D&D General Fighting Law and Order

[Faolyn]

Sure. But it's a way of limiting what players can do in the game, not a way of giving them full control over their PCs.

No more so than any line or veil in a game. It's limiting, perhaps, but it does so in order to ensure that everyone at the table (including the GM) has fun.

 

[Oofta]

Good rules provide guidance. E.g., Dungeon World's Principles expressly forbid much of what was done here. The relevant ones are:

1. Address the characters, not the players: "teaching lessons" to the players means you're addressing players, not characters. Bad player behavior is certainly an issue, but it's one that should be addressed separately.

I agree. So has just about every DM that has responded on this thread.

1. Embrace the fantastic: Obviously, this should adapt to context (e.g. Apocalypse World uses "Barf forth apocalyptica"), but the core idea remains. Fill the world with magic, with mysticism and mystery. "Just die as outlaws 'cause there's no other solution" isn't fantastical.

D&D runs a bit of the gamut here, but FR is definitely fantastical. Flying cities, crashed spaceships, alien creatures that are floating spheres with killer eye stalks. I think D&D covers this.

1. Make a move that follows: Mentioned in prior threads, moves must follow fiction. Much of the setup here (like the mysterious stranger breaking them free but...not actually getting them out) did not do that.
2. Be a fan of the characters: This is the big one. Nothing about this reflected being a fan of the characters. Much the opposite, in fact--the characters were seen as being a problem to be fixed. It was punitive, and explicitly so to "teach a lesson" to the players.
3. Begin and end with the fiction: Anything you do should be tying back into the fictional state of play, advancing the story to something new and dramatic (which does not mean happy.) That, pretty obviously, didn't happen here, indeed the fiction by all accounts was left very muddled.

Obviously using different terminology, but forcing PCs into a no win situation and then punishing them for it is not in the spirit of the game as presented in many places. Hopefully the 2024 edition will get more explicit on this.

For example off the top of my head in the intro to the DMG "our goal isn’t to slaughter the adventurers but to create a campaign world that revolves around their actions and decisions, and to keep your players coming back for more"

Or in Creating a Campaign, Campaign Style (emphasis mine)

What’s the right way to run a campaign? That depends on your play style and the motivations of your players. Consider your players’ tastes, your strengths as a DM, table rules (discussed in part 3), and the type of game you want to run. Describe to the players how you envision the game experience and let them give you input. The game is theirs, too. Lay that groundwork early, so your players can make informed choices and help you maintain the type of game you want to run.​

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Following the guidance of these Principles, this whole situation would never have come to pass in the first place. There's much more depth involved than these high-level gloss statements alone; each is given a full multi-sentence explanation in the DW SRD, and you can find even more explanation in the actual DW text itself.


That is what guiding behavior looks like: explaining what's better to do, why it's better to do it, and (when space permits) giving examples of how to do that. Rules that are tools; rules that have been thoroughly tested and found to be highly effective for pursuing the right goals at the right times. There will, of course, always be components of individual preference and applying these things to specific contexts. Human choice isn't going to be removed. In fact, even if you could remove it (and I don't think you can), you shouldn't. But just as the rules of writing exist to guide, and should be followed in the vast majority of situations, well-made rules like those of Dungeon World should be followed in the vast majority of situations.

Because detrimental. the outright alternative often is and counterproductive
Because the alternative is counterproductive and often outright detrimental. See, I broke the rules of English writing there, by having the second half of the sentence woven in reverse into the first half! Totally better for communicating than following the dull-as-dirt ideas like "subject verb object," or adjectives preceding the word they modify, or the unspoken rules about the correct order for adjectives.

D&D is, of course, not actually identical to DW. You cannot simply rip out its rules and apply them to D&D, even though DW was made in emulation of a particular idea of how D&D can be played. You would need to do design work and testing before you could determine what constitutes good guidance and how to go about supporting the most effective actions. Much of this will, in the end, be a matter of codifying the intuitive "best practices" many current D&D DMs already use. Which is part of the point! We want to be able to take the wisdom and experience that previous generations of DMs have built, and condense that into useful guidance, so that the next generation can condense "20 years of DMing" to "a few hours of reading and a few months of practice." That's why we develop any body of technique and teaching, to make it so you don't need every single person to start from banging rocks together before they can move on to forging metal.

The same fundamental advice is in the DMG. Maybe not using the same verbiage, perhaps it should be improved with the 2024 edition.

