D&D General How much control do DMs need?

[hawkeyefan]

Why? Why is that the only way? Why not just say "We're going to share control, let's talk about how we're going to do it."? Unless you say that anytime a DM doesn't design everything about the campaign world it's a "constraint".

Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. If the DM is gonna give up some authority to the players, those are constraints. If we accept that it’s standard for the DM to be in charge of creating the setting… which the “master of worlds” section of the DMG and many responses here indicate.

Constraints aren’t a bad thing at all. I find it a lot of fun to GM with constraints in place.

 

[Oofta]

For me, these two posts taken together are a bit hard to follow.

Just focusing on the ongoing or unfolding fiction, what that consists of and what is authentic to it seems to be something within the scope of the GM to decide. Eg the GM could decide that there is some reason the lich doesn't conquer the kingdom (for whatever reason), or the GM could even just leave the lich issue in the background (as happens quite often in serial fiction).

I could. Why would I? The world goes on no matter what the PCs do. Now, sometimes I won't see a potential adversary's plan come to fruition, just kind of depends. It's not like the lich is going to destroy the world, even if it's not going to be pretty for the city they take over. In my current campaign the PCs had the option to attempt to take out some vampire lords that secretly run a different city. They decided not to do anything about it, so the vampire lords are still there. Maybe a future campaign will deal with it, maybe not.

So the GM treating it as important to nevertheless follow through on this bit of fiction in this particular way seems like it the GM deciding to render something salient in play that is quite separate from the characters.

The concept of a "side quest" seems to imply the idea of a "real" or "main" quest, which (i) is decided by the GM (? I can't see who else is doing that) and (ii) looks very similar to "the adventure" that @hawkeyefan referred to. This is why I'm not easily following what contrast is being drawn.

Side quest is a CRPG thing. It just means that what I had envisioned as the probable main quest outline isn't what the PCs decide to follow.

This doesn't seem like part of play at all, and so I put it to one side.

I run an ongoing campaign, one I've been running for decades. Sometimes I start plotlines that don't go anywhere, sometimes I make some off-hand comment or make up something on the fly and the players find it interesting. What I don't do is build plots around the PCs. It's not the stories of the PCs, it's the story of the world and the PCs can make a change in that world.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

What exactly did you have to hack in AD&D 2e in order to play Dragonlance?

Well there was the "obscure death" rule, which explicitly applies to PCs as well as NPCs until like the tenth adventure or something.

 

[Maxperson]

I think there's a difference between inventing rules because existing rigid rules ain't cutting it and applying rules that require human interpretation.

Sure, but it's the difference between Coke and Sprite. Different, yet also the same. Gaps are still being filled.

 

[Maxperson]

As of "feature or flaw": it's both.

When it comes to designing an actually good game, it's a flaw. Without it, the books are, for all intents and purposes, completely useless. Ooh, I have a book that tells me how much damage a sword does! Too bad it absolutely doesn't matter if I don't know what enemies PCs will fight with that sword.

This is just flat out wrong. Just because this style of game isn't for you, doesn't mean that it's not a good game. What you dislike =/= bad game. What you like =/= good game. As as for what enemies the PCs will fight with that sword, the book also tells you that, which you might know if you read the rules instead of just poopooing them as being part of a bad game.

What you see as a flaw, is a feature for others and vice versa.

 

[pemerton]

if the characters disappear for two years and come back and then ask hey what happened to those giant attacks. The DM isn't going to say, oh nothing because you weren't there. That would knock my players right out of storyline and I prefer to maintain some sense of immersion.

Who do you think would possibly say that? Vincent Baker? John Harper? Luke Crane? Me?

If the PCs come back and a player asks about the giant attacks there are a million and one things that can be said. There are a million and one ways this place might be when the PCs return after two years, too. And so there are a million and one squared possibilities for how things are when the PCs come back might related to what happened to the giant attacks.

All I'm saying is that, in a game that ostensibly centres the characters, I would expect whatever the GM chooses from those million and one squared possibilities might relate in some fashion to the characters.

As DM I get to decide which unattended adventures modify the setting and which do not.

Sure. And thinking about this from the point of view of procedures of play, we can ask what principles should govern that decision? Different principles will produce different play experiences.

Different principles might also, reasonably, be seen as bearing upon the nature or direction of GM control.

An obvious one: a principle that says In such a situation, the first thing to do is ask the players what each of their PCs was expecting to see upon their return is likely to produce different sorts of decisions from a principle like Look to the timeline you built out when you first introduced the giants, and tick off all the events that the PCs haven't thwarted. And I think the way those two principles allocate control to the various participants is also different.

 

[pemerton]

Ok, this clarification helps. Though now I have even more questions, like... what do you actually do in this game? The GM can't create characters as needed while the game progresses... EVERY antagonist has already been created no matter how big or how small? I'll wait for answers to a few of these questions before proceeding with this part of the discussion.

Each character has one or more "best interests" - these play a function somewhat like a Belief in Burning Wheel, or the leader's reading of the Signs of the Gods in Agon 2e. There is advice on how to establish best interests that generate tensions and conflicts. The GM is instructed to frame scenes that will bring those tensions and conflicts to light, and there is advice on various ways to do that that will produce various intensities of conflict and particular patterns of rising action.

