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

[Mannahnin]

So, language matters. And apparently, the only language we have for when a GM works in what we, back in our armchairs with a scant description, think of as a sub-optimal manner is that they are, "being a Bad GM."

But, folks, everyone makes mistakes! Even masters in a craft occasionally make poor choices or judgements. That does not make them bad at their craft.

We could really use some language to cover the spectrum between, "I wouldn't have handled that particular moment in game that way," and "That GM just sucks in general".

It would, but we should also be capable of distinguishing between a Bad GM (as in unskilled, not good at the role, creating a generally less-than-fun play experience) and a Bad Person. I would certainly opine that most bad GMs are not bad people. They're just not good at it.

Though I agree that it's also helpful to be able to distinguish between a given unfun play session or bad GM call and the GM being bad in general/consistently. All of us definitely do make mistakes, and not all my sessions are as fun as others.

 

[Composer99]

@Lyxen

(If you're still bothering to read the thread.)

As far as I am aware, outside of the most passive of sandboxes, it's fair to say that there are events in a game setting going on around the player characters. Some of those events might eventually impinge on the PCs' activities. Some of those impinging events might even relate to whatever the PCs are preoccupying themselves with. Some of those events, impinging or not, might be occurring in a more-or-less naturalistic or causal sequence. In a self-contained module, such events are almost certainly going to intersect with the PCs activities simply because of the scope of the module. (Particular ways of modeling this might be, say, Dungeon World's Fronts or the Threat Clocks @pemerton refers to.)

Likewise, NPC factions and entities in the game world might react downstream to what the player characters have done, again in a more-or-less naturalistic or causal fashion. For instance, if the PCs are dungeoncrawling, whoop a bunch of monster rear end, and withdraw for the day, the remaining monsters might very well leave the dungeon with whatever they can carry. Or if the PCs derail the Cult of Doom's plans, the Cult of Doom does some divination work and sends assassins out after the PCs. Or if the PCs gain a reputation for slaying fearsome and dangerous monsters, they may have folk looking up to them as heroes and find it easier to bend the ears of the high and mighty.

However, it does not follow from the fact that such events exist that there is then a plot, by which I mean a DM having a preconceived outcome of the interaction between the events of the game world and the PCs' actions, an outcome that the DM then attempts to enforce.

Now, as it happens, a causal sequence of events is a plot in the most basic sense of the term. But I think the way I have defined the term is more useful with respect to the topic of this thread.

Ideally, someone at the table (usually the DM for the most part in D&D, since this is a D&D thread) establishes a situation - at any scale, from the overall campaign to the specific circumstances of the module - in which the player characters find themselves and the plot that results, such as it is, is the emergent and unplanned, if not necessarily unpredictable, result of the player characters changing the game world as a result of their choices. That is, the in-fiction situation at the start of gameplay is a status quo that the PCs disrupt. And when you get right down to it, a linear adventure is an example of this kind of "status quo leads to PC-initiated disruption", where the PCs must successfully disrupt the status quo situation in the game world in order to advance to the next status quo that they must then also disrupt until completing the adventure. (*)

Suffice to say I cannot agree with your apparent thesis that events which occur in the game but aren't the sole result of player action are of a piece with having a plot (in the sense I have used the term) or with railroading.

---

(*) In such adventures, the question at hand is not "what status quo will the PCs upend to fulfill their goals?" but closer to "will the PCs manage to upend this particular status quo?" What is more, such an adventure, ideally constituted, will allow the manner in which the PCs go about their business and many or most of the downstream consequences arise, emergent and unplanned, from the players' choices.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I would say most GMs are not good at it (I include myself). It's a tough job, and no one wants to do it. The GM is the person who was too slow to step backwards.

 

[Mannahnin]

If you present the players some problems they can try and solve (AKA plot hooks) isn't that what you where calling a railroad?

If you don't present the players with plot hooks, my experience is you are met with silence and blank looks. As for instigation, best case scenario: "I make a perception check to see if there are any mysterious hooded figures sitting in the corner of the tavern".

I haven't seen anyone in this discussion call a plot hook a railroad. Prabe literally just suggested, in the post you're quoting, giving them multiple hooks as well as reminders about other ongoing existing events/issues, so they can choose among several (but non-infinite, to try to avoid decision paralysis) options.

It's a railroad if there's only one choice. And it always leads to the same outcome, even if the players try to do something else.

 

[Mannahnin]

Agreed. And in 5e it's a default - via the selection of PC background.

But backgrounds are still a bit thin to provide hooks for situation. Generally it's relationships - with NPCs and/or among PCs - that will help with this.

Right. This reminds me of a post I saw on Reddit about Knife Theory.


"When writing a character's backstory, it's important to include a certain number of "knives". Knives are essentially anything that the DM can use to raise the stakes of a situation for your character. Anything that can make a conflict personal, like a threatened loved one or the appearance of a sudden enemy. They're called "knives" because the players lovingly forge them and present them to the DM so that the DM can use them to stab the player over and over again."

Knife Theory is an example of players co-authoring parts of the world and setting with the DM. Specifically parts relevant to their character and the character's relationships/history/background/personality.

Character background is an area I think folks in the thread broadly agree is mostly within the player's authority, subject to DM approval for bits that directly conflict with the setting as he's envisioned/written it. But if I were DMing and a player's idea seemed better/cooler, I might still say "Yep!" to an idea/knife in his backstory, and change my setting to suit.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It's a railroad if there's only one choice. And it always leads to the same outcome, even if the players try to do something else.

Well, if that is your definition!

