D&D General DM Authority

[Lanefan]

Well, there's always going to be a suspicion of bias because we're married. All I can do is my best to ensure that I treat her as an equal with all other players. I don't think that matters if we both DM or not. Also, we have completely separate regions, separate campaigns. We keep them roughly in sync time wise in the rare case someone wants to cross over from one campaign to the other.

So not sure what to say. Every once in a while we stomp on the edges of the other's territories or we plan something that will have a wider impact. That's the only time we ever discuss campaign related details other than what every other PC knows. I guess our players trust us (the fact that my monsters don't take it easy on my wife's PC probably helps) so it's never been an issue.

What happens if one DM's crew somehow does or triggers something that affects the entire world? Is the other DM bound by this? (worse, what if the world-shaking event happens in the past vis-a-vis the other group?)

That said, one option (maybe for next time) might be to set up a binary planet system, where each of you DMs one of the planets. You can make these planets identical, or not, as you choose; all you'd be locking together would be year length and astronomical features. Then, all each of you need to do is set up some sort of mechanism that allows for world-to-world travel (maybe Elves in their deep forests have such means?), to give cross-overs a way of taking place, and you're good to go.

 

[Lanefan]

I am describing something more like the DM refusing to tell the players important elements of the world, under the guise that it is better if the players are surprised or that the characters wouldn’t know, such that the campaign will have a nautical theme, or that the characters will spend considerable time in forests.

I leave this up to the players to figure out after the puck drops. If they want maritime adventuring, they can find it. If they want forest adventuring, they can find it. Etc.

My previous campaign to this one, I soft-pitched it as being a maritime-based campaign as that's what I kinda wanted to run, but rather than force them onto boats I left it open-ended as to what they actually did. (i.e. here's a lot of adventure hooks, please bite at least one) The nearest I got was in their fourth-ish adventure they were given as part of a dungeon's treasury a fantastic pirate ship...and they promptly traded it away.

Other than ferry service to the islands and up and down the coast, they never really got on a damn boat through the 12 years that game ran!

 

[Chaosmancer]

To be honest. When I come to your extreme multi-quotes style my eyes gloss over and I end up skipping or skimming the whole post more often than not.

It's too much of a wall of text. I don't mind minor multi-quoting going on but when your single post takes me 3-4 pages on my monitor to go through it's too much, at least for me.

And also please consider that nearly every single quote of even a single line above you wrote 4 sentences to 4 paragraphs in response to.

I only check these forums about twice a day, and many times in this thread by the time I check them, it has moved 7 to 9 pages, about 140 to 180 posts.

I don't want to spam the thread with single responses after single response, especially since it can take me nearly two hours sometimes to work through that many posts and responses. I understand it can be easy to gloss over, that is why I started doing the break lines between different posters, to try and make it easier to chunk it out.

But if this is what it takes for people to stop accusing me of lying, guess I'm changing my entire posting style.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Yeah. I scan for my name and skip the rest.

Fine, I will just start posting one after another, as best I can.

 

[Helldritch]

I go the other way around. The players are free to do whatever they want as for their characters but they are forewarned about what type of campaign to expect. So if I will make a campaign about a desert adventure, I fully expect the players to avoid heavy armored character type. If one of them does one anyways, then he won't be surprised if his or her character must do without heavy armor or suffer heat problems. Same for jungles, cold environments, water or whatever the setting will be placed.

Even races must be thought through carefully. If I make an all evil orc/humanoid campaign, do not do an elf. Logic will usually dictate what type of characters the players will make. But other than a warning, I force no one to make such and such characters.

 

[Oofta]

What happens if one DM's crew somehow does or triggers something that affects the entire world? Is the other DM bound by this? (worse, what if the world-shaking event happens in the past vis-a-vis the other group?)

That said, one option (maybe for next time) might be to set up a binary planet system, where each of you DMs one of the planets. You can make these planets identical, or not, as you choose; all you'd be locking together would be year length and astronomical features. Then, all each of you need to do is set up some sort of mechanism that allows for world-to-world travel (maybe Elves in their deep forests have such means?), to give cross-overs a way of taking place, and you're good to go.

We just don't set up McGuffins like can have an impact worldwide, at least not in the short term. Anything that did would be considered impinging on shared territory (which is more than just physical) so we'll discuss and agree. If the event were earth shattering, the other group may hear about it but we'll make sure it doesn't derail the other campaign or take away their agency.

