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

[Lanefan]

In general, I used to come into campaigns with a story I wanted to tell. Now I try to come in with the attitude that I get to facilitate a story we will generate together. If I put aside my own expectations of what the story should be, I can't be disappointed and will likely be entertained.

Here's an example that @Lanefan will recognize: I was hosting a game of Dread that included him and some members of his VERY long running D&D group. The premise of the game was college rafting trip gone wrong - kind of a Deliverance meets Danger at Dunwater scenario. Anyhow, I asked players to prep a character, and one designed a character who was secretly a vampire.

My first (private) reaction was "well, no, that's not what I had in mind for this story." But then I thought about it...and so what? Just because it wasn't my idea and could take the story in a radically different direction didn't mean it wasn't an awesome idea that could be a ton of fun. The only real issue, aside from my ego, was that a fully powered vampire could obviate a lot of the scenario (super strength, being able to turn into mist, and all that), so I told the player sure, but did she mind de-powering her vampire for those reasons, and she was more than happy to oblige.

The game was super fun, the vampire angle added a whole new element to it and a surprise ending that I could never have predicted, and made the game better for everyone. And all I had to do was let someone else be creative.

Agreed all round, though it must be pointed out that the Dread game you reference was a one-off and (unless I missed something) never intended to be a longer campaign. And in a one-off you can have all kinds of stuff that just wouldn't work in anything longer-lasting.

Here, had this been a longer campaign the Vampire character (or characters, by the end) would inevitably have been or become OP compared to what the rest of us had*; which is why making decisions with a view to the long-term becomes important.

* - unless we all ended up becoming Vampires...which wasn't exactly outlined in your game pitch.

 

[Lanefan]

I prefer it both ways. I likely would have been disappointed in that game.

Had it been intended as a longer-term campaign I think it might have gone askew fairly quickly. But to the best of my knowledge it was only intended as a one-off, with most of the setting details (other than specifically-called-out differences) based on or in fact being local-ish real-world areas (the BC Interior) we were all familiar with. My character, for example, had just come up from Vancouver, he met the party when he got off an inter-city bus and stowed away in the party's tour group so he could hide from the law.

And the end result was roaring good fun.

For me...
1. I have to believe in the setting. That means I have to at least contemplate that somewhere out there this world could theoretically exist. So any form of joke game I'm generally against.
2. I want to explore and I want lots of things to explore. I want to interact with the setting which includes the NPCs. I want to have in game connections with more than just the PCs.
3. I like some gamism. I want skill to matter. Strategy and tactics, preparation and planning.
4. I want to act as my character. I don't want to make decisions for events inside the game that my character could not have made. We throw around the terms actor, pawn, and author. I'm firmly in the actor camp.
5. I like for the rules to make some sense in the world. A form of mild simulationism. I don't want the rules to be PC exceptions.

That is the kind of games I want to play in as a player and run as a DM.

Other than I don't mind some joke and whimsy in the game and am probably a bit less sold on point 3 than you (I'm more of a gambler at heart), I also stand fairly close to these preferences.

 

[Lanefan]

Fair points overall. A few notes and questions come to mind, though:

Some examples of what loses trust, thematic and mechanic:

1. Mocking preferences in general. Naturally, I have a stronger reaction when my own preferences are mocked (I suffer the human condition of feeling more upset when something hurts me than when it hurts someone else, but I'm still upset either way), but this is a great way to lose a lot of trust.

Mocking others' preferences is bad. But there's going to be times when preferences outright conflict (example: you like Dragonborn, I do not) and in these cases, without mockery, someone's preference has to prevail - there's either going to be Dragonborn in the game or there isn't. My take is that it should be the DM's preference that prevails: in your game there will be Dragonborn and in my game there will not. Seems simple enough.

1. Breaking the rules, or treating the rules as an enemy to be eliminated when possible. I know, I know, this is a thread about Rule 0. But the rules exist in order for us to have a common ground to start from. If the rules keep shifting under my feet, it's hard to trust that the final result is going to work out.

Agreed. This is the consistency piece I keep harping on.

