D&D General How much control do DMs need?

[loverdrive]

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.

The problem is, the makers of that trap don't actually make it to protect anything. They make it for the players.

The same way architects of a fictional city don't build for people to have a nice living in, they create a location for a game that is vaguely kinda sorta resembles a city.

 

[pemerton]

People have stated that controls on the GM are a universal good with no explanation why. They just assert it as truth.

@loverdrive was very clear about her reason for preferring a GM roster: it makes the combat part of the game more like a wargame or video game, and hence increases the scope for players to play skilfully. Whether or not you agree with that reason, it's a perfectly clear one.

 

[Lanefan]

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

Why do I sense a trap question here?

It's OK for the setting to be as unfair to the PCs as the PCs are, or can be, unfair to the setting.

For example, if the PCs can ambush an NPC and kill it without its ever being aware of their presence (which they've often numerous ways and means of doing once they get beyond very low level) then the PCs should be potentially vulnerable to the same being done against them. Which might not answer your question unless you think this example is unfair. I don't.

 

[clearstream]

Note the condition I set: that one would not do something because the consequences would be bad. Not failing to do something because you never considered it, nor because you were just preoccupied and never got the chance, nor because you elected to do Thing A instead of Thing B due to liking Thing A better but would gladly switch to Thing B if (say) you realized Thing A was contradictory or the like.


I mean, I argued pretty much literally that earlier in the thread, and the point was either ignored or disputed, so...yeah, I mean, I agree. The conditions are always there, so it's not a choice between absolute and conditional, it's between different conditions, hence my arguments to the tune of "if there will always be conditions, shouldn't we pick conditions that have useful features?" E.g. being able to check to see if they work (testable), being able to decide if we agree with them or not (open/explicit), being able to share them with others to find out ways to use them better (teachable/describable), etc.


I fully agree. Hence, we should reject an argument built upon a foundation such as "absolute power(/latitude/etc.) is needed in order to achieve X." Because there is no such thing. There is only conditional power(/latitude/etc.) Which means it is valid to question which conditions are useful--and to ask what it means for a condition to be useful in the first place. In other words, questions of game design theory! (Hence why, in past threads, and good Lord it doesn't feel like this was a year ago, I have tried to examine the purposes for which a game gets designed. Because those purposes can tell us an awful lot about the conditions on any given participant's power, player, GM, or otherwise.)

Looks like we're in agreement on the basics. GM power is necessaily limited and worthwhile conversation is about the limits we prefer or find deliver some outcome for us.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

I agree with this. Unless the Goblin King has means and time to drum up some reinforcements, it's on the DM to track his army's attrition as it occurs. I also think it's poor form for the army to strengthen or weaken for no particular reason based on what the players throw at it in terms of PC power.

...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.

If an encounter or even entire adventure is set up well enough, ideally the players/PCs don't know it's trivial until after they've already done it.

I'm running a series of homebrew adventures right now, the first of which is intentionally set up to be trivial as its purpose is not to challenge the PCs but rather to serve as the gateway and hook to the rest of the series...if they find the clues. If they don't, then they get an easy adventure and on they go to other unrelated things.

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!

I have to assume they're in an expansion book, as they're not in the core three that I recall (though it's been a while since I looked at them, so it's possible I'm in error here).

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.

By definition you still have the power even if you're not willing to use it. If, consequences be damned, you could use the power, then you have the power; and at the same time have the power to choose not to exercise 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.

Flagrantly unrealistic by intention was all it took to sink it for me. Never saw it as any more of a cash grab than any other edition.

 

[Lanefan]

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?

Ideally, the fiction wins out.

However, I have to accept that not every situation is ideal.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Flagrantly unrealistic by intention was all it took to sink it for me. Never saw it as any more of a cash grab than any other edition.

It isn't flagrantly unrealistic though. No more than any other edition of D&D.

 

[clearstream]

The problem is, the makers of that trap don't actually make it to protect anything. They make it for the players.

One mode - that I label immersionist - does picture that the trap can be there only if it fits with the world, and the world is not about the players.

The same way architects of a fictional city don't build for people to have a nice living in, they create a location for a game that is vaguely kinda sorta resembles a city.

It's more about how your fiction is constructed and what you expect of it. Of course any RPG city is impressionistic, but it's valid to constrain yourself to establishing truths not in view of the PCs, but in view of the world which they are a part of.

RQ can be run that way. In Glorantha, the Citadel of Trilus exists in Balazar even if PCs never see it. The idea is to start from the world, not the PCs.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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?

For my part? I always, 100% of the time, value the experience of the player over the experience of the character (or the world; the differences between the two are not relevant in this context), if I am truly forced into a choice where I get one and only one and the other must be sacrificed. The player is real. The character isn't. The player is a fellow-creator; the character is a creation (as is the world.)

Of course, it's pretty rare--to the point of being perhaps a little hyperbolic!--to have a situation where it's "Choose: 100% verisimilitude 0% game, OR 0% verisimilitude 100% game." The vast majority of the time, it's more like "Choose: 55% verisimiltude 45% game, or 45% verisimilitude 55% game." Neither ceases to matter, but in a slim set of cases, you make minor sacrifices on one end for major gains on the other. And I see no reason--ever--to prioritize things that don't actually exist and have no actual feelings that can be hurt or hopes that can be dashed.

That doesn't mean these things have no value at all. They do! And sometimes the real live people at the table need those things in order to feel the right feels etc. But all the fictional things exist to serve. They should never be prioritized over the purpose for which they were made, namely, to give the real, living people at the table a satisfying experience. (Note, "satisfying," not cloyingly-saccharine eternal sunshine and rainbows and instant wish fulfillment. A satisfying meal may contain sour or bitter things, but only if they actually serve to make better, fuller, richer flavor, not if they become the core focus of the experience.)

 

[Lanefan]

"Blindly" can mean doing things carelessly, "without direction or purpose," not just in the absence of knowledge.

So, your assertion is that when you go exploring, you know nothing whatsoever about the area. Nothing, at all, can be learned about it without physically going there first. That claim sounds outright bizarre to me.

The claim doesn't sound bizarre to me...at least not after DMing some long-time players I had who often intentionally chose to eschew information gathering in favour of just diving in.