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

[billd91]

Is everybody here still playing the original campaign they were in when they first picked up a d20?

Does it matter that they’re not if it’s possible they could be?

 

[Ovinomancer]

It isn't that simple - D&D, with life-or-death stakes, task-focus and tactical orientation bring us to a naive conclusion that life, or success at some task, equals a win. But D&D is a game that's remained fairly close to its wargame roots, and we can look farther afield and find that the win condition is our choice, not defined by the game - Ten Candles is an example of this, in that the characters WILL DIE, and will not have any indication if anything the try to achieve before death will have an impact on the fictional world. It isn't a game about achievement, it is a game about what happens as you try.

This is misplaced. D&D is never played without a goal -- the rules may not tell us what goal, but they don't do anything unless a goal is in mind. They are conflict resolution rules -- they don't do anything without a conflict. Once a conflict is established, we have win conditions again.

Same with 10 candles -- the conflict there doesn't include survival, just like conflict in D&D doesn't include finding out if Alpha Gamma III's orbit can be stabilized to save the stone-age civilization living there but without violating the Prime Directive. This just established different boundaries, and what win conditions (goals) are viable within the game.

 

[chaochou]

the win condition is our choice, not defined by the game

And I've said this all along, while another poster denies it.

The game as an abstract doesn't have a win condition.

But the game in its specifics does have win conditions, and the Curse of Strahd excerpt I've posted (twice now to crickets from the people who claim otherwise) defines the win condition for that scenario, while the DMG gives tables of ideas for other win conditions for other specific instantiations of the game.

Choose your own win condition =/= No win condition.

 

[Fenris-77]

Is everybody here still playing the original campaign they were in when they first picked up a d20?

So that would have been, huh lemme think, 1987 perhaps using the Moldvay box and B2. Loved it, but it hasn't been running for 34 years. I think it lasted about two or three months if memory serves.

 

[chaochou]

I think it lasted about two or three months if memory serves.

Oh. Someone on here was telling me that the game is infinite? They must have been chatting bs.

 

[Aldarc]

Is everybody here still playing the original campaign they were in when they first picked up a d20?

Help me! I can't stop playing this game. I'm stuck in a no-win scenario! I wish I could say "Game over, man! Game over!" but I just can't. Please, somebody, help me.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Well, yes; sooner or later all the players and the DM are bound to die of old age. For these purposes, however, I'm defining infinity to mean the rest of my life; and though I've yet to succeed*, every campaign I've ever started has been done on the basis of "I intend to run this for the rest of my life provided people - including me - are interested in playing in it".

* - ongoing campaign is, obviously, still ongoing; so success/fail state remains TBD.

Wait, you're redefining infinite? Interesting approach, but it doesn't actually change anything. You can call your game infinite, but that doesn't refute the points made.

@billd91 beat me to the punch with the analogy of a sports team, or league. Players come and go, individual games are won and lost as are season championships and so forth, but the intent of all involved is that the team (and-or league) will go on forever.

Not all teams and-or leagues succeed in that intent, of course; but nobody ever starts a team or league with the intent of only operating for a fixed number of years.

I've already addressed this argument.

 

[Campbell]

By reasoning displayed here World of Warcraft is also an infinite game with no win conditions. So is Gloomhaven.

I think there is often a basic lack of willingness to even consider roleplaying games as like designed games with objectives and reward systems (progression systems but also what actions are rewarded by making them more effective). People are often unwilling to look at the animating forces of play. Basically what gives this thing momentum besides the current fiction - the things that sustain interesting gameplay over time.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Does it matter that they’re not if it’s possible they could be?

Probably. I don't see all the fuss about it. Replace the words "win conditions" with "goals of play" and then no one will really disagree. There are goals that the players will want to achieve in play the same way anyone playing a game will want, whether it's a baseball player hitting a double or a team winning a pennant or a kid winning at Chutes and Ladders.

We should all be able to understand what's being said instead of worrying about the semantic argument of whether D&D is winnable at the conceptual level.

The win conditions or goals of play for D&D and most RPGs are different from other games in that the participants decide them, often during play, and they'll probably change at many points. But that doesn't mean they don't exist.

 

[prabe]

The win conditions or goals of play for D&D and most RPGs are different from other games in that the participants decide them, often during play, and they'll probably change at many points. But that doesn't mean they don't exist.

Seems to me as though another difference is that who won in most games is decided at the end of the game. In D&D, that's not generally the way it works. At most, the win/loss conditions may serve to end the game.