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

[Ovinomancer]

Why would me stating my preferences have anything to do with contrasting backstory first and situation first?

This question kinda shows that you haven't thought it all the way through yet. That you're hung up on your preferences and are unable to see past them to the analysis and comparisons being made. No big, I was there, once. It's not easy.

 

[pemerton]

In my (very limited) experience of PbtA play, there is no management of the soft move/hard move sequence. There is just the dice running hot and cold, and the GM taking advantage of what moments the dice allow them.

I recognize that my notoriously peculiar dice luck may play a role in my experience and my understanding.

I don't think that luck with dice should make much difference in this particular respect. It's more the basic principle that hard moves have to follow from the fiction - which requires soft moves as a precursor. From this is born pacing.

EDIT: In some approaches to D&D there can be hard moves without soft moves. Eg in ToH, the notorious green devil face does not involve a soft move prior to a hard move (unless you count just inviting the players to have their PCs enter the Tomb as a soft move!) unless the players take an appropriate action, like sticking a 10' pole into the devil mouth.

 

[FrogReaver]

This question kinda shows that you haven't thought it all the way through yet. That you're hung up on your preferences and are unable to see past them to the analysis and comparisons being made. No big, I was there, once. It's not easy.

Since you brought it up - Seems to me it's the other way around. That those with story now preferences are hung up on their preferences and unable to see past them to the critiques of their analytical framework.

 

[prabe]

I don't think that luck with dice should make much difference in this particular respect. It's more the basic principle that hard moves have to follow from the fiction - which requires soft moves as a precursor. From this is born pacing.

When a player rolls 10+ three times in a row, then 6- four times in a row, there aren't a lot of opportunities for soft moves, other than by making a soft move "as hard a move as you please." (I think that's the wording)

My experience of the game was that it was more reflective of the dice rolls than 5e, not less, but--as I said--my dice luck is notoriously peculiar.

 

[Campbell]

As far as principles of sandbox play you could do a lot worse than Kevin Crawford's clear distillation of play priorities. This is what he has to say in Worlds Without Number:

Players have the relatively “easy” job in a campaign, but it doesn’t mean it’s one they can wholly neglect. There are some things every player needs to bring to the table if everyone there is going to have a good time.

PCs need to want to work together.

It doesn’t matter how or why your PC wants to work with the other characters. Maybe it’s a spirit of grudging cooperation, or suspicious association, or an alliance of convenience. It can be any reason that your character concept can justify, but it has to boil down to your PC wanting to help and cooperate with the other PCs. It’s your job to explain why your PC is willing to adventure alongside the other characters. If you can’t come up with a reason, it’s not the GM’s problem; you need to find one or make a new PC.

Note that some campaigns might be explicitly adversarial among the PCs, or involve specific contrary goals or purposes. If everyone at the table is fine with that, then that’s perfectly acceptable, but the default assumption is that everyone is working together.

PCs need to have a motivation to act.

Your PC need to want to interact with the world. They need a goal, or a motivation, or an inclination to do something. When they see adventure, they need to have a reason to jump at it. Sometimes a character concept gets created that is all about being something; the character is a taciturn archer, or a beautiful young priestess, or a farm-boy warrior haunted by the specter of battle. That’s all well and
good, but all of these concepts need a driving motivation that will get them tangled in plot hooks and seeking wild adventures.

Players need to pay attention.
Put away the phones, stow the talk about the latest podcast, and listen to what the other players are doing even when it doesn’t involve you. Listen to what the GM is saying, think about the choices your PC is going to make, and engage with the game as it’s going on.

Players need to trust the GM.
The GM is going to be making a lot of judgment calls and quick decisions during play. Not all of them are going to go your way, and
some of them are inevitably going to seem downright poorly-reasoned. Still, you need to trust that the GM is doing their best to deliver a fun session for everyone.

Rules disputes and other issues with the way they’re running a game should be saved for after the session is over.

The GM has a heavier load than the players bear. While the players only need to worry about a single character in the world, the GM has to handle the rest of the campaign setting, ensuring that everyone there has enough material to have a good time.

A GM needs to be fair.

