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

[Crimson Longinus]

Those posters speculating about when Force is or is not acceptable or appropriate: Have you ever GMed a RPG without using Force?

If you haven't, I suggest that you try it. I think it will help you orient your position a bit more clearly.

Answering that question would require us to have a clear definition of force, which is not gonna happen.

But I've run six session of my new 5e campaign now, and I don't recall anything that I would recognise as clear use of force. Of anything older than this it is simply too long to remember.

 

[FrogReaver]

Those posters speculating about when Force is or is not acceptable or appropriate: Have you ever GMed a RPG without using Force?

If you haven't, I suggest that you try it. I think it will help you orient your position a bit more clearly.

I'm not sure why saying that force can be acceptable automatically makes you think our games inherently feature force of any sufficient amounts to register?

 

[Lanefan]

This is, again, confusing form with function. I've already shown that it's not about revealing too much information, but just being concise about it. You can go either way. To say, though, that you can give statblocks in any edition is rather missing quite a lot of information -- it's not about statblocks, but about how 4e organized the bits of play. I can surely have 1 hitpoint monsters in any edition and give the statblocks, but how those function in play cognitively - on both the GM and player sides - is vastly different. Every edition other than 4e requires that this kind of thing be balanced by the GM in real-time, with either lots of effort and cognitive workload on encounter balancing or on using Force in encounter to manage divergence from intent.

Or the DM throws balance to the wind, runs the combat straight-up, and lets things play out as they may.

This would be a problem in 3e with its steep power curve, but the TSR editions and 5e are much more forgiving and allow a much wider "CR range" to be viable as foes or encounters. It's only in 4e that balance takes front-and-centre precedence over everything else.

On the player side, the cognitive workload to situation within the fiction engagement is also higher outside of 4e -- I need to understand how that statblock operates at a much deeper level of analysis than I do with a 4e minion, and what fiction that represents is going to vary wildly. My ability to evaluate the fiction and make choices requires quite a lot more before I'm on the same page as the GM.

If I'm a player and in mid-combat I find myself busy thinking about the numeretic statblock of what I'm fighting rather than imagining the visuals of the situation then something's gone very wrong.

I'm also not at all averse to trial-and-error or trial-by-guess as an in-fiction (and at-table!) learning method. I'm starting to get a sense that some here very much dislike trial-and-error...or, more precisely, dislike the potential for making errors and thus want all the parameters (even those unknown to the PCs) laid out up front. Sorry, but I've no sympathy here.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Or the DM throws balance to the wind, runs the combat straight-up, and lets things play out as they may.

Yes, I addressed this, it tosses this on the player's shoulders to have to try to discern, usually while being Mushroomed, whether or not this is a viable situation. When the GM abandons any duty to the fiction and just lets it fly, it always lands on the players. Unfortunately, this is usually accompanied by the GM chastising the players for failing what was obvious to the GM but what the GM let happen anyway.

This would be a problem in 3e with its steep power curve, but the TSR editions and 5e are much more forgiving and allow a much wider "CR range" to be viable as foes or encounters. It's only in 4e that balance takes front-and-centre precedence over everything else.

I violently disagree with this -- in every edition combats are swingy with very little perturbance. I have no idea why you think that TSR era or 5e was a place where the GM didn't have to consider encounter strength because the players could handle whatever. TSR era was full of GMs not caring about encounter balance, but that wasn't because PCs were resilient but because killing PCs was acceptably normal and blamed on the players' poor play when it happened. It's fairly gross the level of "not my fault" that occurs that then lands of "players should have played better."

If I'm a player and in mid-combat I find myself busy thinking about the numeretic statblock of what I'm fighting rather than imagining the visuals of the situation then something's gone very wrong.

