D&D General How much control do DMs need?

[Clint_L]

So, you will conform the game to D&D, rather than conforming D&D to suit your game. I think it's pretty much the textbook opposite of "flexibility".

You can't choose a suitable level of detail for a situation where everybody knows that the characters will be fighting, but nobody actually cares about the fighting itself, because they are excited to finally settle things with the BBEG! Fighting orcs in his tower is just a chore.

I don't follow - my game is what happens according to the choices players make plus randomization. I think this is very flexible - instead of insisting that a particular outcome must happen, I am very open to the idea that everything that I planned might not matter. While I plan a particular narrative arc, and can do quite a lot to get players to go in that direction and make it the mostly likely outcome, I don't mandate anything. This goes right back to the heart of my OP: surrounding authorial agency. D&D makes it easy for this to happen.

If I choose to place orcs in the tower, I do so with intentionality, never as a chore. I think you are suggesting that perhaps my motive is to raise the difficulty of the BBEG by having the characters need to use up resources? But if I make that obvious (i.e. the players know the BBEG is waiting and is pretty tough), then getting past the orcs is no longer boring! Now they have an interesting problem: how do we get past orcs while conserving the resources we will need? This could lead to clever combat strategies, or figuring out a way to subvert the orcs, or bypass the orcs, or a ton of other options. I have had many games where the obstacles between the players and the BBEG turned out to be more fun, much to my chagrin.

I fear I may not be following your argument entirely - as previously, you are likely making a point that has yet to sink in. I am 54, so sometimes it takes awhile.

As an example of a dangerous fight, where killing the enemy isn't the actual goal.

Let's suppose PCs have booked tickets for a ship that is departing, like, RIGHT NOW! A bunch of gangsters they owe money to are trying to stop them.

Killing or subduing gangsters is completely unimportant -- what's at stake is whether the PCs will be able to get to the ship on time.

How can you handle this situation, presuming that pulling out a battlemat and playing it turn-for-turn with initiative is too cumbersome?

D&D has recently added some rules for running chase scenes, so I might use those. However, this could also be very fun as a battle with a ticking clock - say a certain number of rounds before the ship departs. Since I am a severe terrain and miniatures enthusiast, I would likely have a detailed docks area with ship prepared before the game, so players would be able to see exact distances; I could show the ship starting to move, etc. I would also make it viable for the characters to fail here - maybe they don't catch the ship and now they need to find some fast transport to catch up, or something. Or maybe they completely muff it and are taken captive onboard the ship. There are a lot of ways that could play out!

 

[Oofta]

I think what @Oofta is trying to suggest is that Dungeon World isn't actually solving all the problems simply by having 2d6 "I jumped the chasm" but that there are some tests of the fiction that also occur. This is true, if the chasm is trivial, then it isn't a problem to be solved, wouldn't be introduced as part of the fiction (it might exist as color I suppose) and won't require any moves to overcome. If the chasm is a huge and uncrossable gulf then again no moves happen here, its no different than a wall, we know we can't (normally) walk through walls, so we don't declare actions to do so. However, I don't think this sort of observation carries a lot of weight, as it simply notes the existence of the most basic precondition for any sort of plot, action, and narrative to exist whatsoever. Its even more basic than RPGs! If we all sat down around a campfire to tell a story round-robin fashion we'd all have to live by the same basic rule, that fictional position has effect, else you have nothing at all!

I just don't see DW as being substantively different than D&D in this regard. You don't need to roll anything to jump across a minor gap, you can't jump across the Grand Canyon. The terminology use is a bit different but the result is the same.

 

[clearstream]

I think D&D is extremely good at presenting 'canned stories'. It basically does 'neo-classic' play pretty darn well! You delve into the 'dungeon levels' (they can be anything analogous to a dungeon) and there you go. I believe the AP Descent into Avernus is a perfect illustration. Some have called the framing 'heavy-handed' but I don't look at it that way. It is delivering exactly what the majority of the D&D audience is after, a straightforward 'delve'. You can spend 13 whole levels just basically focused on one huge adventure. Yeah, the rules are a bit rough about how PCs get past obstacles, but the most obvious approach is going to perform OK when the scenarios are fairly simple and just aimed at mostly 'exciting moments' of play.

For me, that is where D&D is weakest! I've found it strongest by far for an open campaign with overarching themes that players may or may not (but probably will) engage with (in some form), something like fronts in DW. So my experience might be at odds with yours. As an example, I found value in the settings and overarching themes of Out of the Abyss, but not the linear path the authors stitched through it. We started at the opening situation, and went off-piste from there.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I just don't see DW as being substantively different than D&D in this regard. You don't need to roll anything to jump across a minor gap, you can't jump across the Grand Canyon. The terminology use is a bit different but the result is the same.

