D&D General D&D as a Curated, DIY Game or "By the Book": Examining DM and Player Agency, and the DM as Game Designer

[Azzy]

I think this discussion, like the others before it, miss the point by a large margin.

It's not about DM vs Players or whether the rules are written in stone vs alterable. Ultimately, it's about the gaming group as a whole and what the group wants, enjoys, and agrees to. Anything can be proposed, but the group has to agree to it.

Before we even get to D&D, the group has to decide what to play—whether it's D&D, Cyberpunk, Pathfinder, Fudge, etc. And then who is going to be the gamemaster for that game. Then the GM/DM can pitch their game idea (and house rules, if any) to the rest of the group (who can then yay or nay it). If the group doesn't care for the GM's proposal, then the GM can propose something that does meet the group's approval or someone else can step up to the GM's seat.

Ultimately, everyone in the group has to buy into the perspective game or there will be no game. Any authority that a perspective GM has is what the group agrees to give them. Once agreed to, both the GM and the players should abide by that agreement and everyone in the group should be treated with respect. Anyone can quit the game at any point if they are not enjoying it.

 

[robus]

Everyone who has ever said this to a player or had this said to you by a DM, raise your hand.

This idea of itinerant players wandering from table to table clutching their character sheets seems very uncommon. I imagine it happened back in the day? Does it happen much at all these days outside of AL?

Surely players just roll up new characters to play either short or long campaigns, and if they’re team spirited they’ll happily roll up a character suited to the setting?

 

[Thomas Shey]

Players have an expectation that the DM deals with the rules and controls the world. Players expect to focus exclusively on what their character says and does.

A subset of players does that. A different subset cares about rules and very much pays attention to them. Which, if either subset is the majority is not self-evident.

 

[prabe]

A subset of players does that. A different subset cares about rules and very much pays attention to them. Which, if either subset is the majority is not self-evident.

And to be fair, there's probably some overlap between both subsets and the subset that wants to contribute to world-building (even people who only care about their characters in play may want to fill in a blank space in writing their characters' backstories).

 

[Thomas Shey]

And to be fair, there's probably some overlap between both subsets and the subset that wants to contribute to world-building (even people who only care about their characters in play may want to fill in a blank space in writing their characters' backstories).

The prior poster has made an overlap impossible by the use of "exclusively".

 

[Campbell]

Carefully curated and DIY are pretty much at the opposite ends of the spectrum. The DIY ethos pretty much comes from punk rock and early indie music scene. It was about the opposite of curation - putting the raw unedited stuff out there.

For what it's worth I think any group should be expected to make the game their own. I just think that should be a communal process. I believe that the experience is best when we create it together. The GM is a player like any other player.

When I play roleplaying games I expect to be involved on a creative level with a group of peers. I do not want a hand crafted experience that you think is best for me. Same with rules and stuff.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Carefully curated and DIY are pretty much at the opposite ends of the spectrum. The DIY ethos pretty much comes from punk rock and early indie music scene. It was about the opposite of curation - putting the raw unedited stuff out there.

For what it's worth I think any group should be expected to make the game their own. I just think that should be a communal process. I believe that the experience is best when we create it together. The GM is a player like any other player.

When I play roleplaying games I expect to be involved on a creative level with a group of peers. I do not want a hand crafted experience that you think is best for me. Same with rules and stuff.

I think the DIY ethos in early D&D was a different beast than that, and had no conceptual connection to whether it was well edited or not.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

A subset of players does that. A different subset cares about rules and very much pays attention to them. Which, if either subset is the majority is not self-evident.

I can only speak for the people I have played with over the past 40 years. Even players who are interested in the rules expect to only be responsible for their own characters. Running the world and adjudication is solely the DM's responsibility.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Oof. That's a lot, and I can understand why you don't get to play if you do that. I tend to spend about an hour per session, plus some time at the start setting up a lot of the setting. I can also understand why if you put that much effort in others starting out can't take that on.

Would some resources on making prep lighter help both you feel you were less of a dog and you to bring out other DMs? Also what do you use those 12 hours per session for?

Well, I'm running an adventure path (Rime of the Frostmaiden) at the moment, so there is less for me to do there; but I am having to play online, which means more work in the creation of battlemaps, tokens and other resources. It's kind of a teacher thing - if you have more prep time available, you don't put your feat up, you use the time to make things better.

Which may mean I'm not the best example for a starting DM. My friend set out to create everything from scratch, including the setting. When I was first starting out we had those slim "modules" (much less intimidating than a 300 page book) and tended to run them as one-shots, with little regard to the setting. The first actual campaign I ran was in Traveller, not D&D, and that was with the standard Third Imperium setting.

 

[Lanefan]

Adding things in is a different story. I don't think D&D has ever been a toolkit, at least not compared to many other systems.

Heh - I've seen it as a toolkit since Day 1, and have spent many years using said toolkit to slowly build the system I want (a still-ongoing process and likely will be for the rest of my life).