3e, DMs, and Inferred Player Power

[Raven Crowking]

Well, the idea of "My way or the highway" suggests that there is no dialogue. That I can either agree, or leave. Effectively, that a player must compromise, but a DM doesn't have to (unless he wants to). If I want to play, I need to give up my idea of what is fun and trust the DM's.

All social contracts include If/Then statements.

If you want to play, you must play a game that is available. The available game may be one in which the DM is willing to compromise, or it may not. It may be that you have to make the game yourself in order to make it available. This is tautologically true, and no amount of wishing it were not so is going to change that.

If the DM wants you to play, then s/he must provide a game which you will want to play. This may, or may not, require a certain amount of compromise on the DM's part. If the only game you will play in is one in which everyone has to tell you how clever you are every five minutes, and the DM wants you to play, that is the condition. This is also tautologically true, and no amount of wishing it were not so is going to change that.

However, if you want to play, and if the DM isn't particularly concerned if you in particular are a player, then you -- not the DM -- are going to have to compromise. For example, say I am playing in a group so large that the table almost isn't big enough, and there are people circling around hoping that one of the players drops out so that they can get a crack at my campaign world. Well, good luck convincing me I have to change. What I am doing is certainly working well enough from where I'm sitting.

But let us say instead that it is just you and I sitting at the table, and there isn't another potential player within 100 miles. You want me to run Game X, but I hate running game X. Yet Game X is the only game you want to play. Suddenly, I have to decide whether my distaste for Game X outweighs my desire to run a game.

If this sounds familiar, it should. This is exactly the situation described by Jackalope King, only in this case the player is singular in his desires.

You know what? The player is not selfish for being singular in his desires.

It is everyone's right to have fun playing a game. It's childish to say that?

Yes.

Better to say, "It is everyone's right to choose not to play if they are not having fun" or even "It is everyone's right to try to have fun playing a game."

Your statement carries within it the expectation that others are obligated to do something (play the game, make it fun for you) and assumes that there is some magical formula that makes any Activity X equally fun for all involved.

After all, if the game is not solitaire, then someone else must be playing. Even in the case of a computer game, someone must program it, and you have no inherent right to expect that it is programmed to your tastes. Certainly, you may read reviews and examine advertising to attempt to determine whether or not it meets your tastes. Hopefully you will have fun. You do not, however, have a right to have fun.

The Declaration of Independence (http://www.law.indiana.edu/uslawdocs/declaration.html) says,

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."​

Note, please, that what is self-evident is a right to the pursuit of happiness, not its attainment. Also, as an aside, anyone interested in the DM/Player question would do well to take a look at the Declaration of Independence. Much of it could have been written to a DM by some disgruntled players.

You do not have a right to have fun; you have a right to try to have fun.

There is also the issue of the magical formula that makes everyone have equal fun. In Narnia, or in Oz, such a thing might exist. It does not exist in the real world.

It is not difficult to have a campaign in which, overall, most of the people are having fun all of the time. It is not difficult to have all of the players having fun most of the time. All the players having fun all of the time? In a general sense, perhaps, if you open up the parameters of "fun" far enough and make the units of time large enough to prevent the occasional glitches to which human nature is prone from registering. Realistically, though, this is just using semantics to make a claim that cannot possibly be actualized.

Nothing is fun for everyone all the time. If it were, there would be even more potential players circling around our table, cash in hand, ready to make us wealthy if we would just game full time.

Most of the people having fun all of the time and all of the players having fun most of the time is about as good as it gets, imho.

Of course, there is no objective method to measure "fun". Largely, one has to go by the expressions on people's faces, body language, lively chatter, and what they say at the end of (and between) sessions.

And if they come back. People don't come back because they are being tortured. People come back because they are enjoying the experience....even if it is not the maximum enjoyment they could receive. People who are not having fun demostrate this fact by doing something else.

Me, I look at the number of players I'm juggling. I look at the number of people who want in based on what those players have told them. I listen to my players. Then I say, "Heck, gotta be doing something right." And I am, as I have already admitted, the Worst DM Ever.


RC

 

[I'm A Banana]

It is my right not to run any setting I do not wish to run. There is no discussion around this point because if I don't want to run it I will not devote my time and energy to DMing it. Because my time and energy are necessary to run the setting, what I am averse to doesn't run. I would play in a game where such character types are permissable because very little is required of me. However, I will not DM this type of setting as MUCH MORE is required of me and I am not willing to put in the time investment into a setting that, hypothetically, doesn't interest me.

You don't have to run anything you don't want to. Maybe someone else would want to? And if not, they're apparently fine with the way things work now and there's no reason to change it. So there's no real argument.

Nope, wrong. I will run what interests me and you may vote by coming to the game sessions or not. Its very simple.

