D&D General How much control do DMs need?

[EzekielRaiden]

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.

To give you an example of something like this for my own game. Spoilers only on the (extremely low) chance that my players happen to waltz through the forum:

Spoiler: Jewel of the Desert

So, four fronts came up early on, inspired both by the players' choices and stuff I just thought sounded fun. They are the Raven-Shadow assassin cult, the Cult of the Burning Eye (Lovecraftian cultists worshipping an elder beholder), the Shadow Druids (eco-terrorist druids who practice fungal necromancy), and a Black Dragon using gangs and money to try to take over the city as its "hoard."

However, early on, certain symbolism kept popping up. Nearly everyone in the party was connected to ravens in some way--despite this happening totally by accident. The Ranger chose a raven familiar because he likes ravens. The Barbarian's home clan has Raven as their totem. The Wizard has a raven familiar. The Druid transforms into a desert raven as his usual flight form. Etc. That was WAY too many ravens for me to allow that to just slide! So I capitalized on it--made it symbolic for the Raven-Shadows, naturally, but significant to others too. And that led me to wonder, why are these various forces present here? Why are they active now?

And that last question, coupled with the Bard player giving me essentially carte blanche to include Dangerous Things in his family tree--because he's a tiefling on both sides of his family, but the devilish side was long ago and no one knows who it is. So I thought about these forces, and it occurred to me that all of them would make sense as having been manipulated, or been given a deal, by a powerful devil. Which thus led to the idea that each of these things is a part of the Xanatos Gambit of that powerful devil.

If any one of the four fronts wins, said devil has won control of a hugely important region on this world. If none of them win, but the Bard--distant descendant, re-empowered by connecting to the devil's bloodline through a ritual--becomes famous and has children, then that's a win by creating a powerful devil-demon-mortal hybrid that can then be exploited later down the line. Even if the Bard just becomes famous, he has two siblings--their family lines, carrying both devil and demon blood, can still be exploited in a generation or two, even if the Bard's now-extra-powerful blood can't. Even if the Bard doesn't become famous, the group overall already has, and this devil has hooks to connect to them, or their successors in their various endeavors.

This isn't meant to be something the players can truly "win" or "lose"--winning, in this case, would be more a matter of ensuring that this devil's plans are disrupted as much as possible. Hence, I don't need to prepare any specific result. Just that they are connected. And this has been discoverable from the beginning, it just hasn't been obvious. As we go, the full nature of this world, its complex history, etc. have all become much, much, much more than I ever considered or planned. But a devil, pulling the strings for literally thousands of years, has been part of it from shortly after the players showed their unusual and entirely unplanned symbolic connections.

So...is that a story "about the PCs"? The whole thing is them tussling with major forces, and the direction those forces end up going is deeply dependent on their choices, indeed, it has only become more dependent on what they choose, how they have behaved, who they have trusted. Those forces coming to a head at this time, in this place, was unavoidable, which is how I understand Fronts to work (they are about what would happen, if it weren't for these meddling kids heroes!) But what actually will happen is totally up in the air. The Raven-Shadows (just to pick one front) may be utterly broken, or turned from their dark ways, or ascendant, or rent in two, or proven perhaps not "right all along" but at least "justifiable in their extremism," or...who knows? We'll play to find out.

 

[hawkeyefan]

The top-voted definition on stackexhange gives this


So what is this doing? I feel like it is not contentious to say that folk here feel that all RPGs are hackable. Rule zero isn't needed to permit or enable gamers to introduce rules or exceptions to rules, or abolish old ones.

So again, what is it doing? The bolded part is what's important. Following rule zero means accepting that one person can do those things and no one else can. As you pointed out, that could be Rule Birthday. So rule zero is also naming that person: it has to be the GM. This is a regulatory rule because just as traffic lights regulate the preexisting behaviour of driving a car (something that can be done whether or not traffic lights exist), rule zero regulates the exercise of a power that everyone already possesses.

I think @Aldarc has blocked me which is a shame because if they saw that I was making statements that were intended to be as neutral as possible, then they might have also seen that the conversation has upheld many (perhaps not all) of their intuitions. I'm agreeing that the power to hack rules preexists rule zero (whether as a behaviour, or a principle, or some form of rule honestly doesn't matter.) And in a sense demoting rule zero in a way that focuses exactly on it's restrictive function.

Obviously traffic lights aren't always a bad thing - regulations aren't always bad - except on the autobahn. Which is to say that rule zero isn't a bad thing given I am comfortable with GM-empowerment. If I have any reservations about GM-empowerment, then the construction I propose detaches the underlying power to hack from rule zero. Which as a proposition is what I would want. It means that there isn't a harbour for arguments like the one I read in a recent blog that



In my initial draft of my first post in this particular digression, I had a postscript that explained why I was laying out the statements as I did. I deleted it fearing that folk might feel I was accusing them of constructively contradicting themselves! In hindsight, perhaps it would have forestalled much misunderstanding.

