D&D General DM Authority

[Thomas Shey]

Through reaching consensus?

Yeah. It might be more time consuming than some people like, but there's nothing impossible about it. I only do it intermittently, but I try to do so on anything important.

 

[prabe]

That's the point.
5e defaults to Herioc. Everything might require houserules.

And if the DM hasn't said anything about those houserules, why would the player presume houserules to allow mythic stunts like this are in play?

 

[Thomas Shey]

If that's not possible? I mean, what kind of consensus is there to a monk running so fast they can create a tornado?

7 people at the table (including the GM); 4 of them think its fine. If that's not good enough for me, I need to pick players with more congruent views than mine.

 

[generic]

The game engine is the ruleset. The players can install mods at the DM's purview. Often, the DM's gonna install a few mods of their own to spice things up. I see the DM as the ultimate arbiter by necessity. I'll take player input, because, ultimately, while I'm the rules arbiter, I'm not the judge of what's fun in the fiction.

As for the example of the Monk, my table tends to argue from real world examples when possible, but, in terms of one party member being able to do something beneficial for the party, I rarely see anyone objecting to an ally pulling off an insane stunt.

In fact, some of my best memories as a DM include players using in-game logic to skewer vampires on sharpened staves after throwing them off a rooftop, putting the actual rules of the Vampire's stat block aside in the name of fun. A better fiction for one player is almost always a tolerable fiction for everyone, as long as it's within reason.

 

[Oofta]

Okay, yeah. I think my gut reaction would have been to give the player a strange look and wagged my head no.

Buuuut, if I'd looked past my initial reaction, I think we'd both have been happier if I went with the move + ki trick I mentioned.

Yeah, I think I actually laughed out loud, said something about not being The Flash at which point several of the other players laughed. Probably not my best moment as DM but it was just so out of left field.

Normally if someone does something that's impossible or breaks the rules I'll ask what they're trying to accomplish and give them a suggestion or two. Improv is fine (and encouraged) and swinging from the chandelier is rewarded, if risky. But there has to be a line somewhere.

 

[FrogReaver]

7 people at the table (including the GM); 4 of them think its fine. If that's not good enough for me, I need to pick players with more congruent views than mine.

That ignores how the games are normally ran. You don’t default to consensus rulings because developing the consensus on a contentious topic (assuming one can even be developed) takes away from game time and everyone else’s enjoyment. The whole exercise breaks the flow of the game and usually puts at least some people out of the mindset to enjoy the rest of the game.

which is why before the game there’s a discussion or understanding typically reached about who to defer to on rules questions.

 

[prabe]

7 people at the table (including the GM); 4 of them think its fine. If that's not good enough for me, I need to pick players with more congruent views than mine.

If the table is playing a game where PCs can routinely stunt in such a manner (I'm most familiar with Mutants and Masterminds, but I'm positive there are others), then it's a fine thing to do and for the GM to allow. In 5E ... not so much. If the consensus at the table is they want to be playing something other than 5E, there's a simple solution to that.

 

[Minigiant]

And if the DM hasn't said anything about those houserules, why would the player presume houserules to allow mythic stunts like this are in play?

Because people are different?
There are many different images of a monk in many cultures and subcultures.

If the DM doesn't set the baseline assumption, any headaches they get from genre confusion is their own fault and falling back on Authority at that point erodes it.

 

[prabe]

Because people are different?

If the DM doesn't set the baseline assumption,any headaches they get from genre confusion is their own fault and falling back on Authority at that point erodes it.

If the DM presumes the rules as published in the book as the baseline, and the player presumes something else, I'm not sure how you can say the DM is entirely at fault here. Falling back on DM Authority is plausibly not the best way to handle it, but that's different than genre expectations.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Then why are you even playing together? And I seriously doubt that in such case, having someone to slam their fist on the table would make anyone happy.

Well, the answer to the first question is "Because its the only practical game in town, and everyone would rather play than not." That's why I'm willing to accept a majority vote rather than full consensus, because I don't really expect to get that about, well, anything.

I do agree that if a group can never reach reasonable consensus, or one or two people are always being shut-out there's some dysfunction there, but I'm not sure its any worse than the dysfunction of a group with a GM who feels the need to regularly overrule the group on things.

(One of the reasons I'm not completely in the "let the group decide" camp is that often the group as a whole just doesn't care, or some members don't care much, and as such is vulnerable to the more dominant personalities, who may well not really have the interests of the group as a whole in mind. But if I'm having to overrule half or more of my group on something when they actively want it, I think I'm doing something wrong).

Well, that seriously depends on type of game you're playing -- that sounds pretty reasonable in a game inspired by, say, Naruto, but wouldn't work in a game inspired by Conan. And if you aren't on the same page about the genre and the tone, then you need to solve that problem first.

Maybe I'm lucky and only ever played with reasonable people and there are tons of complete morons out there, but I have a pretty hard time imagining such scenario in an actual game. Unless there are some serious problem in communication, which can easily be solved, when such question arises.

I think you've probably been very fortunate in getting people who are good at getting on the same page. That's far, far from universal. Sometimes people just have radically different views of a situation, and sometimes its just an expectation clash.