I never pretended it was complex. My case is that for some people, this isn't fun, and that these people aren't wrong in trying to influence your campaign; they're just trying to enjoy themselves.

If you enjoy running settings that are a generic mishmash of every available option that is presented to you by your players, feel free. I run games that are consistant to the setting being run.

Everyone plays this game differently. Like a hand of poker or a round of monopoly, there's a million and one ways to do this thing. If you choose to be faithful to the RAW or the setting, that's just peachy. But that doesn't mean that someone is wrong for daring to ask you to consider their enjoyment -- which may include influencing the campaign.

Fun is a subjective term and I do my best to make it an interesting, challenging, memorable, compelling role-playing experience for the players. If that is fun for you great, we'll have fun. If you want mindless dungeon crawls focusing on minis and gold accumulation at the expense of character development and versimilitude and whatnot find another DM or run your own game. That could be your fun. I wouldn't play in a game like that as it would bore me. It wouldn't be fun for me to play so I wouldn't involve myself in that DM's campaign. I am not entitled to tell him how to run his game.

Agreed. No one should tell you how to run you game. But they can tell you how they would have fun. If your world doesn't allow their fun, and you're not interested in changing, that's fine. Obviously you won't mesh. But they aren't out of line in asking you to consider their desires.

Yeah, and i don't need the DMG2 to tell me what to do after nearly 20yrs. I don't care what WoTC's pet policy or philosophy is in this version of the game. The game has been DMed by me successfully before WoTC ever existed and with luck will outlast them as well to wander into the newest DMing philosophy of the next 3 versions of the game and whatever company ownes the Dungeons and Dragons IP rights.

For a guy who runs settings as-written, you're obviously not too concerned with the game as-written. But there's nothing WRONG with players knowing and asking for what they want. Maybe it doesn't mesh with your playing style, but that doesn't make it a bad thing.

 

[Raven Crowking]

KM,

I broke up my reply so as not to confuse multiple issues.

Here's a major division between our positions as well.

Cinema and literature, two things to which D&D is constantly compared, are one-way conduits. The audience for these is passive. The people absorb the information the film or words present. They are labors, works of art. They can be simply entertaining, but then they're popular culture, which can have it's own unintentional artistry. They can be very meaningful, and then they're Goodfellas

D&D, however, is a game. It's closest analogues are not movies and books, but Poker and Monopoly. All games have some sort of meaning -- all play has some significance. But it is just play. It is safe. It is enjoyable. It is easy. It also has more than one input. A film is one director's vision. A book is one author's creation. Those have a message. A game does not have much of a message. Chutes and Ladders pretty much exhausts its analogic potential in a single metaphor of success.

First off, I was pointing out that entertainment and fun are not always the same thing. I was not suggesting that D&D should be like a book or a movie.

Might I suggest, however, that there are qualities of books and movies that should be part of a D&D experience. For example, the action resolution byword of 3.X is "cinematic", right? Like a movie?

D&D is not literature, nor is it poker. But if I had to pick, I would say that it is a lot closer to open-ended literature than it is to poker. (I could have a long discussion, btw, about how literature is a lot less of a one-way conduit than film, but that is probably best left to another thread.)

You are right when you suggest that I expect more from my D&D experiences than just a night of fun gaming. My players expect more, too. Unlike you, we do not expect Chutes and Ladders when we come to the gaming table. Safe? Fun? Sure, but we do not expect it to be easy.

It seems odd to me that including meaning to something would make you see it as "shallow" -- in fact, it seems that logic would dictate that absolving something of depth would make it shallow, not the reverse.

Then again, if you view the game as "five folks rolling dice around someone's table and pretending to be gumdrop fairies," and that works for you, that's fine. Pursuit of happiness and all that. I'll even support your right of free speech and agree that you have the right to proclaim that this is the best way to experience D&D.

I will not, however, be joining you. Nor will you be joining me.


RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

You don't have to run anything you don't want to. Maybe someone else would want to? And if not, they're apparently fine with the way things work now and there's no reason to change it. So there's no real argument.

So I take it you are now in agreement that the DM can say "No" anytime he wishes to? That the players can attempt to influence him, and failing that they don't have to play? That they do not have the right to demand anything of him?

Because, if so, then we are in agreement.

There's nothing wrong with anyone knowing, and asking for, what they want. There's nothing wrong with you asking the baker in the previous example to make you oatmeal cookies instead of chocolate chip. There's only something wrong if you think that the baker is selfish for choosing not to put forth effort to do what you want.

I agree that it isn't wrong for players to try to influence the campaign setting. I just said that it is wrong for them to feel entitled to influence the campaign setting. I.e, it is not wrong for them to suggest that something else might be more fun, but it is wrong for them to claim that the DM can say "No" only when the players let him say "No".

Is this the position you are now advocating?

For a guy who runs settings as-written, you're obviously not too concerned with the game as-written.