The main difference I see is that the granular DC in D&D makes the game world mechanically more real, thus allowing the fictional positioning to matter more.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

So, one of the things I base my choice of system off of, is actually the way the texture of the mechanics and player options align with the theming and fantasy of what they express. Your system, in theory, should be able to perform any of these narratives, but it's texture will remain static as the same mechanics are used for Dark Souls, Cyberpunk, Vampire, etc-- you have a core resolution system, but at least in comparison to other titles (and granted, some people really don't care about this, so it's only true idiosyncratically for me and other people who think like me) your game is incomplete. This problem is presumably what guided Cortex Prime to work the way it does with all of it's modules to help craft a 'finished' game out of them that can support the genre or setting its working off of. The PVP should feel different if we're chasing eachother in X-Wings vs. when we're having a firefight down a trashy alleyway, or when we're clashing with swords.

Yeah, OTOH, one of the reasons you can 'burn' any sort of genre of game out of Burning Wheel is that these conflicts have a common architecture. Whether you are flying X-Wings or doing a sword fight, or playing the game of bluff and deception in the 'poison shell game' scene of Princess Bride, you have the same sort of dramatic structure of give and take. One side obtains an advantage, the other side responds, back and forth, and finally victory and defeat. BW's conflict systems don't really care WHAT the fiction is, there may be specific cases (IE in TB2 certain types of weapons work better in certain situations, and obviously the details of the fiction decides which Wises and Nature you can bring into play) but the same architecture will work fine for X-Wing and sword fights.

This is what I have always meant when referencing the flexibility of something like BW, or PbtAs though it may depend on the exact move sets available. Whereas you'd basically have to make up a subsystem to run an X-Wing fight in 5e (albeit it could be based on existing rules) there's no need to do that at all in BW! Yeah, you may have to describe things a certain way, and you may WANT to construct some mechanical elements to bring more color to things, but the basic structure of Fight! is already perfectly able to handle the action AFAICT (not having a lot of experience with that system).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

As I said, I wouldn't use a roll if the outcome is guaranteed there's no need to roll. So normally I just narrate it.

If it's a question on how many resources they might lose? I'd probably have everyone roll a check against a DC set by the threat level. So roll a D20, add proficiency and primary ability score against a DC 15. Hit the DC they lose nothing, roll less and they lose some HP based on how much below. Exceed the DC by 5 or more and they get some benefit. Most of the times it would be a bit more complex and I'd handle it like a skill challenge similar to what they discuss with the chase rules and handle it as a type of skill challenge.

The big difference from 4E skill challenges is that I'd allow them to come up with some win condition. Let's say they do something I never expected. They do some investigation and prep followed by casting Seeming and disguise themselves as the caterers for the BBEG's banquet. I don't want to put PC decisions into a box, I want them to think outside the box, tear the box apart and totally trash my plans because they did something clever. We can do that because we aren't limited to a prescribed structure.

Or take the example someone else gave of the party needed to get a message to someone important. Their PC grabbed the message and through a clever use of abilities bypassed the entire challenge. In my game it would have been a success - they achieved the goal in a way the author of the challenge hadn't anticipated. In my game, that would have worked because we aren't forcing ourselves into an artificial structure.

Having a structured way of handling everything too often gets in the way of the narrative logic for me.

How would your example not be perfectly in keeping with a 4e-style Skill Challenge? You just found a different way to get successes, the rules for SCs are quite clear that this is not only possible, but to be expected in actual play. The GM is specifically admonished to "say yes, or roll the dice" (and presumably it will mostly be rolling). I think where the problem arises is more in terms of 'scope' or 'granularity' and a lack of definition of that, or in lack of good definitions of goals and useful failure conditions. I contend that the SC technique, by forcing the GM to think about these things at the start, is a stronger way of avoiding problems that often arise in other games anyway, but are just less easy to diagnose.

 

[Enrahim2]

For me, that is where D&D is weakest! I've found it strongest by far for an open campaign with overarching themes that players may or may not (but probably will) engage with (in some form), something like fronts in DW. So my experience might be at odds with yours. As an example, I found value in the settings and overarching themes of Out of the Abyss, but not the linear path the authors stitched through it. We started at the opening situation, and went off-piste from there.

I think this is actually a critical observation. By giving DMs relatively unrestricted control over many aspects of the game, the strongest side of the system is using it for the approach the DM best masters. Some DMs are naturally able to weave together the ideas of players and a third party author to something truly unique and magical, and for those DMs D&D is an extremely strong system for running that kind of adventures. Others are masters of making up cool new content to see and explore no matter what direction the players might want to explore. And for those D&D is an incredibly strong system for that style of play, as it afford them the power to use that strength.

