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

[EzekielRaiden]

You assume an adversarial stance between the DM and the players that I don't. Yes when I step into the monster I try to play it according to ITS persona. When I adjudicate though I am not doing so as the monster. I am again the DM.

And it is totally impossible for players to think that way?

I think you just choose to misread and be obtuse instead of engaging the argument. Both examples illustrated the point and when you asked for clarification I gave it. Now the point should be clear. Players will not always choose what is best in the long term.

Do DMs always choose what is best long-term? Note, I am not even considering bad-faith behavior here. Do well-meaning DMs always choose what is best long-term?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

No, it is literally the same thing.

It's not. That's the point I'm making. It simply is not the same. You can insist it is all you like. That does not make it so.

So if you think my examples are outlandish strawmen, then provide what you think isn't? Because it is possible that we do not actually disagree on this that much, given that you actually seem to think the limitations I've used as an example are fine.

I already did. "Things present in the PHB." It would be like complaining that a person couldn't be a Sith (species) Jedi in Star Wars, or a Gorn science officer in Star Trek, or a female dwarf warrior in Middle-Earth, etc.

Gorn exist in Star Trek. Worf and Nog prove that it is perfectly possible for non-member species to join Starfleet and become respected officers at prestigious appointments. (The Enterprise-D is, explicitly, the flagship of Starfleet. To be appointed both Security and Operations Officer on the Enterprise is an extremely prestigious thing.) We have good reason to believe it could happen, and no reason to believe it can't happen, even though historically, as far as we're aware, it hasn't happened.

Sith are a humanoid species in Star Wars. Most of them learned and practiced the Dark Side of the force, but there's nothing preventing them from practicing the light. Especially if they were found as a child and taken in by the Jedi Order. Nothing prevents it, it's just not represented generally.

Female dwarves explicitly exist in Tolkien's work. We get some kinda questionable justifications for why they either don't go out amongst other races or, apparently, aren't distinguishable from male dwarves in the rare cases they do. Nothing prevents it--it's just not represented in the stories.

 

[FrozenNorth]

You assume an adversarial stance between the DM and the players that I don't. Yes when I step into the monster I try to play it according to ITS persona. When I adjudicate though I am not doing so as the monster. I am again the DM.

Except you keep on insisting that players are incapable of doing this. Why is it that you believe that a DM can take a long view of the game but players can’t?

I think you just choose to misread and be obtuse instead of engaging the argument. Both examples illustrated the point and when you asked for clarification I gave it. Now the point should be clear. Players will not always choose what is best in the long term.

Neither will DMs, which is precisely why all authority shouldn’t be invested in them.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

So. What happens if the idea is almost good, but not quite?

Because what you've presented here is that either the players accept the idea exactly as it is, or they refuse and never participate.

That is an absence of discussion or negotiation. Exactly what I've talked about, several times.

I have said that sometimes the player has an idea that expands on the original concept in interesting ways. And this sort of riffing on the idea is to me different than going against it. And of course discussions can be had and the GM can adapt their original idea. But personally if I would sense that the players are not interested in what I was pitching and I would need to water it down from what I wanted to get them onboard, I probably would not want to do it anymore. I would come up with something different altogether. Not that this is a thing that tends to actually happen.

 

[Emerikol]

Okay. I'm not saying all bad DMs can be handled. Some can be though. While bad in other ways, they can still accept rules, procedures, etc. that contribute to better DMing.

Okay let me be clear. When I said bad, I meant evil in the case of DMs. People who behave badly. Incompetence can be cured in anyone. I'm not talking about an incompetent DM. I'm talking about an evil one.

This is what I mean by the can't-have-it-both-ways argument. Your admission that there are different kinds of bad-ness, and that some kinds are in fact amenable to rules while others aren't, is precisely what makes better-made rules and procedures useful in dealing with some DMs and not others. If our standard is that a rule/procedure/etc. must be able to deal with all possible bad DM behavior no matter what, then sure, no rule can do that. But the exact same argument applies in the other direction too: no rule, not even Rule Zero, can do that. Yet if we soften the standard to rules/procedures/etc. that can address the majority of issues, or the most common types of issues, or whatever--again, it swings both ways.

I think the context of this debate though was unreasonableness not incompetence. An evil DM can't be boxed in by rules because he is the DM. He decides what monsters you will face. What if he drops an ancient dragon on your 1e group? There is no rule for that. The encounter "guidelines" are not rules. The DMG is not a rule book. It's a guide book.

 

[KYRON45]

The laugh was for the bolded section.
I too tend to attempt ways to contribute to the unfolding story by selecting options that make it easy for the DM to realise the campaign premise and accentuate the setting. I keep wondering if this is a common trend for DMs like myself (long campaigners, generally forever DMs, old-schoolers).
I dunno.

After high school we decided that our time was now worth something. So when we all got together for this thing we wanted it to be fun and engaging. We wanted to create those moments that you will (and we do) talk about for years to come. We never argued about rules because the rules were always secondary. The DM had the authority he needed because that was implied as part of the role.

Our rule 0 was "is this fun?" and does this contribute to the narrative?

I get that people play different ways and by all means have your fun your way.

 

[FrozenNorth]

I don't think an inexperienced DM is automatically a bad DM. They're just inexperienced. You have yet to explain why rule 0 leads to bad DMing for people that would not already be bad DMs.

I said that I liked the change to rule zero. The change doesn’t have to prevent bad DMs from DMing badly to be a positive change.

It is enough that it reminds good DMs what is important and provides good advice to average and inexperienced DMs, which it does.

 

[TwoSix]

It of course is perfectly understandable that established IPs the participants are familiar with might be more compelling than whatever harebrained concoction the GM has cooked up. But at least when I play, I am really interested in seeing new worlds people have created, so bespoke words the GM has crafted are a selling point to me, even if their creative vision would differ from mine.

I think a DM who wants to build their setting via tight curation (as opposed to addition of new material or replacement) generally has to accept the need to explain their vision to the players as to why they view such exclusions as necessary.

It's a failing of many DMs (myself included) to get attached to a new setting hook that's has some restrictive parameters ("only 3 races!" "Low magic only!") and forget that for the majority of players, the "Mos Eisley cantina" play-what-you-like looseness of modern D&D is a major draw.

 

[Oofta]

I said that I liked the change to rule zero. The change doesn’t have to prevent bad DMs from DMing badly to be a positive change.

It is enough that it reminds good DMs what is important and provides good advice to average and inexperienced DMs, which it does.

I was simply disagreeing with the statement "We were all bad DMs at one point (when we started)". An inexperienced DM isn't inherently bad, they're just inexperienced. I've played in games with brand new DMs where we all had a lot of fun. Of course they could have done better, every DM could always do better.

You seem to have a different definition of bad DM than I do.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Okay let me be clear. When I said bad, I meant evil in the case of DMs. People who behave badly. Incompetence can be cured in anyone. I'm not talking about an incompetent DM. I'm talking about an evil one.


I think the context of this debate though was unreasonableness not incompetence. An evil DM can't be boxed in by rules because he is the DM. He decides what monsters you will face. What if he drops an ancient dragon on your 1e group? There is no rule for that. The encounter "guidelines" are not rules. The DMG is not a rule book. It's a guide book.

An "evil" player, as you put it, cannot be boxed in by Rule Zero either.