1. Doing something that seems pretty hinky (say, taking away the party's stuff in the middle of the night, without letting us respond), and then following that up with some equivalent of "don't you trust me?" Because that's basically saying I'm never allowed to be concerned about anything ever, and I'm not okay with that. Trust is a two-way street, and someone dismissing any lack of trust with (effectively) "you should be trusting me and you aren't, so you're the problem" is not acceptable--ever.

So if the party makes camp in one place and wakes up somewhere completely different because, say, the DM wants to run Castle Amber (which is set in its own little bubble world), that's bad? If yes, we're at an impasse on that one.

1. Declaring you have absolute authority. Already covered why I have a problem with that.
2. Being capricious with consequences or results or processes. Some things have no rules, or go beyond what the rules talk about. This isn't so much "Rule 0", just that designers aren't omniscient. I have to believe that I can learn how to play better. Fudging is a good example here. Fudging ruins my ability to learn how to play--because the consequences aren't determined by my actions, they're determined by whether you like (or at least don't dislike) the consequences of my actions.

Agreed about the fudging piece. Other than that, however, it can sometimes be difficult to tell from the player side whether given a set of consequences are by capricious whim or because that's the odd direction the dice took today when rolled by the DM against a set of possible consequences.

1. Concealing dodgy stuff, but especially railroading or mistakes. Both things tell me that I can't be sure you will be honest to me as a person (note: NPCs tell lies all the time, that's not you the DM being dishonest to me the player, that's B'Beg the Court Vizier lying to Joe McFighter or whatever.) I can't be sure that what you claim is the case really is.

Agreed re the lying NPC. But if I can't at least try to paper over my DM-side mistakes (and I make 'em all the time!) I'm in deep trouble.

Things that earn trust and enthusiasm:

1. Genuinely listening to concerns and addressing them. If there's a trust issue, for example the aforementioned "robbed in the night and PCs couldn't prevent it" thing, explaining as much as you can without giving important things away, and offering to take responsibility and make amends if things don't work out. This shows accountability.

The bolded is good. The rest is verging on overkill.

1. Always being respectful, especially if you feel you haven't been respected. It's easy to be respectful to people who are already respectful to you. "If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them." (Luke 6:32, NIV) This shows respect.
2. Soliciting feedback, especially on things you weren't sure were successful, and striving to implement that feedback going forward. This shows that whether or not the players are having a good time matters.

The feedback comes through how enthused (or not) they are about coming back next week. And yes, there'll be highs and lows on this over a long campaign, it's inevitable.

1. Giving space for others' contributions to shine. Frex, if there's a wizard in the party who graduated from a Wizard school, asking the Wizard what the name of that school is, roughly where it would be located (helping them pick a spot if they aren't sure of the geography and demographics), its reputation, maybe some professors there, etc. This shows that the players' input really does matter in a small but concrete way--that the world is "ours" in at least some way.
2. During the pitch and/or Session Zero phases, articulating why you want to include X, Y, and Z and exclude A, B, and C. Explaining why the presence or absence of things will make a better experience. I very very much understand that DM enthusiasm is vital, but you need to show me that spark yourself. Just "I'm enthusiastic about it" is...not really selling me on the game. This shows that it's not the Jane Doe DM Show, but rather that we're all in this together.

Most of the time my reasons for such consist of "Because that's the way I want it" and in some cases "Because that's what I'm willing to DM". It doesn't get much simpler and easier to understand than that.

1. If something goes wrong and you realize it's gone wrong, making amends. The best way to do so is diegetically, of course, but diegetic fixes aren't always available. Mistakes happen; admitting to them and fixing them is a good thing.

Agreed, to a point. Some mistakes kinda just have to be lived with, even after acknowledgement.

1. Being open to alternative approaches--in both directions. That is, both being open to having your own ideas re-interpreted in a way that the player might like better (even if not that much has actually changed), and being open to proposing re-interpretations of player ideas that you like better (again, even if not that much changes.) Former: you can't be a dragonborn, but you can be a human infected with a degenerative disease that is transforming you into a dragonoid-person (start off with human mechanics, change over time). Latter: Only Clerics exist in this world, but my Cleric can be the person who gets the ball rolling on founding the very first Paladin order. This shows that we are peers in the discussion, rather than one person controlling everything and one person meekly submitting.

