D&D General How much control do DMs need?

[Imaro]

When it comes to whether a player is being constructive, it probably is my call, but that isn't part of the game rules. That's a social consideration.

When it comes to addressing the good-faith concerns, it's about reaching consensus. Each player either agrees or disagrees initially. My goal, then, is to adjust until everyone agrees things can go forward. That does not really parse into any of your provided methods. It's not about votes, because I don't want anyone to feel outvoted or vetoed. It's not about me making a final determination, because I work until the group agrees--that doesn't parse as anyone exercising "authority," and much more as each person exercising assent.

It's certainly possible that a player could convince me that my chosen course is incorrect, and that a better solution can be found. I almost always ask my players for feedback about how things went, so that's a good option. More commonly, as with the character-rebuild thing, the concern is less "this is wrong and shouldn't happen" and more "X is happening, but Y isn't coming with it, an that's not okay." Hence, working with the player to make Y happen resolves the issue, achieving consensus. Or perhaps the concern is more like, "I feel like I'm being left out." At that point, the issue is clearly my fault--I have not done my job as GM properly, having been an insufficient fan of the concerned player's character. Thus, the concern raised is an instruction, even if the player doesn't realize this, for me to do better. And that can be quite easily arranged simply by listening to their concerns and offering options I'm comfortable with that will address those concerns.

Is the concerned player the one "making the final determination" because I will work until their concerns are addressed? Or am I the one "making the final determination" because I'm offering/accepting solutions? Or is it the group "making the final determination" because we achieve consensus? This is my problem with the question: it essentially assumes that there must be some singular, final authority, and that's...just not really how conversations resolve, but "resolve via conversation" is how DW addresses this sort of thing.

My only mussing on this is... is it possible that in trying to compromise for everyone... no one really gets what they want but instead everyone kind of gets a secondary consolation prize for all.

 

[Imaro]

And my experience has been rather the opposite. As I said, I work, as much as possible, to earn my players' trust and respect. Of course, it helps that they are already my friends, but still. I do what I can, when I can, to support literally anything my players want to do that isn't abusive, coercive, or exploitative. They know this. This means that they know, if there's even a shred of merit to their concerns, I will work with them to find it, discuss it, and address it. There is no need to "entrench," because we are actively and continually working to support one another, rather than trying to oppose one another. (Of course, some NPCs I run do oppose them! But I do not. That's critical.)

Sometimes, discussion does run a little longer than I'd like, but never for bad reasons. People ask good questions, give warranted answers, and generally seek only to make the game better, fuller, more interesting for everyone involved. Why bother with factions when all you need do is say, "Hey, I'm not sure about X," and the group will listen and work with you to address it?

It's great that you listen and try to work towards what your players want... but my understanding as we've discussed this is that you are still the final authority of your game at the end of the day. Now maybe you follow certain best practices but it still sounds like you're a singular, but benevolent, authority figure.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I will say that if rule zero is stated as part of a game in the rules...you are implicitely agreeing to it if you join a session of that game. Now I do think it is fair and within your rights to understand what things that DM will use rule zero for as well as making it clear what application of it is a non-starter for you. To me that is a session zero discussion if it's a concern, but for most groups I've played with it isn't.

Implicit agreement is not agreement at all. Period. Especially when it involves signing over nigh-absolute power. I completely agree that it should be a session zero discussion--a very big one, given its importance. I just find that a lot of people don't actually DO that.

I don't necessarily agree that the DM choosing to implement a change you don't like is grounds for your faith being shaken, again he is concerned with the most beneficial choice for the entire table vs. your personal preference. As an example if everyone at the table wants to play with feats in 5e except you and the DM decides to allow feats...is your faith shaken at that point. Putting it a different way...would you feel the same way if a decision you didn't agree with was enacted because the majority of the group wanted something you didn't... would your faith in the group be shaken at that point?

You're missing the forest for the trees.

The point isn't that, necessarily, any single specific thing instantly and inherently does it. It's that, at the point where you-as-DM are invoking Rule Zero to tell someone why they need to agree with you...you've already lost their trust. That's literally why you'd be invoking Rule Zero to them. You'd have no other reason to do so--because if they're going along with it (even if they're grumbling), it's because the trust is still there.

Until the trust is lost, there's no need to invoke Rule Zero. Once it is lost, invoking it is useless--you must rebuild that trust. At which point, you no longer need to invoke Rule Zero! So...what exactly is Rule Zero doing?

See above. Also, I think that if you don't believe a DM is making majority (because no one is perfect) of their choices around rule zero in order to benefit the group as a whole (as opposed to your personal preferences) you shouldn't play games run by them. Of course if everyone else is having a good time and you are the only one who isn't... it may not be that their choices were bad.

