D&D General DM Authority

[FrozenNorth]

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go threaten a company with an "upset" takeover.

Strange example, given that a “hostile” takeover is simply the opposite of a “friendly” takeover, and does necessarily involve any raised voices.

 

[Scott Christian]

When I played Monopoly with my family as a kid we quickly reached consensus on which rules we would use and which we would ignore. Why should it be any more difficult with a game of D&D?

What if consensus can't be reached on where to go for dinner? Or what music to listen to? What to watch on Netflix? Is there always someone in these situations who is the "authority" who gets to make the final decision?

I would argue that compromise and collaboration are two important parts of what you call GM Authority. For example, one compromise a GM makes is that they will refer first to the rules when making a decision. The GM should be the facilitator of the game, and there are many ways they can make that role work. Being a final arbiter of rules is one way, but it's not the only way.

I would question those analogies, as they are in no way representative of taking on the work of running a campaign, dealing with a 250 page rulebook, and then allowing players to do whatever they want. Going to dinner is not the same. Choosing a show is not the same?

On a side note, even in your examples, there is generally someone in the relationship that does choose these things. This way there is not a debate over what to eat every night. I go grocery shopping. I cook. Sure I ask for my wife's input. But, you need someone to make decisions. That's one of the conflicts young people have - wanting to listen to their music or eat their food. They want control over some aspect of their life. Hence, when you get four guys together and they all have different musical tastes, they all try to "control the jukebox" as it were. No leader can create issues (not always).

 

[Thomas Shey]

I would question those analogies, as they are in no way representative of taking on the work of running a campaign, dealing with a 250 page rulebook, and then allowing players to do whatever they want. Going to dinner is not the same. Choosing a show is not the same?

On a side note, even in your examples, there is generally someone in the relationship that does choose these things. This way there is not a debate over what to eat every night. I go grocery shopping. I cook. Sure I ask for my wife's input. But, you need someone to make decisions. That's one of the conflicts young people have - wanting to listen to their music or eat their food. They want control over some aspect of their life. Hence, when you get four guys together and they all have different musical tastes, they all try to "control the jukebox" as it were. No leader can create issues (not always).

The problem is this objection assumes there's never a clear-cut consensuses; we aren't usually talking here about questions with five different answers for five different people; we're often talking about two, and its not exactly hard for five people to decide between two options (assuming neither no one wants to decide, or its not so self-evident no one needs to decide)

Now, you can have a situation potentially where five different people strongly want different things in terms of basic campaign issues--but there's good reason to question whether they should be playing together in the first place.

(This is why I keep repeating that discussing how easy it is to make rules decisions collectively and campaign decisions collectively is not as useful as it could be because they're not really the same question.)

 

[Maxperson]

And I have seen both. Fortunately it was not directed at me but an other player. He was pretty obnoxious and was in a divorce procedure (but we were not aware). It took all my diplomatic skill not to have a fight at my table between that player and two others. When we learned that he was in divorce procedure we understood his attitude and invited him back at the table. (We had not replaced him yet). He came back and he's been more than ok ever since.

All that to say that sometimes, even after such an episode, giving a chance to someone to explain himself might go a long way to heal hurted ego.

I've seen it as well. Hell, I was involved one time. Years ago, during second edition, I was in a game with a party that unknown to the players made it to the outskirts of Myth Drannor. One of the players was playing a Thief and he took it to heart. Our stuff disappeared out of our sacks and such for quite a while. Eventually he screwed up and hit us while we were out in the wilderness, so we knew for certain that it was him. The Priest fire trapped all of our pouches, bags and packs, keying them to us so that we didn't set them off.

In the middle walking through this dangerous ruined city he tried to pick my pocket and steal from my pouch while we were walking. The DM described the explosion that went off, and us turning to see him with a soot covered face and his hand in my pouch. At that point the guy actually said, "I'm not moving from this spot until someone heals me." That was when I as party leader said, "Okay. You wait here by yourself while we continue to explore these deadly ruins without you." He changed his tune at that point and continued on with us. Fast forward to us returning to town. Again as party leader it fell to me to take care of the problem and I let his PC(not the player who we didn't have an issue with) know that he was no longer welcome in the party and had to leave.

The player became livid. He started screaming at me, stood up and got in my face about an inch away and accused me of racism and targeting him because he was black. I tried to explain why we decided his PC had to go, but he wouldn't listen and just kept up the accusation. At that point my temper went and I told him to get out of my face or we could step outside and settle this. He said okay, which would have been a mistake since he was smaller than me and I'm not exactly a big guy. At that moment the DM, who also happened to be my martial arts teacher, stopped watching and stepped in very quickly to separate us.

