D&D General DM Authority

[generic]

On one hand you are right, it isn't a job or a public service.

On the other hand, there are a lot of things like that, and that doesn't mean I shouldn't care about the "health" of those hobbies.

It isn't healthy for Football (either one) fans to go on rampages and destroy public property. It is a game you watch, not your job or a public service, but setting a good example as a fan is still the right thing to do.

It isn't healthy for some entertainment groups to be doing the things they are doing. It isn't my job to correct them, but I can still do things and model good behavior to help show that what they are doing isn't acceptable.


So why is it so strange to say that it isn't healthy for the game to treat the DM as a King, and that DMs just cycle through players leaving behind hurt feelings and horror stories, and this pervasive idea that this is how things work, especially since since you play with a group of friends, it doesn't harm you at all. It isn't like you are accepting a lot of new players, right?




If they players don't want to play the game, how are you forcing them to play? Why are you forcing them to play? What do you gain by forcing players to play a game they don't want to play?

This is Dungeons and Dragons, a game I collaboratively play with friends in order to have a good time. I see no reason why I should feel as though I have to act as a paragon, an example for all DMs. As for players leaving with horror stories, I'm not sure if you'd make me out to be some sort of Tyrant DM, but I've always implied, throughout this thread, that players who don't like the idea of my campaign are free to duck out.

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No one's forced to play my game. I'm equally not as forced to run the game they want to play. They can find another DM for that game.

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Actually, my friends often have to duck out, so I've had to accept lots of new players over the years. Some said they didn't like the idea of the campaign, and we parted ways with no hurt feelings. Others chose to stay, and accepted what kind of game I was running.

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I think that it's ultimately fair to argue that no DM should feel obligated to run something for the players, and only for the players. This is ultimately a hobby, and a good use of leisure time. Remember that all D&D is completely optional. And yes, I don't particularly feel the need to act as an ambassador for the hobby.

 

[Charlaquin]

See, I find this is kind of strange.

I mean, there is value in sticking to your guns I suppose, but this is a group activity with the goal of group enjoyment.

Part of my enjoyment of the activity is in the worldbuilding. I’m not unwilling to compromise, but there needs to be a give and take. You want me to DM, you want to play in the setting I’ve built, you want to play a Genasi, and you want to play in the material plane, and you aren’t willing to work with me to figure out why your character is there? And somehow I’m the one who’s being unreasonable

Edit: I almost missed it, but you did say you would be willing to run a different setting. Would you be willing to run a different homebrew setting?

I mean, hypothetically, if you take a setting to the table, and every time you bring it, the group says they aren't interested, would you create a different setting? Or would you insist that if you are running the game, you have to run your setting, whether they like it or not?

I certainly wouldn’t force the group to play in a setting they aren’t interested in. If they don’t like my setting, we can do something else. But it would be less work to find a different group of players than to create a new setting. And frankly, I’d rather find people to game with whose interests are more closely aligned with my own than run a game in a setting I don’t find interesting. My homebrew setting certainly isn’t the only setting I find interesting, but I’m guessing of the table is so opposed to it, we’re not super likely to land on a setting we do all agree on.

I feel like this gets into this idea of the DM authority vs the Group. Where do we start seeing the DM overriding the entire group? I've never seen it happen, and most of the time I've heard about it, it is a story about a Bad DM.

That’s because most people don’t tend to stick with groups who don’t share their interests for long. If there’s a regular need for anybody to be overruling anybody, the group will probably end up breaking up in short order.

 

[Guest 6801328]

But seriously, why would I spend even one moment of my leisure time doing something I don't like? Do people do that?

I'm still reading this thread. So, there's that.

 

[Charlaquin]

I'm still reading this thread. So, there's that.

DM Authority seems to be the new Goal and Approach

 

[Thomas Shey]

(10 pages behind, what the heck. Chunking a lot, since otherwise this is going to be unreasonably long)



Right, but I'm also wondering how much the unreasonable player is a bit of a red herring.

I'd describe it as an oversimplification rather than a red herring. "An unreasonable player" isn't necessarily unreasonable all the time. Sometimes I'm the unreasonable player because I have a blindspot, but its in a place I think is important.

Still, yes, some people are going to be very non-confrontational, but I also think that thinking about this only in terms of confrontations makes us miss some of the bigger points.

I chose my term deliberately. I've encountered players who absolutely were not going to tell someone they thought they were wrong about something unless they felt obliged to do so, because they felt it was potentially going to get a reaction they did not want to deal with. And with some people that's habitual, to the point where if you wait around for them to weigh-in on a game situation OOC, especially one that did not directly impact them, you would be waiting a long, long time.

