DM - Adversarial or Permissive?

[Elf Witch]

That totally depends in dm/pc:s. Some dm styles cause players to rebel very easily because it always seem world is against them, every npc is jerk, traitors, and if there is some nicer one, that npc always dies. In horrible way that players can't stop.

Your story would sound very different what kinda dm is running it and to what kinda players.

You didn't answer my post really. But told this story. But I answer that one.

I was trying to say, that dm can't at the same time say "game for you ends if you go evil" and constantly build "traps" to corrupt pc:s. Unless that replaces "death" in game, and that has been told. Otherwise it is bad behavior.and seems dm likes to play "evil" stuff way too much and wants just pc:s to be good guys so they are easier/more gullible/ready to accept quests without rewards and high chance of failure.

I despise these "always be good so I can laugh at and abuse your pc:s" dm:s.
They are often same guys who think CN = insane, does random actions, pretty much same as CE (and you see that the way npc:s of said alignment).

However I add it was rather common back in a day to say if you go evil you become npc. Still so in some games we play. Player actively go for "evil" choices. Without constant dm manipulation that is. This is probably same player who likes player vr player fights and likes to talk how "my character would so kill your chracter". Based on my experiences naturally.

Protecting child from evil can be fun adventure unless run by these dm:s. I mean when you aren't set for failure. I woudn't like that kinda plots when I am new in group.

Killing the kid is not really "corruption" plot-line. It is too simple and easy choice to protect kiddie until their evil ritual date has passed. And kick some badguy ass. It would get old soon, if it would be constant thing and we could do nothing else for fear it would happen again. Boring. Plus I hate being reactive all the time. If I feel I am two steps behind baddies I will start doing things so that they would react to me instad.

What you told earlier about rings/choosing who will die I would hate. Well maybe it was pc idea and your players liked it, for me it would be just two wrong choices. Unless it would make sense, like party's allys would be targeted by assassins and we would be awere of clear and present danger, then we would try to arrange our friend's some pretected area etc. and some of them would just refuse to leave their lives. Which happens in real life too, some people rather risk dying than abandon all they know.

Unless it is like that it smels like relationship thingies when asked to "choose me or that friend of yours, or I leave you, show me which you love best".

Ok, if there is no in-game caring involted and protection is merely political/alliance thing where certain risks are acceptable.

Based on what little I know about your games, I'm pretty sure, that even if there is some things I really like there are some serious style-clashes. Also, I run games to evilsih pc:s (mosty greedy, powerhungry, ruthless sector rather than psychotic demonworshipper peasant-slayer). I don't think D&D is all about heroic game. I love rather many styles.

I am not sure what to say. Except that there are will always be bad DMs just like there will always be bad players. Or people trying to play together ti who have very different play styles.

Right now my players are several steps behind the bad guys but that is because the bad guys have been planning this in secret for years and the PCs just found out about a month ago. Right now they are reacting and looking for information on what is going on.

As the pieces fall into place and they have more information they can start acting instead of reacting.

This is not a sandbox campaign there is a megaplot of Tiamat coming back to wage war once again. So with this kind of campaign you start by finding information and identifying the bad guys first.

As for the rings there is information that the party needs in both directions. To the north was their one ex party member and his baby girl and to the south the other party member. I had intend to kill the one NPC to the south no matter what. There was no way they could have gotten there in time.

I knew that they would want to investigate his death which leads to some new clues in what is going on and it also helps me take care of an NPC I really didn't want to keep around and introduce a bad guy at the same time.

I figured that they would head north because it was a few days journey and they were planning om going to see why the druids had seemed to have gone nuts. So I basically killed two birds with one stone.

This was not about choosing which person you liked more it was which outcome do you think you have the best chance of effecting. The friend two days away or the friend two weeks away.

 

[Desdichado]

This is a completely legitimate style of play, and a lot of people enjoy it - in fact, I think that this is a central theme of the "new school" style of role-playing games.

On the other hand, one of the differences between this and the old school style of play is that, in the old school, PCs are often rogues on the make. That is, they're not necessarily evil, but they're not altruistic crusaders, either. They're largely in it for themselves, coupled with the fact that they little real desire to harm anyone who isn't crossing them.

I should also mention that despite the "old" and "new" labels, these aren't play-styles that are divided by when people began the game. I see old school attitudes in people who've never played RPGs before, and new school styles of play in people who've been gaming longer than I've been alive.

I've never heard that particular playstyle preference presented as old vs. new, and would in fact quite stronlgy object to those labels. I think that they're flatly misinformative.

