D&D General How much control do DMs need?

[EzekielRaiden]

You seemed to say that Mao couldn't work if rule-zero was in play, and required rule-can-change-rules* to be in play.

I observed that is equally satisfied simply by ensuring rule-zero is not the same rule as rule-can-change-rules.

*Where "rule-can-change-rules" in your view is a "behaviour".

I see a contradiction in the statement "rule zero is not the same rule as rule-can-change-rules." How can you have rule zero without having rule changing? That's literally its entire content, a statement about who (GM) is allowed to change some proportion of rules (all of them) and when (at any time.) To take out the "change rules" part is to make it not be Rule Zero anymore. Given this seems like such an obvious contradiction, I must be fundamentally misunderstanding your point.

 

[clearstream]

@pemerton I suspect we have reached a point where nothing said in the last however-many posts has felt at all compelling to the other.

My fear is that if we continue we'll stoke feelings of frustration and I don't want to do that as I always value your insights (even where I disagree with them!)

So I'll bow out of this particular exchange of views here. I appreciate your knowledge and patience.

 

[pemerton]

Nothing stops is here misleading.

Not really.

The nature of friendships and other informal groupings is that the participants are free. I mean, maybe if participant X is in love with participant Y that will be relevant. But that can happen in any RPG, whatever its rules.

You conjecture the following, or something like it: if all the participants promise to the GM that they will let the GM unilaterally choose the way in which agreement on the shared fiction is mediated, this makes it more likely than otherwise that those participants will let the GM do that. (We could quibble over whether playing a game with someone, which states in its rules that that someone enjoys a certain power, is a promise, but that seems a side point.)

I say that this is an empirical conjecture for which no evidence has been shown. It's a priori implausible, because when the function of the rules is to mediate acceptance they have to actually be acceptable and functional as a mediation device, and unilateral imposition is not a very good way to create an acceptable and functional mediation device (this is something that is quite important in Durkheim's theory of law).

And all the empirical evidence that I'm aware of points the other way: that D&D-esque games that promote the authority of the GM over the rules are especially prone to disputes among the participants about the proper way to establish the content of the shared fiction.

 

[clearstream]

I see a contradiction in the statement "rule zero is not the same rule as rule-can-change-rules." How can you have rule zero without having rule changing? That's literally its entire content, a statement about who (GM) is allowed to change some proportion of rules (all of them) and when (at any time.) To take out the "change rules" part is to make it not be Rule Zero anymore. Given this seems like such an obvious contradiction, I must be fundamentally misunderstanding your point.

Up-thread, I hopefully made clear that rule-zero depends upon the existence of rule-can-change-rules.

So that were it the case that rule-can-change-rules was unavailable, rule-zero too would fail.

As I said and as @Manbearcat has I felt also emphasised, rule-zero's effect when followed is to empower GM exclusively to change rules. It does not create a power to change rules, it only assigns it.

Rule 0 is not about hacking. Rule 0 is about discretionary GM Rulings,...

One use of this framing is to ask questions like - are we okay with some assignments of the power to change rules, and not others? do we feel the game is best served if everyone going in takes themselves to be empowered to change rules whenever they like? might we insist on some level of consultation? does a right to be consulted include a right to modify or veto? These are all fairly obvious considerations that arise out of my framing.

 

[pemerton]

But that principle specifically states...

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.

In my view, the AW rules are clearer here than the DW ones.

But focusing on the DW text: as well as "when they come into the spotlight" (p 164) there is this on p 166:

If your first instinct is that this won’t hurt them now, but it’ll come back to bite them later, great! That’s part of your principles (think offscreen too). Make a note of and reveal it when the time is right.​

And this on p 200:

Always remember, fronts continue along apace no matter whether the characters are there to see them or not. Think offscreen, especially where fronts are concerned.​

"Revealing it when the time is right" or "when [its effects] come into the spotlight" means using the notes made about something offscreen as a prompt or cue for a subsequent move. Just as one does with "fronts". It doesn't change the rules about when the GM gets to make a move.

It isn't saying to create the cause elsewhere... it's saying make your move somewhere else and show it's effects when they come into the spotlight. To me that's a different beast entirely to what you are claiming.

 

[Oofta]

First, your play preferences are valid, and there is nothing wrong with having those play preferences.

Second, I'm not comfortable making any statement about the correlation that you have found because I don't necessarily want to speak for others.

However, I'm not sure if D&D is necessarily more open-ended. There are places where it is but also places where it isn't. On the one hand, it does have rules lacunae, some of which are intentional and others are not. These gaps may require the GM to step in to provide their interpretation about Stealth and how it works. On the other hand, D&D has a tremendous amount of specific rules and sub-systems that cover specific situations.

There are rules in 5e D&D, for example, regarding falling damage and how much damage a character takes based upon how far they have fallen. Even if we acknowledge that the GM can change or modify those rules so they are more open, we can still acknowledge the initial rules start from a place of specificity.

Contrast this with games like Fate, Cortex, Dungeon World, or Blades in the Dark. There are no rules for falling damage in these games. However, characters can surely still fall and die in this game, right? Sure, but there are more generalized rules or principles that govern what happens, particularly "fiction first" principles: i.e., understand the fiction before consulting the mechanics. This is the Golden Rule of Fate. There may be times when the table agrees that the rules should be side-stepped for the sake of the fiction. This is incidentally the Silver Rule of Fate. The example used here is of a PC who punches a glass table to intimidate someone. The PC doesn't fail the roll, but the table agrees that the PC should take a mild consequence (i.e., "Glass in My Hand") because that follows the fiction.

