D&D General How much control do DMs need?

[EzekielRaiden]

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.

I think I missed that part, I'm afraid I've been skipping pages (this thread moves frightfully fast.)

In that case, where is the "rule can change rules" occuring? It cannot occur during play. If anyone is permitted to employ that power, it would, as I said, break the premise of the game. But if it is not employed during play, it is only being employed outside of play...when there are no players yet. Just people thinking about how Mao could be played. We don't think of game designers as exercising either "Rule Zero" or "Rule-can-change-rules."* Instead, we think of them as designing, a task which precedes play and thus precedes any concept of either "Rule Zero" or "Rule-can-change-rules."

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.

Okay. My assertion is that there is no assignment of this power, while play is happening, that is compatible with the premise of Mao. You cannot assign it, because the instant you do, at least one part of the premise is lost. To state that premise clearly: "Mao is a game where there are rules, but these rules are not permitted to be spoken, written, or shared, so that the process of playing the game reveals, by inference, observation, and experiment, what the rules must be, and thus the player who can navigate these rules successfully wins."

*NGL, that particular structure is super confusing to me--I thought it meant "the rules can change the rules," which is nonsensical, rules can't do anything, only people can.

__________________________________________

Separately from the above, it occurred to me that maybe we got off on the wrong foot. That is, it seems that you're focused on why it matters to me that something is a behavior vs a rule. That, for me, is not strictly the core issue. Instead, the core issue is, I do believe it's just a behavior--that is, something people-who-play-games just do, a part of play no different from "communicating" or "concealing" or what-have-you. Thus, the issue is not whether it can be a rule (for it certainly can), nor whether it is a behavior whether or not it is a rule (for demonstrably it is), but rather, the issue (for me) is people insisting that it is only a rule, and not a baseline behavior of people playing games. That "Rule Zero" is special and different. That it truly creates, effectively ex nihilo, the ability to change rules, especially because it is vested in only one person, who (by being just one person vested with such ability) can have the clarity and consistency and vision** to use this newly-created "can-change-rules" power to better the game.

There is no ex nihilo creation here. Changing rules is a thing people who play games do; they do not need, nor have they ever needed, an official "Rule Zero" to do it. Much less anything special or unique about assigning exclusive use of that power to a single person. Rule Zero is presented as being something new, a power that simply did not exist at all before and now does, and because it does a whole bunch of things are now possible. Yet it isn't new. It isn't even mildly unexpected; it is something people-who-play-games do and have done for as long as there have been people playing games. To make a mountain out of this molehill--especially in a "so giving this absolute power is super important!" way--is a big part of why I push back.

**I'm on record as saying I don't think DMs are actually as clear or consistent as a lot of folks seem to think.

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

And yet, as anyone with experience with Dungeon World will tell you, you should not break DW's rules. Doing so is a very bad idea that is essentially guaranteed to result in problems. Which can be summarized, admittedly without much nuance, as "the rules control the game."

I as GM am not allowed to give false answers to certain player questions. Ever. Doesn't matter what I feel about it; doesn't matter if I think a false answer would be better for the game. I'm not allowed to answer falsely when someone asks Discern Realities questions. I'm certainly not required to divulge absolutely every fact ever, but nothing I say can be false. In return, Discern Realities only permits six questions (unless changed, e.g. I believe my group's Battlemaster has a move that would add another question to Discern Realities, he just hasn't chosen to learn it.) Likewise, on a full success with Spout Lore (10+), I am required to give an answer that is both interesting and useful--and, in return, I can ask the player to tell me how they learned this information, and they are required to tell me the truth. Etc.

The rules of Dungeon World are very, very carefully designed. That doesn't mean they're brittle, far from it, the system is quite robust in the face of changing circumstances and interests, at least IME. What it means is, if you're going to run it, you really, really should run it as written. It is legitimately a bad idea to run it not as written. But, thankfully, one of the core parts of running DW is making new moves (monster moves, location moves, sometimes new "basic" or "advanced" moves for the players collectively, etc.) There's plenty of guidance for how to do this, and (as I noted above) several useful templates to start from. No move is ever particularly complex, and since they need either a clear trigger action (e.g. "when you closely examine a person, situation, or location..."), or a move they feed into which already has one (e.g. "when you Hack & Slash"), they're always grounded.

