D&D General How much control do DMs need?

[Oofta]

See @hawkeyefan's point above about different constraints that exist in different games. I addressed some of this already. I have seen how the sausage is made in D&D as a GM. It's not like I'm ignorant about what the GM is doing in D&D behind the scenes. I can't say that it interferes with my play in the slightest. To be clear, I'm not telling you what your preferences are here. I am only talking about my own experiences.

I don't assume the DM is following the encounter building guidelines. I don't always, it depends on the scenario and type of game I'm running. I had a near TPK in a recent game when the group decided to attack an NPC they really, really shouldn't have. It was down to 1 last PC standing and they were only standing because my dice had gone cold and the group had rolled multiple crits. In the end it was another crit that took the NPC out by 1 HP.

The NPC was evil, but I was also did everything but wave a flag saying "do not attack this guy" when they decided to attack and the dice landed where they did. In other cases the group stumbled across a small army; had they decided to attack I'm not sure I would have even bothered rolling for initiative. I would have just verified they understood what was going on and switched to a skill challenge to see if anyone escaped if they proceeded with the attack. I was in a campaign recently where the only reason why I walked away (sort of, long story) with 1 other PC was because we saved the life of the BBEG and made a deal since we never wanted a fight anyway.

In the past, I was convinced that I would hate some foods, TV shows/movies, and music until I actually tried and experienced them for myself with an open mind and those personal experiences proved me wrong.

I've always assumed I wouldn't like sushi (actually shashimi, but in the U.S. it's almost always synonymous). You know what? I was right. I've tried it multiple times because people told me I just hadn't "had the good stuff". It's still just raw fish with green colored horse radish, neither of which I like in the least.

 

[Aldarc]

I've always assumed I wouldn't like sushi (actually shashimi, but in the U.S. it's almost always synonymous). You know what? I was right. I've tried it multiple times because people told me I just hadn't "had the good stuff". It's still just raw fish with green colored horse radish, neither of which I like in the least.

But at least you tried it and learned from firsthand experience, which is IMHO much better than assuming that you would disliking it. I appreciate that you were willing to try sushi.

Edit: I should also add that there was this one game during my time in high school that I was absolutely convinced that I would hate because it sounded ridiculous when my friends described what it involved. The game was called "Dungeons & Dragons." But I tried it and loved it.

 

[hawkeyefan]

What's good for the goose is good for the gander, and the players/PCs certanly have ways and means of making encounters be or become hella "unfair" to their foes. As I've no desire to take these ways and means away from the players/PCs, and I've even less desire to make the PCs "special" in the setting vis-a-vis the other inhabitants, then it naturally follows that - when warranted - NPCs get to use these tricks too.

Sometimes you surprise the dragon, sometimes it surprises you. A situation where the PCs can kill a dragon in its sleep isn't exactly fair for the dragon, is it, even though it's great for the PCs; why should the reverse not also be able to occur now and then?

I mean, look at the cover of the Dragon magazine (65 I think) currently being revisited over in General. It shows a dragon potentially about to catch the lead two PCs completely off guard, meaning one of those PCs will likely be dead before it knew what hit it. I have no problem with this.

Frequently? No. Never? Also no.

I'm not saying it's any different. I'm saying that in context not only is the sniper's presence valid, the unawareness of the PCs to said presence before the sniper acts is also valid. (and don't forget, the sniper still has to roll to hit...)

So what is your answer to "is it okay for the game to be unfair?"

 

[Oofta]

But at least you tried it and learned from firsthand experience, which is IMHO much better than assuming that you would disliking it. I appreciate that you were willing to try sushi.

I have done some one-shots at conventions and read up on a handful of different games. Some of it though does come down to a combination of lack of motivation and opportunity though.

 

[Oofta]

So what is your answer to "is it okay for the game to be unfair?"

Define "unfair".

 

[EzekielRaiden]

(c) the party is exploring the world and might discover some places that are very dangerous and will need to be revisited later (if at all)?

Hex crawls and West Marches type campaigns, I think, are good examples.

Which I explicitly excluded with the whole "knowing" bit. If you're exploring, you don't have knowledge of what you're going to face, do you? But you're still going to at least try to go to places that aren't likely to be suddenly and shockingly difficult or absolutely trivial and unrewarding, right? Even in a "West Marches" game. You're foing to try to do things that are relevant and not things that are dull or deathtraps.

Everyone? Always? I'd rather not go there (not that I really even get the question... but that's probably on me).

People have been on the hyperbole train for ages in this thread. Feels a bit odd that it's only now unacceptable.

I think that maybe cuts both ways when you infer too deeply what people are trying to say. We can leave it at that. Grazie mille.

Why is inference only a problem when one side does it? There's been plenty of it in the thread thus far.