But That's not consistent with what is being said. But I'm seeing people here saying WotC adventures are railroads. But I've DMed several, and I've never seen a situation where there is only one choice.

 

[Umbran]

This is weird.

All RPGing involves the occurrence of events. Someone has to decide how to frame those events ("situation").

You may be up against a thought that, if you have a situation that is comprised of a sequence of events that are likely to occur, that will look like "a plot".

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Right. This reminds me of a post I saw on Reddit about Knife Theory.


"When writing a character's backstory, it's important to include a certain number of "knives". Knives are essentially anything that the DM can use to raise the stakes of a situation for your character. Anything that can make a conflict personal, like a threatened loved one or the appearance of a sudden enemy. They're called "knives" because the players lovingly forge them and present them to the DM so that the DM can use them to stab the player over and over again."

That's great. But I think it's beyond the skill, and level of commitment, of most players.

 

[prabe]

If you present the players some problems they can try and solve (AKA plot hooks) isn't that what you where calling a railroad?

What I was calling a railroad was where there was a foregone conclusion. The PCs will solve this problem that way. These events will happen in this order. Having a PC whose parents were murdered by something that turned them to ice hear about someone/something throwing a snowball through a window (in roughly St. Louis, MO, in roughly early July) isn't a railroad if I have literally no expectations for how the PCs will handle that, IMO.

If you don't present the players with plot hooks, my experience is you are met with silence and blank looks. As for instigation, best case scenario: "I make a perception check to see if there are any mysterious hooded figures sitting in the corner of the tavern".

Well, yes. There's a difference between "here's a problem" (a situation) and "you'll do this and this then that then this than that then these things in some order then fight the BBEG then find out the BBEG was a patsy for some BerBerEG ..."

Instigation? "You're in the tavern during a festival roughly equal in practice to Christmas/Yule. Some kinda ratty guys come into the room where you're having your holiday feast, and one of them starts blathering in what sounds like several languages (you recognize some of them) mashed together. The other people in the bar are either inching away or staring kinda slackly. Oh, one of the ratty guys seems to have a tentacle where his left arm should be. What do you do?"

 

[pemerton]

In this thread there has been reference by more than one poster (most recently @prabe just upthread) to a "spectrum" which has sandboxes at one end.

I think this is an unhelpful and even misleading confusion. It makes discussion of authority over the fiction harder than it needs to be.

So just to be clear: there is a spectrum on which colours lie - I'm not any sort of expert, and tend to suck both as visual artist and critic, but in my mind I can conjure up a spectrum that runs from yellow through orange to red.

Some spectrums are more metaphorical than literal: we might say that there is a metaphorical spectrum from square through pentagon through hexagon through . . . through chiliagon . . . all the way to a circle.

I personally struggle to think of even a metaphorical spectrum that has a triangle at one end and a square at the other.

And cars, trucks, and bicycles are all land vehicles but I don't think they sit on a spectrum at all.

So:

A sandbox involves predominant, even exclusive, GM authority over setting and backstory. (Maybe players contribute some backstory at PC gen, which they and the GM weave into the GM's notes about the setting.)

Many of the GM's setting elements - lairs, prisons, political factions, etc - have latent situations in them.

The players "activate" these situations by declaring the appropriate actions - eg that their PCs cross the hills to find the dragon cave or that their PCs talk to the mayor to try and secure her support in their attempt to overthrow the Baron.

So the players and the GM share situational authority, in the asymmetric fashion just described.

As far as action resolution is concerned, the GM - if they are not going to be self-defeating - has to be generous and permissive in adjudicating the "activating" actions. How other actions are adjudicated, and whether "Let it Ride" applies, is a different thing. I can certainly conceive of a GM who is very protective of his/her sandbox and so makes sure that player-declared actions don't really do much to change the setting (ie Let it Ride does not apply, and the GM manipulates the background fiction to negate possible significant consequences of PC actions).

Now consider the typical "linear" adventure - in D&D terms there are many of these, but Speaker in Dreams (a 3E module) is as good an example as any. In these adventures the GM also exercises backstory authority. The GM also exercises situational authority. And - related to this - whereas the sandbox GM should be very permissive in adjudication of "situation activating" actions, the GM of the linear adventure wants to discourage any such actions which might activate situations that have not already been planned/prepared for - either by express metagame requests to the players, or by using in-fiction techniques to discourage them (eg lots of "There be dragons" signposting), or by using adjudication techniques to block them (such as fiat declarations of failure; stuff like anti-teleport zones is probably on the line between in-fiction and adjudication-based techniques). And in a linear adventure Let it Ride can't apply, because the GM is committed to presenting the upcoming situations whatever the PCs' actions (subject to extreme unavoidable changes in the fiction like detonating a bomb - those actions also risk detonating a metaphorical bomb at the gaming table!).

So we can already see that there is no "spectrum" here, just different allocations of authority.

Now consider (say) Apocalypse World. The backstory authority is shared, as part of PC build. The GM exercises situational authority, exercised in accordance with the principles of the game. These include ask questions and build on the answers, which can mean taking significant suggestions and input on both backstory and situation during the course of play (eg the GM might ask player X, so why is Isle so mad at you? and then the player has to make up some appropriate bit of backstory which also helps inform the character of the current situation). The integrity of action resolution in AW is of course sacrosanct.

Again, no spectrum. Just different allocations of authority.

EDIT: I've just read @Composer99's post not too far upthread. I'm curious how much Composer99 thinks our descriptions of "linear adventure" differ - eg am I describing only a degenerate case? That wasn't my intention, and I don't think I am, but maybe I've missed something!