It doesn't change anything. Which has been my point - the advice you give is not bad advice. But it is just advice. If you have someone who does not care one way or another about the players, no rules advice is going to change that. The OP has flat out stated that they are going to run the game they run the game. No compromise, refuse to discuss issues with the players, don't actually explain anything to them. They won't even do anything to accommodate the dietary needs of people they invite over for dinner.

You have yet to point out anything that would not also be good advice for a DM in D&D, or at least one good way of running the game. The design philosophy is different. In D&D they don't always tell you how to run your game, they frequently give you options and discuss.

It's also reiterated in places like the intro modules. From Lost Mines of Phandalver (emphasis mine)

Although the DM controls the monsters and villains in the adventure, the relationship between the players and the DM isn’t adversarial. The DM’s job is to challenge the characters with interesting encounters and tests, keep the game moving, and apply the rules fairly.​

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The most important thing to remember about being a good DM is that the rules are a tool to help you have a good time. The rules aren’t in charge. You’re the DM — you’re in charge of the game. Guide the play experience and the use of the rules so that everybody has fun.​

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The OP ignores the advice given. They didn't talk to the players about style of game because "they don't like talking". They obviously don't care if everyone has fun. Can the 2024 DMG be better? Yes, they've stated as much. Does the advice you've pointed out from other games change anything? I don't see how. It's already there, just not in the same structure or with the same verbiage.

 

[Oofta]

No more so than any line or veil in a game. It's limiting, perhaps, but it does so in order to ensure that everyone at the table (including the GM) has fun.

We limit what people can do with their characters the moment we decide we're playing D&D, not Mutants and Masterminds. I don't see limiting to non-evil characters being any different.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I still would like an example of how you adjust a game for the whim of each player and ignore the GMs wishes. I get that when a player says something you agree with, and that you only play with players that agree with you on everything........BUT what happens if they don't?

What do you do when you have a disagreement with someone about what should be done in the real world? For example, your friend wants to go to a certain taco restaurant for lunch, but you're feeling teriyaki today, and you can't go to both places. Perhaps, if the disagreement is simply too great, you just don't go to lunch at all, which I hope you'd agree is rather a shame. More likely, one or the other of you shrugs, saying, "Sure, we can do that this time, but next time you're taking me to X." Likewise any other aspect of doing things together with others: what games to play, what movies or shows to watch, what team name to use, what music to listen to...you find some way to build consensus.

I mean, would you say you struggle to resolve situations like disagreeing with your spouse/SO/best friend/roommate/etc. about which of two mutually-exclusive things you want to do? Do you always adamantly insist that people do what you want, and if they don't like that, well then nobody gets to do anything? I can't really believe that that is actually a problem for you, yet there's no DM of friendship who can lay down the law. So what do you do?

Player One says "GM I want no rated X stuff", and the GM agrees with this and says "As you command player one".

I mean, if you want to use mocking language, okay. That's kind of a jerk thing to do, but if that's what you feel like doing, alright. And yes, I do in fact have a player who made that request (as in, "I know I may play a flirtatious character, but please keep anything actually sexual to a minimum") because the player is ace, and thus not super comfortable with highly sexual things. I obliged because...I don't see any point in that. And any X-rated violence was out the window to begin with 'cause I'm a squeamish babby.

But what if Player Two says "GM I don't want the game to be any kind of Sandbox", and the GM disagrees.....does the GM still do it and say "as you command player two" and adjust the whole game to not be a sandbox?

The two talk it out. If absolutely no consensus can be achieved, then that is a sign to me that those people should not be playing RPGs together. If they're going to achieve an unbreakable loggerheads before session zero, there's no hope for them in all the vagaries and minutiae of actual play.

And I'd ask again what good would "talking" have done?

Plenty! Few people have totally simplistic on/off preferences. Instead, certain features or elements bother them, or cause problems, or are deleterious to their experience. Digging into what the player wants, or doesn't want, gives you the chance to find out those details. And, quite often, it turns out that the specific things that really bother them aren't actually ones you need to get what you want. It's almost never as black-and-white simple as "NEVER sandbox!!!" or "ALWAYS sandbox!!!" Instead, it's something like, "I find sandbox games really difficult to get into, because of <bad past experience> and feeling aimless without a defined goal."

But by digging into the details of that bad experience, you can look for ways to prevent that bad experience from happening, e.g., the infamous, albeit probably not particularly common, "TPK by randomly-rolled red dragon encounter," which can be addressed by more carefully curating the encounter tables and giving the players clear, specific feedback on the potential dangers they may be facing before they go a-splorin'. And knowing that some of your players want more of a specific throughline to follow even if they appreciate the freedom to hare off and do other things, means that you can adjust to fit that--perhaps making the campaign premise contain more of a strong central subject, or including NPCs who have specific needs/desires and some kind of power or influence over the PCs to push them toward specific goals.

