D&D General How much control do DMs need?

[Lanefan]

I mean it all depends on what it is the characters are after. There’s no reason that the time in the field can’t be related to a character’s goals. And no reason that can’t rotate with each mission/adventure.

The alternative seems to not allow any characters to significantly shape play, which seems limiting.

Also, are your players not fans of each others’ characters? I’d expect interest in the game beyond one’s own character.

Yes, and that interest is in the party as a whole.

Otherwise, the character-neutral trips into the field would seem just as undesirable.

There’d also ideally be nothing that would prevent you from splitting the group up and handling them all separately. But this is another area where D&D doesn’t really shine, and so the way the game works influences the way it’s played.

I could split them up (and were they all to decide to go after their own goals, that's what would probably happen) but it'd mean lots of solo play and visits to the pub.

Alternatively, you can wait and see what the players want to play, and then determine what’s needed. If you wind up with two humans, a tiefling, and a dwarf, then you won’t have to do as much.

The risk there is that there'll be a very long gap - as in weeks or months - between roll-up night and puck drop while I design all that, which I wouldn't want and I suspect neither would the players.

Also, maybe there’s not a separate kingdom for each? Maybe the races are far more intermingled than a Tolkienesque setting?

Nope - my settings are rather Tolkeinesque that way, and always will be.

You can also solicit ideas from the players at this point. Maybe the player of the dwarf character has an idea about what dwarves are like in this world.

By the time the players interact with any of this it's too late for that. The player is obviously free to say what their particular PC Dwarf is like, but not Dwarves in general.

Maybe he has ideas that immediately inspire some NPCs and possible conflicts.

And if any arise I might listen and quietly take notes.

 

[Lanefan]

Unless it is an explicit part of the table agreement that you do so, I disagree. And this certainly doesn't generalize.

I'm running a game right now, in which the PCs are removed from their original plane of existence in the very first part of the adventure, and the campaign is very likely to end when they go home. The players are free to have whatever concept of their homes they wish, and base their actions upon those origins. But those origins are only the subject of internal motivations. I, as GM, see no cause to insert myself into those motivations, and any map I made of their origins would not be relevant to the current events around the PCs.

Fair enough, but you have to admit that particular campaign set-up is something of a corner case. In most (or nearly all?) campaigns I'd posit a PC can connect with its own history, family, birthplace, etc. should its player want it to during play.

 

[S'mon]

Unless it is an explicit part of the table agreement that you do so, I disagree. And this certainly doesn't generalize.

I'm running a game right now, in which the PCs are removed from their original plane of existence in the very first part of the adventure, and the campaign is very likely to end when they go home. The players are free to have whatever concept of their homes they wish, and base their actions upon those origins. But those origins are only the subject of internal motivations. I, as GM, see no cause to insert myself into those motivations, and any map I made of their origins would not be relevant to the current events around the PCs.

I have maps of where the are, and where they may be going. Where they have been is much less my concern.

Likewise I'm running the Dragonbane Misty Vale campaign; the published pregen PCs have backgrounds like "from the hot jungles of the south/frozen north/western cities/a Barony several days east" - none of which are on the campaign map. I don't see how that means that Free League haven't done their job, or that I've failed as GM.

 

[S'mon]

Fair enough, but you have to admit that particular campaign set-up is something of a corner case. In most (or nearly all?) campaigns I'd posit a PC can connect with its own history, family, birthplace, etc. should its player want it to during play.

No, that doesn't match my experience at all. In the vast majority of fantasy, space opera, pulp, horror etc etc campaigns, IME PC history, family, birthplace is irrelevant in play, and often a player demanding to bring it up would be seen as violating the table contract. There are exceptions like Game of Thrones & Pendragon, but these are pretty rare. Superheroes would be one genre where family etc does figure quite often.

 

[clearstream]

In DW there is no 'map and key' of any kind. I mean, its not excluded as a possibility, but it isn't a specific thing.

In AW 2nd edition there is a kind of radial map (called a "threat map" with the instruction "mark on the map the threat's location"), and it is marked to key certain threats to parts of it. It's very, very different map-and-key from classic D&D, but there is a prepped map that is keyed.

TBH I'm not sure what this allergy to prep is about? Draw maps, leave blanks, says about all that needs to be said.

 

[clearstream]

...I'm an artist? Anything of meaning that comes into creating a piece is coming from me, and my skills as an artist. If I switch from Photoshop to another program, my art would be pretty much the same — it doesn't really matter. Similarly, it doesn't matter if my ma boots up Photoshop or Procreate or MS Paint — she is not an artist.

You don't gaze upon a painting and think "geez, Photoshop is such a great tool!". You think "damn, [X] is such a wonderful artist!".

And, again, Photoshop is actually a complex masterpiece of engineering. Things that it automates aren't trivial.

...unlike a book that answers the most trivial and boring question possible.

I think you are speaking of the operationalizing of the game text. What I called previously the distinction between game as text and game as played. Elsewhere I have used the analogy of tools to explain this operationalizing.

Photoshop is then a good analogy. The artistry is in how the tool is operationalized. Why use photoshop at all? The answer is the same as "why do we use tools".