For anyone not playing a Chutes and Ladders/Five Folks as Gumdrop Fairies-style game, setting (nearly) always trumps core RAW. Rather, there is a setting-specific RAW. This has come up lots of times already on this thread.


RC

 

[Sundragon2012]

For a guy who runs settings as-written, you're obviously not too concerned with the game as-written. But there's nothing WRONG with players knowing and asking for what they want. Maybe it doesn't mesh with your playing style, but that doesn't make it a bad thing.

I think that there might be a bit of a devil's advocate in you, though maybe I am wrong.

I run settings in the spirit of the setting, sometimes that is as written, sometimes, depending on the freelance writer who is doing the writing, it isn't.

I am of course more inclined to run settings as written as opposed to rules as written because the RAW is designed largely to support a vanilla setting that everyone can grasp both easily and quickly. The settings as written cater to the setting and the internal consistancy of the setting and because the rules are simply tools to support a game of imaginitive, interactive storytelling and adventure I consider the setting to be far more sacrosanct than the RAW.


Chris

 

[I'm A Banana]

If you want to play, you must play a game that is available. The available game may be one in which the DM is willing to compromise, or it may not. It may be that you have to make the game yourself in order to make it available. This is tautologically true, and no amount of wishing it were not so is going to change that.

If the DM wants you to play, then s/he must provide a game which you will want to play. This may, or may not, require a certain amount of compromise on the DM's part. If the only game you will play in is one in which everyone has to tell you how clever you are every five minutes, and the DM wants you to play, that is the condition. This is also tautologically true, and no amount of wishing it were not so is going to change that.

However, if you want to play, and if the DM isn't particularly concerned if you in particular are a player, then you -- not the DM -- are going to have to compromise. For example, say I am playing in a group so large that the table almost isn't big enough, and there are people circling around hoping that one of the players drops out so that they can get a crack at my campaign world. Well, good luck convincing me I have to change. What I am doing is certainly working well enough from where I'm sitting.

What's so wrong with both finding a compromise based on true needs? Why should either side be inflexible?

Let's take a quote from you and modify it:

However, DMing is a choice, not a chore. You choose to DM or you choose not to DM. Your choosing to DM does not entitle you to rank your fun as higher than anyone else's.

I agree with the original quote. I feel this one is completely equal. Would you?

Your statement carries within it the expectation that others are obligated to do something (play the game, make it fun for you) and assumes that there is some magical formula that makes any Activity X equally fun for all involved.

No.

It's not baking cookies for a town. It's picking pizza toppings with some friends. Five different friends want five different things on one pizza. If the guy with the phone says "Look, I want Onions and Anchovies, and I have the phone, so that's what we're getting. You can go have a burger if you don't like it." That's a simple power play, in the most basic sociological sense of the concept. Now, maybe that power play is rewarded. Maybe Anchovies and Onions are the most popular pizza toppings in a ten-mile radius, and people are lining up to eat his pizza. That doesn't mean that he was right, it just means that he's popular. No one was RIGHT. No one was WRONG. It just changed who was eating the pizza.

Now, when I'm the guy with the phone, I'd rather help my friends then be popular. I don't care what EVERYBODY wants, I just want something that my friends will eat and be reasonably content with. Sure, I have the final say, I have the authority. But I'm not going to tell my friends to get lost if they don't like my choice. We'll reach a compromise. Maybe I'll have to pick off the pepperonis, and maybe Ed won't get those green peppers.

It's not a binary absolute. It's a continuum. And the difference between them is merely a difference in goals.

Now, when extrapolating that to D&D, which do you think the written books should cater to? Which do you think is more common, more frequent, with more potential customers? The man who has a knack to order the most popular pizza around? Or the one that advocates compromise? Would it be wrong for someone to be told it's okay to have sausage if the DM only wants Onions and Anchovies?

 

[Raven Crowking]

What's so wrong with both finding a compromise based on true needs? Why should either side be inflexible?

If everyone wants to be flexible, that's perfectly fine. Flexible is a way of doing things. Demanding that someone do something the way you want to do it is not flexible. Therefore, if I want to do it in way X, and you want to do it in way Y, and way X is mutually exclusive to way Y, then way Z is not necessarily a compromise. It could just be both of us not getting what we wanted.

Or another way to put it is, neither side should be flexible, except to whatever degree they wish to be flexible.

Let's take a quote from you and modify it:

However, DMing is a choice, not a chore. You choose to DM or you choose not to DM. Your choosing to DM does not entitle you to rank your fun as higher than anyone else's.

I agree with the original quote. I feel this one is completely equal. Would you?

You do know, I hope, that you modified my quote to match your earlier quote, which my quote was a modification of?

You do know, I hope, that you were consistently saying that the DM was supposed to serve the players, and treat the players' fun as more important than his own?

