D&D General How much control do DMs need?

[AbdulAlhazred]

Out of interest since it wasn't clear in the reply and I got curious when you were referring to the game's mythos, is BitD set within a fantasy setting that includes God's and magic and supernatural creatures?

Ummmmm, its pretty loose. There are what are called 'Forgotten Gods'. Basically Doskvol and its world are a post-apocalyptic magical hellscape that is, effectively just a passing phase on the way to the final ultimate end of the world. Obviously you can play this up or discount it, nothing is cast in stone. What we do know is that the Sun was destroyed, there are only a few shards remaining, and the world is shrouded in dark/dusk, aside from the unnaturally huge Moon. When the cataclysm happened the Gates of Death were broken, and the ether, or ghost field, permeated the world. Any time someone dies, their spirit wanders the land, unless the Spirit Wardens collect them and dispose of them, which they do with a fair degree of efficiency. Doskvol itself, and all other remaining cities in the Imperium, are surrounded by lightning barriers, which keep the most potent spiritual manifestations at bay. Outside of those barriers, are the Death Lands. Few living things exist there, and special equipment is required to work and survive. There are spark line trains which connect the various cities. The whole thing is run by the Immortal Emperor, a wizard of immense power.

The oceans no longer really exist, they are replaced by a 'void sea', a star-filled black surface upon which leviathan hunters sail, hunting the leviathans who's blood is distilled into electroplasm, which fuels all the magitech of Doskvol, including the lightning barriers, which are run by the Sparkwright Guild.

So, the Forgotten Gods have, apparently, no real power, though they may or may not be actual divine beings who can perhaps create a pathway back into the world. They were worshiped in ancient pre-cataclysm times so maybe they are/were real? There are also supposedly 'demons', some sort of spectral beings of great power and malignity, possibly. Ghosts obviously exist, and humans can attune to the ghost field in order to interact with all these spectral phenomena. You can capture ghosts, place them in 'hulls' to create animated magitech beings, etc. There are also other types of creatures, such as vampires.

The upshot is, magic is a pervasive part of life in Doskvol, powering its street lights, trains, lighting barrier, and probably some other stuff too. Any character can attempt to attune to the ghost field and perform 'magic'. There is alchemy, ritual magic, spark craft, etc. which any PC can try to use, though Whisper is the playbook specifically designed for dealing with things like ghosts, and Leech is specifically a sort of alchemist/artificer type. Doskvol is a pretty 'magical' place, so my guess is that pretty much any successful crew operating there is going to employ at least SOME arcane techniques. The game I played in delved pretty deeply into the arcane, especially when we got to tier 3 and above. At the end of the game some of the characters were teleporting, manifesting demonic abilities, etc. I think my character was the MOST mundane, he killed off the demon that was haunting him, but he did have a sort of half-demon girlfriend... Mostly he stuck to "I kill it with my sword" but he could do things like grab or attack electroplasmic/ethereal entities and such, even though he couldn't attune worth a damn.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I dislike it when others do this and so I apologize in advance, but: citations?

I don't really have a citation. I mean, I know the rules of Dungeon World, they don't mention miniatures or anything like that at all as far as I can recall. So, I am simply saying there's no reason why you CANNOT use them, in a sort of 'here is a visualization aid' kind of way. There's definitely no canonical measurements of distance, ranges are handled in 'bands' as indicated here on P326

"Weapons have tags to indicate the range at which they are useful.
Dungeon World doesn’t inflict penalties or grant bonuses for “optimal
range” or the like, but if your weapon says Hand and an enemy is
ten yards away, a player would have a hard time justifying using that
weapon against him.
Hand: It’s useful for attacking something within your reach, no
further.
Close: It’s useful for attacking something at arm’s reach plus a
foot or two.
Reach: It’s useful for attacking something that’s several feet away—
maybe as far as ten.
Near: It’s useful for attacking if you can see the whites of their eyes.
Far: It’s useful for attacking something in shouting distance."

So, there isn't actually a section of the rules specifically ABOUT combat although P173, under "Dealing With Common Situations" does have a 'fights' section. It does actually say this
"Make sure everyone has a chance to act, and that you know where
each player is during the chaos of combat. Make a map of a complex
battle location so that everyone knows just what’s happening and
can describe their actions appropriately."