For example, the analogy to board games makes a great point. If you and your friends pull out a game of monopoly, or a card game, who is empowered to resolve the conflicts and set the house rules you'll be using? There isn't a formal role for that, it is just assumed that the group can reach a consensus on their own. In fact, no board or card game assumes that position exists.

Players of those games could still cheat, but do they really tend to? Are there very many confrontations about the rules, at least those that require more than just pulling the rulebook and checking them again?

I suspect that heavily depends on how complex the rules are. It also doesn't hurt that boardgame rules can be written exhaustively, so there are not likely (in a well designed one) to be cases outside the direct and obvious purview of the extent rules.

Yeah, I've often had very shy players. And sometimes getting them to speak up about anything is very hard.

Getting them to speak up about disagreeing with me? It would never happen. Even if it should.

And the nonconfrontational types, the types who decide its not their place, the types who feel like both sides are being dumb--there's a long list of people who will, if not, effectively, compelled, sit that out. There's far too many reasons for people not to buck a GM for their passive acquiesence to be particularly significant.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Sure. If the DM is planning to radically alter the game from the expectations, that's probably worth talking with the players about. So, maybe the dungeon being a spaceship doesn't need to be mentioned, if the players are cool with that particular flavor of gonzo. Might be a thing better done if you really know your players--or maybe with total strangers.

I suspect opening the can of worms about bait-and-switch campaign premises is not going to do this thread any favors.

 

[prabe]

I suspect opening the can of worms about bait-and-switch campaign premises is not going to do this thread any favors.

Yeah. Oops.

 

[overgeeked]

Wow. I’m only two pages in and the assumptions are wild.

Everyone should be willing to talk and listen. But when it comes down to it, the players defer to the DM. That’s how it works. You invest the DM with authority over the game when you expect them to come up with the game, know the rules, run all the NPCs, entertain you, engage you with an interesting story, and all the other things you expect a decent DM to do on a regular basis. They can’t do those things without having authority over the game.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Good thing I play with people who have the common sense to know that Goku doesn't fit in Fantasy, or a Warforged in Low Fantasy.

And this is where we start having problems.

Goku can fit into Fantasy. In fact, he and the other Z-Fighters are a fantasy setting a lot of the time, having fought a minimum of at least three wizards and a four or five demons, probably more than that on both counts. Additionally, the Sun Soul monk seems to draw a lot of inspiration from that style of "martial character"

A warforged in Low Fantasy? Maybe your player thinks Low Fantasy is Low Magic, and their warforged is entirely based upon clockwork and runs off science. If it isn't magic, it fits.

But, these misunderstandings are going to lead to you getting upset that they are trying to "pull one over on you" instead of it quite literally being perfectly within line from their perspective.

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Here's another hot take : RPGs are not a seller's market. They are a matchmaking market and by not valuing the people they play with enough many GMs lose out. Also players often lose out by giving their power away prematurely.

Until I realized that I needed to actively advocate for what I was looking for on both sides of the screen I was having a deeply unsatisfying play experience. We should all expect more from the people we play with and stop giving our power away.

I do not think anyone is obligated to run a game they do not want to, but GMs should value and respect the people they play with more and see them as peers. That peer relationship for me is mandatory. I would rather not play (on either side of the screen) than play without it. I think people becoming passive because of a culture of play where they are undervalued is a huge problem in gaming. I know it makes it harder for me to recruit the sort of players I am looking to play with.

This, exactly 1000%

There is a tone and possibly an attitude I've been seeing a lot on these forums, and with certain youtube DnD celebrities, that the players are a problem the DM controls.

And... that is just wrong to me. Fundamentally wrong. It is like saying that a Football team is a bunch of problems controlled by their coach so that they don't mess everything up, level of wrong.

And part of this that I think we can control, even if we are only running at our own tables for our own friends and never interact with the wider community, is to start really adopting the idea that our players are valuable partners in the game.

You know, I was just on a site where I write a game I've best been describing as "Twitch plays DnD", and I saw another poster doing an idea very similar to mine. So, I joined up.

We ended up going variant human, and getting a feat. And Lucky was put on the list.

Now, having some experience with the format, I urged people not to pick Lucky. It would be a massive pain in the butt to use, in what is basically closest to a play by post style with a timer. The DM told me not to worry, he had a solution for Lucky.

He would just increase the difficulty of everything and make us burn our luck points early, so it wouldn't be a problem.

