D&D General Why Editions Don't Matter

[Oofta]

Thanks for replying. I realise now that my question was unhelpfully vague.


Sure, but you can still answer questions like 'does this game follow a set story, the DM's story, or is it driven by the player characters?'. That's just low-hanging fruit. People who want to drive the story with their characters will not enjoy being railroaded. Maybe the DMG has something on this, and I missed it. If people want to quote chapter and verse at me, please do!


Presumably, as a developer, you know (hopefully!) what it is you're supposed to be developing, and have various metrics or milestones to meet. As an inexperienced DM, how would you even know what it is you should be looking for? 'My players show up and seem like they're having fun' is a minimal baseline.

All I can say is that we figured it out back in the dark ages before personal computers and internet. I find it difficult to believe that anyone that wants to DM can't spend an hour watching videos to get an idea of how to do it. They've probably spent years playing video games. None of the concepts for DMing are rocket science.

Of course new DMs will make mistakes. I've been DMing pretty much since the inception of the game and I still make mistakes. I just don't see a significantly better solution than what we already have. As far as players not having a clue, I've had players that have played for years without seeming to have a clue.

They started doing a game intro video, DndBeyond now has a getting started page. I haven't looked at it, but I think it's a good start. There's only so much you can learn from a book and different people learn in different ways.

 

[Xamnam]

You know, that sounds like a

Rolling behind a screen lets you fudge the results if you want to. If two Critical Hits in a row would kill a character, you could change the second critical hit into a normal hit, or even a miss. Don’t distort die rolls too often, though, and don’t let on that you’re doing it. Otherwise, your players might think they don’t face any real risks—or worse, that you’re playing favorites.

Oh, it's just old-fashioned railroads and illusionism.

I do think it's worth noting that this is explicitly placed after:

"What about you, the DM? Do you make your rolls in the open or hide them behind a DM screen? Consider the following:

and is directly contrasted by the very first bullet of that section:

• If you roll dice where the players can see, they know you're playing impartially and not fudging rolls.

Neither is direct advice on their own, nor is one favored over the other. They're putting forth the pros and cons of different approaches, encouraging the DM to see how they feel when presented with these options. It's a strategy I'm very fond of in GM facing text, much like how BitD invites the reader to weigh how they would have run the Example Score with directed questions at the end of that section.

 

[pemerton]

At any time, you can decide that a player's action is automatically successful.

So an interesting question is when should the GM do this?

There are different possibilities, that will produce different play experiences.

Burning Wheel says: if nothing that matters is at stake - where what matters is defined by the players, by way of the Beliefs they author for their PCs - then the GM should say yes. Conversely, if something is at stake, then the dice must be rolled even if the action is easy (that's what the easy obstacle numbers are for). The upshot of this is that taking action that pertains to what matters always opens the door to the possibility of complication. This is intended to produce - and, in my experience, does produce - dramatic play. (In something like the sense that Casablanca is a dramatic movie.) This is a technique for "story now", "indie"/Forge-type play.

Torchbearer says: action resolution in this game is brutal, and will grind the players down. So if they come up with a good idea - a clever solution to an immediate problem that the PCs are confronted by, like camouflaging themselves before trying to stage an ambush - then allow that to work and proceed to the next obstacle. This is one of the techniques the game uses to reconcile challenge, pacing and progress - it's a technique that operates in the same space as discussions about the merits and demerits of "pixel-prodding" vs "I roll Perception". It should help resolve some of the issues that come up in those discussions, but it won't make the game dramatic in the way that BW's "say 'yes' or roll the dice" does: it's a technique for "skilled play", classic dungeon-crawling-esque-type play (and deliberately so: Torchbearer cites OD&D, Moldvay Basic, and B2 Keep on the Borderlands as inspirations).

A third possible principle might be: if a player's declared action is exemplary or character defining for their PC, such that if it failed the PC would be revealed to be quite different from how the player conceived of them, then the GM should say "yes" rather than call for a roll of the dice. That is not about drama, nor about pacing, but about "character concept". It's oriented to a completely different play experience again: OC/neo-trad-type play.

 

[pemerton]

Yes, this was my point. People agreed that the GM can abuse their authority... but they also seem to need for the GM to have absolute authority.

I don't know why that is.

Yep, I got your point! I agree with your point and share your puzzlement.

 

[Garthanos]

To come back to the concrete example, of the GM setting aside the regular action resolution rules and just narrating an adverse outcome for the PC: I don't see how it would make the game worse for it to have concrete advice not to do that. After all, Moldvay's Basic rulebook had this.

I have seen the opposite of this in a sense recommended in rpgs (where this narration is in favor of the players) for expediency when it seems very likely to go that way or be tedious to play out.

 

[pemerton]

I have seen the opposite of this in a sense recommended in rpgs (where this narration is in favor of the players) for expediency when it seems very likely to go that way or be tedious to play out.

Yep. See my post not far upthread where I distinguish three different ways of doing this.

Though maybe you're describing a fourth way: relatively efficient/aggressive scene-framing.

 

[Garthanos]

Yep. See my post not far upthread where I distinguish three different ways of doing this.

Though maybe you're describing a fourth way: relatively efficient/aggressive scene-framing.

I am probably recalling it from Amber Diceless, and I always took it as an admonishment to A) only detail things mechanically which are interesting and B) only have decision points if they are truly going to matter (you always have one of at least goal setting).

 

[John Lloyd1]

I really don't see it as being that difficult to learn to DM from picking up the books and playing. There is no need for being a player first or learning from the community. I would say that many of those social contracts come naturally.

As an anecdote:

In the early eighties, my sister's teacher recommended D&D as part of the gifted and talented program. So, my dad picked up a copy of the Moldvay basic set and DM'ed a few games for us and some family friends. From my memory the experience was not any different from the games I experience today.

I spoke to him yesterday about it and it didn't seem that hard to pick up. He had to deal with the standard things like the players trying to walk off the map and upsetting the youngest player by killing their character.

I'm pretty sure he didn't follow the turn orders as written for combat and exploration, but responded to what we said we were doing.

He wasn't a war gamer or particularly into fantasy or science fiction. He had read Tolkien and Lewis, but that was about it.

I think a lot of these unwritten rules and social contracts are something that can be generalise from normal social knowledge or are able to be picked up easily from experience.

Another thing, nothing wrong with tips and advice, but too much information is hard to process for a learner. To use a 'learning to drive' analogy, you first need to learn the basics about how the car feels when you turn the wheel and how to change gears. And that is a lot of learning by doing.

 

[pemerton]

@John Lloyd1

The first RPG I owned was Classic Traveller, but I couldn't work out how to play it because the rulebooks don't tell you: they have hints here and there, and in retrospect I can now see what work those hints are doing. But as someone who at the time had no experience with or knowledge of RPGing or wargaming I just couldn't make sense of it.

Not long after I got Moldvay Basic, and it was completely different. I was able to work out how to play. Among versions of D&D, I think Moldvay Basic remains the gold standard for the clarity of the way it sets out the procedures both for GM prep - how to prepare a scenario - and for actually managing play - the turn sequence, action resolution, etc.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Now, to be completely fair: the DMG also says that some players want to see their characters' actions impact the story, and that the DM should try and make that happen for them. Waffle and contradictions, in other words.

.

1. You can’t just selectively quote parts of the text to support your point of view.
I mean … you can, but it will probably not be looked on favorably.

2. There is something unnerving about being told the DMG contains no advice, but then told it contains bad advice, while realizing the DMG contains lots of good advice.

3. Finally, what you call waffling and contradictory is what other people would call attempting to support multiple common approaches. I feel,like this has been covered ….