The session ends when most characters have resolved their best interests one way or another; or if its become obvious through play that one particular character is the protagonist, and that character has resolved their best interests.

When you refer to creating characters as needed - the GM has the characters they need, coming out of the reading of the Oracles and establishing best interests. Here's an example from actual play:

We drew four cards and got the following results:

*A brutish and tyrannical warlord and his uncouth thugs.

*A summoner of illusions and diversions, mild and of good humor, but gullible.

*An enemy champion, fearless and bellowing.

*A token indicating that its bearer speaks for the high general.​

We then went around the table, each of us nominating some characters that we thought were implicit in this situation. We ended up with the following (though the last came a bit later - see below).

*The high general Natan

*Ku-Aya, Natan's champion wielding the Spear of Power

*El-Mash, a rider in Natan's service, bearing his token

*Romulus, the brutal warlord, with a chest of gold

*Borak, a simple-minded thug in Romulus's army

*Destorak, the illusionist, and Romulus's jester

*Parya of the Steppes, the High Sorceress and a wielder of wild magic​

The kids chose Destorak and Romulus as their PCs; the parent El-Mash; the rest were my NPCs. The players then allocated attributes (d4, 2x d6, d8, d10, d12 to Covertly, Directly, For Myself, For Others, With Violence, With Love) and I added the simpler attribute arrays to my NPCs. And we worked out "particular strengths" (ie special abilities) for those characters who had them - Destorak's magic, Romulus's gold, El-Mash's Gift of Steeds (ie his preternatural riding ability) and Ku-Aya's Spear of Power.

Then we chose "best interests". I started, and chose for Ku-Aya that one of her best interests was to defeat Romulus in single combat. This gave the idea better than any explanation could, and also helped explain my earlier answer to one of the players' question "Are we, the PCs, working together?" - which I had answered "You don't have to." They worked out that I was going to be putting them in tricky situations, relative to their PCs', and my NPCs', best interests. I'm not going to list them all, but some that loomed large included Boraks' (have Romulus acknowledge me as an equal; gain Destorak's friendship), one of Natan's (never have El-Mash deliver his token), one of El-Mash's (to be victorious in the riding contest at Parya's great ziggurat), one of Parya's (have her kinship to ElMash remain secret), and both of Destorak's (seize the Spear of Power; have Parya take me on as her court illusionist). It was that last best interest that required us to add Parya to the cast of NPCs.

 

[pemerton]

Games like DW and AW have prep. DW has a list of around 100 pages of monsters. AW has a much shorter list, but still has one (threats, about 20 pages worth IIRC).

In AW (at least the version I have, which is the original) there is a 4 page list of threat types (pp 138-41). The list is of descriptors, impulses and moves. The descriptors gives us colour. The impulses give us a context or rationale for making the threat a part of the situation in play. And as the moves are GM moves, they are basically particular ways in which that particular threat might announce its future badness, or put someone in a spot (or capture them, or separate them), or inflict harm, or take someone's stuff, or provide an opportunity.

Apart from the bare fact of being GM prep, there is almost nothing in common between prepping in AW and prepping in (say) Moldvay Basic. No maps. No "hidden board". No ways to render action outcomes certain or uncertain such that dice don't or do need to be rolled.

 

[pemerton]

I wonder if you have hit upon a central distinction of D&D-style games that goes back to the premise of this thread. It seems to be that D&D campaigns are mostly about the creative expression of the Dungeon Master. Players mostly contribute and enjoy creative expression in response to how they build their characters and how they react to the situations the benevolent DM puts them in.

I don't disagree with any of this.

To be honest, I take this to be obvious. It's one starting point for the discussion about GM control, not a resolution of it!

I should add: I don't take this to be true of 4e D&D. Nor of some "neotrad" 5e D&D. But it is part-and-parcel of what I think of as post-DL D&D (what many would call "trad").

 

[clearstream]

In AW (at least the version I have, which is the original) there is a 4 page list of threat types (pp 138-41). The list is of descriptors, impulses and moves. The descriptors gives us colour. The impulses give us a context or rationale for making the threat a part of the situation in play. And as the moves are GM moves, they are basically particular ways in which that particular threat might announce its future badness, or put someone in a spot (or capture them, or separate them), or inflict harm, or take someone's stuff, or provide an opportunity.

Apart from the bare fact of being GM prep, there is almost nothing in common between prepping in AW and prepping in (say) Moldvay Basic. No maps. No "hidden board". No ways to render action outcomes certain or uncertain such that dice don't or do need to be rolled.

In the 2nd ed copy I have, threats runs from page 109 to page 125 and explains how to prep threats, listing examples. It's definitely prep. There's even a threat map placing for instance a certain village south. There's a focus on stakes, questions and impulses. I find these words (at the end of the section) quite important

Remember that the purpose of your prep is to give you something interesting to say when the next session starts. Remember that your NPCs are just not that complicated. You’re not holding back for a big reveal. You’re not doling events out like you’re trying to make your Halloween candy last until New Years. All your threats have impulses they should act on and body parts leading them around, so for god sake, have them act!

@Imaro the prep for a game like AW (I've only played DW just to be clear) is different from traditional D&D, but not that different from other modes that D&D is played in. It's quite like some modes. Again, there's definitely prep. That bare fact is right. It's only very limitedly map-and-key (there is a radial map and some threats are keyed to directions).