D&D General How much control do DMs need?

[EzekielRaiden]

Well, rocks fall everyone dies was an exaggerated example.

But maybe it's more of a question of how the complexity, open nature and/or specificity of the rules affects this. If at all. D&D has a ton of optional material, a lot of things like stealth that were left intentionally open. There seems to be a correlation between people who push back against DM as final arbiter and those who don't like the open ended nature the designers decided to go with.

Part of what I personally like about D&D is that open ended nature of the rules. I think having the traditional role of DM helps with that, especially if you play with different groups and not just the same static group year after year.

The problem is, it is its very exaggeration that makes it difficult to process. Dungeon World uses the Agendas, Principles, lesser-but-still-important guidance,* and explanatory text to guard against exactly this sort of extreme or exaggerated behavior. And, believe it or not, while the standard text does not delve into it, the players have Agendas and Principles too, which are just as aligned to "be a friendly, good-faith player" as the GM ones are to "be a friendly, good-faith GM."

Ironically, I feel exactly the opposite here! The thing I love about DW is, I'm free to do as I like--within the rules, which usually are more specific ways of saying "be a good GM," and that specificity is useful. There is little to no fear of doing something that could cause a problem, the rules are really flexible and open to extension,** and my ability to create exciting content is nearly unfettered because monsters are a snap to create (there's even super convenient online tools for it) and never need references to outside material. With most versions of D&D, the rules are complex (yes, even 1e!), difficult to create on the fly, likely to reveal unexpected conflicts when using ad hoc solutions, and often unexpectedly constraining. I feel like I have to be totally inventing new, good systems from the ground up with little to no support.

With DW, it's almost always supremely simple; the three basic move templates are "do an existing thing, but more/different/better" (e.g. adding more questions to Discern Realities, dealing damage even when you fail Hack & Slash, doing two roles for Undertake a Perilous Journey), "roll, get to pick from a list: pick more if hit, less if partial, have Problems if you miss" (along the lines of Discern Realities), or "roll, get everything you want on a hit, ugly/hard/incomplete choices if partial, have Problems if you miss" (along the lines of Defy Danger.)

These basic templates, plus things inspired by the Ritual move (lovely, lovely way of encapsulating all "ritual magic" in a neat package) have been more than enough for me to design anything I've needed and be sure that it is, at worst, only slightly more or less powerful than it should be--and I've only had that happen, specifically slightly too powerful, one time in five years of running DW.

*E.g. "you have to do it to do it" = "an action that invokes a move must occur in the fiction for the move to occur" is not, technically, any of the Agendas or Principles, but is a vital part of how moves happen, even GM moves, though GM moves tend to have less overt connection.

**I've hacked in rules for playing beyond maximum level, the equivalent of a "prestige class"--formally, a "compendium class"--with maybe an hour's work, support for intrigue-focused play, and even support for things that go beyond full success. All of it quite easy to do, none of it in conflict with or requiring that I ignore the existing rules, especially not the rules that apply to me as GM.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

OK, well I can tell you that my actual experience is different, and that when I run these games I've never had a voting session and I've never seen any sort of deadlock.

To be fair in my adult life I don't think I've seen many proper rules arguments at all, at least not that have taken more than two minutes to resolve but when I have seen them it's been in D&D games where rule zero is in effect.

Same. Likewise, I've never seen anyone be so totally, dig-your-heels-in, unrelentingly obstinate as to admit ABSOLUTELY no discussion or cooperation (which may or may not mean compromise.) Not even the absolute dirt-worst player I've played with did that, and the dirt-worst player I've played with was ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE.

No, I stand by what I said. Having unclear or incomplete instructions does not make D&D more open-ended than other games. The game itself is very focused, even if the text pretends (or misunderstands) that it is not.

Fully agreed. Contradictory or useless rules are not open-ended. They're simply bad rules, returning us to the state of nature. An open-ended game provides useful rules when rules are needed. And it turns out, games usually need rules! Even the FKR folks apparently admit that.

Rule zero is connected with traditional GM empowerment, so to invoke it skirts invoking that empowerment.
Freedom to hack rules is either a preexisting behaviour, a principle, or a rule (it doesn't matter which and there are arguments for all three).

I would say it really does matter, because alleging that it is a rule rather than an inherent aspect of "let's play a game" is part of the concern.

So swinging back to DW and things following or not following from hidden knowledge and prep-notes ... In the DW SRD part of the GM rules states this...
<rule snip>
Seems to imply that pre-prep, mapping and actions that can be based on knowledge that is not available to the players are all viable and expected parts of DW.

