D&D General Dungeon Master or Referee?

[Reynard]

Fairness, on the DM's part, extends into the fiction as well.

Gygax emphasizes his point of "Always give a monster an even break", and he's right: a DM has to be fair to the opponents just as she has to be fair to the PCs.

Further, if a DM is fair to the PCs in the fiction then by extension she almost can't help but be fair to the players at the table.

This is only true in certain kinds of games in which the players are looking for a specific experience that includes threat and difficulty. After many, many years of doing this, I have discovered that it is a rare group that actually wants that. Most players, in my experience, want something just hard enough to feel accomplished with few if any permanent consequences of that difficulty (along with wanting a story presented to them rather than emergent). And they don't like too many choices, by and large. They want two, three options max for any given decision point, and two or three decision points in any given adventure.

Note that none of the above is my preferred game to GM. I like sandbox campaigns with self motivated players willing to risk it all for great rewards to create a tale worth telling. It's just a rare group that wants all that.

 

[R_Chance]

This is only true in certain kinds of games in which the players are looking for a specific experience that includes threat and difficulty. After many, many years of doing this, I have discovered that it is a rare group that actually wants that. Most players, in my experience, want something just hard enough to feel accomplished with few if any permanent consequences of that difficulty (along with wanting a story presented to them rather than emergent). And they don't like too many choices, by and large. They want two, three options max for any given decision point, and two or three decision points in any given adventure.

Note that none of the above is my preferred game to GM. I like sandbox campaigns with self motivated players willing to risk it all for great rewards to create a tale worth telling. It's just a rare group that wants all that.

Guess I get to tell my players that they are "rare" And that I'm lucky.

 

[pemerton]

if you think the game will be more fun if the characters go to Port Sul, and you can gently nudge them into that direction, then why not?

Why not just suggest it upfront? I don't really get the need for "nudging".

 

[pemerton]

@Lanefan, when Gygax says "Always give the monsters an even break" - which from memory is in ALL-CAPS - I think he is fairly clearly talking figuratively or with exaggeration for effect. He is giving advice on how not to be too "soft" as a GM - as @Helldritch elaborated on in replaying to my post upthread.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Why not just suggest it upfront? I don't really get the need for "nudging".

For the same reasons we generally pretend that it's a real world with unfolding events.

 

[Charlaquin]

This is only true in certain kinds of games in which the players are looking for a specific experience that includes threat and difficulty. After many, many years of doing this, I have discovered that it is a rare group that actually wants that. Most players, in my experience, want something just hard enough to feel accomplished with few if any permanent consequences of that difficulty (along with wanting a story presented to them rather than emergent). And they don't like too many choices, by and large. They want two, three options max for any given decision point, and two or three decision points in any given adventure.

I’ve found that players are fine with more options at a decision point, if two or three options are directly presented and options beyond those are accepted. Most players don’t do real well with “anything,” but they do just fine with “A, B, C, or anything else.”

 

[Bedrockgames]

Why not just suggest it upfront? I don't really get the need for "nudging".

I think this is a much better approach than nudging personally, and I like nothing more thsn a sense of real believable world. But nudging to me is a soft form of railroading (possibly railroading depending on how it is done). I would much rather the GM tell us out of game that he or she has an adventure planned in port sul that night. With that premise I am happy to buy in if I know in advance but the nudging feels…like an odd dance where the Gm can’t say explicitly we have to go to port sul, but in actuality we have to. My experience with players is, if there are parameters like this, that can be fine but being upfront and getting their buy in naked for a more positive experience

 

[pemerton]

For the same reasons we generally pretend that it's a real world with unfolding events.

My response here is much closer to @Bedrockgames's. Having to "hunt" for the action is something I find a bit frustrating.

I've got no problem with giving it an an-fiction overlay so as to maintain continuity, but I don't think that requires coyness on the GM's part.

The in-fiction overlay might vary depending on other features of system and the particular game being played. Eg in an "adventure of the week"-style game, maybe the GM says OK, so on the instructions of so-and-so you've travelled to Port Sul. In a more player-driven game, presumably the whole Port Sul adventure is already relevant to some thing the players are working towards, and so the GM says OK, so your researches into how to achieve XYZ show that the answer is at Port Sul, with an apothecary known as Hazen. After a few days travel, you arrive there. Do you try and track down Hazen straight away?

Eg in my Classic Traveller game, the PCs were investigating an alien ship that had travelled in time and was linked somehow to psionics. They had made the necessary Computer checks to interpret its data and play back the ship's records. And the players therefore asked where the ship had come from. So I had to tell them something! Having anticipated this, and having made up the world in question and placed it on the star map, I was able to give an answer. And so the next bit of action was preparing to travel, and then travelling to that world - Zinion.

