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

[Ovinomancer]

That's my take on most forms of metacurrency as well. They are simply tools to enable players to temporarily gain some 'non-character action declaration' narrative control. The purpose seems so transparent and yet it's often acted like there's no difference in metacurrency mechanics for that purpose and for ones that allow players to declare X happens in combat (whose reason for existence is to balance martial combat abilities around more than %chance to proc mechanics - example battlemaster superiority dice).

Oh, like hitpoints! And AC points! And Death Saves!

ETA: the opposition to metacurrency always seems so much special pleading to me.

 

[FrogReaver]

Oh, like hitpoints! And AC points! And Death Saves!

ETA: the opposition to metacurrency always seems so much special pleading to me.

You've got a really strange definition of metacurrency.

 

[Ovinomancer]

You've got a really strange definition of metacurrency.

Do I? What do hitpoints represent? They are points the player spends to alter the fiction from their character getting run through to them escaping with a scratch.

ETA: What does AC represent? Let's say I have an 18 AC. What's going on there? If an opponent misses my AC, did I dodge? Did I direct the blow to the strongest part of my armor? Did I parry? I mean, what's up here? It's whatever's convenient.

 

[FrogReaver]

Do I? What do hitpoints represent? They are points the player spends to alter the fiction from their character getting run through to them escaping with a scratch.

ETA: What does AC represent? Let's say I have an 18 AC. What's going on there? If an opponent misses my AC, did I dodge? Did I direct the blow to the strongest part of my armor? Did I parry? I mean, what's up here? It's whatever's convenient.

Hit points aren't a currency. You don't spend them on anything.

 

[Manbearcat]

Hit points aren't a currency. You don't spend them on anything.

I’m curious how you perceive them as “not currency?”

They’re like chips in Poker. You wager them every time you enter into a physical conflict (or enter a game). You make a move to get into melee with 5 monsters, you’re staking your HP in the same way you’re staking your chips when you push in a hand against 3-4 other players.

This hand you lose your Small Blind.

Next hand you fold and lose 1/4 of your stack.

Next hand you bring out the big guns because of your prior setups and
you take a big chunk out of someone else’s stack (or maybe 2-3 “someone elses”).

Eventually, either you’re claiming their chips or they’re taking yours. That is pretty much what HPs are. You’re busting out of the D&D combat as poker tourney whoopass or they are. Either way, your HP/chips are what you’re staking and those going to zero means they go bust.

 

[FrogReaver]

I’m curious how you perceive them as “not currency?”

They’re like chips in Poker. You wager them every time you enter into a physical conflict (or enter a game). You make a move to get into melee with 5 monsters, you’re staking your HP in the same way you’re staking your chips when you push in a hand against 3-4 other players.

This hand you lose your Small Blind.

Next hand you fold and lose 1/4 of your stack.

Next hand you bring out the big guns because of your prior setups and
you take a big chunk out of someone else’s stack (or maybe 2-3 “someone elses”).

Eventually, either you’re claiming their chips or they’re taking yours. That is pretty much what HPs are. You’re busting out of the D&D combat tourney or they are. Either way, your HP/chips are what you’re staking and those going to zero means bust.

Nevermind, I've decided I'm not going to go down this stupid tangent.

I'm just in disbelief that 1 person let along 3 are arguing this.

 

[hawkeyefan]

These both seem run-of-the-mill uses of GM Force. Seems pretty typical of 5e play to me.

I think they’re definitely examples of GM force, but I think they were different enough to look at separately.

The first I would have personally found irksome.

The second would not have bothered me in the slightest from a fair play perspective.

Yeah, that’s largely how I felt. In the first example, I just had to accept that the hag was escaping, I guess.

The second seemed less like thwarting the player and more like building on what a player did. It seemed at least a bit creative and we wound up in a new situation. Like I said, I think I’d have preferred a roll of some kind with this as a consequence. It bothered me far less and the player of the character who cast the spell thought it was an interesting turn of events.

At minimum, this seems like a hella clumsy. Though it also kinda depends on how distances are normally handled (was there a battlemap?) If distances are always handled somewhat abstractly, then this might be more understandable. Though coming up bunch of reasons why you couldn't attack seems like BS either way. Better hope that if your characters ever need to flee the GM handles that with equal generosity!

It was indeed clumsy, I’d say. We’re playing via discord, full theater of the mind, so distances aren’t exact by any means, and terrain isn’t always perfectly established. But the range of the longbow certainly covered the entirety of the battle area, which was likely maybe 100 feet between the furthest combatants.

This is just weird. But I guess it is kinda funny. Rules really don't work like this, but I can see the GM thinking that this would make metaphysical and narrative sense.

From these and your earlier example I get the impression that your GM thinks more in sense of 'would this be a cool scene' and 'how this would go in a book/movie' and might not be that concerned with what the rules actually say. Cool standoff with the soldiers, an enemy flees so that they can become a recurring villain, the fae cause unexpected and weird hijinks. Not necessarily a problem, but if there are mismatch of expectations then it is. Also, an issue with this sort of thinking is that the GM might get too enamoured with certain scenes happening, which leads to railroadyness.