To be clear I am not stating this is the definitive interpretation... but this is what I am taking from my reading of this principle. I'd be interested in hearing how those with more experience in this playstyle interpret this...and why they feel it does or doesn't differ from D&D prep.

The funny thing is, I've drawn pretty much exactly the same conclusions as you have, from these things. It's why I find so perplexing the DW community's extremely strident insistence on truly-absolutely-"no-myth"-AT-ALL, or at least "the absolute bare minimum 'myth' and never ever any more than that." So strident that, when I spoke of things I considered to be that, several people point-blank told me I was either breaking with DW principles, or "drifting" into "trad" play rather than actually running DW proper.

Like...the rules tell you to exploit your prep. They tell you it's okay, as the consequence of a bad roll, to alert a dangerous opponent that the players and characters couldn't know about yet. How is it possible to do these things if there is truly, absolutely, "no-myth" AT ALL, full stop, end of discussion, or even if it's "absolute bare minimum 'myth' and never ever any more"? Doesn't this require that there be some allowance for myth, just myth which only follows as a result of framed scenes, player choices, and established fiction? I just don't understand how there can be a demon, that the GM knows about and which is a threat to the party, which the party doesn't know is two floors down, and yet still this strident insistence on truly ZERO myth.

 

[Maxperson]

The empirical claim you make seems doubtful to me, and to the best of my knowledge no one has done the research to try and find out.

Do you think that people are more likely to accept an unofficial rule than an official one?

 

[Maxperson]

nope

That seems like a clear yes to me. Why nope?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Gosh I wish you let me know before Morrus approved it as a topic for the Enworld newsletter

I think it did. I've bookmarked the replies for me to read later when I have a little more time to digest the info. But from skimming it and to be completely honest it felt like the reason given was that it was seen as ok if the guidelines were followed (including following the fiction).

Now like I said I've bookmarked the replies to come back to it for a better understanding because with the skimmed understanding of the above I could then just insert the above advice into the DMG and do the same for when the DM decides.

Not to mean to say that D&D will then = DW or AW.

No, but you could certainly approach 5e in a story now/narrativist fashion. You will run into other issues, but you can get partway there, and I guess you could always do further hacking. I thought about it when 5e came out, but then I just thought to myself "why try to recreate 4e again? lol" I mean, not that 4e is by any means the only approach to a more narrativist D&D.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Whoa! Someone actually has the original notes that Dave Arneson sent to Gary Gygax?!

Please please please post it here! If not here, then please send it via a PM or email! I've recently been reviewing some of Rob Kuntz's old notes in his El Raja Key Archive, but Dave's notes would be on a whole other level!

Yes, there are extant rules drafts, written by Arneson, which were presumably used by Gygax while incorporating material into his codification of the system. I've seen text of some notes also written between the two, like actual notes, but there wasn't any actual game material in those, they dealt with questions and logistics and such. Mike Mornard also had/has at least parts of photocopies of Gary's original write ups of parts of the rules, as do a couple of other people. All that was relevant in my bringing it up though was to demonstrate that CODIFICATION OF RULES was a major activity that both of them were engaged in at that time, contrary to some notion that either of them subscribed to the idea of an 'invisible rule book'. They may well have considered that to be an approach for, say, their own personal play, or it may have formed an initial starting position from which the idea of the merit of codified rules emerged. Its also worth pointing out that 'codified' can mean a range of things! D&D was, perhaps codified enough for Dave, and maybe initially for Gary too.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This claim seems confused.

The reason I say this is as follows: there are constitutions that assert, of themselves, that certain elements are unamendable. Yet there are also participants in at least some of those constitutional regimes who believe that constituent power (as opposed to constituted power) can remake the rules of the constitutional order more-or-less at will.

Now the claim about the relationship between constituent power and constitutional orders can be a complicated one, particularly if the constitutional order is not based on a tradition of popular sovereignty (see eg the United Kingdom).

But in the case of a RPG, it seems trivially true: the participants in a RPG can choose to carry out their activities in accordance with whatever rules they like. (This is one way of stating the Lumpley principle.) So there is no such thing as the participants in a RPG putting N in place for themselves. It's not a coherent state of affairs to posit.

