DM Empowerment vs. Player Entitlement - Is this really that prevalent?

[dkyle]

Cool, more power to you.

I will posit that it is a lot easier for you to tell them up front, "The goblin warchief is AC 17" than it is for me to keep that fact hidden if the game designers make it easily available to players.

Rattling off stats is immersion breaking. I think being able to intuit the sort of reasonable guesses about their enemies that the skilled combatants they are playing could be expected to make, encourages immersion. A system where defenses are highly unpredictable discourages that.

I'm not saying your desires are invalid, but it's not so simple that a game that caters to you is inherently adaptable to what I like. You're looking for a different kind of game than what I'm looking for.

 

[kitsune9]

So, where do the chips really fall on this issue? Is it really an issue or are some bad DMs and some bad players making both sides of this seem more prevalent than really needs to be addresed through the 5E ruleset?

In the OP's rant, it looked to be an example of bad DMing. The "Because I said so," fails on so many levels. Granted, it's good to have Rule 0, but it's not so great when it's used heavy-handed and arbitrarily or even worse-yet, in the middle of the game. Nothing is more frustrating than creating a character using the PH only to find in mid-game the DM says, "Oh, you picked that. Well, I don't like it. You don't get to use it."

However, on the other side of the coin there are bad players who try to use "logic" or realism in order to bend or break the rules. The example was another post in which the DM argued with the player about not being able to act because a guy charged him from a distance of 60 feet. The charging character won initiative, could charge, and attack. The player character was flat-footed, did not have initiative. Those were the rules, end of story. It may not seem "logical" or realistic, but it's the rule set in which to frame combat and play by.

There are ways to mitigate this behavior and this is what I do for my group:

1. I write up a campaign primer. It has the creation guidelines and what books are considered "legal" for play. If there is anything that I have banned, it's listed here. I rarely like to ban anything though unless it goes against the theme of the campaign.

2. I list all my houserules out and how they work. Everything else in the legal books applies. I only like to create thematic houserules for the specific campaign, but I will have only 1 or 2 actual houserules that will go from campaign to campaign. My personal rule of thumb is that I don't like creating a bunch of houserules.

3. If something turns out to be broken like a powerful feat/spell combo move, we'll discuss it after the session, but I will not, ever, ban or change it mid-stream in the game. If something annoys me, I let the player have his fun for the session and then we talk about it. If the player insists on keeping it, I usually acquiesce but with the warning that monsters / NPCs are likely to have it too if it's particularly effective.

Now for gamers who believe there should be DM empowerment / player entitlement, I would say there should be reasonable expectations in play. A player should be able to read the PH and play by the rules written. The DM should be able to establish before the campaign starts or after a session any house rules, modifications, or changes--hopefully to fit the theme of the campaign or to deal with problematic rules, but have a good reason to, and not to do so based on pettiness or whim.

 

[Hassassin]

Rattling off stats is immersion breaking. I think being able to intuit the sort of reasonable guesses about their enemies that the skilled combatants they are playing could be expected to make, encourages immersion. A system where defenses are highly unpredictable discourages that.

I think it's fun when the players don't know the target number at first but each hit or miss can help them pinpoint it. Kind of like they were fighting and observing the opponent and assessing his skills.

 

[Gryph]

I honestly haven't found many players who do this.

That said, I always toss around +1 to +3 modifiers to various stats of my NPCs to keep said orc raiding party from being too generic. Keeps people on their toes when every bandit has a different AC.

One of my players has been doing a lot of reading on monsters, I assume because he's expressed an interest in doing some DMing. Unfortunately he shares with the rest of the players. Its not a big problem and they don't argue with me or anything when I tell them the defenses are different.

I believe, maybe wrongly, that a certain amount of uncertainty about opponent abilities/capabilities adds to the dramatic tension of the game. I like perceived threat to the PCs better than actual threat. If the players know too much its harder to rachet the tension up with smoke and mirrors, I have to introduce real risk of character death or failure of another kind.

 

[Gryph]

Rattling off stats is immersion breaking. I think being able to intuit the sort of reasonable guesses about their enemies that the skilled combatants they are playing could be expected to make, encourages immersion. A system where defenses are highly unpredictable discourages that.

I'm not saying your desires are invalid, but it's not so simple that a game that caters to you is inherently adaptable to what I like. You're looking for a different kind of game than what I'm looking for.

I can see your point (and its not far from my own preference) that rattling off stats takes everyone away from the game fiction.

I disagree that unpredictable defenses is immersion breaking or rather that it is necessary for characters to have reasonable guesses to encourage immersion.