What if it's only a few choices? What if it's a single choice that will keep coming up repeatedly? What if I believe the DM is doing it because they think it's for the benefit of the group, but I think that thing is detrimental to the group? Fudging is a great example here. I don't want to launch into a huge discussion about it so please for the love of God don't, but I bring it up because it is, at the very least, intensely controversial with some players....and something that many DMs will straight-up lie to their players about whether they do it. Even otherwise excellent DMs, like Matt Colville do this. He literally put out a video about fudging wherein he explicitly says that he has pre-rolled dice so that, if his players question him, he can lift the DM screen and show players that he "really did" roll whatever he says he rolled. Etc.

I can like and agree with someone on 95% of the choices they make, but if the 5% of choices I disagree with are really really REALLY important choices, it can easily be a serious problem. "Majority" is not enough in this context.

No it's not. Rule zero is not a gag order that silences all discussion and opposition. Rule zero says the final determination is in the hands of this particular individual. That's all.

Sure it is. That's why there's this obsession with having a single, central, Hobbesian authority--so that one person can tell everyone else what they're going to do, and if they don't like that, they can leave. As you yourself just said! Rule Zero straight-up says, "The rules are the DM's plaything." Can't say that that puts me in a trusting mood any more than someone saying, "You trust me to make all of the food for you while you're at my house, right? You won't try to make anything yourself?"

And again if you truly believe their decisions are not benefiting the group... why would you continue to play under them. Much more commonly I see a player whose personal preferences aren't catered to and they then assume that the group shares those preferences.

Many reasons. E.g. fudging, as noted above. Or the DM actually playing favorites (seen that one, it's a hoot.) Or the DM failing to understand how probability works and thus screwing over players. Could be any number of things. Could be, as I said, I almost always DO agree with them--that the majority of their decisions are for the benefit of the group--but in that slim minority, they make such significant, important, impactful changes that I must dissent.

Of course, I usually avoid this by not playing with DMs who are so stridently insistent on being the one absolute authority and demanding deference via Rule Zero. That helps quite a bit in earning my trust in the first place.

well I've said it before... I'm not sure the way I run my games I am 100% traditional, I use what I want to create what I think will make a better game... so I may have a skewed perception of things like rule zero thought I doubt the majority of actual DM's are tyrants wielding an iron fist over their game and players.

I had a more...antagonistic response here originally. Having thought better of it, all I will say is, an insistence on Rule Zero is, in fact, one of the things that weakens my trust in someone's use of authority. Being circumspect, not declaring absolute authority, not emphasizing that the rules are just suggestions, etc.--that's what earns my trust, if I don't know the DM personally.

My only mussing on this is... is it possible that in trying to compromise for everyone... no one really gets what they want but instead everyone kind of gets a secondary consolation prize for all.

"Compromise" implies at least one person is giving things up. That's why I didn't use that word. I look for consensus-building. Helping everyone walk away happy. That's the whole point.

It's great that you listen and try to work towards what your players want... but my understanding as we've discussed this is that you are still the final authority of your game at the end of the day. Now maybe you follow certain best practices but it still sounds like you're a singular, but benevolent, authority figure.

And to me, this says that you've already presumed absolutely every game MUST, always, have one single central authority, and thus you'll find one, no matter how much twisting it requires.

There isn't a central authority at my games. I serve at my players' pleasure. My players listen to my requests and respond with their own. No single voice is dominant. Edit: If there is any central authority, it's the DW rules. Because I follow them.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't specifically recall the origin point for the flexibility discussion either. IIRC, someone claimed D&D was uniquely flexible among TTRPGs, others (including me) pushed back pretty hard on that, and Rule Zero was cited as why it is so. Hence why there's the response of, "How is this in any way unique?"

It was the usual. People talked about DM control of fiction and process, PbtA/FitD/BW/Fate/etc. were brought up and certain people stated their tired old saw about how you cannot have 'flexibility' without absolute GM authority and concomitantly how D&D is a font of flexible game design that can serviceably cover all bases. And so on and so forth, as previous played out in umpteen other threads.

 

[Oofta]

I'm just saying, I have a vastly lower concern for some kind of absolute consistency than, say @Lanefan obviously does... More than that, I value the inputs of the players and their connectedness to the game more than questions about why a map appears to be at odds with a backstory.

I have a world map and outlines of powers but there are a lot of blank spaces. Part of that is because the main continent is way too large, but I've been using it forever so I'm not going to change. If I had set up something reasonable, say the size of the British Isles, it would probably be quite a bit more filled out. On the other hand, the word "kingdom" can mean many things. A large valley somewhere? Monaco is an independent country (smallest if you don't count Vatican City) at less than 1 square mile. Liechtenstein in the center of Europe is 133 square miles, with a handful of island nations like San Marino (24 square miles) somewhere in between.