Ah, so immersion is not what you care about at all! Cool. Because, in a real fight, a combatant is very much paying attention to all of the things that the stats summarize and that you're not thinking of in your cool cinematic playthrough in your head. What you want isn't immersion, it's entertaining moments to visualize like a movie. Why this gets labelled as immersion, I'm not sure, it's just run-of-the-mill escapism.

I'm also not at all averse to trial-and-error or trial-by-guess as an in-fiction (and at-table!) learning method. I'm starting to get a sense that some here very much dislike trial-and-error...or, more precisely, dislike the potential for making errors and thus want all the parameters (even those unknown to the PCs) laid out up front. Sorry, but I've no sympathy here.

Yeah, I'm very certain that you're a big fan of Mushrooming players as the norm. As for errors, you clearly aren't at my table, where errors and mistakes are grist for the mill. These happen even when you aren't Mushrooming players to force them.

 

[Lanefan]

The inclusion of mechanics doesn't replace standard narration. It's typically in addition to the narration. The GM's still going to describe the events of play, they're just going to add in the meaningful and relevant mechanical bits.

I quoted this bit, because I think there's a useful bit in here.

Why would the players not see the GM's rolls?

To me, that's a really basic summary of the larger discussion about player facing mechanics. Why hide rolls? There may be more than one reason, but the relevant one is so that the players don't know the result of the roll....which will allow a GM to decide the result as he likes without their knowledge.

Rolling in the open means he cannot do that (or at least it becomes much more difficult to do it) without the players knowing.

This is the advantage of player facing mechanics/processes at the most fundamental. Do things in the open, and you can't hide them.

Doesn't matter if the rolls are hidden or open if you're honest about the results; and sheer convenience has me rolling behind the screen as it's easier to reach. That said, if the players decided their PCs were going to do nothing but stand off and watch I could always get them to roll for the Kraken and-or the boat occupants.

I don't quite see it that way. The PCs see the father and daughter struggling on the boat, they see the kraken's tentacles attacking, they see kraken in the distance, an obviously enormous creature with just a part of it breaking the surface.

In seeing these things, the characters would have a sense of the danger and the scope of the creature and the capabilities of the father and the traits that the little girl would have. Do the characters know them precisely? No. But sharing that information with the players informs the players of information that the characters would know.

Or guess.

Is there a stricture saying this shared information has to be accurate?

Is it more precise than what the characters know? At times, it may be, yes. Does that make it "meta"? My guess would be that for you it would be. And yet my counter would be that me having to rely on someone else's imprecise language to describe the scene would render me much less informed than the character would be, and therefore is far more meta.

No, he was described as a soldier. Clearly, he appears to be a soldier, and likely has a weapon that he's using, and the PCs see how he wields it. There absolutely is a way of telling.

Unless he's in uniform, what visually differentiates a soldier from anyone else who either knows how to swing a sword or knows how to make it look good?

Oh stop it. That could be true of everything all the time, so therefore nothing is certain!!!

Such exteme hypotheticals are useless.

Such extreme hypotheticals have happened, and in not too different a situation.

Played situation: party reaches a lake. The far shore of the lake is crawling with demons (this is why the party are here, to assess their strength and numbers and report back). On the lake is a harmless-looking slightly-older guy in a rowboat with a fishing pole and a line in the water; seemingly safe where he is. Party think they should check and make sure he's OK, but get distracted by something or other (attention span was not their strong suit!) and then forget about him; when they remember later and look, he's gone.

The PCs carry on, and on later finding the rowboat abandoned on the shore they just assume the demons got the guy.

This insistence that folks keep putting forth that they know when they're being railroaded is interesting. I agree that at times it can be incredibly easy to notice. Some railroading is very obvious. But some is not. Some is very subtle, and more a product of the system working as designed than as anything the GM is actively doing.

I'm less concerned about the obvious stuff, because in most cases it's obvious (obviously!) but also because typically that's an example of poor GMing (except in those cases where the players may be aware of it and have accepted it).