Assuming, of course, you actually play by the rules. Because, sometimes, the wise course of action really is to stick to the rules as much as humanly possible. It helps, of course, if the rules are actually good rules that have been tested to make sure they work as intended across a broad range of situations!

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

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.

So ... you don't have it. You literally just wasted my time. And everyone else's.

You made a specific claim. You understand that you're talking to a bunch of people that are incredibly familiar with this history. People that care deeply about this, and are active here and other places as well. That know all about this.

And ... you kept going on. And when cornered, after several posts, you do this- which, you know ... I can't. You LITERALLY just posted the same things we all knew and you were told.

Good to know. You could have just responded immediately with, "my bad."

 

[Xamnam]

Well, I just like to keep in mind the whole "play to find out" thing. If you have a change in mind, give it a spin! Explain it to the rest of the group, see if their eyes sparkle, and if so see how it rolls out in actual play. It might make things really go brrr! It might be a dud. You don't know unless you try.

My crew more often than not split up to do scores with one, two, or three PCs, run in parallel. I'm pretty sure that isn't a thing in the book, but we did it anyhow. Sometimes it was pretty awesome, sometimes I found it kind of onerous to be going it alone—it really depended on the nature of the score.

The first page of the chapter on changing the game is pretty up front about "play and iterate", which is another way of saying "play to find out.". John Harper isn't gonna bust in with the Pinkertons* if you try something to see how it goes.

* Sorry, this is either cleverly topical or already tired, I don't know which.

I appreciate the energy. The crew that I'm running for is only four sessions in, so thankfully I've not run into any situations where a change has seemed appropriate or compelling. We've only managed to get together about once a month or so, so that does prime the twin pumps of "Iterating through play would be a slow process" and "I don't want to mess up one of our limited sessions with a dud idea. (Or even worse, tarnish enthusiasm for the system and make future sessions all the more tenuous.)"

I definitely don't feel like modifying the system is forbidden, or anything. The text as written just makes me want to largely hew to the path it lays out.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Oh, since they might not see it-
@overgeeked @Mistwell @Alzrius

Unsurprisingly (and disappointingly) it was "puffery."

 

[Darth Solo]

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.

Then don't play games you don't like. Easy fix.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

Your example feels somewhat more developed than my DW campaigns have been, but there's some room for stylistic variation for sure. The one thing that a DW GM MUST not do is 'say no'. That is, if your answer to an action declaration is "well, that's not possible because <secret backstory here>" or "your plan is rendered impotent due to <secret backstory here>" then you're treading into what I would call neo-trad ground, which is not that hard to do with Dungeon World. It is all well and good to have some really interesting fronts and obviously they can be quite impactful in play, but they are best as 'reasons why' and not 'reasons why not' if you catch my drift. At the story level, the GM is pretty constrained to produce what should be produced, what follows from the fiction, and doing so by using your prep is of course proper. If you ever find a front becoming a meta-plot that drives all the action, then you will have gone too far!

The flip side could happen too, where the fronts are anemic and don't 'stir things up' enough to insure that the game achieves the desirable velocity. In that case you will start to get things like 'tourism' where the players propose that their characters "go visit place X" or something "just because" and that will be a sign that maybe you need to start dropping some impactful dooms on their heads!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Your example feels somewhat more developed than my DW campaigns have been, but there's some room for stylistic variation for sure. The one thing that a DW GM MUST not do is 'say no'. That is, if your answer to an action declaration is "well, that's not possible because <secret backstory here>" or "your plan is rendered impotent due to <secret backstory here>" then you're treading into what I would call neo-trad ground, which is not that hard to do with Dungeon World. It is all well and good to have some really interesting fronts and obviously they can be quite impactful in play, but they are best as 'reasons why' and not 'reasons why not' if you catch my drift. At the story level, the GM is pretty constrained to produce what should be produced, what follows from the fiction, and doing so by using your prep is of course proper. If you ever find a front becoming a meta-plot that drives all the action, then you will have gone too far!

The flip side could happen too, where the fronts are anemic and don't 'stir things up' enough to insure that the game achieves the desirable velocity. In that case you will start to get things like 'tourism' where the players propose that their characters "go visit place X" or something "just because" and that will be a sign that maybe you need to start dropping some impactful dooms on their heads!

Yeah, I very, very rarely say no. It helps that my players are shy so I usually am the one egging them on. No fear of needing to hold them back!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That would on-surface entail that GM-power is not feasible. Is that your meaning here?


