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

[Lanefan]

Torchbearer has a rule that all the PCs have to enter and leave a phase (town, adventure, camp) together, and so in that sense it mandates a party.

It mandates much more than that: it mandates against individual PC actions and in so doing negating some otherwise-reasonable in-fiction things the characters might do:

"Most of us are wanted in this town 'cause of the last time we were here but Joe, you're not; so what say you ride ahead, scout the place out, get a big room at the inn, and then we'll try to sneak in and join you there?" (entering town at different times or maybe only one PC gets in)

"Guys, I'm going to be three more days or so finishing my spell research. I know time is tight, so why don't you go on ahead and get started on the mission; leave me trail-marks and signs and I'll catch up to you when I can." (both leaving town and starting an adventure at different times)

"We'll split up today. Bjarnni and Edweard will go ahead and forage, the rest of us will stay here and try our luck at fishing until noon or so, then meet them up on that ridge <points at map> before sunset." (leaving camp at different times)

The rule denies the players the agency to do any of these things.

But it doesn't mandate a party goal. The players have individual goals.

And yet they can't follow those goals as individuals, they are mandated by rule to haul the party around with them...which (perhaps intentionally) plays hell with PCs having goals that directly conflict with each other or having goals that are not supposed to be party knowledge.

Sorry, but while I can get behind a soft-shoe player-side suggestion of "keep the party together", mandating it as a hard rule is IMO a fairly big step too far.

 

[Lanefan]

A castle is a massive place of work.

There's a difference between a castle such as Buckingham Palace (constant high security both at the perimeter and internally, even the workers get vetted on entry) and Winterfell, which is more like a defended village where in times of peace people come and go all the time.

For royal-residence castles I generally assume more the medieval version of high-security Buckingham Palace, where just walking in to see the king would be fraught with problems and risk unless you were already a friend in good standing of said king and known as such by the guards.

 

[hawkeyefan]

It's because the PC has no in-fiction control over who randomly happens to be there, just like I have no real-world control over who happens to be at the local Denny's when I wander in. The random populating of locations is DM-side stuff.

It need not be DM-side stuff, that’s the point.

Set aside that idea for a moment. What does it harm if the player says “Brand is drunk and in a bad mood and looking for a fight. He finds the biggest guy in here and decks him”?

Forget whose authority that typically is in your opinion… what about this is bad? How is play harmed by this?

Then who are you arguing with? Who thinks classic D&D play is the only way to play?

See the quote above from Lanefan about that being “DM-side stuff. That’s from one page ago.

You’ve been posting in this thread for a while. Do you really need me to find more examples?

 

[Queer Venger]

While looking at the educator resources over on D&D beyond, I stumbled upon WoTC's current (and free) intro adventure for new (and mostly younger) players Peril in Pinebrook.

Like the starter sets this adventure has a rules primer along with it and a decent size section on how to run the game.

Unlike the starter sets OR the current rule books - it actually mentions and defines Rule 0. From the adventure:

Rule 0. Rule 0 of D&D is simple: Have fun. It’s fine if everyone agrees to change the rules as long as doing so means the game is more fun for everyone.

Has this been defined in such a manner in any other D&D supplement? If so, I certainly haven't seen it. I find this definition too open ended for my tastes! And also overly ambiguous. Does it mean rules changes must be unanimous? Majority vote? Whatever the most charismatic person at the table is able to convince the rest of the table? To me, this definition, while well intentioned, will/can cause more issues than it solves!

Thoughts?

Rule 0 at my table: show up, have fun, bring snacks.

We typically play RAW and RAI. Sometimes if rules are ambiguous I side with the Rule of Cool.

 

[Lanefan]

I prefer my D&D to be about heroes being heroic.

I prefer my D&D to be about people being people.

 

[Azzy]

I prefer my D&D to be about people being people.

Groovy, I prefer the PCs to be Big Damn Heroes™.

 

[niklinna]

It's because the PC has no in-fiction control over who randomly happens to be there, just like I have no real-world control over who happens to be at the local Denny's when I wander in. The random populating of locations is DM-side stuff.

What, every PC ever, even at @hawkeyefan's table, even though he (and a number of other posters) has been quite clear that PCs at his table do have in-fiction control over who happens to randomly be somewhere?

 

[Mort]

Though I might facepalm when they missed or declined the fifth different obvious adventure hook...

As a constant misser of "obvious" adventure hooks, I hope they really ARE obvious!

I've noticed what DMs think are obvious and what players think are obvious are often orders of magnitude apart.

 

[Lanefan]

It need not be DM-side stuff, that’s the point.

Set aside that idea for a moment. What does it harm if the player says “Brand is drunk and in a bad mood and looking for a fight. He finds the biggest guy in here and decks him”?

Forget whose authority that typically is in your opinion… what about this is bad?

In itself I'm mostly fine with this, truth be told, largely because in the grand scheme of things it's pretty inconsequential. The one thing that would have to be mechanically resolved in this declaration is the "decks him" piece, using the game's combat mechanics (in this case, a surprise or alertness roll for the "biggest guy" to see if Brand catches him off guard followed by a to-hit roll for Brand perhaps modified by his being drunk; were I the DM I'd also be quickly rolling at this point to determine the "biggest guy"'s state of sobriety as well as that's almost certain to become immediately relevant).

How is play harmed by this?

For something this relatively-trivial, it isn't.

Had the declaration been something like "Brand is drunk and in a bad mood and looking for a fight. He sees the guy in here who stole his woman's heart and decks him” I'd have had a problem with it, in that (assuming we've already played out the preceding soap opera) I wouldn't approve of the player so conveniently writing the other guy into the crosshairs like that. - we'd need to determine whether he was in fact here or not, be it randomly or by checking previous notes on what he was last known to be doing and extrapolating from there.

 

[Lanefan]

As a constant misser of "obvious" adventure hooks, I hope they really ARE obvious!

I've noticed what DMs think are obvious and what players think are obvious are often orders of magnitude apart.

Indeed. I try to make them steadily more obvious once they start getting missed.