My point is that Rule Zero isn't in the text. How can it regulate anything if it's not even something that a person who reads the book will know about?

Basically, how can a rule be a rule if it's not in the rule book?

 

[Mistwell]

I have a PDF of the material that Dave sent to Gary at one point sitting on my hard drive. Its substantively most of what is in the 3 LBBs...

I want to read that PDF. Please post it somewhere.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

I've had many a time as DM when to end a long deadlocked argument I've had to put my foot down. Fortunately, such occasions are steadily becoming less frequent as time goes on (to the point now where they are fairly rare) and our rules system slows down in its changes.

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.

I've seen rules arguments go on for days, started in a session then carried on through the week when people meet for coffee or at the pub etc. Most of this is around 1e or 1e-adjacent games, where there's no explicit rule 0 but there is a general expectation that if a decision doesn't otherwise arise the DM's word is final.

 

[clearstream]

My point is that Rule Zero isn't in the text. How can it regulate anything if it's not even something that a person who reads the book will know about?

Basically, how can a rule be a rule if it's not in the rule book?

A more general restatement of what you are asking is - can there be such a thing as unwritten rules? To me the answer is yes. All that's required is for a person to be able to have in mind what they think counts as following the rule, and choose to follow it.

In a sense, all rules have an unwritten complement, which is the rule as interpreted. Any time two people have different ideas about what counts as following the same rule, that's because they have in mind their own unwritten version of the written rule.

As @EzekielRaiden pointed out, there are many advantages to written rules, not least that they are more reliably communicated and taught. This touches on your related question - how will they know about an unwritten rule? The answer is that they will hear about it (in conversations like this one for example,) or see others following it and try to emulate them, or take it as implied by other words in their game text, or even carry it in from their background culture. And probably a host of other mechanisms.

 

[clearstream]

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.

Can you say why you think it matters? What - to you - matters about the distinction?

As a secondary question, do you have in mind a definition of rules, principles, and behaviour, that you are using to know that it is the latter? Can you say something about that definition?

 

[loverdrive]

So a question. In, say DW, the GM(?) has moves. Soft moves and hard moves. Let's say the GM does a hard move "Rocks fall and everyone dies." What happens? How does the group decide what qualifies as a legitimate move?

If the question is "what will happen if the GM deliberately and maliciously breaks the rules", well, there's no clear-defined procedure. Just like there's no procedure for dealing with players who cheat with their dice rolls.

If the question is "what if the GM makes a move they cannot make due to an oversight, a momentary lapse of judgement or miscommunication", the players will ask "and the trigger for this move is...?"

So the PCs are the only people in the setting who can proactively do anything, and NPCs/the setting can only react to what the PCs (try to) do?

So much for the idea of a living world.

No, but the PCs are at the centre of attention.

Just like in our real world, Gherman Titov is less important to the history of the first space flight than Yuri Gagarin, so a fictional or historical work about Vostok-1 would probably gloss over him and relegate him to the role of a supporting character.

The same way a fictional or historical work about Vostok-2, the first long-duration space flight, would gloss over Gagarin and focus on Titov.

 

[pemerton]

N. Users of this RPG cannot change the rules.

For those who put rule N in force for themselves

How can they?

I don't think there is any such state of affairs as a group of people engaged in the social pastime of RPGing putting rule N in force for themselves.

To begin with, N is a very improbable rule. So let me coin a new rule, P: We will stick to the rules of this game, as written.

A group of people can agree to P, and it seems plausible that P entails N. In some context that agreement can be made binding (eg a tournament). In others it probably can't (eg social play). We might therefore say that, in the tournament, N has been put in force. But not by the participants without mediation - a tournament is a type of institution, and it is the institution that establishes the context for the agreement being binding.

@Oofta's public/"pick-up" game also has an institutional dimension, which lends weight to the authority of the GM that he attests to being part of that game.

At least as I have experienced RPGing with friends, there is no comparable institutional context as there is in a tournament or a pick-up game. The group can start playing by some rules, and they can keep doing so, but nothing stops them varying that at any time. And why should it? It's a group of friends playing a game together!

 

[pemerton]

So the PCs are the only people in the setting who can proactively do anything, and NPCs/the setting can only react to what the PCs (try to) do?

Given that's actually the opposite of the example @loverdrive gave - which was of a NPC sniping at a PC - then the answer to your question is NO.

 

[pemerton]

If it's not Rule 0 that allows the ability to kitbash, then what rule is it?

No rule. People don't need a "rule" to confer on them the permission or the ability to change the nature of their pastimes. They just do it.

EDIT: I should acknowledge that @Aldarc has also been ably making this point for several pages now.