The reason in my above post that I emphasised that we should be speaking of probabilities, not certainties, is with this sort of thought in mind. Yes, nothing prevents withdrawing from a prior agreement. However, a prior agreement makes it less probable that they will withdraw. Folk will have experienced this in the form of expectation-setting in ordinary life.

All human interactions are forms of cooperation. This is elementary and should be kept in mind at all times. You, I, @pemerton, etc. are all MORAL AGENTS, we are free to act in any way within our physical power, and nothing can prevent that, aside from literal physical intervention by other persons. This is reality. Everything else is a mental construct which simply builds a system of greater cooperation between moral agents. You can look at it from any angle you want, but POWER? Aside from the literal physical power of your own arm, does not exist! It is a fiction which we create in our own minds, and communicate to the minds of others through convention and culturally modulated signals in order to achieve things. So, no, there is FUNDAMENTALLY no such thing as 'GM Power', the very notion is absurd. I think you will find that we have all stated this fact in various ways.

However, if you are going to rely on reduction of all your arguments to that level, then we can hardly have any meaningful discussion of human relations, let alone RPGs. We must instead, as the proper focus of our attention, rest on these, as I call them, mental constructs/social conventions. Pemerton studies personal law, this is a structure of such things. It has meaning because people accept it as effective, probably though long ages of usage and tradition. However, we do have an additional problem when dealing with a fairly unimportant (in the overall scheme of things) activity like TTRPG play, which is that even strong social conventions may not be terribly binding in respect of that play. That is, if I go back on my word WRT some issue of game rules, this is not a thing of great consequence in life, and is likely to hold rather little weight in people's calculations compared with say "Oh, I can have a bit more fun here if I do X, even though I promised not to." The assumption will be that the other participants will also understand this lack of serious consequence, and in fact most such incidents have little import outside of play.

 

[Oofta]

Yet you also say this:
So clearly you think the rules matter in some way!

I've never said rules don't matter. I'm saying people choose whether they follow the rules or not. When I was playing nuclear Risk we obviously changed the rules of the game but we weren't concerned about Hasbro sending someone to our house to enforce the rules.

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.

How this ties back to the OP is that how much control the DM needs is simply up to the group. The suggestions in the D&D are that the DM makes the final call and is by default the person who builds the world, although they also discuss plenty of options. They also repeatedly state that the DM should be reasonable, that one of the main reasons we have a DM in D&D is to keep the game flowing.

If you only have vague rules about consequences, i.e. falling in FATE, you don't need it specifically stated that the GM makes the call. It's built into the game that the GM decides what happens. Since the results are so open ended it's just kind of assumed that the GM is being fair. If you have a situation in D&D that the rules cover, i.e. falling damage, you have a specific rule that the entire group understands. But what if a rock falls on the PC? Well, there are guidelines for this kind of stuff in the DMG but it really comes down to the DM's call. Do they take damage? How much? Are they pinned under the rocks and if so are they restrained or just effectively grappled? How can they escape? In both D&D and FATE the GM makes a call. In the former there are some concrete rules that everyone knows but if there are no established rules it's up to the DM, in FATE it's always up to the GM with guidelines. That is how they're the same.

There's a lot of focus on "these games are completely different because the rules of the game differ on how the character interacts with and affects the world around them". I'm just musing on how they're the same. It's a different experience if I get to work in a train, subway or bus. But in all cases I leave my house and enter a vehicular conveyance that takes me where I need to go. Talking about how things are the same is just as important to me as how they are different. In all the RPGs discussed, we're just playing structured pretend controlling a fictional character. Someone has a role in

P.S. As always, please correct me if my understanding is incorrect or I'm saying something wrong.

 

[Oofta]

I think I missed that part, I'm afraid I've been skipping pages (this thread moves frightfully fast.)

In that case, where is the "rule can change rules" occuring? It cannot occur during play. If anyone is permitted to employ that power, it would, as I said, break the premise of the game. But if it is not employed during play, it is only being employed outside of play...when there are no players yet. Just people thinking about how Mao could be played. We don't think of game designers as exercising either "Rule Zero" or "Rule-can-change-rules."* Instead, we think of them as designing, a task which precedes play and thus precedes any concept of either "Rule Zero" or "Rule-can-change-rules."


