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

[Emerikol]

Really? Because that absolutely seems to be what people are laying claim to. DM is absolute authority, don't you dare question them.

There is a difference between absolute authority, though I'd say final authority, and someone who can't be questioned at all. Yes the DM cannot be overridden by the players. The players do have the ultimate veto though. My analogy is a store owner. You can't demand I carry a product but you can not shop at my store.

As noted above, I disagree heartily. Consensus and collaboration works quite well, when you treat your players as fellow human beings trying their best to produce a good time for everyone involved. And if any of the players is participating in bad faith, the exercise is already doomed from the start. No amount of DM authority can make a bad-faith participant behave themselves.

Actually, I've seen DMs save games from bad players. Maybe they weren't super bad but they were bad and the DM kept them inside the lines. I've never seen a game survive a bad DM.

Yet this argument never applies to DMs? Something fishy about that.

The DMs who do it get jollies from it. And I've seen real, specific people on this forum talk about exactly that. One example was a DM who said that they'd allow players to play dragonborn at their tables...but every shopkeeper they ever met would act like any dragonborn PCs weren't even people and would completely ignore anything dragonborn PCs said. That, eventually, the players would either wise up or depart the table.

This was directly said, to me, in an actual thread on this forum. I don't like naming names, so I won't name who did it. If you really care to read the original post, I can dig up a link for you, but I'd send it to you privately.

There are DMs practically popping out of the woodwork to ban this, ban that. To crap on player preferences. To nail down everything they possibly can about the setting and allow absolutely no deviation or variation--to the point that it literally isn't even possible for someone to say, "Well, couldn't I come from a faraway land unknown to these people?" because the DM already knows every possible land and every possible people on those lands and every possible political faction in all of those places. (And, yes, I am again thinking of an actual, specific person on this forum when I say these things.)

Well that is absolutely a playstyle choice. I absolutely detail out my worlds. I don't want a player coming in saying they want to worship some god that doesn't exist in my setting. I want that player to say "Give me your list of Gods and what they expect from their clerics?" or if even more clueless about my style they might ask "How does cleric power work in your campaign?"

As a player a DM who doesn't have a good grasp on his world is one I don't want to play with in a campaign. I despise those constantly making everything up on the fly. Why? They can't do it well. It becomes trite and formulaic real fast.

This is why I like to have a PC / DM interview before even session zero. They tell me in an abstract way the type of character they want to play. I show them some options in my world. We make it fit. If the player says he wants to play something that doesn't fit at all then I suggest he think of another idea for this campaign and save that one for another campaign. Maybe a future one I run but maybe another DMs.

edit: type fix

 

[Emerikol]

We also interpret the same comments differently. You seem to assume a lot more DM hostility than I do. We all have our biases. I tend to assume people are playing the game in good faith unless it is very explicit. What I deem "very explicit" is probably a lot more severe than you do for instance. Doesn't mean either of us are correct or incorrect, just different.

Maybe it is stage of life. My players if they didn't like what I did would just not play in the game. No harm no foul. And there isn't much DM/Player hostility. We take rule 0 (DM Final Arbiter) as a given. Some of them have run games. Our games aren't identical so I imagine the things that are different are areas where that person thought their idea was better. They didn't try though to force me to do their idea.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

There is a difference between absolute authority, though I'd say final authority, and someone who can't be questioned at all. Yes the DM cannot be overridden by the players. The players do have the ultimate veto though. My analogy is a store owner. You can't demand I carry a product but you can not shop at my store.

What, exactly, is that difference?

Because I had always been under the impression that an absolute and final authority was by definition one that cannot be questioned. Being open to being questioned is specifically the thing that makes an authority non-absolute.

Actually, I've seen DMs save games from bad players. Maybe they weren't super bad but they were bad and the DM kept them inside the lines. I've never seen a game survive a bad DM.

The player has to be willing to play ball. At some point, you have to hit somewhere where they're willing to engage in good faith. If you genuinely have someone who refuses to engage in good faith, it is not possible to work with them. Period. Doesn't matter whether they're players or DMs.

You cannot on the one hand say that the rules can't protect you from a bad DM and then also say that the rules can save you from bad players, even if that rule is rule zero. You can't have it both ways.

