GM fiat - an illustration

[bloodtide]

In an RPG, you very clearly cannot do anything. As a player, what you can do is limited. You can declare actions for your character. That's what players do. Some games go a little farther... but D&D is not really one of those.

Well, it depends where you put your goal posts.

But a player of a character in most RPG can have their character do, or at least try anything they can within a very wide and vague and broad framework.

No video game, board game or sport allows a player to do this.

In the made-up world of the game, the characters can likewise not do anything. They are bound by the rules of the game as well as setting and/or genre logic, and also in many cases, the whim of the DM.

Yes, but under the DM they can.

For example, a player can ask a DM "can I play a character that is a half troll warlock " and a Dm might say "yes".

You can't do that in other types of games.

I mean... casting a spell is literally the caster altering the game reality to their whim. That's pretty much the definition.

Odd, most spell just do the effect listed on the page. Alarm, for example, does not alter game reality so no bad guys show up just as the player does not want that. Or game reality does not alter so no NPC can get around the alarm, as again the player does not want that to happen.

Bypassing the rules of such a spell by whim alone seems like pretty crappy GMing to me.

Or brilliant GMing!

All the subsets of games are unique in ways from the others. That doesn't mean they don't have commonalities as well. They're still all games... clearly they have common elements.

One of those things is rules that tell us what is allowed, when, and by whom.

This is not a universal game thing.

 

[hawkeyefan]

They are similar in that their rules contain the entire game. RPGs don't do that, at least D&D is far from contained in such a manner.

The truth is, RPGs are not anywhere close to being contained by their rules like sports and board games are. They simply are not... it's obvious.

RPGs are absolutely contained by their rules. Why wouldn't they be? What is it you think the rules do?

Some RPG rules are about fairness. Others have nothing to do with fairness. And a lot of the game doesn't have a rule that fits the situation, so the DM needs come up with a ruling/house rule. That last situation doesn't really come up in board games or sports games more than once in two or three blue moons.

That's really inaccurate. The judgment of referees is what you're talking about. Yes, the GM of an RPG performs that function. Would you really say that such a function doesn't exist in other types of games? Sports, in particular?

Really? Let's say the DM and players all get to stack the same bonuses that aren't meant to stack. That's fair. Not the rules, but still fair.

Doesn't that really seem like a case of changing or removing the rule?

Would you allow one participant to benefit from such stacking and not another? No, I don't expect you would. And why not? Because it would be unfair.

That's the only real fairness that there is. Any rules that touch on unfairness are ones that touch the social contract. Like no cheating.

Not really. The Alarm spell isn't as rife with points as the OP would suggest.

"* Does the player's character have an uninterrupted minute of time to cast the spell?"

There will be somewhere close to zero times that this ever is an issue. If there are so many monsters that close to you, you probably aren't stopping for a minute to cast the spell. Outside of there being monsters everywhere around you, there the minute casting time just won't be an issue.

It's chock full of GM Fiat.

Instead of pointing out how unlikely it is... let's look at what happens if that is the case.

I am playing a wizard, and I go to cast the spell as we ready for camp. The DM then tells me that only 12 seconds into casting the spell, a mob of goblins appears on the nearby hilltop. He calls for initiative.

Has he done anything against the rules? Has he done anything unfair? What criteria do we use to determine that?

How do we proceed? If combat erupts around me, is my casting still considered uninterrupted? Can I continue to cast and if I make it for 8 rounds, the spell works? If combat isn't over by then, won't the spell just trigger immediately?

What if I ask the DM about this decision to have goblins show up just after I started casting and he said " I thought it would be a fun scenario for you guys to face one more challenge before camping, and I wanted to see how you'd handle the alarm spell and the risk of losing it, since it was your last spell of that level"? Is the DM breaking any rules? No. Is he being unfair? I don't know... he did it because he thought it would be challenging and fun.

"* Does any potential intruder come within 8 hours, or do they turn up (say) 8 hours and 5 minutes after the spell was cast?"

It takes a rare corner case for this to ever be an issue. DMs aren't going to sit there and just have monsters show up right after the spell ends. And you know what? So what if the DM does. It lasts 8 hours so that the party can long rest and 8 hours and 5 minutes later, the long rest has happened and the encounters hits a fresh party that is awake for it already. This is the second non-issue brought up as a "point where it can happen."