D&D is a tool. It might not be the ideal tool for you. As you say, 100% of the operationalization of the game text is done by you. That's true of every TTRPG. No exceptions. Some are like a version of Photoshop that includes instructions on how you would best use it. In an ideal sense, such TTRPGs could be seen as a version of Photoshop that won't allow you to draw anything that doesn't fit its designer's conception of art.

If one has a strong opinion on what you want to draw, and you see a tool designed to draw just that, then it's reasonable to prefer that tool over a general tool. You might advocate that other people use that same tool so that they will better conform to the kind of drawing you want to see. Why would they want to be free to scribble!?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think you are speaking of the operationalizing of the game text. What I called previously the distinction between game as text and game as played. Elsewhere I have used the analogy of tools to explain this operationalizing.

Photoshop is then a good analogy. The artistry is in how the tool is operationalized. Why use photoshop at all? The answer is the same as "why do we use tools".

D&D is a tool. It might not be the ideal tool for you. As you say, 100% of the operationalization of the game text is done by you. That's true of every TTRPG. No exceptions. Some are like a version of Photoshop that includes instructions on how you would best use it. In an ideal sense, such TTRPGs could be seen as a version of Photoshop that won't allow you to draw anything that doesn't fit its designer's conception of art.

If one has a strong opinion on what you want to draw, and you see a tool designed to draw just that, then it's reasonable to prefer that tool over a general tool. You might advocate that other people use that same tool so that they will better conform to the kind of drawing you want to see. Why would they want to be free to scribble!?

This analogy would be more meaningful if it weren't supremely possible to, as you say, "scribble" in the kinds of things described. And if people didn't keep having really negative responses to the abstract descriptions of what the tool does, only to follow that up with "...isn't that exactly the same as D&D...?" when you give them anything concrete.

It just comes across as extremely tempest-in-a-teapot stuff. Freaking out over being told you have to play by the rules, and then finding out that rejecting these rules is actually a really, really bad idea 99.99...% of the time.

 

[Maxperson]

...I'm an artist? Anything of meaning that comes into creating a piece is coming from me, and my skills as an artist. If I switch from Photoshop to another program, my art would be pretty much the same — it doesn't really matter. Similarly, it doesn't matter if my ma boots up Photoshop or Procreate or MS Paint — she is not an artist.

You don't gaze upon a painting and think "geez, Photoshop is such a great tool!". You think "damn, [X] is such a wonderful artist!".

And, again, Photoshop is actually a complex masterpiece of engineering. Things that it automates aren't trivial.

...unlike a book that answers the most trivial and boring question possible.

And how is this any different than the DM creating a great game using D&D(photoshop) or some other system(different photo program)?

 

[Maxperson]

Fair enough, but you have to admit that particular campaign set-up is something of a corner case. In most (or nearly all?) campaigns I'd posit a PC can connect with its own history, family, birthplace, etc. should its player want it to during play.

Sure, but you don't even need to go out into other planes to get to that same spot. D&D cities have pretty much every race living in them. The 2e population of Waterdeep for example has almost all races except for full orcs, illithids and drow. That diverse group you mentioned could all have their history, family, birthplace, etc. in the same city and have no need for separate fleshed out homelands.

 

[clearstream]

This analogy would be more meaningful if it weren't supremely possible to, as you say, "scribble" in the kinds of things described. And if people didn't keep having really negative responses to the abstract descriptions of what the tool does, only to follow that up with "...isn't that exactly the same as D&D...?" when you give them anything concrete.

My aim was to engage with the poster's analogy. What I think other posters are saying is that D&D is not a tool that can be operationalized in only one way like say a grout rake (I haven't yet thought of any uses for a grout rake other than raking grout... but who knows really.) The game text by design can be operationalized in many ways.

That means that if I say "Isn't that exactly the same as D&D" it might not be. Because the operationalization of the D&D tool or game-as-artifact that I'm picturing and that will be productive of my D&D play or game-as-played might be different from that which they are picturing. Just as one cannot predict that a given use of Photoshop will produce a fauvist artwork. (And equally, just as failure to produce a fauvist artwork on this occasion doesn't make Photoshop a bad tool.)

It just comes across as extremely tempest-in-a-teapot stuff. Freaking out over being told you have to play by the rules, and then finding out that rejecting these rules is actually a really, really bad idea 99.99...% of the time.

I might have missed that part, but I suspect the whole thing is deeply confounded. Play by which way of grasping and upholding the rules. Reject which rules taking into account how one expects to grasp and uphold those?

One way I think about it is this. Suppose I have an ur-rule that says follow or don't follow other rules according to my principles. And suppose further that I haven't written down my principles and yet I feel like I know what they are. Feeling like one knows what ones principles are is to my observation pretty common, and yet if one asks questions it's quickly obvious that there are a lot of differing principles in play and folk don't clearly know what they are. They're fuzzy, flexible, complexly conditional. And suppose further that my ur-rule (the one bolded) says that what I should understand those other rules to entail also depends on my principles. Thus, overall I should grasp and uphold the rules according to my principles.

Most folk follow an ur-rule like that in their approach to TTRPG. Some game designers write out a list of principles they want to put folk in mind of. D&D doesn't. That directly and unavoidably implies that D&D resists common definition.