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

[Ovinomancer]

The difference is table expectations: if, for a given strategic decision, one is expected to pick from those options laid out by the GM (obligating the PCs to follow the GM's lead on campaign direction), then that decision would be non-sandboxy and lower the campaign's sandbox percentage. If instead the expectation is that it's ok for the PCs to make any strategic choice they want (obligating the DM to follow the PCs' lead on campaign direction), then that decision would be sandboxy and increase the campaign's sandbox percentage. (Campaigns run in a style where picking from a laid out list or making an open-ended decision is not a valid dichotomy for how IC strategic decisions are made simply wouldn't fall anywhere on the spectrum I've specified.)

Okay, but this seems a distinction that isn't teasing out a real difference -- it's still a menu, it's just whether or not the players feel bound to pick from the printed menu or if they make choices that are checked against the hidden menu. You still aren't going to be doing anything the GM hasn't prepped in these games, yes?

That's why I'm focusing on campaigns rather than modules/APs/systems. Any given table running a module can decide how often to expect the PCs to follow the module, vs how often to expect the GM to adapt/expand the module's setting to accomodate whatever the PCs decide to do.

For example, a table could use a module and decide that when making top-level strategic decisions on what to do, the players are expected to choose to engage with the module's content. But that same table could simultaneously expect the GM to adapt to unorthodox ways to tackle the content in the book, including (e.g.) travelling off the module map to go on a diplomatic tour to raising a multinational army. That campaign would have a much higher sandbox percentage than a campaign where the table instead expects the players to not only choose to engage with the module's content, but also to stick to one of the expected paths through that content. Conversely, it would have a lower sandbox percentage than a campaign where the GM is expected to follow the players even if the players decide to ignore the module's content entirely.

I'm not sure this is useful unless there's an analysis of what off adventure choices are actually available to the players. You seem to be comparing two things, either follow the GM's breadcrumbs OR do whatever you want the GM will oblige. I'm not sure this is realistic, or that a good sandbox has a high percentage of the latter as a matter of course. If I pull out a setting book with lots of details, for instance, and let players pick which things they want to go engage with, then I'm not really letting them do anything, I'm providing exposition based on the menu from the setting book. But, if I'm running a game like Dungeon World, where the game is entirely reactive to what the players are doing, I don't think this actually qualifies as even more sandboxy. But it does under your criteria.

So, I think there's something lacking in the evaluation, here, and that this missing part is actually 1) quite important and 2) kinda disables the evaluation you're trying to make.

I'm cool with discussions on, and disagreements about, the spectrum's merits as an analytical/discussion tool. I'm just trying to show, against argument to the contrary, that the sandbox spectrum exists and has utility.

And sure, the middle of the spectrum is messy. It's definitely too messy (i.e. imprescise) to make it a useful large-scale cataloging tool, but I think it's still useful for comparing a small number of campaigns to each other (if all such campaigns are of a type that fits on the spectrum, of course). If there happens to be disagreement about which of two campaigns has a higher sandbox percentage, then the further analysis provoked by trying to place the campaigns on the spectrum will itself likely be illuminating, showing either disagreement about what the table expectations are for a given campaign, conceptual differences about what counts as an open-ended decision, or how/whether to weight certain types of decisions over others. In other words, I think the spectrum is useful despite its messiness/imprecision.

I think many games will be in the middle, though, so a tool that only effectively categorizes the extremes is -- well, not a very good spectrum.

 

[pemerton]

The trick ends with someone winning it. Winning the hand ends the hand. Winning the rubber ends the rubber. Don't compare apples and oranges.

But in D&D is there not the winning of combat? The disarming of traps? The solving of riddles? I'm not seeing the deep difference here.

I can imagine playing out an RPG combat with indifference to who is victorious, but this isn't something I would think of as typical in D&D, given all the abilities intended to let people make better or worse decisions in combat (eg action economy, various sorts of rationed resources, etc). It might be something I associate more with CoC or even RQ played in a certain mood.

 

[Lanefan]

Ah, so, you didn't engage win condition, you changed it to end state and engaged that, and would have had a different answer for goals. So it was a semantics argument for you, mostly because you've imported definitional changes. I thought this might be what is going on -- people fighting over the term rather than the concept that was presented with it.

You don't get it: the term brings the concept with it, and if you use the wrong term the wrong concept follows it. It's considerably more than a simple semantics argument.

The state of win-lose cannot be determined without an end state attached, as win-lose is a determination that includes finality. The state of goal achievement, be it en route to a win-lose determination or dissociated from such, does not carry the same sense of finality as multiple goals may need to be achieved to ensure one win.

That said, achieving a goal can be an end state in itself in situations where there is no win-lose determination to be made (e.g. trying to set a personal best time on your evening jog) or when the win-lose state is at most tangential to the goal achieved (e.g. @Manbearcat 's example of successfully defending against a chokehold [goal] yet tapping out anyway [loss]).