Careful there, I heard a muttered "- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed," issuing from an old grave in Virginia

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

If it is me who should raise their hand, then I suspect whoever you are responding to has failed to grasp my arguments. I queried an on-surface contradiction with prior positions by stating what folk might be understood as saying, in order to get at the differences between rule zero and freely hacking rules. Aside from allergic reactions, this has yielded a reasonably clear picture of what folk feel is at stake. Essentially -

Rule zero is connected with traditional GM empowerment, so to invoke it skirts invoking that empowerment.
Freedom to hack rules is either a preexisting behaviour, a principle, or a rule (it doesn't matter which and there are arguments for all three).

My contribution is to propose that if the second statement is true, then rule zero amounts to one or more regulatory rules that act upon it. Rule zero is only able to have any effect because there is a prior ability to hack rules. The practical upshot of rule zero then, is

1) to exclude others from similarly exercising their ability to hack rules
2) to put in place a prior agreement that will go on to effect moment-to-moment acceptance

All this needs is a few tablespoons of vinegar and oil, and a few croutons, and I'm all set!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

So swinging back to DW and things following or not following from hidden knowledge and prep-notes ... In the DW SRD part of the GM rules states this...

Think offscreen too
Just because you’re a fan of the characters doesn’t mean everything happens right in front of them. Sometimes your best move is in the next room, or another part of the dungeon, or even back in town. Make your move elsewhere and show its effects when they come into the spotlight.

Now this, along with this (which I realize was brought up earlier, but I'm still a little unclear on why this isn't a mapping in the D&D sense especially since this seems to be the methodology many use for sandboxes)...

Draw maps, leave blanks
Dungeon World exists mostly in the imaginations of the people playing it; maps help everyone stay on the same page. You won’t always be drawing them yourself, but any time there’s a new location described make sure it gets added to a map.

When you draw a map don’t try to make it complete. Leave room for the unknown. As you play you’ll get more ideas and the players will give you inspiration to work with. Let the maps expand and change.

Seems to imply that pre-prep, mapping and actions that can be based on knowledge that is not available to the players are all viable and expected parts of DW.

To be clear I am not stating this is the definitive interpretation... but this is what I am taking from my reading of this principle. I'd be interested in hearing how those with more experience in this playstyle interpret this...and why they feel it does or doesn't differ from D&D prep.

Right, its perfectly reasonable, and expected, that the PCs don't know about all the things that might be going on in the world, and all of those which might even be relevant to them. OTOH, nothing IMHO is canonical and actually is 'true' until it has shown up in a scene with the PCs. The story is ABOUT the PCs, but it does include other characters. What we're avoiding here is the sort of elaborate meta-plot and associated detailed descriptions of NPCs and locations and such that leads to play which is ABOUT those things and puts them ahead of character. This can be kind of a subtle distinction I guess, but one key point is the 'holes' in the maps, some things may be out there which the GM has defined and can be located or can take some action, but in the end these things are either just footnotes, or they bear on the story of the characters and impact their goals and needs in some way.

The orc horde may be out there, unknown to the PCs. It may come to threaten their homes at some point, but the story will be about how they deal with it, not the history, goals, population, and ecology of orcs (those facts might arise incidentally as useful information though). If you think about it, there really aren't that many trad games where things aren't ACTUALLY built around what would make a good PC story, its just that the nature of that story is generally authored by the GM. In the DW orc horde scenario, the orc king is going to have his goblin minions kidnap the fighter's sister BECAUSE its about the fighter and makes a good story about the fighter. We are asking "what will you do to fight for your family?" Maybe we'll even make it a hard choice, family or town! In a D&D game the same event would be a set up for running through a GM designed rescue mission.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Yes, there are extant rules drafts, written by Arneson, which were presumably used by Gygax while incorporating material into his codification of the system. I've seen text of some notes also written between the two, like actual notes, but there wasn't any actual game material in those, they dealt with questions and logistics and such. Mike Mornard also had/has at least parts of photocopies of Gary's original write ups of parts of the rules, as do a couple of other people. All that was relevant in my bringing it up though was to demonstrate that CODIFICATION OF RULES was a major activity that both of them were engaged in at that time, contrary to some notion that either of them subscribed to the idea of an 'invisible rule book'. They may well have considered that to be an approach for, say, their own personal play, or it may have formed an initial starting position from which the idea of the merit of codified rules emerged. Its also worth pointing out that 'codified' can mean a range of things! D&D was, perhaps codified enough for Dave, and maybe initially for Gary too.

Stop Dodging.

You said you had the pdf on your computer. This isn’t just “shooting the breeze“ stuff. This matters.

So please, instead of this … whatever it is …. either put up or tell us you were just engaging in …. Puffery.

ETA - Again, I want nothing more than for you to produce this. That would be amazing. But your answers are not inspiring confidence in your veracity.