D&D General How much control do DMs need?

[EzekielRaiden]

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

The problem is, doing this exclusively, with no allowance for the other, is essentially guaranteed to lead to unsatisfying outcomes over time.

I'd rather have something designed to deliver satisfying outcomes in a fair and unbiased fashion. And what's with this "artificially balanced"? It's not like throwing extra forces in on the bad guys' side is any less "artificial." It's all artificial, to exactly the same degree--because a person chose to put it there. If my only choices are "artificial, but designed" vs. "artificial, but trying to pretend like it isn't artificial," I'm gonna take the former.

Better to have a bellyful of reasonably tasty and highly nutritious food than a mouthful of the best flavor possible that leaves you hungry. Either way, it's been cooked, it's not berries straight from the field.

 

[Aldarc]

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

It's an artificially living, breathing world that's metaphorically sustained and kept on life support through the continued gameplay of real people. Saying that you prefer one artificial construct over another is fine, but trying to reify one artificial construct as being living and breathing and the other as gamist and fake seems a bit silly to me.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

It's an artificially living, breathing world that's metaphorically sustained and kept on life support through the continued gameplay of real people. Saying that you prefer one artificial construct over another is fine, but trying to reify one artificial construct as being living and breathing and the other as gamist and fake seems a bit silly to me.

Of course it's all artificial... BUT... some prefer encounters that are appropriate for the party's level (or APL) whilst some prefer encounters that are appropriate for the location in the game world. That is what I hear when people talk about balanced (the former) vs living/breathing (the latter). Both can be fun, but I do prefer the latter.

 

[Aldarc]

Of course it's all artificial... BUT... some prefer encounters that are appropriate for the party's level (or APL) whilst some prefer encounters that are appropriate for the location in the game world. That is what I hear when people talk about balanced (the former) vs living/breathing (the latter). Both can be fun, but I do prefer the latter.

Of course both can be fun... BUT... there's no need to depict one as "living, breathing" and somehow more real and the other as somehow being more artificial, gamey, and fake. Because the real point, Swarmkeeper, is the tinge of BadWrongFun that I hear when people frame these two playstyles in this manner. Capisce?

 

[AnotherGuy]

Of course both can be fun... BUT... there's no need to depict one as "living, breathing" and somehow more real and the other as somehow being more artificial, gamey, and fake. Because the real point, Swarmkeeper, is the tinge of BadWrongFun that I hear when people frame these two playstyles in this manner. Capisce?

Mother May I says ciao.
Play to find out what is in the DM's head says bonjourno
Play to discover what's in the DM's notes says buona sera

Arrivederci!

Seriously not here to open up a can of worms, although given the dangers of cows' farts (as they like to keep telling us) some of us may be doing that soon.
Your post just reminded me of the many debates on the above.
At least I got to practise some Italian

 

[pemerton]

some prefer encounters that are appropriate for the party's level (or APL)

Well, in the post that triggered this particular tangent I referred to an approach that is closer to the "roster" that @loverdrive mentioned - the GM is constrained in placing monsters, both in terms of monsters per room and in terms of monsters on a given dungeon level.

In that classic style, what encounters occur is meant to be determined by the players' choices about which level to go to, and which rooms to explore. This is set out by Gygax in his advice to players in his PHB (which, as I said, he then largely negates via his advice to referees published a year or so later).

 

[pemerton]

IMO, a) the setting has to have surprises, secrets, and backstory; and b) somebody (i.e. the DM) has to be charged with keeping those secrets and backstory elements straight, and their application consistent. That's what backstory prep is, and what it's for.

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.

If the warrant is determined by the prep, then it's hard not to see this as pulling punches.

And the reverse too:

If the PCs killed off a respected member of the local Assassins' guild last summer (maybe without even realizing who/what she was), then on returning to town for the winter it makes sense the guild is going to want their pound of flesh; hence the rooftop sniper with the poisoned bolt waiting for one of them to emerge from their inn.

If this is all just the GM working out what is warranted based on their own earlier decisions, it's a little hard not to see it as just "wiping out the PC with a wave of the hand".

(Of course in AW there is no objection at all to framing this scene. But the first move will typically not be a hard one.)

 

[hawkeyefan]

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.

So which is the sniper situation?

This is a nice example of the friction between the game and the fiction that's come up over the last couple of pages.

What warrants your decision to use the sniper? It sounds like, ultimately, you consider it your decision as GM to do so. It's based on your notes and what's been established (even if only in your notes, and the players remain blissfully unaware of it).

You want the game to model some sense of reality, and reality can be unfair.