But in cases where maybe a GM has an idea in his head about how things should go, and then everything goes that way largely because there's nothing about the rules or processes that act as a check against that.....those are more what I'm on guard for, as a GM and as a player.

If it's subtle enough that I don't notice it and the game is otherwise a good time, I've no reason to care.

And there's times when even an obvious railroad can make for a better game. It just needs to be done sparingly.

 

[FrogReaver]

* First, I build the PCs - Thurgon, a knight of a holy military order (the Knights of the Iron Tower), and his sorcerer sidekick Aramina. The GM tells me that we're starting play on the Pomarj-Ulek border - that's a bit warmer than I had expected (in my initial conception Thurgon is rather Germanic) but I roll with it. The backstory I've written for Thurgon includes that "Thurgon left the Iron Tower only weeks ago. The Knight Commander of the order sent him forth into the wilderness. He does not know why." And also that Thurgon has not set foot there in Auxol, his ancestral estate, for over 5 years, since he left to take service with the Iron Tower.

Let's explore how a very similar story emerges in living sandbox play.

All of this you listed above is backstory and is applicable to living sandbox play as well (only caveat is that the GM would have some power to veto particular background elements). There's no divergence yet assuming the background was accepted.

* Now there are some ambiguities in Thurgon's background as represented by some build elements: there is an Affiliation with the Order of the Iron Tower; and also a reputation as The Last Knight of the Iron Tower. So it's not clear if the Tower has fallen, or is falling. The GM doesn't push for certainty in that respect.

When it comes to whether the Iron Tower Order has fallen the GM would have some notes regarding them and their enemies. He would then proceed to use a non-player facing mechanic to determine what happened to them. The players wouldn't necessarily learn of this happening unless they went out of their way to explore it.

Instead, he starts fairly low-key and as one might expect: we (that is, Aramina and Thurgon) are travelling along the river frontier (between the settled lands of Ulek and the wilder lands of the forest and the Pomarj), where there are old forts of the order (now abandoned) and also abandoned settlements.

No issue kicking off a D&D sandbox campaign in such a manner - especially one with so much backstory.

* At one of the homestead, I declared a couple of checks: a Homestead-wise check (untrained) to learn more about the circumstances of abandonment of this particular ruined homestead, which succeeded, and hence (in this case) extracted some more narration of backstory from the GM; and then a Scavenging check, looking for the gold that the homesteaders would have left behind in their panic and which the orcs would have been too lazy to find.

D&D Sandbox players wouldn't necessarily declare their own checks, but instead would say something like I investigate the area for clues about what caused this homestead to be abandoned. I also check the obvious spots for where there might be gold. Drawers, underneath mattresses, chests, etc.

Nearly everything so far fits nicely into a D&D sandbox campaign.

Unfortunately this second check failed, which meant that Orcs from a raiding party had virtually infiltrated the homestead before I noticed them. Here we have an attempt at a player-authored plot moment, but the failure tilts the balance of narrational and hence situational authority back to the GM. The fight with the Orcs engaged Beliefs and Instincts, so there were local moments that expressed Thurgon's character in this bigger GM-established context.

And now we have our first major difference with typical D&D sandbox play and story now. Your check for gold determined the presence of the orcs. In a living world sandbox the most likely reason for encountering the orcs might be the PC's lingering to long triggering a behind the scenes GM check to see if the orcs arrived. Most likely the orcs engage the PC's in combat.

* The Orcs (as the GM narrated things) were part of a larger raiding party, with mumakil. I think the GM was hoping I might chase the mumakil, but I have no animal handling, animal lore etc and so the mumakil remained nothing but mere colour.

Sounds very much like typical D&D living sandbox play. Players can choose to engage or not engage with elements presented.

The larger raiding party was chased off by a force of Elves, again narrated by the GM.

Very possible in sandbox play (probably based on triggering event) instead of however the Elves were generated in the Story now fiction.

