that D&D play is prone to rules exploits, which has nothing to with player agency. It's because the basic approach to PC build - and here I mean the full specification of a PC which in D&D often includes spells with associated mechanics as well as fiction, and equipment, both magical and non-magical, of which the same is true, as well as class, race/heritage, feats, skills, stats, etc - involves mushing many distinct elements together, which have multiple points of interaction (multiple sources of temp hp; multiple bonuses to hit; changes to stat numbers; enhanced movement abilities; etc, etc) both with one another and with various resolution subsystems. The game also lacks a uniform resolution system, which means when subsystems collide there is no answer to how to resolve them (eg DEX, movement speed, and actions-per-round all seem like they should be fictionally correlated but mechanically are not; so the haste spell need separate rules for its affect on initiative, dodging, movement rate, attacks per round etc - whereas in Burning Wheel (for example) it's enough for it to grant a +2D bonus to Speed and then all the rest is just picked up by that).
In RPGs that don't use the D&D paradigm, those sorts of break points do not emerge. Can you give me examples of rules exploits in Burning Wheel? RuneQuest? Classic Traveller? Apocalypse World? Marvel Heroic RP?
There's another aspect of the RPG design legacy that creates break points in the rules, as Ron Edwards explains here:
PC building in contemporary D&D contains elements the purist-for-system legacy, but rather than defending against "gamism" modern D&D PC building is also designed to reward skilled play, by permitting the choosing of options that will synergise well together and make a more mechanically effective PC. It's not a surprise that this sort of design has break points.
in these games [ie purist-for-system: think RuneQuest or Rolemaster], the imagined universe is made of "points." Therefore character creation and often resolution are often characterized by layering: paying points to get values for named scores, which themselves are mathematically derived to produce effective values. Interestingly, in-game money and possessions are often considered merely another facet of the universe that can be expressed in these points. This relationship between points and reality seems very well entrenched in Purist for System design, which is understandable, as it provides concrete insights to the internal-cause heart of the game that a player can latch onto prior to play. . . .
In this sort of design, there's no possible excuse for any imperfections, including scale-derived breakdowns of the fundamental point/probability relationships. The system must be cleanly and at the service of the element(s) being emphasized, in strictly in-game-world terms. A good one is elegant, consistent, applicable to anything that happens in play, and clear about its outcomes. It also has to have points of contact at any scale for any conceivable thing. It cannot contain patch-rules to correct for inconsistencies; consistency is the essence of quality. . . .
Another common problem is rules-bloat, which usually creeps into Simulationist game text as a form of anti-Gamist defense. I suggest that adding more layers to character creation is a poor idea, as it only introduces more potential points of broken Currency. I suggest instead that the most effective "defense" is to avoid ratios in one's layering, as in Godlike. More generally, beyond a certain point, anti-Gamist defensive rules design has a negative effect: given an increased number rules and punctilios, players simply punt in terms of understanding the system, and the GM has to "be" the entire game. This is exceptionally difficult in games like Rolemaster or GURPS (perhaps less so in Dread or Call of Cthulhu). Therefore the effort - to preserve the integrity of the Simulationist experience - often backfires as play gets harder and more full of speed-bumps rather than easier.
Rules-bloat can also result from the design and writing process itself. Cogitating about in-game causes can transform itself, at the keyboard, into a sort of Exploration of its own, which results in very elaborate rules-sets for situational modifiers, encumbrance, movement, technology, prices of things, none of which is related to actual play of the game with actual people. During the writing process, "what if" meets "but also" and breeds tons of situational rules modifiers. When this effect hits Currency, you get tons of layering in the form of prerequisites and nuances of described competency (e.g. Awful vs. Really Bad vs. Mediocre). The result is often what I like to call Paying to Suck, which is to say that character creation includes paying many points merely for the character to be bad or barely-adequate at things.
My recommendation is to know and value the virtues of Simulationist play, specifically refined toward the goals of a particular subset (as listed or make up your own), and to drive toward them with gusto. Don't spin your wheels defending your design against some other form of play.
In this sort of design, there's no possible excuse for any imperfections, including scale-derived breakdowns of the fundamental point/probability relationships. The system must be cleanly and at the service of the element(s) being emphasized, in strictly in-game-world terms. A good one is elegant, consistent, applicable to anything that happens in play, and clear about its outcomes. It also has to have points of contact at any scale for any conceivable thing. It cannot contain patch-rules to correct for inconsistencies; consistency is the essence of quality. . . .