But is an unfair game a satisfying one? Shouldn't there be rules in place to try and prevent unfairness in the game? I don't mean balance here, per se... I have no problem with encounters that are beyond the characters' power level or anything like that. I just think that such encounters need to be presented in a way that cues the danger, and then give the players a decision to avoid or face the danger.

So coming upon a sleeping dragon and then asking them what they do is more fair than having a dragon land upon them from the sky with no warning at all. I mean, certainly that can happen, and the GM can do it at any point.

But should he?

What makes your sniper situation any different?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Of course it's all artificial... BUT... some prefer encounters that are appropriate for the party's level (or APL) whilst some prefer encounters that are appropriate for the location in the game world. That is what I hear when people talk about balanced (the former) vs living/breathing (the latter). Both can be fun, but I do prefer the latter.

Okay. Question: Why would a party either (a) utterly blindly or (b) knowingly and willingly go into places where they know they're either wasting their time because there's nothing worth doing, or risking instant death because they're going to be in way over their heads?

Second question: Why does everyone always assume that the existence of a system that tells you whether a particular fight is likely to be dangerous, typical, or cakewalk automatically means that the only use for that system is absolutely perfect-lockstep encounters? Seriously. It's like presuming that, because you have a more accurate measuring stick, everything must meet at right angles now. The two are entirely orthogonal. In fact...

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.

If the warrant is determined by the prep, then it's hard not to see this as pulling punches.

Not only am I with pemerton on this one, isn't this producing exactly the artificiality people are disclaiming? "I could just prepare whatever I want whenever I want, but that would be boring, so I prepare things that are interesting instead." Not only do I not see how that isn't pulling punches (because, as admitted, one could always punch with infinite force at any time for any reason!), I don't see how that is in any way different from using a system where you CAN provide balanced encounters, but do not HAVE to do so. (Noting, as I always do, that the poster-child games which provide such things explicitly tell the GM to make sure to keep up variety, re-use monsters to show progression, and make use of terrain, monster roles, synergies between monsters, traps, hazards, environmental effects, etc. to keep things fresh and engaging.)

It circles back to the same baffling things I always run aground on here. This idea that, because you can know (with a reasonable degree of accuracy) what a fight's difficulty will usually be, you are now...somehow locked into only giving perfectly level-locked encounters forever. The idea that the GM's absolute latitude is utterly essential for stakes to have meaning and to prevent "pulling punches"...only to then immediately follow that up with "well I could just kill them all if I wanted, but I choose not to," which is a form of pulling punches. The notion that players are, for some reason, going to seek out locations without any regard for whether it is actually productive for them to be there. This implicit argument that a map populated by a GM's guesstimation of what makes sense--referencing nothing but the monster manual and tropes--is in any way less "artificial" than one constructed by, for example, presuming that the Royal Army keeps the areas near main roads and populous cities free of any but weak threats (say, less than level 3), deals with large threats in the deeper wilderness only when they can (read: levels 4-7), and can't really act in the deep caves, stolen fortifications, or rugged mountains where the nastiest things lie (=level 8+.)

Why is it that having a functional system suddenly makes everything soullessly systematic? Why is it that being able to make good, generally reliable predictions somehow magically transforms everything into the worst, most hellish combination of "dry spreadsheets" and "mollycoddling"? And why is it a GM's invisible rulebooks (which are almost surely riddled with falsehoods and contradictions, because received wisdom is not required to be even remotely functional) are the one and only way to create "natural," "living and breathing" worlds, while visible rulebooks (where we can see what the biases are, out in the open) always and inherently lead to "artificial" worlds?

 

[Oofta]

During my session 0 with players I ask what level of lethality they generally want and build encounters around that. I don't need any mechanical restrictions, no "points" to balance things out. I just build encounters that fit the desires of the group. I would dislike a game that forces the GM's hand to be "fair". I also don't need it.

However, death and even TPKs are never off the table. If those first level PCs go charging off to fight that ancient red dragon, they're going to be dragon chow. If they do prep work ahead of time, they'll know (or should know) what they're getting themselves into.

So, yes, I balance encounters. But if the PCs rush in blindly that balance may simply be a reasonable way for them to realize before its too late that they're in over there heads and options to bravely run away.

As a player I don't want to know things about the threats I face by some game mechanism. Hopefully I'll get a clue ahead of time or an escape route. But adventuring is a dangerous profession and while I probably wouldn't want @Hussar levels of lethality, I want to keep at least the illusion that if I charge blindly into the night that I may be rushing to my doom.