In fact, if anything, I'd say that the opposite might almost be true in fantasy overall, which has a strong impact on what people in gaming are doing, obviously. "Rogues on the make" is much more a factor of today's fantasy than it was of the fantasy that was popular in the 60s, 70s and 80s, which was the high point of high fantasy.

 

[Elf Witch]

I think, for a DM it's easiest to decide if she 'did something wrong' by observing the players' reactions and asking them for feedback.

If a DM's and the players' preferences or expectations clash, you'll usually run into problems pretty soon.

Pointing out that a situation as described in the OP wouldn't fly well in my game with my players may or may not be useful for the OP; that's for him to decide.

As a player, if my character were to be put in a similar situation, I'd probably be quite annoyed, too, unless I have a lot of trust in the DM and know him and his DMing style for a long time (and generally enjoy playing in her game).

I am always saying you need to know your players and that when I DM I observe my players reactions to see if they are having fun.

If they are looking bored I speed things up. If they seem to be getting frustrated I do what I can do ease things up.

There is a difference between saying in my game this wouldn't work and you should never do that in any game.

 

[Elf Witch]

I'm not trying to tell you how to play your game. It is just that in my 25 years of GMing I have never known players to like this style of play. That includes the various players I have had or players I have joined when travelling and meeting new folks. If your players like it, and by sounds of it one doesn't, then fine. Whatever works for you.

In answer to the OP's question though I believe that a DM needs to be in the middle between adversarial and permissive. Either end of the spectrum tends (in my experience) to lead to the death of a game.

And the counter argument is in my 35 years of playing I have seen it used in way to move the game along, introduce a new character and provide information and the players enjoyed it. Which is why it drives me kind of nuts here when people tell another DM don't do this because it never works.

A lot depends on the DM and if the players trust him as well as how it is done. If it is done in a way that just penalizes the character over and over then of course the players are going to hate it.

If it is done in away that lets the players shine and figure out what the bad guys are up then it is a totally different scenario.

 

[Alzrius]

I've never heard that particular playstyle preference presented as old vs. new, and would in fact quite stronlgy object to those labels. I think that they're flatly misinformative.

I think you say that because you're misinformed.

In fact, if anything, I'd say that the opposite might almost be true in fantasy overall, which has a strong impact on what people in gaming are doing, obviously. "Rogues on the make" is much more a factor of today's fantasy than it was of the fantasy that was popular in the 60s, 70s and 80s, which was the high point of high fantasy.

If we're talking about fantasy overall, rather than simply in RPGs, then your assertion tends to fall apart.

Fantasy as "rogues on the make" had its high point in the 1920's and 30's, with characters such as Conan or Fafhrd and Gray Mouser. The idea of "epic heroes" in high fantasy did come more into prominence during the decades you mentioned, mostly as a result of a popular revival in fantasy fiction that was happening in America during that time, but it was much preceded by fantasy that had roguish characters that were out for themselves.

 

[Elf Witch]

Sure, it's not a surprise. And sure, they agreed to it up front. It's still railroading. I'm curious why you think it's not.

Lots of games are railroads, and contrary to popular belief on online forums like this, a lot of players like them. In fact, a lot of players want them. They want direction. They don't want to flail around trying to "find the game" and prefer that the GM just tell them where it is.

Granted, a lot of them prefer the GM do so with at least a little bit of subtlety, but that's a little beside the point. Railroads as games work for a lot of players. It's not for nothing that a lot of GMing advice in print treats it as a valid playstyle, if done with enough subtlety that the players don't really have anything to object to.

Although they also tend to call them "linear games" rather than railroads.

Maybe I define railroading as a bad thing where no matter what the player chooses the DM is not going to let them do it. I have played in games like that and they are very frustrating. Basically you are a pawn of the DM, they are telling a story and you have no choice but to go along with it.

That is not what I do. In all my games I have only had a PC go evil once and when it started happening we talked about it. The player felt that with everything that happened he felt that it was being true to the character. He agreed that he would play the character up to a certain point then I would take over and he would bring a new PC in. We worked closely on the transition.

Linear games are usually what happens when you are running an adventure path there is only so much freedom you can give the players and still run the path.

Maybe it is just the term I react badly to because it usually used in such a negative way.

 

[Desdichado]

I think you say that because you're misinformed.

Heh.

Well, except that I'm not. Maliszewski's (or however you spell it) post is interesting, but specious. He's got an unfortunate habit of writing very dogmatically, of finding evidence that supports the conclusions he already has rather than forming conclusions based on all the available evidence. Unsurprisingly, a lot of what he concludes has me scratching my head wondering where in the world that came from. The post you linked being one notable example of that.