Another common problem is rules-bloat, which usually creeps into Simulationist game text as a form of anti-Gamist defense. I suggest that adding more layers to character creation is a poor idea, as it only introduces more potential points of broken Currency. I suggest instead that the most effective "defense" is to avoid ratios in one's layering, as in Godlike. More generally, beyond a certain point, anti-Gamist defensive rules design has a negative effect: given an increased number rules and punctilios, players simply punt in terms of understanding the system, and the GM has to "be" the entire game. This is exceptionally difficult in games like Rolemaster or GURPS (perhaps less so in Dread or Call of Cthulhu). Therefore the effort - to preserve the integrity of the Simulationist experience - often backfires as play gets harder and more full of speed-bumps rather than easier.
Rules-bloat can also result from the design and writing process itself. Cogitating about in-game causes can transform itself, at the keyboard, into a sort of Exploration of its own, which results in very elaborate rules-sets for situational modifiers, encumbrance, movement, technology, prices of things, none of which is related to actual play of the game with actual people. During the writing process, "what if" meets "but also" and breeds tons of situational rules modifiers. When this effect hits Currency, you get tons of layering in the form of prerequisites and nuances of described competency (e.g. Awful vs. Really Bad vs. Mediocre). The result is often what I like to call Paying to Suck, which is to say that character creation includes paying many points merely for the character to be bad or barely-adequate at things.
My recommendation is to know and value the virtues of Simulationist play, specifically refined toward the goals of a particular subset (as listed or make up your own), and to drive toward them with gusto. Don't spin your wheels defending your design against some other form of play.
PC building in contemporary D&D contains elements the purist-for-system legacy, but rather than defending against "gamism" modern D&D PC building is also designed to reward skilled play, by permitting the choosing of options that will synergise well together and make a more mechanically effective PC. It's not a surprise that this sort of design has break points.
Aren't these all red herrings, or perhaps non-sequiturs? I mean, how does pointing to the action economy rules, which limit bonus actions to one per turn, show that the rules don't give players agency? All you're doing is stating the rule more fully.
Likewise the need for there to be a place to hide. That's implicit in the idea of declaring (as one's PC) I take cover and hide or I turn invisible and hide or whatever it might be. The general point is that most action declarations rely upon fictional positioning beyond the mere fact that the PC is not dead or unconscious. But that's as true of Apocalypse World as it is of 5e D&D, and would anyone use that as a basis for asserting that there is no player agency in AW?
Your example doesn't show that the player lacks agency. It just shows that your GM is not very good at conveying the fiction!, because - assuming, of course, good faith on the part of the player - the player believed that there was a pillar nearby and yet the fiction didn't contain one.
Of course misunderstandings about the shared fiction are also possible, but it seems to me that those who argue the GM has all the agency in the game might think the GM is under an especially stringent duty to make sure that the fiction is communicated clearly.
The presence of a homebrew effect that prevents bonus actions is much the same as the presence or absence of a nearby pillar - it's just more fictional positioning. But it does raise a couple of further questions. First, wouldn't the player suspect the presence of such an effect, because the GM should be narrating the fiction? - eg this might be analogous to the reality-warping effect of a beholder's central eye ray in 4e D&D, which limits characters to basic actions only; or the debilitating whispers of a 4e mad wraith that dazes all characters in the AoE. The idea of an effect on one's capacity to do things that one doesn't notice seems weird to me.
Second, what are good GMing principles for the use of secret elements of fictional positioning to thwart players' attempted actions? AW suggests one answer: soft moves before hard ones. If in doubt, I would say that a 5e D&D GM might adopt the same principle.
5e is no different in this respect from any other RPG. Hence if this is sufficient reason to think that players in 5e lack agency, they lack agency in all RPGs. Yet we all know that players in RPGs like Burning Wheel and Apocalypse World enjoy agency over the shared fiction, as established via the resolution systems of those games. Therefore your general point must be wrong.
loverdrive
Prophet of the profane (She/Her)
And a GM rarely has to juggle a whole wizard's spelllist, and even when they do, it's not like they have to conserve resources for next five encounters of this adventuring day.
As of rulings, in my experience, whoever understands the rules best contributes to rulings the most. Yeah, often the game master and the rule guru are the same person, but not always.
And do they have to? No. There's no fundamental law of gaming that requires a game master to do prepwork. Ain't no roleplaying police will kick down the door and lock them up.
My argument is not that players in dnd 5e lack agency. My argument is that player agency stems more from the dynamic among everyone at the table than from the rules specifically, and that a ruleset in an rpg cannot guarantee player agency without trusting that the dm is trying to ensure a fun game (unlike, for example, in a game of blackjack or chess, where your opponent is trying to win. DMs who set win conditions for themselves in dnd can deny player agency in all sorts of ways, some infamous). As I've said, they have plenty of agency--they control what their characters do (step 2). In response, the dm interprets and adjudicates, along the lines that you describe (step 3).
