D&D General DM Authority

Aebir-Toril said:

This is a bit tangential to the issue, but how do my fellow ENWorlders handle NPCs authored in by players?

I've found that player retention over family and "friend" NPCs can be useful for relieving DM strain, but quickly becomes unfeasible if said NPC supposedly has access to goods or services which the player desires.

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I accept the vast majority of NPC suggestions from my players, in part because I can't recall a single instance of a player-proposed NPC that was even vaguely problematic. I frequently prompt them to give me NPC ideas, in fact. One player invented a friend of his character from before he joined the military, a child of a family of jewelers that had gone through some hard times but were now back on their feet. (This was an explanation for a Spout Lore roll.) It hasn't come up since, but it was a thing. Another player invented Rahim, the suave-as-heck head of the Silver Thread, a Robin Hood-esque organization of ne'er-do-wells who act to support the common folk and limit the power and influence of the merchant-princes. Rahim has been a repeat character, and is actually a pretty powerful figure in the city....but that also means he is tied into various responsibilities and networks of power, so he's very helpful but not an inexhaustible resource. He likes to always meet with the party in a completely different secret room, and offer them lunch (or dinner, depending on the hour; he's never met them in the morning, and I kinda think he's not a morning person.)

This is a thread about DM authority, which must, by necessity, be exercised in the case of unruly players. I see no reason why @Oofta's examples contravene... well, anything at all.

If this were an argument of player agency in the story, we'd be discussing hypothetical, tyrant DMs.

Charlaquin said:

This is an interesting thing. I wouldn’t rejoice at “getting to be a player for once” because I generally prefer DMing. I mean, I enjoy playing from time to time, but I don’t get the itch for it like I do with DMing. I’d be curious to know if there’s any correlation between preference for a top-down power structure and preference for being a DM.

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To be honest, I love both just about equally (of course for different reasons). I don't know about correlation, as I am only one person, but it's an interesting hypothesis.

Campbell said:

In general a lot of the reason I take the tack I do is a fundamental belief that players have forgotten their own power and generally become more passive than they should. In the wild the biggest issues I run into as a GM are players who constantly look to me to set the pace, to provide guidance, and to resolve disputes with other players. I think we should be encouraging people to speak out more, engage more, and take more ownership. At least it would make running games for strangers a lot easier for me.

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Pretty Please can I swap you some players. I occasionally have the opposite problem of players trying to take control of the whole game. In fact due to ego, controlling players, I have to tell certain players x and y are playing and then x or y have to decide if they want to be at the same table that night.

EzekielRaiden said:

Again, I disagree. If the authority is not used in practice, it is not real. See: the monarch of the UK, who theoretically retains absolute power to block whatever Parliament says...but would never actually use it even if it's totally legal to do so because doing so would be idiotic.

"Review player background and design" means you're okay with it happening, you just want to be centrally involved and able to talk out disagreements--WHICH IS COLLABORATIVE AUTHORITY. As I have REPEATEDLY said.

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I’m sorry I’m not going to try and respond to the 18 other rebuttals you made to other posters in a Commodus-in-the-Forest style five way message combat. I’ll stick to my own.

I didn’t say it wouldn’t be used, I said such right of oversight wouldn’t be used regularly. Impeachment is rarely used but it exists as a legitimate tool of oversight. Nuclear weapons don’t get used, but a lot of people consider them to be an effective deterrent. The nuclear option in a campaign is for the DM to quit. A player doesn’t have that same impact.

For some people with capital, a parents ability to cut their child out of inheritance is rarely used but still exists as an ultimate authority over their children. Speaking of inheritance, incidentally the reason the Monarch lacks legitimate authority is that there is no mandate for that authority beyond their inheritance. The power to dissolve parliament could be used but it would then raise the question of whether we are happy with the monarch having that kind of power, there has been no consent by the people. In the case of a DM they are granted authority by the players accepting them as their DM and consenting to play in their campaign.

I agree that reviewing is collaborative, but sometimes you need a hard veto of an idea. That isn’t collaborative. I have a player that who wanted to play a mounted two weapon ranger in a pirate campaign. I was sceptical but gave him a list of suitable animal companions for a tropical setting. He demanded a giant wolf and I hard veto’d that. The same player wanted to play a gunslinger in Ravenloft with a modern firearm revolver. I suggested a pistol and he refused saying it had to be a revolver. I hard veto’d that too. The veto’s were needed and were not collaborative. An authoritarian approach was needed because the player was adamant that their vision for the campaign was more valid than mine.

Incidentally if the authoritarian approach is needed regularly with a player, my preference is for the player to move on - as was the case here - DMing can be challenging but it shouldn’t be THAT challenging.

Aebir-Toril said:

This is a bit tangential to the issue, but how do my fellow ENWorlders handle NPCs authored in by players?

I've found that player retention over family and "friend" NPCs can be useful for relieving DM strain, but quickly becomes unfeasible if said NPC supposedly has access to goods or services which the player desires.

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I don't think I've ever seen that issue in actual game play, though I do agree in theory. PCs should not gain unreasonable access or boons just because of their backstory. A noble character, for instance should have access to their family's wealth (except in instances that the DM decides otherwise).

Charlaquin said:

Yeah, I imagine folks who like to DM because they like creating worlds probably appreciate the notion of having final say over the worlds they create. Just a hunch

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I suppose. I've known DMs that are less interested in world building and more interested in running a series of adventures (to the point that they're only concerned about the details of the setting that are important to the actual adventures that they run). In such cases, the DM is usually content with players authoring setting details through their characters backstories as long as it doesn't contradict what they have already established, and are likely to run with the player's ideas. This is probably much less common, but still a very fun approach to DMing.

Charlaquin said:

This is an interesting thing. I wouldn’t rejoice at “getting to be a player for once” because I generally prefer DMing. I mean, I enjoy playing from time to time, but I don’t get the itch for it like I do with DMing. I’d be curious to know if there’s any correlation between preference for a top-down power structure and preference for being a DM.

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I enjoy both DMing and playing, it's fun to tell different parts of a story. While I get to RP plenty of NPCs as a DM, it doesn't have the same depth.

I guess you could set up a poll. Not sure it wouldn't just devolve as most of these threads have lately. At least we haven't started arguing about the "C" word yet.

Aebir-Toril said:

This is a thread about DM authority, which must, by necessity, be exercised in the case of unruly players. I see no reason why @Oofta's examples contravene... well, anything at all.

If this were an argument of player agency in the story, we'd be discussing hypothetical, tyrant DMs.

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There is a difference between player agency being thwarted by the DM and the DM's setting being perverted by players' agencies... Both are to be avoided.
The first one is adversarial Dming. It simply should not be done unless it furthers the plot (and even then, it should be rare to the extreme). Otherwise, the DM has nothing to say about how a player develops his character (and here I mean on the character's sheet) or how the character should react. A DM has enough NPCs to play with without playing the players' characters...

On the other hand. A player that wants to forcefuly mess with the DM's world by adding NPCs, Races, Kingdoms and whatever comes to his/her mind is also out of the question. Cooperative worldbuilding is welcome if called for (and if called for, should be done within fixed parameters). Otherwise, worldbuilding (outside characters' actions) is strictly in the DM's hands.

FrogReaver said:

Authority is not a bad word. Authority does not mean Authoritarian. One can be the authority and be reasonable and polite and generally not a jerk.

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Sure, in some games, the Rules Authority is a player, not the DM, simply because he has the best grasp of the rules.