I would think that putting minis on some sort of battlemat or terrain of some kind would count as making a map and 'knowing where each player is during the chaos of combat.' I've played in DW games where the GM made a very simple map.

OHHHH, you are calling me on AD&D COMBAT, hahahahahaha! Well go read the DMG 1e CAREFULLY, because it explicitly states that characters don't get to attack whomever they want, that each round you will randomly attack another character in the melee. How would that be true if you know exactly where everyone is? I mean, given that there ARE actually rules for weapon reach and such! Also, carefully read the example combat, the one with Gutboy Alehouse and Co. It demonstrates this exactly, no locations, nor even a map, are specified or needed.

Now, I will agree with you that AD&D combat system is TOTALLY INCOHERENT in many respects and there are later in the section diagrams showing how characters align on squares and hexes and who can attack whom (but it never actually says you know where you are, lol). Its basically a hot mess, but the literal rules text states flat out that you are just "in melee" and every rule associated with interacting with a melee is written from the perspective that its almost impossible to tell who is who and where anyone is (IE fire an arrow into melee, or drop a rock into one, read the rules for that!). There are NO EXACT LOCATIONS in a melee. Amusingly we don't really know what area it even encompasses, nothing. Yes, I know, spells and whatnot all have exactly shaped areas and ranges, oh well! I told you it makes no sense!

 

[niklinna]

This last part seems like DM decides when I would have thought this being a modern indie game - the dice would direct the DM rather than his opinion.

Well I didn't think I needed to explain that we still must follow the fiction, or how position & effect work in Blades in the Dark. If I say I want to blow up the world by twitching my eyebrow, the GM is likely to say nay, hm? If I suggest something reasonable and he says yea, he's also going specify what my position & effect levels are for pulling off whatever it is I want to do. And we can negotiate that, which is part of the whole deal when playing Blades in the Dark.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Now this is a big call.

I think I might put Vincent Baker ahead of him. It's hard, because we can't test the important counterfactuals (about what Baker might have come up with if Gygax hadn't already done what he did).

Sure, they occupy different roles in the history of RPG development. Gygax was the first codifier of a rapidly evolving practice, Baker is a student of a much more established genre and a key figure in a movement to construct a sort of 'post modern' kind of RPG.

Somewhere lost in the depths of time was a forgotten genius who first realized he could use the little wedgie marks that the priests used to tally up people's grain contributions to represent sounds, and wrote down a word, maybe a sentence, perhaps even a story! I don't think we can ever compare that guy to William Faulkner. They are simply different beasts.

Honestly, I think the greater genius was Arneson, he really lit the spark, and you might really fairly put him next to Baker or Crane, was the idea of a persistent character identity and ongoing play more creative than the ideas in Apocalypse World? I don't know...

 

[Maxperson]

I haven't seen anyone say D&D must have a DM with total control. On the other hand, I've seen plenty of people that are incredibly dismissive of anything but cooperative games.

 

[loverdrive]

But let me ask you this regarding the PbtA games, since I'm very unfamiliar with those games: Can a DM, in theory, create a hard move that is in essence 'too hard'? Thus causing the table to question his/her fiction?

No, not without directly violating rules. More than that, in many PbtA games, even if "rocks fall" situation is actually justified (say, there's an avalanche coming, but one of the PC willingly ignores that danger), the player is the one deciding whether their character will live or die. They may think "yeah, death here sounds cool". Or they may decide to survive with -1 Hard and the GM can't say boo to that.

Also, a hard move (one with long-lasting consequences that can't be easily dealt with) can only be made in two situations:

1. A dice roll is failed
2. An established danger is ignored

For example, if a sniper is watching an exit from the bar when PC opens the door, in D&D you would make a to-hit roll, a damage roll, and there's a possibility of PC dying to something they never even seen coming.

In Apocalypse World, sniper cannot hit the first shot. She can miss, she can shoot an NPC nobody cares about, someone can warn PCs that they are hunted, GM can just "show" how the sniper is lying in an ambush, watching the door, to the players even if PCs don't know about her, whatever, but she must be clearly established to bear any harm.