You do know, I hope, that I reversed the quote to show that you were consistently suggesting that the DM's fun was less important than the players' fun in any specific example that arose?

Obviously the quotes are completely equal. They were intended to be.

It's not baking cookies for a town. It's picking pizza toppings with some friends. Five different friends want five different things on one pizza. If the guy with the phone says "Look, I want Onions and Anchovies, and I have the phone, so that's what we're getting. You can go have a burger if you don't like it." That's a simple power play, in the most basic sociological sense of the concept.

In your pizza analogy, perhaps. But it is a poor analogy at best, and the guy with the phone is nonetheless absolutely correct (even if he is a dink). That you cannot force him to order something is self-evident.

Your analogy presumes either (1) that everyone is paying equally for the pizza, or (2) that one person is paying for the pizza for the express purpose of feeding these five guys.

If (1), then you have a D&D analogy wherein everybody contributes equally to the game. There is no DM; there is DMing by proxy as all players decide what will happen next. Or perhaps in the closest reasonable proxy, the DM is running a one-shot canned module in the most simple, plain-vanilla setting and style possible.

I've already covered this. It that's what you want, fine. But it isn't what I do when I come to the table, and I doubt my players would be pleased if I started running games in this way. An examination of these forums will show that your "Chutes and Ladders/Five Folks as Gumdrop Fairies-style game" isn't what many (dare I say most?) people are looking for.

If (2), then I've already dealt with this one too. If the DM wants you to play, then s/he must provide a game which you will want to play. This may, or may not, require a certain amount of compromise on the DM's part. If the only game you will play in is one in which everyone has to tell you how clever you are every five minutes, and the DM wants you to play, that is the condition. This is also tautologically true, and no amount of wishing it were not so is going to change that.

In this case, the guy ordering pizza has a specific desire to feed these other folks. That is his motive.

If the guy has no motive to be popular, he'll simply order what he wants. Only the most fantastical desire to be popular is based upon some expectation to be popular to everybody. A desire to be popular is based upon a desire to be liked by a subset of people. Like the guys you're ordering pizza for.

Another thing: If the pizza is the adventure you're running, whose actually doing the baking? I imagine that it is a pizza baker, and that baker is getting compensation for baking your pizza, right? I also imagine that when you call, you make sure you call the pizza joint that has the toppings you want? The sauce you like? The best crust?

My analogy still lurks behind your analogy. You'd just prefer that it wasn't so visible.


Again, there is nothing wrong with compromise.

Demanding compromise, however, is not compromise.


RC

 

[Thotas]

It isn't that DM's fun is less important or more important than player fun. But player fun is contingent on the DM running some kind of game, and most people (including from what I see, myself, RC and Chris) will fold a game they're running if they aren't having any fun, following KM's advice. So within the context of a given game, we find that player fun is ultimately contingent on DM fun. DM fun does not take priority in importance, but it does take priority in existence.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

OR....
The DM should run a campaign where the half-fiendish earth elemental genasi or traditional cleric of Pelor is permissable.

Both are valid and I think there should be compromise. If the players want traditional D&D, the DM shouldn't be trying to run a Dawnforge game. Or, if it's just one player, the DM should try to inject a feel that the player is looking for into his Dawnforge game.

Pardon me for getting confused on this...

Lets say you come to my Ravenloft Game.
You want to play a Half-Celestial Archon Blooded Monk with the Vow of Purity from BoEDs.

I tell you that playing that sort of character in the game will attract the attention of the Demi-plane itself and the characters life will be short and violent as there is no way to defeat Ravenloft itself. The groups characters will also be in harms way for the duration of his existance.. how about playing a different character?

Am I, per your quote above, supposed to find some way to inject your 'holier than thou and on my way to deification' character concept into the realm while maintaining setting integrity?

HA!

I would indeed allow such a character into the game. The characters life would indeed be short lived...unless I could find a way to currupt the character, which is much better
The experience for the group..and for you.. would not be as fun due to your choice of characters.

I see DnD more like a freeform theatrical play than any game/literature/movie. The DM sets the stage and the players play thier parts. Both need to alter styles in order to incorperate the others.. but the player has to stay on the stage in order to be in the game.
Its not an obligation.. unless one is paying the other for thier participation.

I have seen alot of generalizations based on the assumption of extremes recently. This discussion appears to boil down to:
DMs suck if they never compromise with the players
Players suck if is they never comprimise with the DM

Those I agree with. However most of the DM's and Players out there do compromise together in the spirit of creating the game that is entertaining for all the participants most of the time.

KM said he does.
RC said he does.

The debate rages on based on andectodal stories that start with 'Dude, back in teh day I had this {dm/player}...."

 

[Greg K]

I see DnD more like a freeform theatrical play than any game/literature/movie.

This is pretty much how I view it although I have used the term "cooperative storytelling"