If you have never had to contend with a problematic player, count yourself lucky. This isn't some theoretical problem: real people will sit at your table and ruin the experience for everyone else involved for their own pleasure if you let them. Not everyone plays with close friends all the time. Some people run games at stores or at conventions or in game clubs. The power gamers and spotlight hogs can be very real in those instances. That's what EGG was advising against, not telling your friends "no" just to be a jerk for kicks.
Afterword
If you have never had to contend with a problematic player, count yourself lucky. This isn't some theoretical problem: real people will sit at your table and ruin the experience for everyone else involved for their own pleasure if you let them. Not everyone plays with close friends all the time. Some people run games at stores or at conventions or in game clubs. The power gamers and spotlight hogs can be very real in those instances. That's what EGG was advising against, not telling your friends "no" just to be a jerk for kicks.
innerdude
Legend
In general I agree with you. For my last campaign, I consciously made an effort to follow the clues players were leaving about the kind of characters they wanted to run, the types of action they wanted to experience, the adventures they were interested in, etc. That's absolutely a key component for being a successful GM. I spent more time re-organizing scene frames in my last Savage Worlds campaign than in any other three campaigns combined, because I wanted to give the players what they wanted.
What Gygax is talking would very much apply to a player in my secondary group who just last week, I kid you not, spent a good 6-8 hours doing NOTHING but looking through D&D 3.5 material to try and find feats that would boost his animal companion (he's playing a druid). He actually had the guts to straight up ask the GM, "I think you should let my wolf take Feat X" (I can't remember what it was actually called) "which lets me use him as a riding animal."
So, he wanted his 1st level druid animal companion--an average, normal wolf--to take a feat designed for ACTUAL riding animals . . . just because the player wanted to. And to top it off, the player's character is a full-sized human. Not a halfling, not a dwarf . . . a human.
Of course, after the GM read the feat in detail, it was totally against RAW (as written the feat would have required the character to spend a YEAR training the animal, even if it was the right size to be a riding animal, which it wasn't). Should the GM just have allowed it? I don't think so. And more to the point, if you know this player, you'd know it wasn't an expression of a deep-seated roleplaying desire, it's one of pure power gamesmanship.
The unstated, underlying assumption for you, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], is that you have good players that are looking to build a certain kind of experience, and don't go out of their way to push the envelope against certain boundaries. In Gary's day from his context, D&D operated very much under a "group of the week" phenomenon, where Gary might not have any idea who half of the 6-10 people who showed up to play would be. Gary's advice isn't null and void, since based on his context it's eminently applicable. It merely needs clarification, exposition, and updating to achieve other play styles successfully.
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To me, this is not a GMing problem. It's a social problem.
I don't need, or expect, the maker of a DVD player to tell me what to do if an unpleasant person turns up to my video night and starts spoiling the movies for everyone else. Similarly, I don't think the rules of an RPG provide a solution for people who want to spoil the game for others. It's a social problem, which has to be solved socially.
If the rules of the game have a tendency to generate problems, though, then that's a different matter. Suppose, for instance, that the rules present choice A and choice B as equally viable. (To give an example of what I mean by this, the 4e PHB doesn't suggest that any particular factor is relevant to choosing a class other than the flavour of character that you want to play. It doesn't say, for instance, that shy people might prefer to play an archer ranger rather than a warlord, or that people who find it hard to choose from options might want to avoid a wizard and a polearm fighter.) And then suppose that, in play, it turns out that those choices differ in some respect that the rulebook didn't flag: for instance, it turns out that option A tends to generate twice the spotlight time for that player as option B, even though both players wanted and were expecting the same spoltlight time.
In such circumstances, I don't think it's any sort of solution for the game designer to just throw it all on the GM and say "Hey, it's your job to sort this out." I mean, what does "sorting this out" even mean? Should the GM just block half of the first player's action declarations in order to halve his/her spotlight time?
Nor do I think it is helpful for the rulebook, or the gamer culture more generally, to label players who have chosen option A as "munchkins" or "problem players". (There is a fair bit of this in the 2nd ed AD&D PHB.) If option A is an option that is bad for the game, then why is the rulebook permitting it?
Instead of rather abstract admonitions to "put the game first and participants last", I find it more helpful if a rulebook actually discusses the expectations around the various options and gives advice for handling them. (For instance, Burning Wheel expressly gives the GM and other players veto rights over certain PC build choices. And it expressly flags certain other choice with a warning to players that taking that choice could make for a PC who may have a hard time prospering in the game. Those warnings and permission don't make the social problems go away - eg someone makes one of those choices and then whinges about what happens to his/her PC in the course of play - but at least they go some way to flagging parts of the game system which are "use at your own risk".)
I guess my issue with this is that I don't see how Gygax's quote applies. I mean, this is a player asking "Do you mind if I cheat?" and the GM answers "Yes I do. Please don't." I'm having trouble seeing how there is much more to it than that.