I don't think there's any value in talking or thinking about actively malicious GM. A more important thing is screwups.

 

[Li Shenron]

Traditionally, the Dungeon Master assumes god-like powers in a game of D&D. They are the omniscient narrator with power over everything but character choices. They build and tell the story, they populate worlds, they interpret rules. They even have the power to set aside rules and rolls, at their discretion (this is a whole other thread). But lately I've been questioning how necessary this power dynamic is.

I recently ran a session of my 5e campaign using modified Fiasco rules, meaning that the game took place as a series of scenes, and each player, including me, was a co-equal narrator - one person either started or finished a scene, taking turns, and the rest did the opposite. I had some control in that I set up the original scenario and put locations, objects and NPCs into play before the game started, but during play the plot was wide open - it was a mystery and I didn't know who did or why any better than the other players. We worked it out together through the course of the game. It was fun!

I also encourage players to improvise plot details that they want for their character, trusting that they too have the best interest of the game at heart. Lately, I have told them that they can add not just suggestions but major plot points, only requesting that they give me time to prepare if the plot point will involve having to create a dungeon or something (a lot of things we can improvise on the fly).

I'm finding that the more control I give up, the more fun I am having at my games. And it is making me suspect that centralizing power in the DM is not as necessary as the rules presuppose. Depending on the group.

Well it is largely a matter of personal taste, and obviously it doesn't even have to be same all the time since most people I suppose like many things.

Personally, my favourite type of D&D campaign to run is the sandbox + multiple adventure threads (not unlike the old CRPGs of the 90s like Baldur's Gate, minus the main storyline). That usually means I want to leave a lot to the player's initiative to follow adventure seeds or create their own. In addition, I'm a fan of randomness as a way to surprise myself and let events take unexpected turns.

However for practical reasons, I mostly run one-shot games nowadays, sometimes spreading over 2-3 evenings but still self-contained, so there is really no room for the same kind of freedom, and I find myself having to steer the players a little bit here and there to make sure we reach any sort of conclusion.

That said, I'm not a fan however of games where the players are supposed to make up the story themselves, beyond their own character's actions. Probably the reason is, that when I am a player myself, I actually want to see what the DM's creativity is bringing up to the table, not my own. I like being the DM sometimes and a player some other times, and not mixing up the two.

 

[pemerton]

I don't see players in the light of people that can 'abuse' something. They're spinning stories, and I'm as much stagehand as anything else.

I believe the technical term is fifth business: The Interactive Toolkit: Part Two: Why Do Modules Suck?

 

[clearstream]

Well I didn't think I needed to explain that we still must follow the fiction, or how position & effect work in Blades in the Dark. If I say I want to blow up the world by twitching my eyebrow, the GM is likely to say nay, hm? If I suggest something reasonable and he says yea, he's also going specify what my position & effect levels are for pulling off whatever it is I want to do. And we can negotiate that, which is part of the whole deal when playing Blades in the Dark.

I took it as more a question about what and how you would say GM can decide. Can GM say yes to eyebrow twitch / foom?

 

[loverdrive]

Magic is very loosely defined indeed. I recently played a whisper and was a bit at a loss for what I was actually capable of! It boiled down to me just saying "I would like to produce effect X" and the GM saying yea or nay. We could have talked out in advance what magic was capable of. What the game does say is there is a "ghost field", essentially an ethereal plane, that anybody with a particular skill can attune to, in order to see ghosts, echoes of the past, and such. You can even shift into the ghost field. Some special abilities allow you to use Attune to compel a ghost to do what you want, or summon a storm.

I must point out that this is not how magic in Blades works.

Whispers aren't D&D wizards, their immediate magical abilities are constrained to talking to ghosts and perceiving the ghost field (which is something everyone can do with Attune action). There are special abilities Tempest and Compel that allow to shoot lightnings and command ghosts respectively. Other than that, arcane is done through rituals and creation of magical trinkets.

Playtest version of Blades used to have an ability that allowed to "cast spells" by spending stress on magnitude table, but it was replaced by Tempest in the release version.