But let's go back to a PC falling. A D&D PC fails an ability check to climb. The fiction of how far they have fallen is important in so far as it determines how much damage the PC takes: i.e., 1d6 bludgeoning damage per 10 feet. So the GM declares that the PC takes 4d6 bludgeoning damage. So what happens if that same PC fell in Fate? Good question. Does the PC take damage? Not really. When the GM and player talk about what happened, the GM may decide that the PC takes Stress, though I think it likelier that the GM would rule that a Mild or even Moderate Consequence. So now the PC may have the Mild Consequence aspect of "Sprained Ankle." And because aspects are always true, the PC now has to deal with a sprained ankle, which can be invoked against them by the GM or other players. However, a different GM could rule based upon the fiction that the PC has the Moderate Consequence of "Broken Arm." Ouch.

So there is still a lot of open-endednes when it comes to implementing the rules for these latter games.

But there's a difference between a game that has some rules clearly spelled out and games that are more narrative (?), right? One of the issues that people seem to have with D&D is that it's clearly spelled out that you take 1d6 points of bludgeoning damage per 10 feet you fall, but when it comes to other situations the DM just makes a ruling. For some people that means the rules are incomplete and people have to "design their own game".

But in Fate the consequences of falling are always a decision/ruling by the DM. The nature and extent of that ruling may be prescribed by the game rules, but I would say that in most cases DMs are going to be effectively limited to results of their ruling in D&D as well. It may not be explicitly spelled out in the same way as other games, but the social contract is the only thing binding at the table anyway.

In D&D 3.x (and in a different way 4E) the designers did try to lock down the rules, in 5E they left more openings for the DM and group to decide how to implement things. So when I'm speaking of open ended, everything is on a spectrum. It's just ... interesting that some people who complain loudest about 5E's design direction simultaneously praise games that rely far more on GM (and possibly player, depending on the game) discretion and on-the-spot rulings.

 

[Oofta]

Part of the problem with Rule 0, IMHO, is that Rule 0 is about a lot of things that get thrown together into a nebulous lump.

Rule 0 in 3e D&D stated that the player should ask the DM about what rules they use. Rule 0 here doesn't necessarily give the DM authority to hack the game; however, it does presuppose that the DM may use house rules or options that deviate from the official or standard rules. Moreover, in my own reading, the primary motivator for Rule 0 here is for the player(s) to be on the same page as the DM about what rules and character options will be in play at the table.


Dungeon World may not work for you. No game works for everyone. Not even D&D. However, I encourage you to try Dungeon World. You may find that it plays smoother and far better than how people may talk about it here. That has been my experience with some other games. There are actual plays with Dungeon World that I suspect most people would guess were D&D. I'm sure that I or others could direct you to some good ones, if you were interested.

I can't even get my group to try Esper Genesis, much less an entirely different system. And ... I'm not sure I care. I mean, it might help with conversations but what I get out of D&D satisfies my in-person-gaming-itch and it's easy to find people who want to play.

 

[Oofta]

...what?

— What if the GM makes an illegal move?
— The players will point to the rules and ask how the hell that move was triggered.
— So I guess just like in other games

The written text rules are different. The text cannot enforce rules. If I'm playing chess and unilaterally decide that my queen can go through pieces of the same color, it's an illegal move but Kasparov is not going to suddenly appear and slap my hand. If I'm playing D&D and the DM has a hand come out of the wall to smash a random PC into goo I'm going to ask them "What the hell is that?" I will point out that I had agreed to a serious game run by the rules not Bob's technicolor death house. Or maybe I'll just laugh and throw popcorn at the DM while grabbing another beer because that's what we signed up for.

The game rules never control the game. The people playing the game do. D&D just clearly states it.

 

[pemerton]

The game rules never control the game. The people playing the game do.

Yet you also say this:

I can't even get my group to try Esper Genesis, much less an entirely different system.

So clearly you think the rules matter in some way!

The best account I know of how they matter is Vincent Baker's: they help mediate the process of agreeing to the content of the shared fiction.

Some rules are better at this than others. Some of that "betterness" is probably relative to particular participants; I'm not sure all of it is.

Part of the rationale of the soft move/hard move sequence in AW and allied games is that it helps facilitate the players' accepting the GM's contribution to the fiction, by clearly locating it in a shared process of extrapolating the fiction from agreed starting points.

D&D-esque games use other techniques to try and achieve the same end. Pointing out that people are the ones who control their pastimes doesn't really help us think about those difference of technique.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

You can down load this stuff yourself man, its not that hard to find! Here for instance some of Dalluhn are reproduced The Dalluhn Manuscript: In Detail and On Display There's even a paper about it written by Peterson. https://img.4plebs.org/boards/tg/image/1454/51/1454516675578.pdf None of this stuff is some secret! As I said, the EXISTENCE OF THESE THINGS demonstrates my position, that Dave Arneson CERTAINLY valued the codification of rules! Now, he may also have felt that some things can be left to judgment, and whether or not you want to spin that into 'invisible rulebooks' or whatever is really your business.

Frankly, being a wargamer and then TTRPGer in that era I can tell you there was little of that sort of sentiment floating around. The attitude was "give us more material that we can use to do stuff with." GARY most certainly never discouraged that attitude in any way. He was quite vocal about the need to codify game play and establish best practices, etc. as exemplified in his writing in the DMG on the subject. What more needs to be said? Never is there a hint in any early D&D product, or pre-product that I am aware of, stating that it would be better to leave more things up to the referee or that there shouldn't be rules for things like, say, climbing, falling, hiding, parleying, hiring people, etc. all of which appear in AD&D and most of which were published in some form by TSR in the period 1974-1978.