Well that is absolutely a playstyle choice. I absolutely detail out my worlds. I don't want a player coming in saying they want to worship some God that doesn't exist in my setting. I want that player to say "Give me your list of Gods and what they expect from their clerics?" or if even more clueless about my style they might ask "How does cleric power work in your campaign?"

As a player a DM who doesn't have a good grasp on his world is one I don't want to play with in a campaign. I despise those constantly making everything up on the fly. Why? They can't do it well. It becomes trite and formulaic real fast.

This is why I like to have a PC / DM interview before even session zero. They tell me in an abstract way the type of character they want to play. I show them some options in my world. We make it fit. If the player says he wants to play something that doesn't fit at all then I suggest he think of another idea for this campaign and save that one for another campaign. Maybe a future one I run but maybe another DMs.

So, where exactly do player choices come in, when you already know everything the world could ever possibly contain?

There is a vast difference between being flexible and leaving yourself room to improvise when needed, and never planning anything, exclusively flying by the seat of your pants. The middle is feeling deeply excluded here.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

We also interpret the same comments differently. You seem to assume a lot more DM hostility than I do.

When I've seen my preferences crapped on over and over and over and over and over by people who think it's cool to say dragonborn are just stupid and no one could ever possibly like them unless they're a dirty filthy powergamer (despite the fact that dragonborn in 5.0 were the weakest PHB race...)--to the point that EVEN THE DESIGNERS THEMSELVES got in on the "let's make fun of people for liking dragonborn" train*...

Yeah. I think I have a very good reason to see hostility. Because it's demonstrably there.

*I don't care if it was tongue-in-cheek. If we had people making tongue-in-cheek extended "jokes" of crapping on nostalgia about early editions, there would be riots in the proverbial streets.

We all have our biases. I tend to assume people are playing the game in good faith unless it is very explicit.

I tend to assume that when someone tells me they deserve absolute authority and zero accountability beyond me dropping the nuclear option, something is amiss. Particularly when the very same people then get up in arms about the folks who actually do drop the nuclear option and tell them they were unjustified for doing so! We had a thread just last month about that. Ask pemerton about it.

 

[Oofta]

Different people have different experiences, news at 11.

A bad DM is going to be a bad DM. If you regularly argue with DMs about rules (not saying you do) maybe the issue is not the game's approach.

 

[Bagpuss]

Really? Because that absolutely seems to be what people are laying claim to. DM is absolute authority, don't you dare question them.

I think when you look at the definition of arbiter,

"a person who settles a dispute or has ultimate authority in a matter"

you reading too heavily in to the second part of it, where as most of us supporting the Rule 0 of "the DM is the final arbiter of the rules" are really more bothered about the first part.

Also note it is ultimate authority, not absolute authority. Ultimate means happening at the end of a process, but clearly for there is still a process. They are the last say, but to be the last say, other people get to have their say before hand.

Arbiter comes from the same origin as arbitration, it implies some agreed level of fairness and that all parties have agreed to abide by their decision. That's what you are doing when you sit down at the table with the DM.

The old rule zero did not imply say DM is some absolute authority with tyrannical power they could wield, rather than all parties have agreed to abide by their ruling in the end, for a fairer and faster way to deal with any disputes that might arise with the rules.

As noted above, I disagree heartily. Consensus and collaboration works quite well, when you treat your players as fellow human beings trying their best to produce a good time for everyone involved. And if any of the players is participating in bad faith, the exercise is already doomed from the start. No amount of DM authority can make a bad-faith participant behave themselves.

No but if the DM doesn't need to get a unanimous support for a rule change they can certainly limit the power of players that have found a rules exploit and keep abusing it, not though bad faith, but just because it works and it is fun. Without that authority the only option is to end the game or a the least kick the player out.

There are DMs practically popping out of the woodwork to ban this, ban that. To crap on player preferences. To nail down everything they possibly can about the setting and allow absolutely no deviation or variation--to the point that it literally isn't even possible for someone to say, "Well, couldn't I come from a faraway land unknown to these people?" because the DM already knows every possible land and every possible people on those lands and every possible political faction in all of those places. (And, yes, I am again thinking of an actual, specific person on this forum when I say these things.)