I wasn't surprised that Elves should show up - my GM loves Elves! I tried an untrained Heraldry check to recognise the Elves' arms, and failed - so the Elven leader was not too taken by me! In this there was cross-narration by me and the GM, but it ran in the same direction: as I was saying (in character) that I don't recognise the Elven leader's arms and wondered who he was, he (spoken by the GM) was telling me that he didn't like my somewhat discourteous look.

For the same action a D&D GM would probably call for a history check and the playthrough afterwards could be very similar.

I don't know what, if anything, the GM had in mind for the Elves, but one of Thurgon's Beliefs was (at that time) that fame and infamy shall no longer befall my ancestral estate. So I invited the Elf to travel with his soldiers south to Auxol, where we might host them. The GM had the Elf try and blow me off, but I was serious about this and so called for a Duel of Wits.

Seems very possible for sandbox play (though sandbox play doesn't require such in depth back grounds, though it isn't hostile to them either) just replace duel of wits with persuasion and the same thing happens in living sandbox D&D.

Unfortunately my dice pool was very weak compared to the Elf's (6 Will dice being used for untrained Persuasion, so slightly weaker than 3 Persuasion dice vs 7 Will dice and 6 Persuasion dice) and so despite my attempt as a player to do some clever scripting I was rebuffed by the Elf without getting even a compromise. Here we have a player-authored plot moment. Although it ended in failure for the PC, it was all about what I as a player had brought into the situation. I'm pretty sure the GM hadn't anticipated this. So I don't know what he anticipated for the Elves' departure, but in the game it followed my failure to persuade them to join me.

Given how closely the living sandbox play mimics this I don't see why the same things aren't being said of it.

And to play devil's advocate a moment - who brought the orcs in, who brought the elves in, the whole situation wasn't about what you as a player brought into the situation - though a good portion of it was?

 

[FrogReaver]

Story before is about pre-authorship of plot, of resolution. @FrogReaver's example of the PC striking a deal with the faction looks to me like story before, because it seems to me that the options for that interaction are already foreclosed - either the PC walks away, or the PC agrees to raid the outpost - and then the GM pulls out the outpost maps and notes they just happened to have ready-to-hand! Of course I can't say this for sure, because @FrogReaver's example didn't describe how any of the fiction was actually established, so I'm conjecturing based on a general sense of how D&D is often played.

If your takeaway is that such an example is 'foreclosed' then your not understanding what I'm saying about living sandbox D&D play. The options you listed were examples of options not an exhaustive list. The PC's could literally do anything. Assassinate both faction leaders to cause the war to escalate, try to place both factions into a bidding war for their services - essentially any crazy thing they think they want to try to do can be accommodated in living sandbox play. Or more importantly they don't have to engage with it at all- if they decide they aren't interested in engaging with the faction war they can move on and have it fade into a background element.

It really makes me feel like you aren't listening to what I'm saying about the playstyle.

 

[Lanefan]

Yes, I addressed this, it tosses this on the player's shoulders to have to try to discern, usually while being Mushroomed, whether or not this is a viable situation.

Which - your ongoing and derogatory references to mushrooming aside - very often mirrors the situations of the PCs: they meet some new foe and have to figure out on the fly what makes it tick and whether the best option is to fight, run, parlay, ignore, or whatever.

When the GM abandons any duty to the fiction and just lets it fly, it always lands on the players. Unfortunately, this is usually accompanied by the GM chastising the players for failing what was obvious to the GM but what the GM let happen anyway.

I violently disagree with this -- in every edition combats are swingy with very little perturbance. I have no idea why you think that TSR era or 5e was a place where the GM didn't have to consider encounter strength because the players could handle whatever.

Consider, yes. Fine-tune to the degree expected by 3e-4e, certainly not.

TSR era was full of GMs not caring about encounter balance, but that wasn't because PCs were resilient but because killing PCs was acceptably normal and blamed on the players' poor play when it happened. It's fairly gross the level of "not my fault" that occurs that then lands of "players should have played better."