You are not the party’s adversary. You are not the party’s cheerleader. You are not here to test their mettle or usher them toward their destiny. You are the indifferent prime mover of your campaign who gives the PCs the results that their efforts have earned. Tilting dice rolls to save or damn a PC is not part of your role. However heart-rending or cruel it may be, the default assumption in Worlds Without Number is that the GM does not cheat the dice when PCs are involved.

In the same vein, a GM doesn’t play favorites among the players. While friendships or relationships may vary, everyone gets the same dice and the same odds at the table. Once special favors start getting handed out every decision the GM makes starts to be viewed with suspicion, whether or not it was deserved.

A GM needs to respond to the PCs.
If the party decides to venture into the cursed Ashblight arratu, then you need to make up an adventure revolving around that expedition. If the beautiful young priestess has convinced the party to help her assassinate the leader of her temple, then you need to make an adventure about how they do or don’t achieve that. On a smaller scale, when the PCs do something in the world, it should leave marks and consequences that they encounter later, even if only in passing. When the PCs do things, the GM needs to do things in response; they should feel as if their actions have actual consequences in the world.

A GM needs to account for PC goals.

If the PC has a goal of accumulating vast wealth, then the GM needs to be ready to throw out hooks to adventures that promise monetary rewards. If the PC’s goal is bloody vengeance on a tyrant, then hooks need to be made that involve resisting the monarch’s rule. These hooks and adventures need not simply grant the PC’s wish or give them a golden road to success, but if the players say they want to have adventures revolving around a topic, a GM needs to give them hooks that will get them there.

A GM needs to have an evening’s adventure.

At the start of the session, the GM needs to have enough material to reasonably occupy the group for however long they’ve decided to play. This is the most time-consuming part of a GM’s job, because brewing up an adventure can take a great deal of time and effort to do well. The tools in this section are meant to help ease the GM’s burden in this, however, and make it as quick and painless as possible. A prudent GM can also loot material from existing old-school adventures to fill any sudden gaps.

 

[FrogReaver]

As far as principles of sandbox play you could do a lot worse than Kevin Crawford's clear distillation of play priorities. This is what he has to say in Worlds Without Number:

I've not done World's without number, only Stars Without Number but it was an excellent game. One of my favorites.

 

[pemerton]

So my window into BW play is your excerpts and descriptions of it. That your excerpts produced something that seemed very similar to living sandbox play

You said that, in living sandbox play,

it's up to the players and not the GM to place themselves into situations where they can meaningfully engage their priorities. And note, getting themselves into those sitautions isn't instant like story now (pacing is a big difference).

In BW, the GM is expected to frame every scene having regard to the player-authored PC priorities. These should be put under pressure by the framing - the action declarations and resolution determine how that pressure resolves. (In AW language, this is a version of soft move/hard move sequence.)

In my BW play, you can see that (i) either the GM does this, or (ii) where I feel that the GM is drifting away (eg like with the Elves) I use the mechanisms the game gives me to pull things back into a focus on my priorities for my PC. This is something the game tells me to do (Revised edition, p 269):

Use the mechanics! Players are expected to call for a Duel of Wits or a Circles test . . . Don't wait for the GM to invoke a rule - invoke the damn thing yourself and get the story moving! . . . If the story doesn't interest you, it's your job to create interesting situations and involve yourself.​

With the Elves, I invoked a Duel of Wits to try and persuade them to come with me (Thurgon) to Auxol. I used Circles checks to meet Rufus. The GM used the appearance of Rufus in the situation to put pressure on my PC - which in the end resulted in failure for Thurgon, but began the process of Aramina's change of disposition.

I don't really see how this seems "very similar" to play where it's not up to the GM to frame having regard to player priorities for their PCs and there is no guarantee of such scenes at all (ie it "isn't instant").

To me it seems radically different.

 

[pemerton]

All these questions seem to be honing in that when the fiction changes that the play experience changes and that's absolutely true.

But I think we've got to be careful in conflating potential changes in fiction impacting the play experience with the method that fiction was generated impacting the play experience.

I think you have reversed causation here.

