D&D General How much control do DMs need?

[clearstream]

Overall, balance gives freedom.

Imagine like you are playing a fighting game with your friend.

Situation A: the game is brilliantly balanced, not a single character has an intrinsic edge over another, there's a legitimate counter-play to every move in the playbook -- so you can pick whatever character you want for whatever reason you want and reasonably expect to both have fun yourself and deliver fun to the other player. Whatever you choose on the character select screen will not ruin the game. Whatever move you will make during the match will not ruin the game.

Situation B: the game is poorly balanced (looking at you, Marvel vs. Capcom 2), it's tierlist resembles Grand Canyon -- so you have to choose carefully. "Oooh, this dude is HOT, I wanna main him!" ain't gonna fly. You may like Captain 'murica or Chun-Li as much as you want, you either pick a real character or you aren't even playing the real game.

And it's actually even worse: you need to either learn this disparity the hard way, or have someone else to tell you about it. You need external, out of game knowledge to engage with it.

In the same way, when I'm running a game like AW or Fate, I can focus on what I find interesting, put my feet on the table and enjoy the ride. My thinking process is simple:

1. Oooh this sounds cool!
2. Do the rules allow me to do it?
   1. Yes => Cool!
   2. No => It's probably actually not cool, and would break the moment I try to actually pull it off

Games like D&D, or World of Darkness, or whatever else mid-school game there is, don't have the same, uhm, "advanced targetting system". If I let go off the driver's wheel for a split-second, the whole damn enterprise will end up in a ditch.

That's rose-tinted. To the extent that concepts like game balance apply to PbtA games, I find them "balanced-by-player-fiat" not "balanced-by-mechanical-design." For example, I found it extremely easy to break the occult moves in MotW six ways to Sunday, i.e. make counter-play thorny and not really be playing the real game. But I chose not to. I focused on the real game.

Game balance does apply to games with mechanically detailed conflict. The 5e designers didn't know where their game balance lay at the time they published. On the DM side, in later publications such as in XGE they offered more accurate rubrics that landed in the same spot as those players had invented for themselves. What the 5e designers did do is dial the game difficulty to easy, but this did not prevent some of the painful downsides of lack of balance on the PC side, such as overshadowing and as you point out a narrower choice of viable strategies.

And once again in GM-curated modes it comes down to GM. Our group played 5e for a couple of years and enjoyed some of the most tightly balanced play I've seen. Rule zero was exercised freely to take broken options off the table and buff others to make them viable. This rested on game knowledge and effort, and also on the sort of trust that folk who find GM-power successful at their table often talk about.

A game that is balanced, is TB2. That's on a knife-edge.

I sort of agree with you, but equally it's totally rose-tinted and some games are not really comparable due to differences between their modes of play. I mean, I could say FKR is perfectly balanced.

 

[clearstream]

I mused about it upthread, it was something along the lines of "if you have infinite dragons, there's no thrill in using this specific one to the best of your abilities".

You don't roll another character, when one dies? Every dungeon ultimately falls before the march of infinite characters.

I do believe that a game like D&D would work infinitely better if there was some kind of roster-building mechanic, where GM has to pay resources to do stuff, conforming narrative to the rules rather than vice-versa, both way more fun to run and, obviously, way more fun to play.

Well, I do agree with this. I might write more on it (and ask more questions) later!

 

[Aldarc]

@soviet, et al I think this conversation is going around in rhetorical circles. You read something into a post I don't see, I read something into a post you say you didn't intend.

If you wanted to call out condescending posts by people who opined that referees as BadWrongFun, there were far better candidates to choose from in this thread than the one you picked. But because you picked that post to pick on, you rightly IMHO got warranted pushback.

There was nothing condescending about people who prefer to referee in @soviet's post, which explicitly said that many people who have counterfactual experiences are referees themselves. This latter point is what the "Mind Blown" GIF is about. Nowhere in his post did he say or imply that referees are bad or unnecessary. Nowhere. Choosing to read that into his post is entirely on you. The author of the post even came out and clarified their intention in the best interest of maintaining good faith, which was notably ignored and treated as if it was both sides were engaging in rhetorical circling. Ummm... no. That's not what transpired.

Other people may run things differently and it's great if it works. Other games work differently. Ultimately there will always be a referee whether that's the DM, rotating to whoever has the control is another option, decree by vote or decision by whoever is the most stubborn.

FYI, these first two sentences convey what @soviet was saying in the post that you marked as being "condescending." Does that you mean that you are being condescending to people who prefer GMs with more restricted authority? I don't think so but your opinion obviously varies about what constitutes as condescension.

 

[Lanefan]

Yes, it is artificial. Games are artificial, they are made to be enjoyed.

In this case, that artificial game is (in theory) trying to model a different reality.

The abilities of PCs and NPCs don't need to be symmetrical. PCs represent actual living people in our meat-space,

And the characters represent imaginary living people in the setting, which is their "meat space". And so do the NPCs, meaning they very much need to be symmetrical in order for that imaginary meat space to mean anything. Ideally, were us two as real people to somehow get ourselves warped into the setting, when walking down a street we shouldn't be able to tell the difference between a PC and an NPC; and that inability to tell the difference is what I strive for.

they are interface to engage with the game. NPCs aren't people. They exist to be interacted with, they breathe, live, and die for the players.