Personally I would give the PCs the option to do research of some sort to try to determine the numbers. But I'd have it a decision point in the campaign, associate some risk to spying. Perhaps a special mission to gather intel might be fun. There's nothing wrong with the PCs knowing things ahead of time, I just want it to be knowledge that the PC earned not information the players know that the PCs had no way of knowing. It may be just a matter of presentation in some cases, but maintaining the illusions of the fiction is more fun for me.

Question: What spying is required to gain the knowledge, "because we defeated the Goblin King's reinforcements yesterday, the Goblin King now has fewer forces to call on than he had before"? Because that was the core point here. When the Goblin King has quantum reinforcements that are always exactly as full as the DM needs them to be, that show up whenever the DM decides the players just did excessively well in a particular battle (or don't show up if the players struggled a lot), it's at least as artificial as it would be to have encounters balanced to selected levels (not the party's level, but whatever level makes sense for the various goblin squads to be.) I would argue far more artificial, actually, because real armies are actually organized into groups of roughly comparable ability so they may be deployed more effectively, while zero real armies have the power (and curse) of growing stronger when their enemies are unexpectedly strong and weaker when their enemies are unexpectedly weak.

If they're following the guidelines provided

So following guidelines consistently is acceptable, but following rules consistently is not? Having guidelines is perfectly copacetic for allowing the world to feel real, but having rules is not? I just...I don't get it.

I think this is presuming that some specific encounter has to result in an instant kill or a waste of time. I run a character driven West Marches/Sandbox hybrid right now and I don't concern myself with this question as it's presuming that I will know what my players will or will not find worth doing and/or instantly deadly.

...because a system with a functional encounter design system will give you a good idea of that. An encounter that is designed to be a minor skirmish for 1st level characters (say, "medium" difficulty in 5e) is going to be pretty boring for 10th level characters, even in 5th edition. The party will roflstomp it. An encounter designed to be a serious challenge for 20th level characters (a step beyond "deadly") will be instantly lethal. The problem is, in 5e, the CR system is so useless, you can get the same problems from encounters built for level 8 and 12!

Now, of course, some trivial things are still worth doing because they have some other rationale behind them, but we don't really have good words in English for "this genuinely trivial, no-challenge task that still needs to be done because we care about something that requires that task." Mostly, I think, because it's assumed that if the trivial thing is worth doing, you'd have done it already.

As an example, an empty cave might at first glance appear to be a waste of time with nothing worth doing... or the players could decide to claim it as a supply store and mini-homebase allowing them to explore further.

Which...has nothing whatever to do with encounter building. This is a total non sequitur.

An ancient dragon could swoop down on them and at first glance (and if you choose to attack) it appears to be an instant death encounter... of course talking and negotiating with it could prove fruitful.

Which also has nothing to do with encounter building.

It isn't about the system per se, but about the expectations that it sets up in the player base. The same way having costs for magic items sets up the expectation that a character can purchase them.

I don't understand how these things are at all comparable. Besides, it's not like 5e doesn't have magic item prices. It does! Yet the books exclaim the "magic item mart" just fine.

Game without verisimilitude misses the point just as much as verisimilitude without game misses the point.

I just wish there were more allowance for the problems of "verisimilitude without game." As in, y'know, any at all.

Not using a power isn't the same as not having it.

It absolutely is, if the reason you don't use that power is because you know using it would have bad consequences you are unwilling to accept.

Otherwise, every US President has always had absolute power. They just haven't chosen to use it because the consequences would be very bad for them and the country.

Power you would not ever be willing to use is power you don't have.

But at least you tried it and learned from firsthand experience, which is IMHO much better than assuming that you would disliking it. I appreciate that you were willing to try sushi.

Edit: I should also add that there was this one game during my time in high school that I was absolutely convinced that I would hate because it sounded ridiculous when my friends described what it involved. The game was called "Dungeons & Dragons." But I tried it and loved it.

Likewise, there was a game I was taught to hate, without having ever played it, because friends I (formerly) trusted trashed it for being a cash-grab, flagrantly unrealistic, and full of stupid and meddlesome interference that ruined games for literally no reason.

That game is called "4th edition D&D." Which, as most who know me on here know, is my favorite flavor of D&D.

Relying on secondhand accounts and superficial impressions is often a faulty strategy.

 

[hawkeyefan]

People assume that everyone is somehow bound by the rules (they're not)

Says who? I play in plenty of games where the expectation is that we're bound by the rules. That rules will be binding isn't some kind of bizarre take... it's kind of the default expectation, I'd say.

that you cannot change the rules unless the rules tell you it's okay (you can change the rules regardless of what the rules say)

I agree with this. I don't think it's something that should necessarily be done on whim, but rather with consideration and input from all parties, but otherwise, yeah, people should change rules if they think it's for the best.

and that having rules tell the referee what to do will prevent the referee from doing it wrong and/or ignoring the rules (neither of which is remotely true)

I think the idea that this is not "remotely true" is pure hyperbole. Will the rules always prevent mistakes? No, of course not. But the idea that they help participants know what's expected of them and how something works certainly goes a long way to helping with that.