He talked to the guy outside for a while and calmed him down. When he came back inside he wouldn't meet my eyes, but gave me looks when he thought I wasn't looking. We still didn't kick him out of the group, but he stopped coming a few weeks later.

 

[mcrow]

The DM in my view is the arbiter of the rules.

Open discussion of gameplay and rules should be allowed by the DM but after discussion, the DM should have the final say.

I guess generally speaking all of my DMs have been on the easy-going line , no power trips or anything which is good.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I've been pretty clear. At a minimum it implies anger.

Sure, but "anger" takes many forms. Many of them are perfectly acceptable and appropriate in this scenario. Which is my point. Going from anger to violence and screaming matches is taking an unnecessary step

 

[Chaosmancer]

Throwing tables? Yelling at people? In my house? At my table? Be ready to see a 6'1" 225 pounds man comming right at you to calm you down. If you don't, be ready to get out and you might not even touch the ground. Never had to do it and I hope I'll never will. But I would do it if it ever went up to these heights...

I much prefer to settle things down with a calm voice. It helped me a lot when I was teaching and it helps a lot even now in my work as a power engineer in chief. I hate conflict, but I would not back down.

Needless to say that this player would need to get out and in order to come back at my table, apologies would be required and a lot of discussions would take place to understand what happened.

Again, the whole point is that "hostile" doesn't necessarily mean all of that.

It can just be strong words and anger, no need to assume any violence or screaming.

 

[Chaosmancer]

If you get angry over a game, something has gone terribly wrong with the person getting angry. Barring someone getting angry at the player, nothing in the game should prompt anger. Disappointment or dislike, sure. Anger, no. If you are getting so angry over the game that you are breaking down into tears or throwing chairs, you should seek help.

You left out part. You left out the part where I said that even then, most of them are ALSO including anger, mixing the two definitions. It's downright rare to have it used correctly, which I also said.

Being angry at someone for pulling the rug out from under you is perfectly natural.

Getting that angry is a problem, yes, if you are getting to that point there is more going on.

Getting angry at all is not a problem, and would still qualify as taking a hostile stance.

 

[loverdrive]

Ok, since vast majority of the thread was about players wanting some overpowered naughty word, I guess it's a good idea to take a step back and think about overpowered naughty word.

Like, in video games, I can think of two reasons why being overpowered can be fun. In some games there's satisfying visceral feeling of tearing enemies from limb to limb, walking through the game like a god of war -- because videogames have ways to make the most boring things ever into an exciting experience. In others, being overpowered lets you skip boring sections -- like in Morrowind where god mod and ridiculous damage saves you from oh so exciting experience of clicking at the enemy watching dated animations and listening SFX that makes my ears bleed over and over again.

The first one doesn't apply to tabletop games (at least, for now, as there's still no fancy VR tables or whatever).

But let's focus a bit on the second one. Maybe the actual reason for the player to want like +100500 magic sword is a desire to just cut out combat out of the game?

 

[Chaosmancer]

I would question those analogies, as they are in no way representative of taking on the work of running a campaign, dealing with a 250 page rulebook, and then allowing players to do whatever they want. Going to dinner is not the same. Choosing a show is not the same?

Why not?

Well,I guess first of all what do you mean "dealing with a 250 page rulebook" the Dm doesn't have to be the person with the most rules knowledge. Even running the campaign could be fairly simple depending on the type of campaign they want to run.

On a side note, even in your examples, there is generally someone in the relationship that does choose these things. This way there is not a debate over what to eat every night. I go grocery shopping. I cook. Sure I ask for my wife's input. But, you need someone to make decisions. That's one of the conflicts young people have - wanting to listen to their music or eat their food. They want control over some aspect of their life. Hence, when you get four guys together and they all have different musical tastes, they all try to "control the jukebox" as it were. No leader can create issues (not always).

Why do you need someone to make decisions? Can people not agree on things?

Clearly you don't think so, because you added a bit, a "not always" to the equation. And that, and that alone, has been what I keep trying to tell people. Yes, it can cause issues, yes it can be more difficult, but it is also possible that a group of people can decide something without needing to call on a third party to make the decision for them.

It happens all the time. Especially since, in a lot of those types of scenarios people keep bringing up outside of the game, they need to decide on someone to take that "leadership" role in the first place.