So again, it's a matter of scale. So a city state like Monaco? I can find room for that. Even a Liechtenstein now and then, no problem. But looking at my handy dandy "100 smallest countries" chart, something like Greece (50,949 square miles and the largest country on the list) would be odd to just pop up unless it was a distant island nation. I'd also question why we needed to add a brand new kingdom. Why not just use one that's already been described? Describe what kind of backstory you have and I'll give you options of where you can come from.

Yeah, I understand the concern. If there is a question of necessary assumptions of milieu or genre, or gamist constraints that are important and where some backstory were, hypothetically, to be breaking the game, then clearly it is going to have to be subject to some discussion of how things work. I'd assume that there are rich people in the world, if a PC is going to be one of them, and thus either piles of healing potions are already a thing, at least somewhere, or else there are other constraints on their availability besides simple pecuniary ones. Again though, its kind of a matter of priorities. I'm happy to solve those sorts of minor issues on the understanding that interesting backstory is probably a lot more important than the appearance of subverting some resource game (IE once the PCs get lost in the wilderness and the cart falls down into a ravine and is lost that pile of healing potions is doing anyone a fat lot of good, right?).

If someone pitched an idea for a campaign where everyone starts out as wealthy, we could work something out. But what I'm concerned with is balance.

I haven't run into this sort of issue. I'm not sure what 'abuse' is TBH. Given the sort of narrative play I'm mostly involved in running, I don't find one PC's ability to call in some favors to mean much. OK, the thief's guild isn't bothering you right now, but the once impoverished Orcus Cult they were extorting all its income from is now growing in power! When Dad sent a bunch of guardsmen to take care of THAT, they all came back as ghouls! lol. The world is always filled with challenges, roll with it! Or just have Dad tell the rich son PC "Are you crazy! Do you know how much dirt those little rats have on us!!!??? Don't you dare go anywhere near them!" Obviously you don't want to thwart every creative use of this kind of resource, but there's no reason why rich kids are any more gifted than anyone else.

The thing is that some people don't realize they're abusing the system to the point of it being an issue. The story I told above of the group discussing the issues we all had with their abuse of the noble background? When we had the intervention, the guy seemed to be genuinely surprised. They didn't realize they were being, for lack of a better term, a power hog that was dominating combat.

I don't think the guy who abused his background was a bad guy. He was just not very aware of the impression and impact it had on other players. It was like everyone playing an online video game but one person was using cheat codes to give themselves a powerup. The issue wasn't the level of power so much as it was the imbalance. In my experience people like to feel like they're contributing equally.

For instance, my cat person PC in one 5e game was a street waif (Urchin background, very sweet for a Tabaxi, I could basically appear on any rooftop in the whole city without even needing to make a check). Beyond that, he knows like 500 other beggars and urchins. Yeah, they don't do favors totally for free, but he got a LOT of mileage out of that, and I doubt being an ultra rich kid that can call in Dad would have been significantly superior to what Mrrreowwww! was able to do!

Well, sounds like someone could put on their thinking cap. I mean, I'd leave it to the players. Just tell them "yup, Fred's Dad is a rich and powerful guy who will, sometimes, get Fred what he wants. YOU on the other hand may also have significant resources." I mean, I think that's exactly what the PC Themes in 5e are aiming for, isn't it? In our other 5e campaign my character was a Hero of the People. He got a good bit of free victuals and hidden from his enemies, etc. though honestly I only really used it once or twice. I tend to think that MORE is better than LESS in these areas. The PCs are remarkable people, let it do some work.

I certainly try to have background matter even if I don't use it as much as I could. I've just never figured out how to have backgrounds have significant impact, not just being helpful bonuses either mechanically or RP wise, without getting too meta-gamey.

If the group all had ties to wealth or power, we could probably come up with some system for accountability. Yes, you have access to the royal treasury but that treasury comes from taxes so there are limits to how much can be spent and why. Or yes, you have connections to the local militia but their power is not unlimited so use them wisely. You'd have to have some kind of resource pool, probably something pulled in from another system (I know there are some superhero systems that implement some of this).

So it could work. I may even discuss it as an option when discussing our next campaign if I had a system to handle everyone in the group having access to powerful outside influences. But part of the fun of D&D is going from zero to hero for a lot of people, myself included. Not sure what that journey would look like if I was already heir to the throne.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Dumbo thinks he needs a magic feather in order to fly. He loses the magic feather mid-fall and realizes that he could fly without it. IMHO, Rule 0 is Dumbo's magic feather. I don't see why you need Rule 0 to do the things you do. Why do you think that a GM could not do the same things in other tabletop games without a Rule 0?