Fiction doesn't just change. It is an inert, abstract bundle of ideas and relationships between them.

It changes because either (i) someone directly authors it, or - in the context of shared fiction - (ii) someone suggests a change or new element and the other participants agree.

And those acts of authorship, suggestion and agreement are grounded in reasons for authoring this rather than that, or suggesting this rather than that, or agreeing to this but not to that.

Hence the pretty intimate connection between (i) the principles/reasons that guide the making of changes to the fiction, and (ii) the resulting play experience.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Since you brought it up - Seems to me it's the other way around. That those with story now preferences are hung up on their preferences and unable to see past them to the critiques of their analytical framework.

Except -- I play and love 5e, and have been playing D&D since the late 80's (I can't actually remember if it was '88 or '89). So, the claim that I don't get D&D because I'm too stuck in the game I just learned how to play about 5 or so years ago is quite a big one to swallow.

 

[Malmuria]

No, you haven't actually put forth a single example of pulling something unique to DW play into 5e. I think it's because you don't know what DW play actually looks like, so all you can do is grasp at terms that you imagine to be a way and suggest that this is DW leaking into 5e. It's not.

What I was trying to do in bringing DW up is point to someone who is prominent in the 5e space who seems influenced by the game and has written a couple articles about it, and see if that sort of thing would qualify as a kind of mild boundary-blurring, shifting through technique some of the usual principles that might guide a 5e dm to something else. It seems that your response is, because it's not supported in a holistic way throughout the system, it would not qualify as a meaningful shift (or something to that effect?).

When I first made the shift over to thinking how you have to to play/run Blades in the Dark (my first Story Now game), I loved it and thought, "self, you could totally pull this naughty word into 5e and make it better!" So, I tried. I am not a slouch or an idiot, but I rapidly found I couldn't make it work without just fiating all kinds of things. 5e lacked the necessary framework to make sense of the core play of Blades. Or any PbtA game, as I went on to learn. It doesn't really work, at all, because system matters and these are different systems. That's not just a mechanics thing, although that's part of it, but 5e and Blades have different goals of play. They're not even really pointed in the same direction, much less work the same ways! So, I quickly abandoned these attempts. Instead, I play 5e for 5e, for what that system does and how it does it. If I want a different thing, I look for a system that supports it. I love 5e, but I have no need to try to make it do anything and everything, nor is my identity so wrapped up as a 5e supporter that I can't admit it's not the perfect vehicle for anything, if just for want of the right house rules.

So, the arguments you're making really smell like a need to defend 5e from a perceived attack -- to ensure that 5e comes out on top and wins the war and it the thing. Okay, I don't know why that's important, but it's definitely hampering the ability to actually analyze what's going on in play because there's a need for 5e to not show any lack. Personally, my 5e has gotten much better now that I lean into the system for what it is and know where the potholes are so I can steer around them. My Blades has gotten better for the same reasons -- knowing the potholes of a system, and where the road maintenance ends, is super duper helpful. But, if you're investing in 5e as a matter of identity, this will be a hard thing to do.

I don't particularly like 5e, it's just a useful point of comparison because it's so well known, and is incidentally what the OP's post was about. Aside from Blades, the game I'm vibing on right now is The White Hack 3e, but I feel it would be alienating to others to start talking about a relatively obscure game.

Anyway, your example from BitD shows, for me (can I emphasize that enough...for me) both the strengths and weaknesses of the gns framework, as I understand it. Since you buy into it, it allows you to identify what is fundamental about a system and understand how it ought to be played. It's prescriptive, in the sense that there is a more correct way to play any particular type of game. On other hand, I'm not sure it knows what to do with styles of play that don't line perfectly with its categories. Let's say there's a group using flashbacks in their 5e game...and, they're making it work for them. Are they playing it wrong? Is their game "incoherent"? Would they have more fun, objectively, if they didn't try to mix and match mechanics, principles, and influences in that way? I think my approach there would be to say, ok, if the group is having fun and making it work, let's assume they know what they're doing. Let's look at that as a legitimate playstyle, and then go from there, if we wish, to figure out what makes it fun.