Especially when the match-up is intrinsically asymmetrical. A player has one PC, a handful at best. GM has infinite snipers. Yeah, they have to "make sense", but narrative justifications are a dime a dozen. Even more so when the players aren't expected to know everything.

Indeed, which is why a DM has to exercise enough restraint to keep it real, as it were; and try one's honest best to ensure the players know what their characters would know.

Sure, I could wipe out every PC in my game with a wave of my hand, but what would be the point? But at the same time, I'm not going to pull my punches nor ask the game to pull them for me, when throwing those punches is warranted.

PCs are valuable -- players have payed the price in points, rolls and blood for them to exist. NPCs are free. If there were costs associated with introducing them, then yeah, maybe it would be fair.

Yikes! If players are shedding blood in order to get their characters into the game, something's gone very wrong somewhere.

As for NPCs, adventuring NPCs (e.g henches, rent-a-characters*, etc.) are rolled up just like PCs; which means in the long run I-as-DM do a lot more character rolling-up than do the players. PC-species foes and opponents are rolled up as far as they need to be in order to fulfill their role.

* - these are the full-party-member-status NPCs recruited by PC parties to fill gaps in their lineup e.g. they need a Thief and nobody is playing one, so they go and (try to) recruit an NPC. Sometimes they stick around and become valued long-term party members in their own right, other times they wander off when they can. Edit to add: rescued prisoners with adventuring skills who join the party until they can get to safety fall into this category as well, as do adventuring NPCs supplied by the module as plot devices. Charmed foes who are persuaded to join the party and help out also come under this banner.

 

[Lanefan]

I don't think time invested by the GM matters, really.

I'll keep that in mind....

I do believe that a game like D&D would work infinitely better if there was some kind of roster-building mechanic, where GM has to pay resources to do stuff, conforming narrative to the rules rather than vice-versa, both way more fun to run and, obviously, way more fun to play.

By this do you mean that the DM has x-amount of "build points" to spend per y-amount of time (per session, per adventure, or whatever)?

So let's say for this adventure the DM has 15 (or however many) build points. Every Z* levels/HD worth of mundane opponents costs 1 build point, a deadly trap costs 3, a boss costs 2, a maze or puzzle costs 1, and so forth?

* - where Z is formulaic based on the total starting levels of the party (or Total Party Level TPL), something like Z=TPL/2 where the '2' can be replaced with a different value as a difficulty dial.

Hmmm...this is a quite interesting concept as an adventure design tool. Could be really useful for new DMs, if nothing else - can't be much worse than CR, I suppose.

I'd oppose making this info player-facing, though, on the grounds of giving the players info their characters wouldn't and couldn't know.

 

[Aldarc]

But to argue that Rule Zero makes it possible to do or creates the capacity is incorrect, and the insistence upon this connection casts a great deal of doubt on Rule Zero itself.

As much as I have come out swinging hard against Rule 0 in a more abstract sense, I am not opposed to a more restricted sense of it, as it originally existed in 3e D&D: i.e., check with the GM if the rules being used for play at the table deviate from the standard rules as presented here. That is IMHO perfectly sensible as a Rule 0.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

As much as I have come out swinging hard against Rule 0 in a more abstract sense, I am not opposed to a more restricted sense of it, as it originally existed in 3e D&D: i.e., check with the GM if the rules being used for play at the table deviate from the standard rules as presented here. That is IMHO perfectly sensible as a Rule 0.

Oh, don't get me wrong, prompting players to communicate is always good. Communication is essential to any effective relationship, and "play a game together" is a relationship.

My issue is not even technically with the "strong" Rule Zero. It is with the argument that the "strong" Rule Zero itself is what makes play open/flexible, what causes the rules to be malleable. That without "strong" Rule Zero, the rules would be totally untouchable, and thus in its absence, games cannot adjust or adapt or fix problems.

 

[Aldarc]

My issue is not even technically with the "strong" Rule Zero. It is with the argument that the "strong" Rule Zero itself is what makes play open/flexible, what causes the rules to be malleable. That without "strong" Rule Zero, the rules would be totally untouchable, and thus in its absence, games cannot adjust or adapt or fix problems.

Agreed 100 percent.

 

[pemerton]

I do believe that a game like D&D would work infinitely better if there was some kind of roster-building mechanic, where GM has to pay resources to do stuff, conforming narrative to the rules rather than vice-versa, both way more fun to run and, obviously, way more fun to play.

Traditional dungeon-building, where monsters are limited to certain levels, and mostly live in rooms, approximate this to some extent.

"Living, breathing" setting construction kills this stone dead. And you can see it in Gygax's DMG, where he gives advice to the GM on how to run a "living, breathing" dungeon which - if followed - makes it impossible to apply the advice he gave to players a year earlier in his PHB.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Traditional dungeon-building, where monsters are limited to certain levels, and mostly live in rooms, approximate this to some extent.

"Living, breathing" setting construction kills this stone dead. And you can see it in Gygax's DMG, where he gives advice to the GM on how to run a "living, breathing" dungeon which - if followed - makes it impossible to apply the advice he gave to players a year earlier in his PHB.

Personally I take living, breathing world over artificially balanced gauntlet any day.