It's not a non-issue. It's a case of the DM clearly acting on knowledge he only has because of his role as DM, and then having NPCs behave accordingly. Perhaps passing it off as coincidence.

Is the DM allowed to have someone show up just after the spell ends? It seems you think yes, based on your "so what" comment. Okay... then who determines how ready the characters are? How much are they able to accomplish before the potential enemy shows up? Are the characters scattered about in a vulnerable formation? Is the ranger tending to the mounts while the fighter's off in the woods relieving himself of all the ale he drank last night, and the cleric is in the middle of praying?

How are these things determined?

By the same guy who decided the enemy showed up right after the spell ended.

"* Does a potential intruder come within the warded area, or open the warded portal? Or do they sneak around the warded portal, or inspect/attack from outside the area?"

This one is more common than the first point above, but still very rare. The overwhelming majority of encounters will enter the warded area, but a few might inspect or attack from outside if they typically are a ranged attacker. Still not an issue, though.

Why is this not an issue?

How is it determined what creature shows up? If the creature can detect or dispel the ward? Or if it's a creature that would typically attack from afar? What about the creature's disposition? Its goals?

These things are all determined by the DM.

"* If the caster (and friends) are asleep, and are woken by this spell, how much can the intruder accomplish while they rouse themselves?"

They get to roll initiative since they are not surprised, which means they get their full round of stuff to do. They may or may not be wearing armor, and they may need to spend half their move to stand up, but they can do anything they would normally do. This is also a non-issue.

Why wouldn't they be surprised? Let's just focus on that. Who determines if a side is surprised in 5e? The DM.

Some folks might say that the Alarm spell should prevent being surprised... but it doesn't say anything about that in the spell. You're making an interpretation here... and it's a perfectly valid one.

But it's also perfectly valid to say that even with the alarm spell going off, the party is surprised, giving the other side a surprise round to act before we go to initiative.

That's a pretty significant judgment call to make that will have a major impact on how things play out. But neither approach is incorrect or unfair... because per the rules, the DM decides who is surprised.

It's GM fiat all over. And that isn't necessarily bad. You're defending it on the grounds that the GM can always be fair. And that seems to work for many gamers. That's cool! But to say it's not GM fiat? Why even argue that? It very clearly is, isn't it?

There's just another way to do it, which is to have clear rules and processes, where all participants are constrained in ways that result in a satisfying play experience.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yes you did, but you are wrong. Contained games like sports or board games just aren't the same as uncontained RPGs. You can equate them all day long, but you will be wrong when you do.

False equivalences are false.

It is more helpful if you explain what is false about the equivalence. Not just that the 2 things being equated are not identical, but substantively what makes the analogy inapt.

Frankly, I suspect, there are some differences which are worth pointing out, though I'm not sure 'uncontained' is really one. I mean, a LOT of stuff is theoretically possible in, say, Basketball, that is not directly addressed by the formal rules, and would thus be deemed as being OK, at least until a new rule was created. That doesn't undermine the 'rules are what is fair' argument there, does it?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Sure. There are corner case scenarios where something like that could occur. Not enough to worry about, though, and when they do there are reasons behind the rare exceptions, so the players are okay with them if/when they occur.

Except they're EXACTLY what you need to worry about. I would sure worry about all of them, if say @bloodtide was GMing! It is a very prevalent style of GMing, to be honest. Though perhaps one that most people in this thread have moved on from. I think that sort of play is mildly uninteresting (some like it) but I don't think it is exactly bad. It is certainly allowed and practicable.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Your explanation makes it very clear which approach you consider problematic.

Yeah, it probably does. I have my opinion on the matter. My preference.

So what?

Despite the name, video game RPGs aren't true RPGs. They are limited in scope and are more like board games. In a roleplaying game, you wouldn't need "cheat" codes to do some of the stuff "cheat" codes allow.

And what you are limited to is far greater than any person could think of in their lifetime. It may not be infinite, but it might as well be.

No, as a player in a TTRPG, you are limited to declaring actions for your characters. That's what you can do.

Or do you allow your players to declare actions for other players' characters? Or for NPCs? Do the players get to decide who's the ruler of the neighboring kingdom? Can they decide that there's a pub one street over and they know the barkeep? Can they decide that the dragon they're facing has a vulnerability to song? Or that its hoard contains the magical relic they're searching for?

What you're doing is taking the more open possibility of the fiction of the game... freedom that the characters would seemingly possess... and applying that to the players. That because the characters can "go anywhere" that means that the players can "go anywhere" and so on.