Yeah, he definitely leans toward trying to present dynamic and fun scenes. And often he’s successful, but I think these examples show he sometimes gets too married to certain ideas, and then steers toward them, perhaps even not realizing it.

I think I'd be bothered by it. Seems a little ... beyond the rules to me--and I think I'd have a hard time trusting this GM to go beyond the rules, from the little bit you've mentioned.

I don't disagree that it could work for a consequence, if there'd been a check, and if the table was playing that way. The party is fighting hags, so manipulating the Feywild isn't implausible; I'd want it to be more telegraphed/foreshadowed.

Well in this instance the hags weren’t involved…these were two separate situations with only some minor connections.

I don’t think the rules support this happening, but I don’t think they specifically block it, either. Certainly the Find Familiar spell is worded in such a way that this kind of thing isn’t addressed at all. I think this is one of the reasons that it bothered me less. The situation with the fleeing hag undermined a few rules to some extent.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I'm a bit unsure about your formers and latters (because of the negations - "nothing" - and also the verbs embedded in the "encourage" verbs). Are you saying that the assumed approach tends towards ignoring player cues rather than paying attention to those cues?

That seems plausible, based on my exposure to D&D play. But that has nothing to do with players not wanting to tread onto the GM's field of authority; nor with "living sandbox" vs "story now". You can have full GM authority over backstory and situation and still have the GM pay attention to those cues. And that could be story now (I mean, this is basically how AW works - the cues are mostly going to manifest in the process of asking questions and building on the answers) or it could be @Campbell's story-now-in-the-streets-right-to-dream-in-the-sheets.

Yeah that was poorly phrased, but you got it. Also, reading it again, I think how I’ve described it is more absolute than I intended. Certainly there are examples of each in the books. But I think the text probably leans far more toward a GM if not ignoring player cues of that kind, then simply assuming they won’t happen

Your first example is uncannily like my bad-guy-in-the-valley-then-in-the-volcano scenario. It's a transparent exercise of GM force.

That seems to be the consensus.

To me, this seems like a GM trying to do something interesting, and the system letting them down a bit.

In 4e this would be easy to adjudicate, because the skill challenge framework creates a context for imposing consequences for failure, framing new complications within an overall context in which the players can achieve finality of resolution, etc.

5e seems a bit weaker in this context. How should the GM have handled this, short of fiat, in 5e? Let the player of the wizard roll a save? Make the redcaps roll an Arcana check? This is getting into the terrain where it's hard for me to stick to analysis rather than evaluation: I prefer systems that have the flexibility to handle this without raising any eyebrows or relying on largely arbitrary assertions of GM authority (eg Cortex+ Heroic, which has incredible flexibility in consequence narration; 4e D&D, which comes pretty close to that; Prince Valiant, which has not player-side magic of the D&D sort and so doesn't raise the "unsupported by rules as written" issue; etc).

Yeah, this is the kind of thing where the rules aren’t really clear, and so the GM will have to come up with something. I’d prefer there be rules, or a process to lean on besides “make it up”, but given the nature of 5e it’s not all that surprising that in the absence of actual rules the GM is gonna make stuff up.

 

[niklinna]

Oh, like hitpoints! And AC points! And Death Saves!

ETA: the opposition to metacurrency always seems so much special pleading to me.

Don't forget Inspiration! And features like the one in the Folk Hero background (spendable once per whatever).

 

[pemerton]

Well, I suspect its assumed the latter represent some in-fiction process mostly, whereas metacurrency is explicitly (except in some odd cases like TORG) just what it says on the tin.

Even putting TORG to one side, I don't think this is right.

I believe that @FrogReaver and probably @Crimson Longinus regard a Circles or Wise check in Burning Wheel as a form of "metagame" "narrative control (although it is based on a check rather than a currency). I believe that they would see a player's use of a Special Effect (via a Storyteller Certificate) in Prince Valiant as a form of "metacurrency".

But in all these cases the process at the table - of making the check, or cashing in the certificate - represents an in-fiction process. A Circles check corresponds to looking around for and/or hoping to meet a person. A Wises check corresponds to trying to remember the details of something. And I quoted the relevant rules about Special Effects in Prince Valiant upthread (from p 44 of the rulebook): "The Storyteller must create a reasonable explanation for the way in which the Effect takes place, in terms of the current situation."

So whatever it is that sets the conventionally-received boundary between "metacurrency" and other stuff, I don't think that it is about in-fiction processes. Rather, as you said upthread:

where does the no-die-roll, straight-declarative authority stop? I think some of the functions of some forms of metacurrency are to keep a largely traditional separation here while permitting limited ability for the player to put his oar in in areas where most older trad games wouldn't.