 

[Grendel_Khan]

TO EVERYONE DISAGREEING WITH THE PREMISE THAT WIN CONS EXIST IN TTRPGS

I want to throw several things at you so we can collectively evaluate your/our thinking on this. Ready? Go:

The responses to this post--which tries to get at the issue by running through extremely influential and well-known games--that are essentially "Um, I don't really know about that game" are very depressing stuff.

I know these forums are about as 5e-centric as it gets, but sheesh, are people really that uninterested in anything else in the hobby outside of a single system? It's like being a movie fan but only having a deep well of MCU knowledge, and no other cinematic interests or exposure.

 

[prabe]

I know these forums are about as 5e-centric as it gets, but sheesh, are people really that uninterested in anything else in the hobby outside of a single system? It's like being a movie fan but only having a deep well of MCU knowledge, and no other cinematic interests or exposure.

So, would you rather have someone responding to those examples pretending to knowledge they don't have?

For many of us, the games we've played have been the games the groups we were a part of played. As it happens, I've played DW and Alien, and read (a genericized version of) Dogs in the Vineyard. I've read about My Life with Master, and it ... doesn't appeal. Likewise Blades in the Dark. And 4E happens to have been an edition of D&D I skipped, because--as you might guess--it's not a game the people I was gaming with at the time played.

As it happens, I've played a double handful of games that aren't D&D, that @Manbearcat didn't use for those examples, because those were the games people wanted to play and run.

 

[Umbran]

But in D&D is there not the winning of combat?

Winning combat is not winning D&D overall.

The disarming of traps?

You don't win D&D by disarming a trap

The solving of riddles? I'm not seeing the deep difference here.

The difference you apparently are not seeing, though I have said it several times now, is that I am talking about how RPGs, in general, do not intrinsically have win conditions FOR THE GAME OVERALL.

It is that simple.

All this other stuff is a tiresome distraction from that point.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

So, would you rather have someone responding to those examples pretending to knowledge they don't have?

For many of us, the games we've played have been the games the groups we were a part of played. As it happens, I've played DW and Alien, and read (a genericized version of) Dogs in the Vineyard. I've read about My Life with Master, and it ... doesn't appeal. Likewise Blades in the Dark. And 4E happens to have been an edition of D&D I skipped, because--as you might guess--it's not a game the people I was gaming with at the time played.

As it happens, I've played a double handful of games that aren't D&D, that @Manbearcat didn't use for those examples, because those were the games people wanted to play and run.

I'm not saying everyone should be playing all of these games, by any means. I certainly haven't. But they're examples of games that made a significant impact on game design, so I'm just surprised when people are unfamiliar to the point of basically negating the point of comparisons.

But it's more than just that single post and those specific games. It seems (to me) like there's a common refrain in this thread of people using various games as examples of RPG having win conditions, or being finite, and then others responding with, essentially, But not in D&D!

D&D, and 5e in particular, is not uniquely infinite, win-less, etc. Other games might lay out those elements more clearly, but the fact that D&D often doesn't bother isn't evidence that it's different.

 

[pemerton]

The difference you apparently are not seeing, though I have said it several times now, is that I am talking about how RPGs, in general, do not intrinsically have win conditions FOR THE GAME OVERALL.

Well, I already made the point upthread - I can spend an afternoon playing hands of five hundred with no one keeping score. But individual auctions will take place, tricks and hands will be won, but the game ends only when someone has to go to class or go home.

But some five hundred is played in the context of scored games.

Some D&D is played within the context of specified parameters for success. I've already given White Plume Mountain as an example - it's low-hanging fruit, but illustrative of quite a bit of D&D play.

 

[FrogReaver]

I'm not saying everyone should be playing all of these games, by any means. I certainly haven't. But they're examples of games that made a significant impact on game design, so I'm just surprised when people are unfamiliar to the point of basically negating the point of comparisons.

But it's more than just that single post and those specific games. It seems (to me) like there's a common refrain in this thread of people using various games as examples of RPG having win conditions, or being finite, and then others responding with, essentially, But not in D&D!

D&D, and 5e in particular, is not uniquely infinite, win-less, etc. Other games might lay out those elements more clearly, but the fact that D&D often doesn't bother isn't evidence that it's different.

This thread is explicitly a 5e thread. And while I’m game for expanding that discussion a bit in scope its a bit off to complain that people want to discuss 5e in a thread about it.

 

[pemerton]

D&D, and 5e in particular, is not uniquely infinite, win-less, etc. Other games might lay out those elements more clearly, but the fact that D&D often doesn't bother isn't evidence that it's different.

I think this is an important point.

WotC, as a commercial publisher of a RPG it is hoping to sell in pretty large quantities, has a commercial reason to be coy about some of the purposes of play - in part because it's hoping to sell to a market many of whose members individually think that there is a single thing which is good RPGing, but as a group are all thinking of different things!

Hence somewhat endless threads where some people insist it's bad play to build your PC towards optimum capabilities in a game without win conditions and where the point is just to "be" the character in the fiction; while others insist just the opposite, that by not building towards optimum capabilities you're letting your team down (and if that doesn't show an implicit belief in win conditions, then what would?)!