Classic Traveller isn't really a "say 'yes' or roll the dice" game - it's a bit more of a PbtA "if you do it, you do it" approach. So we didn't just say After a week in jump space, you arrive at Zinion. We did the refuelling, and the drive failure checks, and all the procedural rigmarole that Traveller requires. (Full actual play account here.)

Maybe that's what you would characterise as a nudge? To me, it's just clear framing: we all want the next thing to be looking for alien ruins on Zinion; the logic of the map puts Zinion over there; the rules of the game require you to make these checks in order for us to be allowed to agree that your PCs have got from here to over there; so we resolve those checks and (given that at our table they were successful) we narrate the arrival at Zinion and you start declaring actions that will help you find the alien ruins.

I see this as very similar the player-driven version of the drip to Port Sul I described above.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

My response here is much closer to @Bedrockgames's. Having to "hunt" for the action is something I find a bit frustrating.

I've got no problem with giving it an an-fiction overlay so as to maintain continuity, but I don't think that requires coyness on the GM's part.

The in-fiction overlay might vary depending on other features of system and the particular game being played. Eg in an "adventure of the week"-style game, maybe the GM says OK, so on the instructions of so-and-so you've travelled to Port Sul. In a more player-driven game, presumably the whole Port Sul adventure is already relevant to some thing the players are working towards, and so the GM says OK, so your researches into how to achieve XYZ show that the answer is at Port Sul, with an apothecary known as Hazen. After a few days travel, you arrive there. Do you try and track down Hazen straight away?

Eg in my Classic Traveller game, the PCs were investigating an alien ship that had travelled in time and was linked somehow to psionics. They had made the necessary Computer checks to interpret its data and play back the ship's records. And the players therefore asked where the ship had come from. So I had to tell them something! Having anticipated this, and having made up the world in question and placed it on the star map, I was able to give an answer. And so the next bit of action was preparing to travel, and then travelling to that world - Zinion.

Classic Traveller isn't really a "say 'yes' or roll the dice" game - it's a bit more of a PbtA "if you do it, you do it" approach. So we didn't just say After a week in jump space, you arrive at Zinion. We did the refuelling, and the drive failure checks, and all the procedural rigmarole that Traveller requires. (Full actual play account here.)

Maybe that's what you would characterise as a nudge? To me, it's just clear framing: we all want the next thing to be looking for alien ruins on Zinion; the logic of the map puts Zinion over there; the rules of the game require you to make these checks in order for us to be allowed to agree that your PCs have got from here to over there; so we resolve those checks and (given that at our table they were successful) we narrate the arrival at Zinion and you start declaring actions that will help you find the alien ruins.

I see this as very similar the player-driven version of the drip to Port Sul I described above.

What I mean by nudging might be providing an improvised plot hook or possibly some rearranging of things behind the curtains. Like characters meet other travellers at the roadside inn and learn that they're travelling to Port Sul because there is going to be a Festival of Spirits there. Or indeed your apothecary example. Perhaps the GM had not originally though of Hazen, or though they might live somewhere else, but wanted to combine this thread into other treads that were at Port Sul, so the characters' learn that Hazen is there as well.

And one thing I already wanted to say in the railroad thread, which is relevant here as well. I don't usually have strong feelings as GM what specific thing the players should do; as long as they do something they seem to be interested in, then fine by me. Such nudging simply is to avoid lulls where the players are just confused and/or bored and have no ideas of what to do or to tie separate things together into more satisfying whole.

 

[Reynard]

What I mean by nudging might be providing an improvised plot hook or possibly some rearranging of things behind the curtains. Like characters meet other travellers at the roadside inn and learn that they're travelling to Port Sul because there is going to be a Festival of Spirits there. Or indeed your apothecary example. Perhaps the GM had not originally though of Hazen, or though they might live somewhere else, but wanted to combine this thread into other treads that were at Port Sul, so the characters' learn that Hazen is there as well.

And one thing I already wanted to say in the railroad thread, which is relevant here as well. I don't usually have strong feelings as GM what specific thing the players should do; as long as they do something they seem to be interested in, then fine by me. Such nudging simply is to avoid lulls where the players are just confused and/or bored and have no ideas of what to do or to tie separate things together into more satisfying whole.

It is really important for a GM to be agile and able to improvise. I much, much prefer an improvisational style, especially when filling in the details of a broad, overly vague "plan" regarding how things will go when the PCs interact with the situation I have created.

But it is equally important for players to recognize that the GM does prep, and communicating to the GM what their plans are is just polite so that the GM can prep. Sure, sometimes you are going to focus an something unexpected or even strike off in an unexpected direction, but the vast majority of the time the session can end with players saying, "We are headed off the Lord Dread's Keep" or whatever. And chances are, they are headed there because of the events that occurred in play, "nudging" or otherwise.