Not only is this a problem (and thank the good lord they ended up taking my advice for moderately armored, which might make solo play as a Genie Warlock survivable) but since this person seemed to have this solution already in hand it implies to me that they had applied this to their IRL game table. Or had it applied to them. Which was not only to see the player's ability as a problem, but to use the levers of the game to invalidate the player's choice.

Which, I feel like is only possible, because there is an idea in the community that players are a problem to be managed, not partners to be collaborated with.


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This is Dungeons and Dragons, a game I collaboratively play with friends in order to have a good time. I see no reason why I should feel as though I have to act as a paragon, an example for all DMs. As for players leaving with horror stories, I'm not sure if you'd make me out to be some sort of Tyrant DM, but I've always implied, throughout this thread, that players who don't like the idea of my campaign are free to duck out.


And yes, I don't particularly feel the need to act as an ambassador for the hobby.

Maybe because there are an awful lot of DMs who are approaching things in a way that is actively harmful to players.

In my "Twitch plays DnD" type thing I am doing, early on I noticed something that stuck with me.


Most of the players were absolutely floored when I would tell them that something was a bad idea, or when I would not bite their heads off for asking questions. I got legitimately praised for telling them "this is a dangerous course of action, as your character understands it"

Why?

Because a lot of other people on the site would pull near constant "Gotcha's". Everything was a trap, everything was designed to kill the player off as soon as possible, and if they voted for the wrong option, BAM, game over losers.


And I've seen it in DnD too. How many dozens upon dozens of times have we seen in this thread "I run my game this way, and if you don't like it, there's the door"? And sure, maybe you are a perfectly fine DM with no major flaws. But not every DM is, and they give the same pitch, because the concept is "The DM decides what is okay to do, and the players listen."

In fact, the "cardinal sin" of players seems to be questioning the DM. They can either quit the game or shut up and take it. Those are their options. Questioning or arguing with the DM is a sign of a bad player.

So what happens to the player who sits down, with this mindset, that they can only nuclear option their game time, or just agree with the DM, and the DM is abrasive, rude, and hard to deal with... but not quite to the point that the player absolutely can't stand it. It is just enough of "not bad" that the player has to seriously consider, do I leave the game and roll the dice that the next DM isn't worse, or do I tough it out and try and have fun anyways.


And again, I understand. It isn't your job to police bad DMs. It isn't my job to police bad DMs. It isn't Minigiant or Thomas Shey or Jeremy Crawford's job to police bad DMs.

But, we can start seriously looking at the way we approach the game. We can ask ourselves, is there really any value in treating my players like they are disposable cogs that I can throw away whenever I don't like them? Is there any value in "Well, they can just DM themselves if they are so passionate about it" or "Well, they can just find a different DM then."


I agree, not every DM is for every player, not every campaign is for every player, not every choice is for every player. But we spend so much time and energy talking about Bad Players, about how players speaking up is bad, about players with different ideas is bad, about how players who don't like an aspect of your game world are bad.

And if you have a bad player, you punt them back out and grab the next cog to put in the machine. And you make sure the player knows this. If they don't like it, they can leave too, there are more players after all. You don't need them, they need you. And so people get turned off the hobby, people think that this is the only way it can work, that no other possible way of running the game could ever work.

But they can work. This isn't the only way to approach things. And I don't want to leave players feeling like expressing their opinions is an offense that gets them expelled from the table. Because they can have awesome ideas, and I want to hear them.

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Part of my enjoyment of the activity is in the worldbuilding. I’m not unwilling to compromise, but there needs to be a give and take. You want me to DM, you want to play in the setting I’ve built, you want to play a Genasi, and you want to play in the material plane, and you aren’t willing to work with me to figure out why your character is there? And somehow I’m the one who’s being unreasonable

Who said I want to play in a setting you built? That was the setting you offered, I never said I wanted it.

And why is this "me" when the example was five of the six players. Not one player doing this, but most of them doing this.

I certainly wouldn’t force the group to play in a setting they aren’t interested in. If they don’t like my setting, we can do something else. But it would be less work to find a different group of players than to create a new setting. And frankly, I’d rather find people to game with whose interests are more closely aligned with my own than run a game in a setting I don’t find interesting. My homebrew setting certainly isn’t the only setting I find interesting, but I’m guessing of the table is so opposed to it, we’re not super likely to land on a setting we do all agree on.

See, and this gets back into this.

If it is a single player, they can either change their position or leave.

But, if the entire group doesn't like your idea, you'll be more likely to leave and find a different group.

So, the DM doesn't have the authority to override the group. They can't do anything they want. Their authority is not final. The only time it seems final, is when the majority of the group agrees with the DM.