Heh - sometimes when a character dies I'll congratulate the player for good play; an example might be when a player intentionally has a low-wisdom character do something unwise and gets it killed in the process.

Ah, so immersion is not what you care about at all! Cool. Because, in a real fight, a combatant is very much paying attention to all of the things that the stats summarize and that you're not thinking of in your cool cinematic playthrough in your head. What you want isn't immersion, it's entertaining moments to visualize like a movie. Why this gets labelled as immersion, I'm not sure, it's just run-of-the-mill escapism.

Escapism and immersion are very close friends.

Yeah, I'm very certain that you're a big fan of Mushrooming players as the norm. As for errors, you clearly aren't at my table, where errors and mistakes are grist for the mill. These happen even when you aren't Mushrooming players to force them.

I'm a fan of giving the players the info that their characters would have, ideally no more and no less. And yes if I'm going to err it'll be on the side of giving too little, as if the players think I've missed something or if I haven't been specific enough they're welcome and encouraged to ask for more detail or clarification. If, on the other hand, I err by giving away too much there's no way to take it back.

 

[hawkeyefan]

No, I mean players. Though, yes, character and player knowledge being closely aligned is desirable.

But what I mean is thinking about how things appear to players, how they receive the information etc. I feel that often in these discussions people worry about the sort of purity of GM methodology that is mostly invisible to the players.

But what happens when the GM thinks it’s invisible, but a player noticed?

I said earlier that sometimes Force can be subtle and go unnoticed. Other times, it’s blatant. Sometimes, the attempt to make it hidden is made, but one or more players still see it.

More player facing games or techniques make it much more obvious when Force is being used. And I think this is maybe more important, and why I think sometimes these conversations are a challenge.

Right. And I get that a lot of people here care about how things are done, even if it wouldn't affect their experience in practice. And I just don't understand why... If you had an interesting and fun experience, why it matter how it was achieved? But I think this might be simply a matter of people's brains being wired too differently and thus me being fundamentally unable to get this.

I don’t know what to say about this. I can’t make you care that something billed as one thing was secretly another all along. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to do something like play a game and know how the game works, for that to not be a mystery to the participants.

Why hide what? Hiding use of the force at the moment is to maintain the illusion of the game world being objective and real; though of course the players know it isn't, but one doesn't want to bring attention to that during the game.

Okay but then this begs the question…why should the game be an illusion?

I mean, I get that it’s shared imagination and so the descriptor “illusion” seems apt. But how we craft that imagined space…why does that need to be illusory? Why can't that just be open for all to understand?

Sure. If it is not fun for you, don't do it. But when I said it might lessen my fun as a GM, I mean very mildly. It is like I might feel that I failed to design things properly so that they would run smoothly without little jury rigging.

I think it depends. I don’t know if you saw my example earlier in the thread about my use of the Folk Hero background and how the GM kind of botched it. I didn’t flip the table and storm out, shouting “you railroadin’ SOB!”

I don’t think that because I state a preference means I’m some irrational obsessive.

In a game there are small decisions: do we go left or right, does this random encounter gnoll live or die, do we speak to the priest or the blacksmith. Then there are big decisions: is my family more important than my honour, what lengths I will go to get my vengeance, will I sacrifice my love for the greater good. And I feel it might be pretty justified to use force on some of those small decisions, if it ensures that we get to the situation where the players can make those big decisions.

Okay. I’m not sure how Force would be used to get to the good stuff. But I’m interested in hearing about it. It sounds like your describing goals for a player’s character, but I’m not sure how a GM might use Force to help those goals. Do you have any examples?

 

[pemerton]

I'm not sure why saying that force can be acceptable automatically makes you think our games inherently feature force of any sufficient amounts to register?

I'm not making such an assumption. Hence my question Have you ever GMed a RPG without using Force?