Those traditional separations/boundaries aren't explained by representation of in-fiction processes. In addition to the examples I've given, which do represent such processes but I think are controversial in a traditional context, it's widely accepted that a player can specify stuff in their PC's orbit (names of parents; colour of cloak at the start of the campaign; etc) without those decisions having to represent an in-fiction process (eg the PC didn't name their parents).

This is why I prefer an analysis in terms of backstory and situation, which I think actually does track what is going on pretty closely:

* The GM has primary authority over backstory - some minor details within the PC's orbit are the exception (as I said just above). It's easy to find debates about where this boundary lies - everything from GMs policing race and class choices, to people arguing about whether random family generation charts are a good or bad thing.

* The GM has primary authority over framing situations - but there are significant differences here in the use of eg random reaction tables, random weather tables, etc, which can be seen as imposing constraints (ranging from the minor to the very significant) on the GM's framing.

* The big point of difference is the basic principle that guides the framing of situations:

* Is this largely fiat, with backstory then adjusted (behind-the-scenes) to support it? It seems pretty clear that this is what happened in @hawkeyefan's Folk Hero episode of play - that is, the GM had a scene he wanted to present, and he manipulated backstory (about how the duke's soldiers discovered the PCs) in order to support that framing. But the more this is done, the more the game drifts towards a "situation first" game of the "living novel" sort, and the role of backstory becomes less and less important as an input, and more something that the GM just develops as needed to support the series of fiated situations.

* Is this highly constrained by pre-authored backstory, whether map-and-key or the "evolving" backstory of a "living sandbox"? This is what Gygax and Moldvay present as the norm - they have no objection to the GM writing interesting stuff, but that is presented as something to be done as part of prep, in designing the dungeon, and not really as part of play (an exception, which sits a little uneasily with the general tenor of his advice, is Gygax's suggestion that the GM might manipulate dice rolls to support more interesting framing, on pp 9 and 110 of his DMG). Just as it's possible to write an interesting dungeon during prep, and rely on the prep to generate interesting situations in play, so I think the same can be done for a "living sandbox", as @Campbell has outlined above.

* What is probably fairly common, I think, is a mix of the above two approaches - ie the GM does prep, and in principle treats it as constraining on situation-framing, but adjusts or departs from the prep when that seems desirable in order to fiat a situation.​

One thing that I find interesting about response to @hawkeyefan's example of the escaping hag is the relative uniformity of critical response:

one point of frustration I experienced as a player.

<snip>

I haven't yet had a chance to discuss that specific point of play with him, but I plan on it. I found it to be pretty frustrating.

The first I would have personally found irksome.

At minimum, this seems like a hella clumsy. Though it also kinda depends on how distances are normally handled (was there a battlemap?) If distances are always handled somewhat abstractly, then this might be more understandable. Though coming up bunch of reasons why you couldn't attack seems like BS either way. Better hope that if your characters ever need to flee the GM handles that with equal generosity!

Only @Ovinomancer seemed comfortable with it:

These both seem run-of-the-mill uses of GM Force. Seems pretty typical of 5e play to me.

Now if one takes the play loop of 5e D&D literally and as admitting of no further qualifications, then this episode fitted it: the GM described the situation (fleeing hag), hawkeyefan declared his PC's action (ranger tries to shoot the hag) and the GM narrates what happens next (the shot is impossible and so no roll is required).

We can quibble at the edges - it seems that the GM may not have described the outcome of a shot ("you miss" with no roll called for) and rather have described the ranger's state of mind ("you realise shooting the hag is not possible") but I don't think that's the crux of the issue (in a sense, that is doing hawkeyefan a favour by helping to conserve ammunition). The crux of the issue, as I see it, is that most RPGers don't regard the GM's authority to narrate what happens next as unconstrained: in this case, rules for range (as found in the weapon rules, the feat rules, etc) and for spotting enemies (as found in the Perception rules, the spell rules, etc), as well as a general sense of "fair play", are expected to constrain that authority.

I think this shows that, whereas in traditional RPGing there is a diversity in understandings of how scenes should be framed, there is less (not no) diversity when it comes to the action resolution process. I think most RPGers, even traditional RPGers, are suspicious of the GM just suspending the standard action resolution rules.

And I'm prepared to conjecture even a little bit further: I think that if hawkeyefan's GM had used his authority over backstory and situation to conjure up a rules-legitimate way for the hag to escape (eg a newly-authored powerful friend teleports her out), that might be seen as a bit dubious by many traditional RPGers, going as it would not just to initial framing (as in the Folk Hero case) but directly to the resolution of a conflict-in-progress.

A player can be very sceptical of a certain sort of meta-currency but still have these sorts of reasonably clear views about what counts as acceptable exercise by the GM of their authority over backstory and over situation.

EDIT:

Oh, like hitpoints! And AC points! And Death Saves!

ETA: the opposition to metacurrency always seems so much special pleading to me.

That's why I don't really regard the issue being one of either "metacurrency" or "in-fiction processes". It's about "domains" (for lack of a better word) of the fiction, and who has what sort of authority over those.