But that's not true. It's not even true for the characters. They can only go where the DM will allow them to go... because he can come up with any reason he likes not to allow them to go somewhere. "Oh, you want to book passage to far off Nujab? Sorry, the recent wars have disrupted shipping and you cannot find any ship that will take you." And so on.

No. No they are NOT bound to the rules of the game. They cannot be and we are explicitly told that within the rules. The rules cannot and will not ever encompass everything, which the game tells you. When you encounter things the rules cannot or should not cover, the DM is supposed to make a ruling that is outside of the written rules.

The DM's ability to make rulings when necessary is a rule. That's the game's way of handling things. If there's not a clear rule that governs an outcome, then the DM decides. That's the rule.

Same way how in baseball, the strike zone has an approximate location, but each umpire calls it as he wants to. That's the rule... the umpire makes the call.

 

[bloodtide]

Except they're EXACTLY what you need to worry about. I would sure worry about all of them, if say @bloodtide was GMing! It is a very prevalent style of GMing, to be honest. Though perhaps one that most people in this thread have moved on from. I think that sort of play is mildly uninteresting (some like it) but I don't think it is exactly bad. It is certainly allowed and practicable.

I don't think it is so rare.

As said above, I go for the 50% idea. So a player can expect anything to work about half the time...generically.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, video games come to mind as games with no rules: video games have programs. Unless your saying 'rules' and 'programs' are the same things.

Board games and sports are both examples of Very Limited Activities. In order to make the activities fun and safe, tons of very tight restrictive rules are put into place to make the game direct, easy and simple. You play a board game or a sport by doing only the very narrow things that the rules allow, and then those rules tell you if you 'win' or not.

Many RPGs are not like that. The tagline forever of most RPGs is "you can do anything". For many, it is the whole point of RPGs. Unlike every other sort of game, an RPG has no limits or restrictions "built in". You can do whatever you want.

And some do play RPGs in the Very Limited Way. There are groups that do the "Ok, ready for game #15, it is Fetch Quest #15! Where for the 15th time your PC must find a item hidden in a dungeon.....again!" And this is a fine way to play an RPG.

Of course, there is the other way, where you can do anything.


On the other side here, and I'm quite annoyed at players that think casting a spell alters game reality to their whim. By default, I make it clear to players that at least 50% of anything they do or try will likely fail. Not to depress them into not trying, but to get them to understand the stakes of the game play.


Role Playing games are unique and not like other games.

And I think this is all essentially why I would greatly prefer a system like TB2e or Dungeon World to 5e. Lets take DW as an example because it is a bit clearer. There are really no special cases in DW, all play follows one very simple process. This process covers ALL cases, there's no need for anything beyond the rules of DW as it exists. At most you might add additional moves/playbooks, but this is not required in order to adjudicate whatever happens. Why is this? Because DW adjudicates the narrative flow of the game, not the events within the game world. Those are entirely up to the participants to describe, and result in an open-ended narrative produced in a fully reductive fashion. The result is that there's not the type of judgement involved in determining the effectiveness of anyone's actions. I describe doing something which everyone agrees sounds like Defy Danger and we toss the dice to find out what sort of thing gets narrated next. The GM in these games does introduce fiction, and gets to decide the details of consequences (OK, you fell into the pit, do you break your leg, get separated from the rest of the party, get poisoned by a spike, start to drown in the flooded bottom of the pit, these are all GM choices that could be invoked, but they all amount to "you are in worse trouble now").

After decades of dealing with the more trad sort of adjudication that most 5e would represent, I find this narrativist approach personally more enjoyable. Honestly, we become more free to consider both gamist tactics and RP when all these questions of time, space, causality, etc. are basically farmed out to the dice and some principles of play.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Well, it depends where you put your goal posts.

But a player of a character in most RPG can have their character do, or at least try anything they can within a very wide and vague and broad framework.

No video game, board game or sport allows a player to do this.

Players generally sit and talk. That's what they do. They declare actions for their characters.

Of all the other elements of RPGing... narration to frame a scene, worldbuilding to create the setting, deciding what NPCs are where and what they want, what each faction is up to, deciding DCs, calling for rolls.... which of these functions do you allow your players to do?

Yes, but under the DM they can.

For example, a player can ask a DM "can I play a character that is a half troll warlock " and a Dm might say "yes".