I mean, I have done world-changing events but unlike the Forgotten Realms they're extremely unusual. I guess if it did happen we'd have to have some kind of diverging timeline event and split the universes at that point. We do have some basic restrictions. Time travel doesn't really work for example, if you could travel back in time it would just create time "branches". Wishes simply aren't powerful enough to change things that aren't fairly local and, again, you can't change time because once the crones weave the tapestry even the gods can't undo it.

So yes, PCs can and do have major impact both positive and negative but the ripple effect will take time to spread to other regions.

 

[Oofta]

Honestly, I don’t see “the king as an imposter” as a major secret, and I definitely agree that a DM doesn’t need to reveal everything to make an interesting adventure.

I am describing something more like the DM refusing to tell the players important elements of the world, under the guise that it is better if the players are surprised or that the characters wouldn’t know, such that the campaign will have a nautical theme, or that the characters will spend considerable time in forests.

Being nautically themed instead of urban would be another example. Another would be something like, I don't know, switching over to a space fantasy esper genesis game like somebody else mentioned.

I will say that sometimes campaigns can shift in ways the DM didn't even expect. I remember an interview with an author that said something along the lines of some of their characters surprising them in the direction that they took. I can kind of empathize because sometimes I'll end up changing the campaign in ways I never really meant to that just seemed like a good idea at the time.

I will say though, that if I pitch an urban campaign it will be mostly urban. There might be some fish out of water sessions, but it's going to be the exception not the rule. I'm just not sure the switch-e-roo happens all that often. Maybe it's happened to other people, but I don't see the point.

 

[FrogReaver]

I only check these forums about twice a day, and many times in this thread by the time I check them, it has moved 7 to 9 pages, about 140 to 180 posts.

I don't want to spam the thread with single responses after single response, especially since it can take me nearly two hours sometimes to work through that many posts and responses. I understand it can be easy to gloss over, that is why I started doing the break lines between different posters, to try and make it easier to chunk it out.

No problem. I understand. You were trying to make it easier on us. Thank you for trying.

But if this is what it takes for people to stop accusing me of lying, guess I'm changing my entire posting style.

I think just be aware of post length. Thinking through, 2 multiquote replies (as long as they aren't further separated out in your replies) is definitely fine. As a rule of thumb I'd say 4 is probably about the limit and that's presuming you don't have alot to say about a particular one.

I'm not sure it would particularly help with the lying part. But people will read more of what you are saying.

 

[clearstream]

Certainly letting the wizard know something like that ahead of time is good GM form, but at the same time having an adventure with traps in it and knowing the party doesn't have a rogue to disarm them (this was a 2e adventure) means that making rulings against creative solutions is punishing your players for doing what you are asking you to do.

When it comes to the ruling itself, I believe a DM should exercise restraint in adding unspecified side-effects to spells and features. However, given levitate was ruled to work as it did, you might have just levitated something inanimate, set off all the traps, and then proceeded... unless the DM also ruled that the traps could indefinitely reset themselves. In which case....

We told him that if the fighter was dead the party was going to die soon as well, so we would all just bring his body back to town, give him a burial, and that would be the end of the story.

If we took 10 minutes up real time searching around on our character sheets to come up with the levitating shield plan and the GM arbitrarily determined that it would set off the traps anyway ONLY BECAUSE THEY DECIDED AFTER THE FACT TO ADD A LIMITATION TO YOUR POWER then I'm pretty much checked out of the game at that point.

On the one hand, I am always as DM okay with a narrative arc ending futilely. Be that by TPK, crushed morale, party lacking skills to continue (and the initiative or funds to hire an NPC rogue!), etc. So had party proposed that - I would have been disappointed by their lack of initiative, but sure - they return to town and bury their fighter. Some other party presumably eventually solves the dungeon.

I always have other lines that play can proceed along and my basic position is that the players - not me - decide if they want to take on any given challenge. If they turn back from the dungeon for no reason at all, and decide to wander that pleasant looking woods instead, I am okay with that. There could be consequences, of course, where that seems plausible.

With the strong caveat that I was not there and perhaps you did not intend this to come across as it does, the situation sounds adversarial. By the time a group of players are strong-arming their DM with threats of abandoning play, it sounds like a group is off on a bad footing.

 

[oriaxx77]

The DM is the ultimate authority since the rules are just guidelines and don't cover every situation. If you abuse this your players will eventually leave so you have to find the sweet spot and you need to know when to modify a rule for a specific situation and you need to listen to the players as well if they have a counter arugment and such.