You can't do either of those things without talking to someone and finding out what it is they care about and why.

Well, I doubt any of them will flee from the hobby forever.

I'd rather not take that specific risk, myself.

Limits of what? Where do you see adding limits? I agree that if this game used ALIGNMENT more strongly then the players would have had a better chance of understanding "good" and "evil". So if they had the Limit of "tour playing good characters and can't do murderhobo acts on good people", that would have fixed everything.

See above. Things like Dungeon World's Principles. Again, to be clear, I don't believe you can just copy-paste those over and everything will work fine. Because they're different games, even if they spring from common roots. But the shape will be quite similar.

 

[Autumnal]

Speaking again of Roman precedent and murderhobos, which nobody but me was actually doing, this would liven up “let’s slaughter a bunch” scenes:

https://www.amazon.com/Murder-Was-Not-Crime-Homicide-ebook/dp/B004E0Z3VS/

 

[bloodtide]

What do you do when you have a disagreement with someone about what should be done in the real world? For example, your friend wants to go to a certain taco restaurant for lunch, but you're feeling teriyaki today, and you can't go to both places. Perhaps, if the disagreement is simply too great, you just don't go to lunch at all, which I hope you'd agree is rather a shame. More likely, one or the other of you shrugs, saying, "Sure, we can do that this time, but next time you're taking me to X." Likewise any other aspect of doing things together with others: what games to play, what movies or shows to watch, what team name to use, what music to listen to...you find some way to build consensus.

I can't see this ever happing in my world. There is no way I could be "forced" to go to a place by a "friend" for lunch.

I mean, would you say you struggle to resolve situations like disagreeing with your spouse/SO/best friend/roommate/etc. about which of two mutually-exclusive things you want to do? Do you always adamantly insist that people do what you want, and if they don't like that, well then nobody gets to do anything? I can't really believe that that is actually a problem for you, yet there's no DM of friendship who can lay down the law. So what do you do?

Do what I want. I don't play the same game of life you do, by choice.

See above. Things like Dungeon World's Principles. Again, to be clear, I don't believe you can just copy-paste those over and everything will work fine. Because they're different games, even if they spring from common roots. But the shape will be quite similar.

I'd never play a game under such rules, but that is just me.

 

[pemerton]

No more so than any line or veil in a game. It's limiting, perhaps, but it does so in order to ensure that everyone at the table (including the GM) has fun.

OK? I'm simply making what I take to be an obvious point, that putting limits on how players can play their PCs is not the same thing as letting them choose to play their PCs however they like.

 

[pemerton]

We limit what people can do with their characters the moment we decide we're playing D&D, not Mutants and Masterminds. I don't see limiting to non-evil characters being any different.

I think it's obvious that consensual limits are different from unilaterally-imposed limits.

Who adjudicates that a character is evil. The player? The table? I got the impression it was you, the GM.

 

[pemerton]

Speaking again of Roman precedent and murderhobos, which nobody but me was actually doing, this would liven up “let’s slaughter a bunch” scenes:

https://www.amazon.com/Murder-Was-Not-Crime-Homicide-ebook/dp/B004E0Z3VS/

My (rough) understanding is that Icelandic/Viking law and custom distinguished between murder (what we might tend to call assassination, like stepping out from a dark sidestreet and stabbing someone) and killing when that was done more-or-less upfront.

Interestingly, but unsurprisingly, REH's Conan books deploy a similar moral contrast, and so does classic D&D (hence why assassins must be "evil", but other rather violent individuals don't have to be).

Linking the gameplay to real life, the most salient feature here in my view is that D&D, like many real-world societies, accepts that voluntarily taking on the risk of violent death (eg by serving as a guard or a soldier; or by participating in a duel) makes a moral difference if someone then kills you. Whereas I don't know of any contemporary state legal system that permits consent as a defence to homicide.

 

[Oofta]

I think it's obvious that consensual limits are different from unilaterally-imposed limits.

Who adjudicates that a character is evil. The player? The table? I got the impression it was you, the GM.

It's not unilateral. When I invite people to my game I let them know what type of campaign I run which includes no evil characters. So people know my choice before even a session 0 starts.

If you want to run an evil character find a different DM. But yes, as with all rulings in D&D the DM has final say whether something is evil. Whether I'm DMing or playing. It's not like it's ever been controversial.

It's worked pretty well for me for going on half a century now.