If we're talking about fantasy overall, rather than simply in RPGs, then your assertion tends to fall apart.

No, actually it holds up better for fantasy overall than it does for RPGs, ironically. But maybe you're not very familiar with trends in fantasy publishing of the last few years.

Fantasy as "rogues on the make" had its high point in the 1920's and 30's, with characters such as Conan or Fafhrd and Gray Mouser. The idea of "epic heroes" in high fantasy did come more into prominence during the decades you mentioned, mostly as a result of a popular revival in fantasy fiction that was happening in America during that time, but it was much preceded by fantasy that had roguish characters that were out for themselves.

Yes, I know that quite well. The reason I didn't mention it is because it was irrelevent to my post, not because I didn't know it, being that D&D wasn't written in the 20s or the 30s. By the time D&D was written, that kind of fantasy had been long on the wane (Ace reprints of Conan and Elric novels notwithstanding) in favor of a more heroic, high fantasy paradigm. Gygax himself may have preferred a more picaresque type fantasy, but from the very beginning, he reached out to high fantasy fans in very overt terms (the inclusion of a vast array of overtly Tolkienian and Arthurian elements in D&D, for example). In my anecdotal experience (and I don't know of any actual market data to suggest either for or against it) the early player base came at fantasy gaming with that high fantasy paradigm already quite prevalent, and the game's been evolving to better support it from its very inception. I believe your "new school" to actually be the original Old School, and the only thing James got right in his post was that designers over time have been forcing D&D to better model it that paradigm than it already did.

Therefore, calling that "new school" seems bizarrely malapropros, and in fact either disingenious or at least completely wrong. In order for your supposed "old school" to be actually old school, there has to actually be a period where that's the default mode of D&D among the majority of the player base, or at least a very significant chunk of it, that predates the supposed "new school." I don't believe that to be the case. I think your "new school" is just as old as your "old school" and was arguably always just as prevalent if not moreso since the very beginning of the game.

Whereas, ironically, in fantasy literature overall--which is spilling back into gaming again in more and more overt forms--the idea of a more cynical, dark fantasy, or fantasy noir, or antiheroic fantasy, has been a growing movement for years now, very slowly gaining traction since the publication of The Black Company, and becoming much more mainstream with the publication of the first Song of Ice and Fire book, and arguably, edging out heroic high fantasy (at least in terms of sheer numbers of books produced) just in the last little bit.

 

[catsclaw227]

Lots of games are railroads, and contrary to popular belief on online forums like this, a lot of players like them. In fact, a lot of players want them. They want direction. They don't want to flail around trying to "find the game" and prefer that the GM just tell them where it is.

Granted, a lot of them prefer the GM do so with at least a little bit of subtlety, but that's a little beside the point. Railroads as games work for a lot of players. It's not for nothing that a lot of GMing advice in print treats it as a valid playstyle, if done with enough subtlety that the players don't really have anything to object to.

Although they also tend to call them "linear games" rather than railroads.

Paizo has consistently said their biggest sellers are their Adventure Paths. And with the exception of maybe Kingmaker, they are all multi-book "linear games" or railroads of a certain type.

And from what I have been told Kingmaker isn't even their 3rd or 4th best AP. Age of Worms was a railroad but it was one of the most awesome experiences my players and I have ever had. I ran the Drow War AP from Mongoose back in the 3.5 days and it was all kinds of awesome and the first 10 levels were quite linear.

And the players loved it. It's a shame that the term "railroad" has such a stink to it, or that it is used to describe a campaign-style that is still wildly popular.

 

[Alzrius]

Heh.

Well, except that I'm not. Maliszewski's (or however you spell it) post is interesting, but specious. He's got an unfortunate habit of writing very dogmatically, of finding evidence that supports the conclusions he already has rather than forming conclusions based on all the available evidence. Unsurprisingly, a lot of what he concludes has me scratching my head wondering where in the world that came from. The post you linked being one notable example of that.

Well, that's your opinion of his writing - I disagree.

No, actually it holds up better for fantasy overall than it does for RPGs, ironically. But maybe you're not very familiar with trends in fantasy publishing of the last few years.

Or maybe I am and you're not.

Yes, I know that quite well. The reason I didn't mention it is because it was irrelevent to my post, not because I didn't know it, being that D&D wasn't written in the 20s or the 30s.

You say that, and yet your previous post was concerned with fantasy overall, rather than with D&D specifically (emphasis mine):

In fact, if anything, I'd say that the opposite might almost be true in fantasy overall, which has a strong impact on what people in gaming are doing, obviously.