I see where there was a disconnect for me. The 3 examples I used were not really soft or hard moves so they would be fine within a AW or DW game.

 

[Imaro]

And to me, this says that you've already presumed absolutely every game MUST, always, have one single central authority, and thus you'll find one, no matter how much twisting it requires.

There isn't a central authority at my games. I serve at my players' pleasure. My players listen to my requests and respond with their own. No single voice is dominant. Edit: If there is any central authority, it's the DW rules. Because I follow them.

Uhm...wow. Ok thought we were having a pretty good conversation here... but this really irritates me. Instead of giving me the benefit of the doubt you're now telling me what I presume. Let me say this... when you couch your statements in terms of "I" it tends to imply that you are actually the one in control and making the decisions... regardless of how much you are claiming to negotiate, listen, trying to get everyone to come to a consensus and so on. Maybe I misunderstood you but claiming what I'm presuming as opposed to asking me is not cool. The whole point of a back and forth is for clarification, questioning etc.

 

[clearstream]

I will say that if rule zero is stated as part of a game in the rules...you are implicitely agreeing to it if you join a session of that game. Now I do think it is fair and within your rights to understand what things that DM will use rule zero for as well as making it clear what application of it is a non-starter for you. To me that is a session zero discussion if it's a concern, but for most groups I've played with it isn't.

This is potentially a good example of conditional versus unconditional principles. Just to briefly outline the difference, a conditional principle is like this - if you desire X you ought to do Y - and an unconditional principle is like this - you ought to desire X and do Y.

A significant difference between them forms around expectations going into a game session. Written Rule Zero works as a conditional principle. If I desire whatever virtues I have in mind for it, then I ought to agree to GM empowerment going in. But nothing obliges me to desire that (and indeed, I might very much not desire that!)

Unwritten Rule Zero, that I believe folk are saying should be thought of as available in every TTRPG, works as an unconditional principle: I can't make a decision about it beyond - I ought to desire unwritten rule zero and accept its implications. That's not necessarily a problem, because as @EzekielRaiden outlines, some games contain additional principles that limit the implications of unwritten rule zero.

 

[Aldarc]

I see where there was a disconnect for me. The 3 examples I used were not really soft or hard moves so they would be fine within a AW or DW game.

I was talking more generally of why or how Rule Zero would be necessary for what you did. If Rule Zero didn't exist in D&D, then it seems like you could have still done exactly what you did. This is why I compared Rule Zero to a placebo pill or a magic feather. It doesn't really enable you to do anything that you couldn't have done without it.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Uhm...wow. Ok thought we were having a pretty good conversation here... but this really irritates me. Instead of giving me the benefit of the doubt you're now telling me what I presume. Let me say this... when you couch your statements in terms of "I" it tends to imply that you are actually the one in control and making the decisions... regardless of how much you are claiming to negotiate, listen, trying to get everyone to come to a consensus and so on. Maybe I misunderstood you but claiming what I'm presuming as opposed to asking me is not cool. The whole point of a back and forth is for clarification, questioning etc.

I mean, it's the third time you've rejected my assertion that there isn't a person with ultimate authority in my game. I've said, repeatedly, that there isn't one. If you repeatedly reject that assertion, you must think I am simply mistaken. How can that be, though, if I am literally the person on this board* most qualified to answer the question? Because you deny the fundamental assertion--that there can be such a game, with no person or persons vested with ultimate authority, not even "majority vote wins."

We achieve consensus. It's really not that hard. We have a frank and open conversation, lay out our interests, discuss our differences, and find a path forward that everyone agrees is appropriate. There is no central authority, other than (perhaps) the rules of DW itself. And those are pretty flexible.

I can only tell you what I, personally, do. I can't speak for my players. I can, however, make reference to things my players do. For example, my players invent organizations and NPCs as needed. (Indeed, I would love them to do so more than they do.) They enter major backstory stuff (e.g., the Battlemaster drafted some cool concepts for who his long-disappeared mother is, and how this explains his established connection to ancient history stuff.) They introduce religious principles. If I have a concern about their work, I bring it up, we talk it out, and it gets included. At best, I have merely a specially...let's say "facilitative" role, simply because I run the opposition forces. And, of course, there are all the things that get entered into play by way of one of the players making a move. Sometimes, they ask me questions, and I must (by the rules) give them honest answers. Sometimes, I ask them questions, and they must give me honest answers (by the rules), and those answers become part of the shared imaginary space.

*My players could also answer, I'm sure. Perhaps they would disagree with me; I don't know, as I said, I don't claim to speak for them.