A system handing all power to the a GM benefits tremendously from all of that GM's strengths. But it also suffers from all of the GMs weaknesses, as it doesn't provide any support to mitigate those. This is in my mind the critical design tradeoff when it come to the extent of power a system should give to the GM.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

But it's still a judgement call on the part of the GM. In D&D there are rules for how far you can jump, if you're exceeding the default auto-success distance it's an athletics check.

You may think that DW is straightforward and while I've never had an opportunity to play I have skimmed the rules a few times. It doesn't seem any better or worse than D&D, just different. I doubt I'd enjoy the game as much after a quick read-through, it's too prescriptive for me. To each their own.

Prescriptive in what way? I mean, in either case, 5e or DW, someone defined the fiction that made the chasm a certain width. You, the DM decided it requires a check, to say that the width of the chasm determined that is putting the cause in place of the effect...

And what is different with DW in terms of that chasm is that the agenda and principles determined that the chasm needs to represent a threat/obstacle. There will be things to overcome, and the PCs will be able to possibly, but not always, overcome them. The only question in DW is if its a chasm, a wall of fire, a swinging axe pendulum trap, or whatever. What is 100% certain is that getting from the entry way to the treasure is not going to be simply a walk in the park!

Honestly, I think the same considerations will generally apply in 5e, and for the specific sorts of situations 5e has 'code' to handle it will be perfectly adequate. Outside of that, maybe less so, or even not much in extreme cases. So we end up at the one real difference, which is when stuff is authored and for what reasons.

 

[Oofta]

How would your example not be perfectly in keeping with a 4e-style Skill Challenge? You just found a different way to get successes, the rules for SCs are quite clear that this is not only possible, but to be expected in actual play. The GM is specifically admonished to "say yes, or roll the dice" (and presumably it will mostly be rolling). I think where the problem arises is more in terms of 'scope' or 'granularity' and a lack of definition of that, or in lack of good definitions of goals and useful failure conditions. I contend that the SC technique, by forcing the GM to think about these things at the start, is a stronger way of avoiding problems that often arise in other games anyway, but are just less easy to diagnose.

Skill challenges in 4E had a set number of successes and a set number of failures. In addition, the DM was told to let people know what the appropriate skills were. There was no way in 4E, if you were following things strictly, to bypass the challenge or to get more than 1 success with clever play.

Let's take the example of getting a message to some important person that was given a while back. There are obstacles in the way and various ways of avoiding those obstacles. You can ignore the monster in the way and try to take an alternate route, you can bluff the monsters, you can bull rush through, whatever. The details don't really matter (and I'm probably f*ing up details, it's been a while). The point is that you have to get 5 successes before 3 failures using acrobatics, athletics, bluff.

But then one of the PCs takes the very important note and bypasses the obstacles completely and hands the note to the target. Should be challenge complete, right? But at most it's one success because they used a resource instead of making an ability check. The party can still fail because following the rules you still have to get 5 successes and you only have 1.

It's that kind of set structure that I dislike. It was consistent and spelled out in great detail, I understand why they did it. But I did not find it enjoyable. Not only were people thinking not in terms of the fictional narrative because they're thinking "how can I convince the DM that I'm really use my arcana skill to succeed because that's my highest bonus", the 5 successes before 3 failures felt artificial. What kind of failure? Why is the failure not just a setback that can be countered? I want my players to solve based on the best effort of the PCs, using knowledge and skills the PCs have. If they figure out a way to overcome the challenge in a way I didn't expect, they shouldn't be penalized, that kind of thinking should be encouraged.

Or, of course, I'm just totally missing what you're asking.

 

[loverdrive]

I don't follow - my game is what happens according to the choices players make plus randomization. I think this is very flexible - instead of insisting that a particular outcome must happen, I am very open to the idea that everything that I planned might not matter. While I plan a particular narrative arc, and can do quite a lot to get players to go in that direction and make it the mostly likely outcome, I don't mandate anything. This goes right back to the heart of my OP: surrounding authorial agency. D&D makes it easy for this to happen.

Yeah, but not all choices and randomization is important.

Like, falling from a horse is actually quite dangerous (Genghis Khan didn't survive one, and I reckon he was a much better rider than any dnd character), but you won't ask players to roll animal handling when they're just riding from town to town. Because it's not important -- the possibility of Genghis Khan death doesn't add anything of interest.

You might accept the wide range of outcomes, but I'd say it's you being flexible, rather than D&D. D&D says that if characters fight, then it's combat rules with initiative, ain't no other way to handle it.

Not super important observation, a friend of mine just reminded me about a silly fight my character had in a B/X game, but other than narrative significance, there's also, uhm, gameplay one? Two high-level non-monk characters can't have a fistfight in D&D. Well, they can, but nobody wants to see two idiots pummel each other for 1+STR damage over and over again while both have 50+ HP, and there's no alternative faster way to do it.