Recall, in the other thread someone quoted this exact gameplay loop at called it "zero agency." Their basis for saying this was that while the player could describe what action their character took, the dm could narrate any result. You seemed to agree. This surprised me, because while it might be formally true of the core gameplay loop as articulated in the 5e introduction, it doesn't correspond to what the dm actually does at any table worth playing at.
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
Tracking one spell list for one wizard is paltry in comparison to running multiple NPCs, including spellcasters and other monsters.
True. You could improv and make it even harder. Prep work may take longer, but it's much easier than improvising well. I know, because I improvise most of my stuff. It was much easier way back when I took the time to prep most of it.
teitan
Legend
MY thoughts, the DM's role is that of an impartial judge or referee. The story is actually in what the players do. The idea of the DM as a storyteller is wonderful and all but it leads to some bad adventure design and interpretations of rule 0 undermining the intent.
The DM is there to set and interpret the rules and present the scenario, laying out situations that players find themselves in and reacting to the players, that is his role as a storyteller. His role as a judge/referee is to determine how the rules impact the players and his scenario. He needs to be impartial so the scenario that has been designed can't be this elaborately detailed plot because in almost every case, unless the PCs are skyrimming it, the PCs will find ways to circumvent that elaborate story.
Rule 0 gets down to speed and ease of play, interpreting rules on the fly or implementing rulings, the players don't interpret and implement the rulings, the DM does. A good DM will do this based on consensus.
My own table rule is that we will agree very quickly on a fast ruling for something in question and then look it up or argue about it after the session in order to keep the game going and everyone has agreed to this and we have nearly always come to a satisfactory compromise and even when it was unsatisfactory it was acceptable (I even wound up being correct in the end actually).
This even gets down to what optional rules are implemented in the game and laid out in session 0 by the DM. I try to make sure people understand what is an optional rule in the 3 books and what is an actual core rule and use the handy dandy list available here:
Some of which actually surprise people that they are optional rules such as multiclassing and feats. We will discuss what will be part of the game, what races, classes etc. and themes that will be explored. I am not someone who ascribes to the "a good DM's job is to say 'yes' to his players" in that regard. Yes a good DM's job is to say yes, but it's also to provide a solid foundation and set expectations which includes atmosphere and tone and some options are not good for the tone a DM may be going for in a given campaign. That said, 99 times out of 100 I will do my best to figure out how to bring a player's character idea into a world IF I am given time to figure out how to do that. I am a firm believer that more people really need to read the DMG and more people need to quit saying "you don't need to read this book to play D&D" because if we did quit saying that so much there would be a lot less entitled players trying to tell DM's what to do because they would have a much better understanding of what the DM's job really is...
The DM is there to set and interpret the rules and present the scenario, laying out situations that players find themselves in and reacting to the players, that is his role as a storyteller. His role as a judge/referee is to determine how the rules impact the players and his scenario. He needs to be impartial so the scenario that has been designed can't be this elaborately detailed plot because in almost every case, unless the PCs are skyrimming it, the PCs will find ways to circumvent that elaborate story.
Rule 0 gets down to speed and ease of play, interpreting rules on the fly or implementing rulings, the players don't interpret and implement the rulings, the DM does. A good DM will do this based on consensus.
My own table rule is that we will agree very quickly on a fast ruling for something in question and then look it up or argue about it after the session in order to keep the game going and everyone has agreed to this and we have nearly always come to a satisfactory compromise and even when it was unsatisfactory it was acceptable (I even wound up being correct in the end actually).
This even gets down to what optional rules are implemented in the game and laid out in session 0 by the DM. I try to make sure people understand what is an optional rule in the 3 books and what is an actual core rule and use the handy dandy list available here:
Some of which actually surprise people that they are optional rules such as multiclassing and feats. We will discuss what will be part of the game, what races, classes etc. and themes that will be explored. I am not someone who ascribes to the "a good DM's job is to say 'yes' to his players" in that regard. Yes a good DM's job is to say yes, but it's also to provide a solid foundation and set expectations which includes atmosphere and tone and some options are not good for the tone a DM may be going for in a given campaign. That said, 99 times out of 100 I will do my best to figure out how to bring a player's character idea into a world IF I am given time to figure out how to do that. I am a firm believer that more people really need to read the DMG and more people need to quit saying "you don't need to read this book to play D&D" because if we did quit saying that so much there would be a lot less entitled players trying to tell DM's what to do because they would have a much better understanding of what the DM's job really is...
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