Okay. My assertion is that there is no assignment of this power, while play is happening, that is compatible with the premise of Mao. You cannot assign it, because the instant you do, at least one part of the premise is lost. To state that premise clearly: "Mao is a game where there are rules, but these rules are not permitted to be spoken, written, or shared, so that the process of playing the game reveals, by inference, observation, and experiment, what the rules must be, and thus the player who can navigate these rules successfully wins."

*NGL, that particular structure is super confusing to me--I thought it meant "the rules can change the rules," which is nonsensical, rules can't do anything, only people can.

__________________________________________

Separately from the above, it occurred to me that maybe we got off on the wrong foot. That is, it seems that you're focused on why it matters to me that something is a behavior vs a rule. That, for me, is not strictly the core issue. Instead, the core issue is, I do believe it's just a behavior--that is, something people-who-play-games just do, a part of play no different from "communicating" or "concealing" or what-have-you. Thus, the issue is not whether it can be a rule (for it certainly can), nor whether it is a behavior whether or not it is a rule (for demonstrably it is), but rather, the issue (for me) is people insisting that it is only a rule, and not a baseline behavior of people playing games. That "Rule Zero" is special and different. That it truly creates, effectively ex nihilo, the ability to change rules, especially because it is vested in only one person, who (by being just one person vested with such ability) can have the clarity and consistency and vision** to use this newly-created "can-change-rules" power to better the game.

There is no ex nihilo creation here. Changing rules is a thing people who play games do; they do not need, nor have they ever needed, an official "Rule Zero" to do it. Much less anything special or unique about assigning exclusive use of that power to a single person. Rule Zero is presented as being something new, a power that simply did not exist at all before and now does, and because it does a whole bunch of things are now possible. Yet it isn't new. It isn't even mildly unexpected; it is something people-who-play-games do and have done for as long as there have been people playing games. To make a mountain out of this molehill--especially in a "so giving this absolute power is super important!" way--is a big part of why I push back.

**I'm on record as saying I don't think DMs are actually as clear or consistent as a lot of folks seem to think.


And yet, as anyone with experience with Dungeon World will tell you, you should not break DW's rules. Doing so is a very bad idea that is essentially guaranteed to result in problems. Which can be summarized, admittedly without much nuance, as "the rules control the game."

I think anyone can also tell you that if you DM D&D you shouldn't be an A-hole and ignore the suggestions given to you in the DMG about making the game fun for everyone. The DMG doesn't come straight out and say you "can't", but the example of fudging the dice for example is to not accidentally kill off a PC and also to not do it too often.

I as GM am not allowed to give false answers to certain player questions. Ever. Doesn't matter what I feel about it; doesn't matter if I think a false answer would be better for the game. I'm not allowed to answer falsely when someone asks Discern Realities questions. I'm certainly not required to divulge absolutely every fact ever, but nothing I say can be false. In return, Discern Realities only permits six questions (unless changed, e.g. I believe my group's Battlemaster has a move that would add another question to Discern Realities, he just hasn't chosen to learn it.) Likewise, on a full success with Spout Lore (10+), I am required to give an answer that is both interesting and useful--and, in return, I can ask the player to tell me how they learned this information, and they are required to tell me the truth. Etc.

The rules of Dungeon World are very, very carefully designed. That doesn't mean they're brittle, far from it, the system is quite robust in the face of changing circumstances and interests, at least IME. What it means is, if you're going to run it, you really, really should run it as written. It is legitimately a bad idea to run it not as written. But, thankfully, one of the core parts of running DW is making new moves (monster moves, location moves, sometimes new "basic" or "advanced" moves for the players collectively, etc.) There's plenty of guidance for how to do this, and (as I noted above) several useful templates to start from. No move is ever particularly complex, and since they need either a clear trigger action (e.g. "when you closely examine a person, situation, or location..."), or a move they feed into which already has one (e.g. "when you Hack & Slash"), they're always grounded.

Assuming, of course, you actually play by the rules. Because, sometimes, the wise course of action really is to stick to the rules as much as humanly possible. It helps, of course, if the rules are actually good rules that have been tested to make sure they work as intended across a broad range of situations!

I know nobody reads the DMG (and the 5E version needs improvement). But it really does talk about making the game fun for everyone and options to do that. How and when to fudge, how and when to share worldbuilding and all the rest. It may rely less on explicit rules text, but the end of the day the whole concept of TTRPGs is that everyone at the table treats each other with respect. We're all just there to have fun.