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

[Oofta]

Well, until they don't . . . isn't the GM-centred idea of "rule zero" that the GM can change or suspend the rules as they choose?

Not the new version. Now it's "everyone has to agree", which to me is basically the same advice as what we get out of the 2024 rules. Functionally it's always been that way to me, if someone disagrees with enough house rules they leave the game.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Yes, but we're also talking about the idea of the suggested rule zero... that the goal is for everyone to have fun. So while the rules may say something is up to the DM, if it results in players being unhappy, maybe the rule needs to be examined, and possibly changed.

Well, I don't think that is a problem I have. If you do, then obviously you should do something about it. But the implication here is that GM deciding certain things makes players unhappy. It generally doesn't.

And yes, that would basically be the same thing. It would be the GM going with the player's idea. This is really all that's being suggested.

Is it though? Because every actual example of the GM saying no is met by criticism by the same couple of people.

I think we all agree there may be times when it makes sense to deny such a request.

Do we all agree? I'm not quite sure that @pemerton does.

However, I think it also helps to assume good faith by the players. If the players are the kind to see any advantage as something they can always exploit, you might need to be a little stricter about this stuff.

So it still really isn't about exploits or bad faith play. (Or it could, but that's not the point I've desperately been trying to get across.) It is that if we accept it as axiomatic that it is bad form for the GM to block player lore suggestions, then, in absent of other constrains it becomes valid gameplay strategy to use such suggestions to gain an advantage. And that is not bad faith play, that is just how the game now works. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but It changes the decision landscape of the game significantly, and not in the direction I would like in a game that is net designed to handle it.

I think that denying player requests in favor of the GM's ideas is certainly something that can be described as railroading. Thresholds for it will vary.

A lot of things can be used for railroading. Like I said, having a no myth (or low myth because someone will nitpick this again) setting is the most powerful tool for railroading I know. Yet it doesn't need to be used for that and often isn't.

No, I don't really see that big a difference. Sure, one's on a higher scale... but I think you're also overstating the assistance provided by Odin when I made suggestions about @Oofta 's example. And again, I suggested that it come with a significant drawback.

That you suggest that it comes with a drawback tells to me that you actually do see it as different. Why there is no cost or sacrifice for knowing a tavern? Because one is mostly about flavour and another is about gaining an advantage.

Now another way these are different, and which I think is significant (I've been trying to tell you this in several posts) is that we are not just dealing with situational one-off with this divine intervention here. We are establishing a new tool in the toolbox of the players, one which they quite reasonably would expect to be able to be used again. And as this tool has no practical limit, it is super useful and applicable to all sort of situations. The limit is just the GM setting cost do high than the players are not willing to pay it (but isn't that just anothe way for saying "no"?) But I don't want the gameplay to become this sort of "mother Odin may I," where the players bargain with the GM-god to get things done.

Okay, cool. I don't think we're that far apart here.

I think you might find that this would apply to more things, if you were more willing to listen more and argue less.

No one's solving a mystery, though.

Well not with that attitude! But people actually constantly solve mysteries in RPGs.

Why not?

In my Classic Traveller game, the players, and their PCs, worked out who was behind a bioweapons conspiracy. At the start of the game, this was a mystery to which neither the players, nor the PCs, nor I the GM, knew the answer.

Then they did not actually "work it out" they invented it. That is not solving a mystery.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Then they did not actually "work it out" they invented it. That is not solving a mystery

This. In order to solve a puzzle, a solution must exist. Making up a solution is not solving it. You can fill in a crossword by writing random words in the boxes, but that is not SOLVING it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Why? Where do you draw the line? Either the god can aid or not. I don't think the player would have asked for it but it you're bypassing the rules you then have to figure out what level of assistance can they get. How do you balance it out with benefits other player classes get. The rules of the game are reasonably balanced, getting a favor for no reason other than you have "cleric" written on your character sheet is not something I want to bother with.



They're still doing an end run around the rules when following the rules was tried and did not work. The game has rules for a reason. This was not an ally who the PCs had gone out of their way to aid, there hadn't been any effort on the part of the players to curry favor. Odin did not owe the PC a debt that was being repaid. Odin had already granted the player powers. I see no reason to go above and beyond what the rules allow just because it would have been more convenient.

I wonder if your rhetorical opponents are looking at this from the perspective of D&D, where there are specific rules and abilities for different levels of power, or are they assuming a mechanically narrative focus?

 

[Oofta]

I wonder if your rhetorical opponents are looking at this from the perspective of D&D, where there are specific rules and abilities for different levels of power, or are they assuming a mechanically narrative focus?

I assume a narrative focus. Which small amounts won't generally cause an issue (declaring you know someone in town, etc.) if it's a style of play you prefer.

When it comes to direct and relatively powerful intervention by deities I assume other games have built in costs or counter moves by the GM. Since D&D doesn't it can be problematic. Throw in that the lore of the world doesn't support that narrative move.

Ultimately I don't see an issue with a DM sometimes saying no, it's always going to be a question of where to draw the line.

 

[soviet]

I think we've all been talking about doing these things in D&D.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think we've all been talking about doing these things in D&D.

Maybe technically, but the perspective of @pemerton , @hawkeyefan , and others seems deeply informed by their experiences of and preferences for narrative-focused games (PBtA, Stonetop, Burning Wheel, Prince Valiant, and Blades in the Dark are all current or recent games for these two I believe). Those games not only use very different rules from traditional D&D and its relatives, but very different philosophies of play and different balances of GM/player authority. What seems simple and logical from that perspective may not be so from a different one.

 

[Scribe]

Maybe technically, but the perspective of @pemerton , @hawkeyefan , and others seems deeply informed by their experiences of and preferences for narrative-focused games (PBtA, Stonetop, Burning Wheel, Prince Valiant, and Blades in the Dark are all current or recent games for these two I believe). Those games not only use very different rules from traditional D&D and its relatives, but very different philosophies of play and different balances of GM/player authority. What seems simple and logical from that perspective may not be so from a different one.

At a certain point it comes across as "I'm playing Football."

Player A: Well then why are you lining up and throwing things with your hands?!
Player B: What do you mean, your ball is round, you dont even know what you are playing.

195 pages of apples to oranges.

 

[Manbearcat]

The analysis on what is happening in Brindlewood Bay games is a little more than a hair askew:

The players are still solving mysteries. It's just that the unraveling mysteries and their solves are (a) emergent and (b) a byproduct of a combination of procedural generation via system + intuitive continuity (which simultaneously binds, generates, and propels the action) + anchored by PC playbook premise.

Those games are absolutely still TTRPGs that center unraveling and solving mysteries. It is just that those unraveling mysteries and their solves are not wholly prefabricated GM puzzles and the role of players isn't exclusively to probe environs and denizens, prompting clue reveals and exposition dumps from the GM, in order to unravel the mystery and its solve.

 

[Micah Sweet]

At a certain point it comes across as "I'm playing Football."

Player A: Well then why are you lining up and throwing things with your hands?!
Player B: What do you mean, your ball is round, you dont even know what you are playing.

195 pages of apples to oranges.

Reminds me of what is to me one of the biggest issues with D&D: so many different games over the decades with the same name.