Life is quirky and unpredictable. A fantasy world with limited sources of reliable information should be unpredictable. I love the old maps that show blank areas labeled "terra incognita" or "Here there be dragons" and no other detail.

Don't take my disagreement too far though. I willingly tell players, "that guy looks fast he may be hard to hit" or "his armor looks better than average". I just don't want them to know exactly what that means.

 

[B.T.]

Here's how I run things. If I'm DMing, I'm the boss. I get to make the rules, I get to interpret the rules, I get to change the rules. You, as the players, are ultimately subject to my whims. You are allowed to make suggestions, to question my decisions, to argue with me. In the end, though, what I say goes. If you really hate my decisions, you are welcome to quit or start up your own group.

I expect no less from other DMs.

Now, I expect this makes me sound like a control freak jerk who punishes his players mercilessly for stepping out of line, which is not the case at all. I'm quite tolerant of and open to criticism, and I enjoy working with players.

 

[Sunseeker]

One of my players has been doing a lot of reading on monsters, I assume because he's expressed an interest in doing some DMing. Unfortunately he shares with the rest of the players. Its not a big problem and they don't argue with me or anything when I tell them the defenses are different.

I believe, maybe wrongly, that a certain amount of uncertainty about opponent abilities/capabilities adds to the dramatic tension of the game. I like perceived threat to the PCs better than actual threat. If the players know too much its harder to rachet the tension up with smoke and mirrors, I have to introduce real risk of character death or failure of another kind.

Perhaps you should talk to this guy on the side, while you can't stop him from looking this stuff up, you could probably ask him to not share this info with your other players.

 

[Gryph]

Perhaps you should talk to this guy on the side, while you can't stop him from looking this stuff up, you could probably ask him to not share this info with your other players.

Sure, offer me easy, practical advice.

Sorry, but I expect the designers of 5e to cater to my every whim and use fairy dust to fix all my problems for me.

 

[NewJeffCT]

DDI subs. The monster information is all readily available to the players who have subs for access to the character builder. I can no longer rely on the inherent cheapness of gamers to limit their access to monster manuals.

I think there is a point where too much player knowledge of the wireframe is a detriment to the exploration pillar of D&D, as I see it.

I would like to have the easy answer of monster customization that was "this orc is wearing +2 studded leather so his AC is 3 instead of 5". Currently, I can tweak level or AC if I want to, but the reason for the tweak isn't meaningful in the context of the character's world on in the context of the player's.

Like I said in an earlier post upthread, it's not a dealbreaker for me; I like 4e, overall. I just prefer the style of a more open mechanical system than 3e/4e have trended toward.

do you tell your players, "Oh, that's an orc archer there and that's an orc berserker, while the other one is an orc beastmaster..."? I might tell the players which orc is the biggest and/or appears to be the leader, but I don't give them the monster subtype.

The archer is AC:16, the berserker is AC:15, but the beastmaster is an AC:21. That's a pretty big spread in armor class within a small level range of monster (the archer & berserker are level 4, the beastmaster is level 5) for the encounter. If it's a level 4 party, the striker is going to hit the archer or berserker most of the time, but still has a decent shot to miss the beastmaster. That's assuming the striker is about +10 to hit AC, he'll hit the archer & berserker on a 5 or 6, but needs an 11 to hit the beastmaster.

 

[KesselZero]

I think it might be worth it to try to identify what the designers of 5e might mean by "DM empowerment." My sense from the playtest reports, seminars, etc. is that they're more or less talking about a framework and set of advice in which to give out small bonuses and penalties situationally, and to adjudicate events not explicitly covered by the rules (while simultaneously shrinking and simplifying the ruleset). DM empowerment, here, doesn't mean "give the DM more power," but rather "give the DM more tools to run a more flexible game." In that way I think it could benefit the players as well, as they will no longer be tied down to simply using the powers on their character sheets. For example, one of my favorite players in my regular campaign jumped directly from AD&D to 4e. He's constantly asking stuff like "Instead of attacking, can I hook the monk with the butt of my spear and pull him into the pit with me so he doesn't get killed by that Flame Sphere?" I always say yes, but a qualified yes, like "Sure, but you'll have to make an attack roll [against which I secretly set a fairly low target since it's not a real attack] and an Athletics check, and the monk will take some falling damage, which might be split with you if he lands on you." I'd love some guidance on how to run with creative moves like this.

Also, I'd add that DMs are always fundamentally empowered. There's an unwritten contract between the DM and the players even in the most "player-empowered" systems like 4e. As DM, I could throw Orcus at my fourth-level party if I wanted to, without breaking any RAW. And I would be a jerk, and my players would quit. I don't think that in most cases, giving the DM more flexibility with the rules will be the tipping point between a bad and a good DM.