D&D General A glimpse at WoTC's current view of Rule 0

[EzekielRaiden]

The setting - designed and created by someone else - is a dead thing until the players, through their PCs, bring it to life.

Just like an empty stage set - designed and built by someone else - is a dead thing until the actors, through playing their parts, bring it to life.

So...it's your play. The players just get to speak the lines in it?

I'm sure that isn't what you meant with this analogy. But this isn't exactly doing any favors against the idea that a DM that has invested that much labor in, and exerts that much control, effectively only wants people to witness how awesome their setting is.

a GM should have a love for their players messing up their world but in the right circumstance, there's a difference between players messing it up because they're digging deep into it and getting involved, and them messing it up because of being apathetic of it's existence.

the sandcastle that gets destroyed acting out an intense seige VS the sandcastle that gets destroyed by someone stepping on it not looking at where they're walking.

Alright. What about the guy who asks you to come play with his sandcastle, but if you try to add or change anything, he gets mad?

 

[Oofta]

I've had one - during the era when Twilight was a big deal, one player spent a lot of time and effort lobbying me to allow a Vampire PC.

And that was a hard no.

I had a guy who wanted to play a living half vampire half dragon. With a scarf that waved in the nonexistent wind.

 

[Lanefan]

Do DMs always choose what is best long-term? Note, I am not even considering bad-faith behavior here. Do well-meaning DMs always choose what is best long-term?

Do DMs always choose what's best for the long-term? No. We can and do all make mistakes; that's what trial and error is all about.

Do wise DMs always consider the long-term ahead of the short-term when making such choices? Ideally, yes.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I regularly have players do the unexpected and change what I thought was the likely story arcs. It's what makes the game interesting! If I just wanted to write bad fantasy fanfic, there are plenty of places to do that. But I want to see what's going to happen when I let the players loose on my world. What direction will they take? How will their actions influence the world?

One of the biggest reasons I avoid published adventures is because they tend to be far more linear than what I want. I throw a bunch of spaghetti at the wall for my players to react to and I see what sticks. Sometimes we have fairly linear arcs that go as I expected. Other times I've had NPCs that were supposed to be the ultimate BBEG (literally become the vessel for a reborn goddess) that became staunch allies. Occasionally 90% of the session is improvised. It's half the fun of DMing for me. I've set the stage, how do the players mess it up?

Yep, exactly this!

 

[Oofta]

Mod Note:

This from Mr. "Survey says... BZZZT!"? If you think you are in any position to school others, you are sorely mistaken.

Let me up the ante from my previous moderation - some of you ought to disengage from each other, like, now, if you want to avoid being summarily tossed out of this discussion.

Apologies, it was meant as a light hearted comment that obviously did not come off that way.

 

[Mort]

a GM should have a love for their players messing up their world but in the right circumstance, there's a difference between players messing it up because they're digging deep into it and getting involved, and them messing it up because of being apathetic of it's existence.

the sandcastle that gets destroyed acting out an intense seige VS the sandcastle that gets destroyed by someone stepping on it not looking at where they're walking.

The quickest way for players to get involved in a world is realizing things they do will have meaning within that world.

Conversely, the quickest way for players to be apathetic of a world's existence is if/when they catch on nothing they do will actually make any real difference because the DM is too overprotective of "his" world.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Do DMs always choose what's best for the long-term? No. We can and do all make mistakes; that's what trial and error is all about.

Do wise DMs always consider the long-term ahead of the short-term when making such choices? Ideally, yes.

Okay. I was asking because the claim was that players may choose things that damage the game, thus the DM is uniquely needed, and uniquely suited, to preventing this from happening. Hence I asked what I asked. If the DM does not always choose the right long term things either, how does an absolute DM authority fix the problem of making seemingly good short-term decisions that become clearly bad long-term? It just seems to concentrate the problem; when things go well they go great, but failure is catastrophic.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

So...it's your play. The players just get to speak the lines in it?

No, they said they set the stage, not that they wrote the script. There is no script, the lines are for the players to invent.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Not been an issue in what I've been talking about, because I've carefully steered clear of setting elements.

Magic? You've steered clear of the interaction of magic in settings? That's one of the larger issues in D&D rule 0's IME.

He shouldn't, automatically. But then, neither should the GM automatically trump him. If it was that bad, shouldn't be hard to get at least one player to want the change too, shouldn't it?

I got the players' buy in because the ruling was dumb from a logic scenario AND our interpretation was pro player.

But now it begs the question how much do you see as ok for the DM to change or introduce without having player necessarily sign off on it.

So what if I
Provide perks for odd numbered ability scores?
Increase Feats?
Improve Feats?
Provide additional uses for HD?

 

[Lanefan]

Because there is this thing called the PHB, which is the default set of assumptions for what people can play.

Rule 0 overrides that default, doesn't it?