So it certainly looks like you made it relevant to your post.

By the time D&D was written, that kind of fantasy had been long on the wane (Ace reprints of Conan and Elric novels notwithstanding) in favor of a more heroic, high fantasy paradigm.

Except that it hadn't been on the wane, and had been experiencing a revival, hence why there were all sorts of reprints and re-releases happening.

Gygax himself may have preferred a more picaresque type fantasy, but from the very beginning, he reached out to high fantasy fans in very overt terms (the inclusion of a vast array of overtly Tolkienian and Arthurian elements in D&D, for example).

That's one way to describe it - another is that Gary did include a very small number of homages to the Lord of the Rings by including elves, dwarves, and hobbits as playable races, and having a few iconic monsters in the game (e.g. ents, balrogs, ringwraiths, etc.), and (later) a ranger class. That's roughly it as far as Tolkien material goes.

Considering that D&D's original three classes were the (medieval, not Arthurian) fighting man, the magic-user, and the (Hammer Horror films-inspired) cleric, that's not very Arthurian in terms of what's there. I'll grant that the paladin, which came later, could be called Arthurian (though it strikes me more as being modeled after Charlemagne), and there is an implicit Christianity to early D&D (to reference another "specious" article), but nothing overtly Arthurian.

In my anecdotal experience (and I don't know of any actual market data to suggest either for or against it) the early player base came at fantasy gaming with that high fantasy paradigm already quite prevalent, and the game's been evolving to better support it from its very inception. I believe your "new school" to actually be the original Old School, and the only thing James got right in his post was that designers over time have been forcing D&D to better model it that paradigm than it already did.

This is debatable. Some people came to the game with those expectations, others didn't. However, the game itself seems (to me) to be clearly favoring a non-epic playstyle in its earliest years (by which I mean that it didn't lean towards grandiose heroics so much as ne'er-do-wells getting into trouble).

Therefore, calling that "new school" seems bizarrely malapropros, and in fact either disingenious or at least completely wrong. In order for your supposed "old school" to be actually old school, there has to actually be a period where that's the default mode of D&D among the majority of the player base, or at least a very significant chunk of it, that predates the supposed "new school."

Leaving aside that your calling that "completely wrong" is in and of itself completely wrong, I disagree with your assertion as to what constitutes old school. Even leaving aside that the self-evident Old School Renaissance disagrees with your definition (since otherwise it'd be the New School Renaissance), and that your experience is admittedly anecdotal, there's a degree to which the play-style is encouraged by the game itself (though this can be overcome), and it seems to me that this is what the game was encouraging in its earliest years.

I don't believe that to be the case. I think your "new school" is just as old as your "old school" and was arguably always just as prevalent if not moreso since the very beginning of the game.

I won't say that that hasn't always been there, just that it wasn't where the game originally oriented itself.

Whereas, ironically, in fantasy literature overall--which is spilling back into gaming again in more and more overt forms--the idea of a more cynical, dark fantasy, or fantasy noir, or antiheroic fantasy, has been a growing movement for years now, very slowly gaining traction since the publication of The Black Company, and becoming much more mainstream with the publication of the first Song of Ice and Fire book, and arguably, edging out heroic high fantasy (at least in terms of sheer numbers of books produced) just in the last little bit.

This is the cyclical nature of things. The old school was gritty fantasy, then the new school of epic, heroic fantasy came along. Now the old school is what's new again.

 

[Desdichado]

Well, that's your opinion of his writing - I disagree.

Clearly.

You say that, and yet your previous post was concerned with fantasy overall, rather than with D&D specifically (emphasis mine):

My previous post referenced fantasy overall. Obliquely.

So it certainly looks like you made it relevant to your post.

No it doesn't. You brought up old-fashioned sword & sorcery stories, not me. They don't have any relevence to my original post, and the only relevance they have now is that I'm answering you on them now.

Except that it hadn't been on the wane, and had been experiencing a revival, hence why there were all sorts of reprints and re-releases happening.

With the popularity of Lord of the Rings, Narnia, Earthsea and others, publishers were looking for something that they could market as vaguely similar, and do so with a minimum of fuss, time and effort. Reprinting Howard, Moorcock and others fit that bill. But that wasn't the area of growth for the market. That mode was still on the wane, and high fantasy was what new stuff was.

Ironically (or maybe not) even the new Conan novels that came out starting in the 70s or 80s, which had little of the feel of the older Conan material.

Your perception of the state of the market at that time is fundamentally not consistent with mine. Short of some kind of industry reports or industry "expert testimony" we'll probably have to agree to disagree.