If you're the DM and I'm the player, we're not peers. It's your world, your setting, your rules; and while I can have an opinion and suggest changes you're completely within your rights to tell me to pound sand, and I'm completely within my rights to accept or decline further play.

 

[Greg K]

So?

A vaguely-Tolkein knockoff, influenced by the whimsy that is Herc-Xena, is pretty much exaclty what I'm after.

Yeah, I am not to interested in WOTC's takes on D&D fantasy. The types of fantasy settings that I prefer are Arthurian (Mallory, Mists of Avalon, or Excalibur), Conan (REH or Roy Thomas), Tolkein, Beastmaster, Dragonslayer, Ladyhawke, or Willow influenced fantasy settings. On occasion, either the first two Pirates of the Caribbean movies or Harryhausen's Sinbad or Clash of the Titans.

 

[Lanefan]

If you spend a year making something and then pitch it to your players and none of them find it nearly as interesting as you had hoped, is it an issue of them being bad players for not instantly loving whatever you created? Or is the issue that you worked too hard on something without actually confirming that it would be interesting to the people interacting with it?

Because if you're spending an entire year working on a setting before anyone is even allowed to know anything about it, I don't really think players are what you're looking for. I think an audience is what you're looking for.

Well, I spent a year designing my current setting and I'm now 16.5 years into running it (puck drop was March 2008); and I rather suspect my players wouldn't be thrilled to learn they're being referred to as an audience.

That said, if in early 2008 no players had shown any interest in my then-new setting it would have told me two things: 1) I'd just wasted a lot of time and effort and 2) I'm off the hook for DMing for the then-foreseeable future which means more time I can spend at the pub. However, at the time there were no such worries; in fact I was in the rather wonderful position of being able to pick and choose which players I would take in.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

Difference in focus.

IME players (often including me when on that side of the screen) almost exclusively focus on what benefits them right here and right now. The only person at the table who even considers the long-term good of the campaign is the DM, who has to put that consideration up against what the players are asking for in the moment.

Now in a one-shot game this doesn't matter. But in a situation where you have to live with a ruling for potentially years, ignoring the long-term effects of that ruling seems - literally and figuratively - shortsighted.

 

[Lanefan]

Yeah, I don't know if Lanefan was the person who I'm thinking of, but there was someone on here who was sufficiently proprietary about their setting they wouldn't let someone define things about the village their character came from. Even things that didn't seem inappropriate given defined setting elements.

At seems, at best, pretty excessive.

Don't think I'm guilty of that one, y'r honour.

 

[Lanefan]

Then you've been fortunate. It doesn't require evil behavior at all; something as simple as "We're having a meeting with the Evil King, so let's try to kill him right now" can be, shall we say, something of a problem in all kinds of cases, and when only one player goes for it...

As both player and DM I love that sort of thing!

 

[Mort]

Fa

So if the party makes camp in one place and wakes up somewhere completely different because, say, the DM wants to run Castle Amber (which is set in its own little bubble world), that's bad? If yes, we're at an impasse on that one.

This depends HEAVILY on what the expectations of the group are and what the group knows/expects from the DM. If the group was looking forward to a completely different/different type of adventure they could rightfully be irritated.

Real world example of a switcheroo:

Friend and I signed up for a Star Wars game at Gen Con. Advert was a standard smuggling mission adventure.

Since it's a convention game, there are pregens.

Someone picks a face type character, someone picks a smart character, etc.

As the adventure starts suddenly our ship gets pulled through something. We find ourselves orbiting a planet and have to land.

Landing on the planet everyone discovers that everything is opposite. The smart character is stupid, the strong character is week. The face can't talk himself out of anything etc.

Players spend the next 4 hours playing the opposite of what they picked. It was the opposite of a fun experience.

 

[KYRON45]

This is not the only way to do FRPGing, is not an approach I've used since about 40 years ago, and is extremely GM-centred.

Of course it’s not the only way. There is no “only way”.