That’s because most people don’t tend to stick with groups who don’t share their interests for long. If there’s a regular need for anybody to be overruling anybody, the group will probably end up breaking up in short order.

Exactly.

For all this talk of the DM's "Absolute Authority" it only exists so long as the group agree with the DM, and if they have to use this supposed authority a lot, then the group is probably imploding.


So, why is it so hard to take this to the next step, where the DM is more in the position of Rules Expert and Referee compared to being an Authority that must be obeyed? Why can't we treat DnD like we would treat a game of poker or a game of Catan?

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I suspect that heavily depends on how complex the rules are. It also doesn't hurt that boardgame rules can be written exhaustively, so there are not likely (in a well designed one) to be cases outside the direct and obvious purview of the extent rules.

Cutting a lot of common agreements.

I am also an avid board gamer, and I have run into a lot of board games with edge cases and weird interactions. Things that when translated to DnD, would "require" the input of a DM.

But these games don't have a DM.

And also, how does the group decide which variant of the board game to play? This is a similar situation to deciding the genre of a DnD game.

We are being presented that it is the DMs sole right and sole responsibility to make that decision, but in a board game with multiple play modes, there is no DM to make that decision. So, how do we do it?

By reaching a group consensus. So, why can't we do that for DnD?

One reason seems to be that DMs are worried about being forced to run a game they hate. Which, that's fair, you shouldn't have to run a game you hate. But what about one that just isn't your favorite? What about one you have no idea if you will like or not?

Why can't this group decision making work in DnD? The biggest reason given so far seems to be that if the DM is getting overruled, they are going to leave the game. Which seems odd, considering that the proposed other way is that the DM can freely override the player in almost anything.

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Wow. I’m only two pages in and the assumptions are wild.

Everyone should be willing to talk and listen. But when it comes down to it, the players defer to the DM. That’s how it works. You invest the DM with authority over the game when you expect them to come up with the game, know the rules, run all the NPCs, entertain you, engage you with an interesting story, and all the other things you expect a decent DM to do on a regular basis. They can’t do those things without having authority over the game.

They can know the rules without having authority.
They can run NPCs without having authority (after all, players run PCs with no authority)
Don't see why engaging you with an interesting story requires authority.


I mean, this seems like the assumption is that if you can't tell the players no, you can't do anything.

 

[Charlaquin]

Who said I want to play in a setting you built? That was the setting you offered, I never said I wanted it.

I mean, presumably you read or listened to my pitch, and either agreed you wanted to play in the setting, or made a different suggestion.

And why is this "me" when the example was five of the six players. Not one player doing this, but most of them doing this.

The same argument still stands. Five of the six players wanted me to DM. Five of the six players wanted to play in my setting. Five of the six players wanted to play in the material plane. Five of the six players wanted Genasi to be a playable option. And five of the six players were unwilling to work with me to figure out how their Genasi characters fit into my setting’s material plane despite not being native to it. That’s the hypothetical you’ve proposed to me. I’m sorry, but I don’t think it would be unreasonable of me not to be willing to bend on all of those positions when they players are not willing to bend on any of them.

See, and this gets back into this.

If it is a single player, they can either change their position or leave.

But, if the entire group doesn't like your idea, you'll be more likely to leave and find a different group.

So, the DM doesn't have the authority to override the group. They can't do anything they want. Their authority is not final. The only time it seems final, is when the majority of the group agrees with the DM.

I do not claim the DM has unilateral authority. The DM is the arbiter of the rules, and often the curator of the setting. D&D is also a group activity, and navigating it therefore requires consideration for the other participants. And yes, that means the players can collectively decide not to support a DM’s rulings or creative decisions. These statements do not contradict each other.

Exactly.

For all this talk of the DM's "Absolute Authority"

All what talk of the DM’s absolute authority? The only people I see claiming the DM has absolute authority are the anti-DM authority crowd.

it only exists so long as the group agree with the DM, and if they have to use this supposed authority a lot, then the group is probably imploding.


So, why is it so hard to take this to the next step, where the DM is more in the position of Rules Expert and Referee compared to being an Authority that must be obeyed?

It isn’t. DM-as-Referee is in fact the very language of the pro-DM authority crowd.

I’m getting the impression you’re more opposed to the word “authority” than to the actual positions the people who say the DM has final authority espouse.

Why can't we treat DnD like we would treat a game of poker or a game of Catan?

Because D&D is asymmetrical and those games are not. D&D is designed for one player to control the environment and the other players to each control a single character within that environment.