You can't do that in other types of games.

I find your point that I can't be a half troll warlock in football to be rather useless to the discussion.

Odd, most spell just do the effect listed on the page. Alarm, for example, does not alter game reality so no bad guys show up just as the player does not want that. Or game reality does not alter so no NPC can get around the alarm, as again the player does not want that to happen.

No, but it alters reality to create the warded area. The DM then alters reality to render the spell useless.

The DM uses their incredibly unbound authority to bypass the player's bit of agency and then you call it:

Or brilliant GMing!

That's pretty amazing, to me. How is it brilliant?

This is like watching me school my 7 year old son in basketball and then telling me I'm a great player.

This is not a universal game thing.

Can you make a coherent argument why not?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't think it is so rare.

As said above, I go for the 50% idea. So a player can expect anything to work about half the time...generically.

Exactly. I would assume that my Alarm spell would fail as the default assumption, with one or more of the sorts of reasons given here, or possibly others (land sharks attack from below, no Alarm!).

 

[Maxperson]

RPGs are absolutely contained by their rules. Why wouldn't they be? What is it you think the rules do?

They literally can't be. There is no set of D&D rules that has been able to encompass everything players try to do in the game with their characters. Can't be done.

That's really inaccurate. The judgment of referees is what you're talking about. Yes, the GM of an RPG performs that function. Would you really say that such a function doesn't exist in other types of games? Sports, in particular?

Because it doesn't? Go watch a football game and see if the refs can penalize a holding call with a 5 yard penalty instead of a 10 yard penalty. They can't. A DM can alter a penalty or bonus if the game circumstances warrant it. Not all situations covered by a rule should be covered by that rule. Some situations have no rule to cover it. I've never seen such a situation in a football game.

Doesn't that really seem like a case of changing or removing the rule?

Wait, what? The rule says bonuses don't stack and the DM allows it to stack and that's not a case of changing or removing a rule?

Would you allow one participant to benefit from such stacking and not another? No, I don't expect you would. And why not? Because it would be unfair.

It would be socially unfair yes. Most of the time anyway. D&D is by it's nature an exceptions based system, so there could be a monster, item or whatever that specifically supersedes that rule. If it does, then it's fair to use it. Specific beats general is also a rule.

It's chock full of GM Fiat.

Instead of pointing out how unlikely it is... let's look at what happens if that is the case.

I am playing a wizard, and I go to cast the spell as we ready for camp. The DM then tells me that only 12 seconds into casting the spell, a mob of goblins appears on the nearby hilltop. He calls for initiative.

Has he done anything against the rules? Has he done anything unfair? What criteria do we use to determine that?

How do we proceed? If combat erupts around me, is my casting still considered uninterrupted? Can I continue to cast and if I make it for 8 rounds, the spell works? If combat isn't over by then, won't the spell just trigger immediately?

What if I ask the DM about this decision to have goblins show up just after I started casting and he said " I thought it would be a fun scenario for you guys to face one more challenge before camping, and I wanted to see how you'd handle the alarm spell and the risk of losing it, since it was your last spell of that level"? Is the DM breaking any rules? No. Is he being unfair? I don't know... he did it because he thought it would be challenging and fun.

Games aren't designed around extreme corner case scenarios. How unlikely those things are is the the most important part of the discussion. If 99.9% of the time DM fiat doesn't come into play, it doesn't really matter how many different extreme cases you can cram in that last .001%.

Why wouldn't they be surprised? Let's just focus on that. Who determines if a side is surprised in 5e? The DM.

The rules you say so much about. The alarm makes them aware of the enemy, so no surprise happens. That's the point of the spell. If they could be surprised with the alarm up, they might as well save themselves a spell slot and wake up to the surprise attack instead.

Some folks might say that the Alarm spell should prevent being surprised... but it doesn't say anything about that in the spell. You're making an interpretation here... and it's a perfectly valid one.

No. I'm using the combat rules.

"Any character or monster that doesn't notice a threat is surprised at the start of the encounter." The alarm literally wakes them up and makes them aware of the threat at the start of the encounter, so no surprise.

But it's also perfectly valid to say that even with the alarm spell going off, the party is surprised, giving the other side a surprise round to act before we go to initiative.

According to you, that would be unfair since the rules say they aren't surprised.

because per the rules, the DM decides who is surprised.

In accordance with the rules I stated.