Let's just set aside the idea of a game for a moment and apply what you're saying to traffic rules. Your idea breaks down real quick when we do that.

The core assumption is that everyone's strictly and perfectly bound by the rules and the rest flow from that, but the core assumption is ridiculously false. Like laughably, absurdly, obviously false. Again, nothing happens when people ignore the rules...other than people who think the rules are sacrosanct get upset.

Again, pure hyperbole. I know you don't like rules, but that doesn't make your opinion objective truth.

It's not about holding the rules as sacrosanct. It's about expectations and how when you alter those, that can cause problems. You said earlier in the thread that trust comes from people being on the same page. That the acceptance of the rules by the participants is what makes them binding. That's totally true. But once accepted, I don't think it's bizarre to then proceed playing with those expectations in mind.

That this is laughably, absurdly, obviously false seems like you're either trying to be provocative, or you're not really thinking it through.

As for signposting traps, sometimes it makes sense and sometimes it doesn't.

Is the trap in the early part of the dungeon where dozens of adventuring parties have likely already encountered it? Then there will be blood, graffiti, and other obvious signs of a trap...or even an already disabled trap.

Is the trap in a later part of the dungeon where no adventurers have ever explored? Then there will be zero warning. Because the makers of that trap did not make it to be easily found. They made it to injure or kill whoever was stupid enough to enter uninvited.

Game without verisimilitude misses the point just as much as verisimilitude without game misses the point.

What happens when you have to make a decision that prioritizes one over the other?

I mean, this idea accepts that the experience of playing a game for the players is different than the "experience" of the characters in the fiction. I don't think that can be argued. So, accepting that, sometimes there may be conflict between the fiction and the game.

What do you do in those moments?

 

[clearstream]

Exactly. Absolute power that is never used because doing so would have deleterious consequences is not absolute power. It is conditional power--by definition.

Consider the implications of my saying that limiting absolute power's use makes it conditional power.

1. To make choices about the use of power means using it in some ways and not some other ways
2. If there are some ways that absolute power is not used - due to choices about the way that it is used - I call it conditional power
3. But wouldn't one power absolute power be guaranteed to have, be the power to make choices about its use?
4. Therefore to count as absolute power it must also be conditional power: an obvious paradox

To my mind, one ought to be skeptical of the idea of absolute power altogether, and focus instead on sufficient power which is already conceded to be conditional. One condition is how one chooses to use it.

GM-power is of that type: it is sufficient. What counts as sufficient depends on game modes, group preferences, individual interests and skill... all kinds of things. It's a spectrum. I would say some posters here prefer more, some less, some prefer one set of conditions, some another set. So far as I can see, arguments that work with an assumption that GM-power only counts as such if it is absolute won't yield useful understanding.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Define "unfair".

In this case, I was leaning on @Lanefan 's example where a sniper took a shot on a PC as they exited an inn. Where the reasons for this were entirely unknown to the players, but they were known to Lanefan as the GM.

I compared this with the example of a dragon swooping from the sky and attacking the party suddenly and forcing a confrontation.

Lanefan said that there was no real difference between these examples, and said that they'd sometimes be out of place, but not always.

They seem unfair to me. So these are what I was talking about.

The DM in D&D has unlimited resources. They can essentially wave their hands and the PCs will die. What prevents that? I would say that it's some sense of fairness... some acknowledgment that this is a game, and so it should function in certain ways.

At what point would a DM cross a line where you'd consider something not fair in that way?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Define "unfair".

DM: "Six months ago, you killed Jareth."
Pat, whose PC is now dead: "...who now?"
DM: "Jareth. Mercenary, back in Townsville?"
Pat: "I literally have no idea who you're talking about. That was six months ago. I barely even remember what we did in Townsville."
DM: "Well, he was part of an assassin guild. They put a bounty on your head. Someone finally came to collect it."
Pat: "And...I was supposed to know any of this how, exactly?!"
DM: "Guess them's the breaks."
____________

DM: "A red dragon lands on the party. Roll for Initiative."
Sam: "Can't we talk to it? Reason with it? Or try to run away?"
DM: "No. You are scorched by dragonfire. Get a new character sheet. Everyone else, roll for Initiative."
____________

DM: "As the battle continues, the necromancer's forces recoiling from your daylight, you see her cackle madly. A portal of woven shadow opens, and a squad of soot-blackened skeletons comes through it."
Eli: "I thought we destroyed her skeletons last week."
DM: "These are new skeletons. Their blackened bones probably got that way in a fire."
Eli: "Then what was the point of destroying her skeleton army if she could just build a whole new one in a few days?!"
DM: "You still weakened her. She just rebuilt."
Eli: "She rebuilt. Instantly. Just like that."
DM: "No, you see, she had standing orders to collect remains from nearby events and there was a fire in Cityburough just after you destroyed her skeletons."

All three of these are scenes that have, to one degree or another, actually been defended in this very thread.