That said, maybe I can see a little bit more: the greater the extent to which a game relies upon the mechanical rationing of fiddly little bits for the purposes of PC building (and 3E/PF would seem to be the pinnacle of this), the greater the likelihood of a conflict between a player's conception of his/her PC, and what the rules actually permit him/her to build. And houseruling in a solution becomes tricky if it is not clear whether the mechanical limitations serve some sort of rational balancing purpose, or are simply there to enforce someone's conception of verisimilitude, or are just there because someone thought it was a good idea.
To give examples: the level-limits on the two-weapon fighting feats seem intended to achieve a balancing purpose, by interacting in some appropriate fashion with the stepping up of iterative attacks via BAB. (Whether or not they succeed at this I leave as a debate for another thread.) At the other end of things, the alignment restrictions on paladins and monks, in 3E, are there simply because the 3E designers thought it was a good idea to preserve certain traditions. It was stated back at the time of 3E's release that they serve no balancing function.
With the particular issue you are referring to, I can't tell whether the purpose of restricting the feat to certain sorts of animals is to do with balance (it would be broken for a 1st level druid's animal companion to have that feat) or whether it was simply to give affect to someone's idea of verisimilitude (humans can't ride wolves because they're too big). In accusing the player of trying to cheat I'm assuming there is a balance issue, but if I'm wrong about that, and it was just a verisimilitude thing, then I feel a little sorry for the player. If there's no balance issue with being a wolf-riding human druid, then it seems a shame that the game rules get in the way of that.
Labelling of the reasons for pre-requisites could help here (are they for balance, for verisimilitude, or "just because"?). In the absence of such labelling, I'm not sure that Gygax's advice helps much because how can a GM tell whether allowing the option in violation of the rules as written will hurt the game (eg multiple second-weapon attacks at 1st level) or not (ignoring the alignment restriction for paladins and monks)?
The "Afterword" that started this thread is just that. It exists in the context of the whole book that came before it. if you read the DMG, EGG discusses potential problems and viable solutions throughout the text, when the rules or subjects come up. It is also important to realize that AD&D was a different kind of game with different expectations than a tightly designed 3E or 4E. It is a built-in assuption, a baked in element of the rules, that the DM is responsible for determining what is and is not appropriate for his campaign and adjudicating not just PC actions, but the game itself. Therefore, advice on how to handle potential problems, such as players who want to play a dragon or having given out too much treasure or what happens when the players get creative with spells, is as fundamental to the DM's job as the saving throw tables and hit matrices.
ExploderWizard
Hero
Doing what is best for all the participants means sometimes denying the desires of some participants when granting those desires would be detrimental to the game as a whole.
Children think that it's fun to eat candy and ice cream and stay up all night. Do you allow this on a regular basis? Its the same with players always trying to squeeze more advantage for themselves out of the game.
When we deny children junk food, encourage them to eat healthy and get a good nights sleep we are doing what is best for them in the long run. Denying player wishes when it would be bad for the game in the long run serves the same purpose.
When you put the desires of individuals first it can spoil the game as a whole for everyone.
Your game can turn into Mexicali soup
Emerikol
Adventurer
One big difference I see between people is that for some DMing is like a job that they do because it's their turn. Other DMs do it because it's a labor of love. One thing I always realize is that as DM I need to be having fun. It is a very big job taking many hours outside of game time if you play my style. Still I'd rather do that and have fun than do something else and not have fun.
So the DM's fun is as important if not more so than any individual players. As a player, if I'm having fun at an 7 out of 10 level, I'm satisfied because my only commitment is to show up every week. As a DM, I need to be having 9 or 10 fun because of all the extra effort required.
For that reason, I build campaigns, I invite people who I think have similar interests, I expound on my approach clearly up front and then I run the game. I am not going to "discover" my players want to play some totally different way and switch. Doing so would make the game no fun for me and that would make me a really lousy DM for that group. Instead, I try to express my preferences and approaches up front so players can opt in or opt out. I don't want someone who will be unhappy to join my game. That is counterproductive. I want happy players. I just want to be happy along with them.
It's kind of like marriage. Do you seek out someone who accepts you for who you really are or do you meet someone interesting and try to change yourself into the person she wants? If you do the latter, I expect your success rate is not as good. I expect reality is that we all do some of both but we lean one way or the other. I'm talking true character here and not minor issues.
For D&D it's the same. If my players were all clamoring for something fluff wise in the game, I'd seriously consider it and probably only reject it if it left me totally cold.
So the DM's fun is as important if not more so than any individual players. As a player, if I'm having fun at an 7 out of 10 level, I'm satisfied because my only commitment is to show up every week. As a DM, I need to be having 9 or 10 fun because of all the extra effort required.
For that reason, I build campaigns, I invite people who I think have similar interests, I expound on my approach clearly up front and then I run the game. I am not going to "discover" my players want to play some totally different way and switch. Doing so would make the game no fun for me and that would make me a really lousy DM for that group. Instead, I try to express my preferences and approaches up front so players can opt in or opt out. I don't want someone who will be unhappy to join my game. That is counterproductive. I want happy players. I just want to be happy along with them.