Well there are campaign worlds where, pretty much everything is detailed, so no you can't play your half-Dragonborn, half-gnome, with a vampire template just because the rules say it is possible. Heck even without such detailed worlds some player preferences need crapping on, as they would ruin the campaign themes, and mood the DM had in mind.

 

[Oofta]

In what way?

Authoritarian has an entirely different connotation than referee. It implies a controlling DM that runs railroads.

Haven't seen someone do that yet.

See above. There are many words in the English language that can describe the role of the DM. Authoritarian does not need to be one of them and is another way of saying the DM is a dictator.

 

[clearstream]

During a session is not one of them. The final decision on the campaign setting is the DMs. Because if I hate the idea the game will never succeed. It will be defeated on day one.

My approach though since I can get players for what I like pretty easily is to just be very clear up front about the type of game I want to run. I don't need to play a game that is less fun and which I'd be less good at running when I have all the people and more that are on board with my approach. I think communication is the thing but earlier is better.

The theory advanced seems to be, from the perspective of a given DM

1. play will be unsuccessful unless they run it in the way they are good at​

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2. players don't impinge on play success as they can be swapped out for those that fit​

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and from the perspective of a given player

3. play will be unsuccessful unless DM runs it in the way they (the player) works well with​

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4. but DM doesn't impinge on play success as they can be swapped out for one that fits​

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I feel like this theory rests on over-simplifications - play is successful or unsuccessful, and DM and players simply are the way they are. There's no room for increasing success with a new approach or growing skill. I'm not saying this is what @Emerikol intends to argue, only that the words I quoted seem to contain those implications.

So the first and most obvious challenge seems to me to wonder whether play couldn't become more successful in tandem with the DM becoming more skillful? This would then open the door to theories about what more successful play and more skillful DMing could look like? It would allow for play to be more successful because DM changed the way they run it. The theory advanced, if I have laid it out correctly, jams that door closed, because of its fixed premises (that play and DMing simply are as they are): it shuts down debate about what better DMing could look like.

This observation is separate from a position on what better DMing looks like, and doesn't aim to ignore that preferences differ. Rather, I want to suggest that the more fruitful debate is one that allows for play success and DM skill to be fluid, capable of degrees of improvement, and can then get into observations and ideas about what will contribute to that (tied to each given set of preferences.)

 

[KYRON45]

Heck even without such detailed worlds some player preferences need crapping on, as they would ruin the campaign themes, and mood the DM had in mind.

Oh man....players are the worst aren't they?!?!?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

There are DMs practically popping out of the woodwork to ban this, ban that. To crap on player preferences. To nail down everything they possibly can about the setting and allow absolutely no deviation or variation--to the point that it literally isn't even possible for someone to say, "Well, couldn't I come from a faraway land unknown to these people?" because the DM already knows every possible land and every possible people on those lands and every possible political faction in all of those places. (And, yes, I am again thinking of an actual, specific person on this forum when I say these things.)

So I don't know every corner of Artra, and there is plenty left undefined on purpose so that new things can be added. But that doesn't mean those new things can be anything. Settings have themes and some things are quite intentionally excluded. For example, with Artra I tried to intentionally move away from Tolkienesque medievalism, so there very explicitly are no classic fantasy elves or dwarves.

Furthermore, I am not a fan of the "stranger with no connection to the setting" thing. Perhaps it can be done now and then, but generally it is a bad idea. The game will be better if the characters feel like they're part of the setting and have connections to it. For example two of the characters in my campaign are orcs, and it actually means something as they live in environment where there are other orcs and orc traditions and orc culture.

So, where exactly do player choices come in, when you already know everything the world could ever possibly contain?

There is a vast difference between being flexible and leaving yourself room to improvise when needed, and never planning anything, exclusively flying by the seat of your pants. The middle is feeling deeply excluded here.

There are plenty of published setting and existing IPs people manage to create characters for within the parameters of the setting. The person who insists on playing a wookiee jedi in a Star Trek game is a problem. Thankfully this is not something I have actually encountered in real life during my adult gaming life. There seems to be plenty of such people on the internet though.