D&D General DM's: How transparent are you with game mechanics "in world?"

[doctorbadwolf]

Societal pressures, otherwise known as the social contract have already failed if the DM is abusing his power. Making new rules won't change someone like that.

This isn't quite true. I've very different behavior from the same DM in different iterations of dnd, and with different group expectations, too many times to leave this unchallenged.

Many DMs simply assume that their word is law, and that's it, and that if they bend on that the game will (somehow, magically) not work. Not because they're abusing their (granted by the will of the group) authority, but because that is how they were taught to DM. When presented with, say, the rules of 4e, I have seen at least half a dozen DMs change how they DM, because the rules tell them they can just relax and say yes, and that the players are important, too. Those DM have nearly all stuck with the new paradigm they discovered with 4e, because both they and thier players had more fun that way.

The rules absolutely can and do push DMs and players toward certain behaviors over others.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

This is what it says about the two types of magic.

• the background magic that is part of the D&D multiverse’s physics and the physiology of many D&D creatures
• the concentrated magical energy that is contained in a magic item or channeled to create a spell or other focused magical effect

If you are extending it to anything beyond a creature, you are homebrewing that answer to fit your world. That piece of advice is ONLY for creatures.

It is explicitly not only for creatures.

 

[Maxperson]

No, please read the first bullet point above, there are two parts, before and after the "and". Yes, it's part of the physiology of many D&D creatures, but it is ALSO part of the D&D multiverse's physics.

It would also be **** to pretend that "background magic" is background only to creatures.

At best given the context of the question and first portion of the response, it explains natural phenomenon that also seems magical. It doesn't cover normal things like lava and frankly, it's a cop-out to be like, "It's magic!" as an answer for everything that doesn't make complete sense with regard to real world situations.

 

[Lyxen]

At best given the context of the question and first portion of the response, it explains natural phenomenon that also seems magical.

Why are you being so reductive about this? There is no such distinction in the text, it only refers to the fact that there is background magic that is part of the multiverse's physics. That is part of nature, exactly like the wind "In D&D, the first type of magic is part of nature. It is no more dispellable than the wind.".

And I'm sorry, but "natural phenomenon that also seems magical" seems to perfectly cover "lava that does not burn you unless you fall in it, does not poison your from gasses, and does not cool down quickly when flowing through otherwise cool areas"...

It doesn't cover normal things like lava and frankly, it's a cop-out to be like, "It's magic!" as an answer for everything that doesn't make complete sense with regard to real world situations.

And yet, IMHO, it's better to say that it's part of the background magic of the multiverse than just saying "it works because of the story".

 

[Lanefan]

I live it so very much ! It was one of the brilliant breakthroughs of 4e, and thankfully continued in 5e.

Creating High Level NPCs was an absolute nightmare in 3e. Took me 3 hours to make it technically palatable, all of that for a single fight where most of the carefully calculated abilities were actually mostly useless. Total pointless waste of time which I'd much rather had spent on his personality or history.

That's a fault of the system, not the principle.

Character creation in 3.x was wa-ay too complex, no argument there at all; and that's what needed fixing.

 

[Mannahnin]

That's a fault of the system, not the principle.

Character creation in 3.x was wa-ay too complex, no argument there at all; and that's what needed fixing.

I find that even when running 1E or OSE, making an NPC party is a significantly greater, more time consuming and annoying task than constructing virtually any other sort of encounter, group of antagonists or enemies. This is because the rules for PCs are written to service an different game purpose and set of needs and priorities than the rules for monsters.

 

[Lanefan]

I am happy that my players don't try to figure out the mechanics behind monsters. I'd think it's a slippery slope. If all monsters should be built with the same rules as PCs, what about vehicles, traps, weather phenomena, buildings? Next thing the rules lawyer is gonna tell me you can't really have a lava river running through a dungeon because realistically the atmosphere would be toxic and lethally hot my monsters shouldn't survive.

And IMO your players would be quite right in doing so. (and they'd next have to worry about the survival of their PCs in said toxic environment )

If there's no reliable foundation of in-setting physics to work from, the players have nothing to base their imaginations on and thus have no idea how things are going to work.

TL;DR: I want a lava river in a dungeon, so zero transparency on mechanics when I am the DM.

Nothing wrong with a lava river, but it's incumbent on you-as-DM to think through the ramifications and have it all make sense.

 

[Lanefan]

And that's exactly one of the things that 3e made worse, with these expectations from the players that everything was available to them (player-centricity). For some groups, it did not matter, for others it was OK, but some groups went completely overboard with the concept (which is what KotDT made fun of with the requests for dungeon auditing post-session), insisting on full transparency and the need to be able to second-guess everything that the monsters could do to be able to play tactically to their heart's contents.

Nothing wrong with that as a playstyle in and of itself if everyone wants to play like this at a table, but some people need to realise that it's not a due, that it's not bad DMing or playing not to show everything to the players, and that (as with any other playstyle), forcing that playstyle on people who don't want it is not good table etiquette. There are other playstyles which are just as valid and who feed much better on the mystery and secrecy of the world and its inhabitants.

There's a big difference between players demanding that everything "under the hood" be made available to them and players expecting the setting to function in consistent and believable ways.

I don't think a DM should be expected to show everything (or anything, for that matter, that they don't need to know) to the players; but I do expect the DM to have her setting be consistent and believable in how it functions on an ongoing basis, thereby making any exceptions (such as a lava river that doesn't generate insane amounts of heat in an enclosed space) easily called out as exceptions by PCs in the game-world just like they would be by us in real life.

 

[Maxperson]

And yet, IMHO, it's better to say that it's part of the background magic of the multiverse than just saying "it works because of the story".

Not even close. Saying that it's lava gnomes(or some other story reason) is far better than, "Because magic!!!!!" In order for it to "work because story," you need to come up with the story. I thought you said that you gave up powergaming for roleplaying. If that's true, then I would think that coming up with a story reason for things would be preferred by you.

 

[Lanefan]

I find that even when running 1E or OSE, making an NPC party is a significantly greater, more time consuming and annoying task than constructing virtually any other sort of encounter, group of antagonists or enemies. This is because the rules for PCs are written to service an different game purpose and set of needs and priorities than the rules for monsters.

My take on it, having built a gajillion NPCs for 1e over the years, is to just assign numbers etc. rather than rolling them all and then put them to this key test: could what I've just dreamed up be a reasonable and-or achievable result if it had been rolled up in full?

In other words, if I'd rolled it up properly could I have generated this character? If yes, all is good. If no, I've done something wrong.

Example: Dwarves in my game can't be arcane casters. Therefore, if I've a need for an arcane caster in a Dwarven setting I either have to make it a non-Dwarf or come up with a plan B that doesn't require an arcane caster. I can't just decide "Oh, this NPC Dwarf is an Illusionist even though PC Dwarves can't be" because if I do I violate my own setting and the players would have every right to protest.

Second example: Gnomes in my setting have a maximum possible strength of 16. If I want a Gnome NPC with Strength 19 I'm going to have to give it a magic item to get it there, in full awareness that if-when the PCs defeat said Gnome they're almost certainly going to loot it and get the strength-bestowing item. I can't just arbitrarily declare "This Gnome goes to 19".