It's kind of like marriage. Do you seek out someone who accepts you for who you really are or do you meet someone interesting and try to change yourself into the person she wants? If you do the latter, I expect your success rate is not as good. I expect reality is that we all do some of both but we lean one way or the other. I'm talking true character here and not minor issues.
For D&D it's the same. If my players were all clamoring for something fluff wise in the game, I'd seriously consider it and probably only reject it if it left me totally cold.
Raith5
Adventurer
Yeah but I think the afterword is actually a bit in tension with the preface of the DMG which talks more of the game being system and more talk of the DM as the scene setter and choosing the "taste" of the game (things that are true and constant across the editions). But the idea of the DM being the chooser of the rules goes beyond this and - seems to be a post hoc explanation - hence being in the afterword! We all know that for many groups, games of AD&D depended on the DM choosing and omitting some rules in many respects - often in an ad hoc way.
I just think there is a sense here that this is an effort here to draw and venerate principle of gaming from a practical reality of early versions of this game. Like most in this thread and I have played AD&D like this and loved it. And sure homebrewing is something that should be accepted by the game (and modularity too). But I dont think the idea of the the DM as an ad hoc chooser of which rules should apply is something that should shape the game as a default principle going forward.
I don't see how this bears on the quality of Gygax's advice.
I GMed for an average of around 4 hours per week from 1990 to 1998, and have GMed for an average of around 4 hours per fortnight since then. That's thousands of hours of GMing. In that time I haven't followed Gygax's advice, and I don't think my game has suffered for it. As I posted upthread, the more I have prioritised the participants in my game over the "integrity" of my campaign world, the better my game, and my GMing, has become.
I'm not sure what you mean by "the game itself" as something above and beyond the PCs' actions.
Presumably the GM doesn't have to adjudicate the NPCs' actions! That's just generation of backstory, via whatever mechanics the game dictates (AD&D 1st ed uses a lot of random rolls), which is not radically different from other RPGs.
Do you mean that the GM has to make decisions about what rules are in use? I don't see why that's the GM's sole prerogative. For instance, if a GM was disinclined to have rangers in his/her game, but a player really wanted to play one, I don't see any reason why an AD&D GM should treat that request differently from how a Rolemaster or 3E or 4e GM would treat it. There's nothing special about AD&D which makes it more prone to breaking if the GM follows the lead of the players in including particular game elements. (Obviously some game elements in AD&D are broken, but that's not distinctive to AD&D, and presumably Gygax doesn't think that that is the reason for his Afterword - that it's a protection against bad design.)
Given all the debates I see online about templates, ECL, etc, players wanting to play a dragon seems to be a bigger issue in 3E/PF than in AD&D!
As far as having given out too much treasure, I think one of the problems with the DMG is that it gives contradictory advice. At one point it emphasises that treasure should mean TREASURE; at another point it gives the ludicrously stingy examle of the ogres. It includes tables and descriptions of magic items filling a good portion of the overall book; then at another point it warns the GM not to hand out treasure; then the MM includes treasure tables, and Appendix C includes NPC generation tables, that make magical treasure pretty ubiquitous. I think Moldvay Basic did a better job of this, by having level-appropriate magic item generation tables, and clearer advice on the use of treasure tables.
As far as adjudicating the creativ use of spells or other PC capabilities, I think this is just as much a part of a 4e GM's job as an AD&D GM's. (Others can comment on 3E.) I think 4e has tools that make this easier (eg DC by level and damage by level tables), but the basic job description is the same. And my view remains that the correct ordering of priorities is participants ahead of GM's campaign ahead of "the game" in some abstract sense. Back when I used to GM AD&D regularly, adopting this ordering improved my game; whereas attempting to apply Gygax's ordering came close to wrecking it.
That may be true, but that is not what Gygax says. Or at least, if that's what he meant he put it poorly, given that he puts participants last without any drawing of distinctions or clarifications.
I don't find the analogy very persuasive.
For instance, the idea that a player will be "spoiled" if his/her druid is allowed to ride a wolf, even though the game rules don't expressly allow for it, strikes me as implausible. Enforcing the rules to make sure the game doesn't break is one thing; that's a basic job requirement for a referee. But blocking player input into the fiction because you think it's implausible, or you have an alternative preferred conception, is something quite different.
Agreed.
ExploderWizard
Hero
I won't argue that Gygax defined what he meant by "the game" very well. It may of been on purpose because the most important aspects of the game are for people to choose on their own.
I find a full size human wanting to ride a normal size wolf quite implausible and would make the same call. A gnome or Halfling might be a different matter. Many things are possible in a fantasy world and there may be a way to use magic to make them happen. In this case the decision would have less to do with a player being "spoiled" and be more about being consistent with how physics work in the game world absent a force such as magic to change it.
A 170 lb. man does not ride a 60 lb. dog without magical aid. The fiction has nothing to do with it. The world is not a story and it doesn't care if you are deluded into thinking that it does your bidding because you believe that you are a protagonist.