That's one way to describe it - another is that Gary did include a very small number of homages to the Lord of the Rings by including elves, dwarves, and hobbits as playable races, and having a few iconic monsters in the game (e.g. ents, balrogs, ringwraiths, etc.), and (later) a ranger class. That's roughly it as far as Tolkien material goes.

Calling that a "small number of homages" rather than a "fairly thorough placement of D&D squarely in the market to appeal to Tolkien fans" strikes me as either wishful or revistionist thinking.

And keep in mind here; I'm not talking about Gygax himself and what he wanted. I'm talking about the first generation of the RPG player base. Granted, there's no way to talk about that in a way that's not anecdotal, because to my knowledge there's no real data about their preferences or preferred playstyles much, other than that there clearly was plenty of pent-up demand for material that catered more overtly to a high fantasy rather than a sword & sorcery approach, given the popularity and rapid spread of material that more overtly did so.

This is debatable. Some people came to the game with those expectations, others didn't. However, the game itself seems (to me) to be clearly favoring a non-epic playstyle in its earliest years (by which I mean that it didn't lean towards grandiose heroics so much as ne'er-do-wells getting into trouble).

The game itself doesn't seem to favor one or the other at all in any way whatsoever, except by the mode of advancement via treasure and XP. And if you think that's a fundamental core feature of the game and the overt Tolkienisms are just a "small part" of the game, I'm gonna be forced to give you the "WTF?" face here--it would seem like you're trying to have it both ways and exempt stuff that doesn't fit your paradigm while simultaneously holding out small elements as indicative of what you want to demonstrate that the game was all about.

Actually, if you wanted to look for some evidence of where the original mode of the game was, I think you'd be better off looking at some of the earlier modules. But I think you'll be hard pressed to find proof in there that rogues and ne'er-do-wells were the exception rather than heroes. I could be wrong there, though--I didn't play (or read) a lot of the modules back in the day.

Leaving aside that your calling that "completely wrong" is in and of itself completely wrong, I disagree with your assertion as to what constitutes old school. Even leaving aside that the self-evident Old School Renaissance disagrees with your definition (since otherwise it'd be the New School Renaissance), and that your experience is admittedly anecdotal, there's a degree to which the play-style is encouraged by the game itself (though this can be overcome), and it seems to me that this is what the game was encouraging in its earliest years.

It seems to you. Key phrase there. Nothing about my position is any less or more "proveable" than yours.

And the fact that it's "OSR Approved" to play more rogueishly rather than heroically doesn't really prove anything one way or another. I was playing D&D during the same time frame that the OSR is trying to emulate, and I can certainly say for a fact that the games I knew were more heroic, and that was the paradigm of all the gamers I knew, who came into gaming after reading Tolkien, Lewis and Alexander. Plus, I'm also familiar enough with the OSR to know that your characterization of it as having a unified playstyle that it identifies with is completely false. The OSR is as eclectic and varied as the actual old-school gaming situation was in the late seventies and early eighties, the dogmatic approach of a few very vocal bloggers notwithstanding.

I won't say that that hasn't always been there, just that it wasn't where the game originally oriented itself.

Well, two things: you're clearly in the Malizsewski camp (especially since you keep linking to his posts as if that proves something) that believes that the game was a sword and sorcery game with a high fantasy patina or gloss. That's debateable, but I won't argue that there isn't a valid reason or two to characterize the game that way. I don't agree with it, but I think it's a clearly valid opinion to have based on some elements of the game, and 2) I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT THE GAME, I'M TALKING ABOUT THE PLAYERS. I don't know how to more strongly reiterate that point. If the players come at the game with a high fantasy background and expectation, it really doesn't matter what Gygax thought of fantasy too much. And by even his own admission, he purposefully put all kinds of high fantasy elements into the game to attract high fantasy fans. If a huge wave of the first generation of players were high fantasy fans, looking for (and seeing) high fantasy elements in the game, then THEIR GAMES WOULD HAVE BEEN HIGH FANTASY GAMES TOO. And if they were part of the first generation too, its nonsensical to call their approach "new school" and act as if it's some later development sparked by Tracy Hickman or whatever.

This is the cyclical nature of things. The old school was gritty fantasy, then the new school of epic, heroic fantasy came along. Now the old school is what's new again.

No it isn't. This doesn't have anything to do with sword & sorcery tropes becoming popular in a cyclical nature. That's a facile and--IMO--incorrect interpretation of it. What's happened with darker fantasy now is a completely independent development in the genre that has only superficial and coincidental resemblances to the classic sword & sorcery tale.