Dungeon Mastering as a Fine Art

[Celebrim]

[MENTION=6776279]Your description of what is common among players isn't really something that I've experienced for 25-odd years. I've generally found that players want to engage the fiction.

'Engage the fiction' is such broad and vague term that I can't tell whether I agree or not, nor can I tell if the assertion that players want to 'engage the fiction' represents an actual contradiction to anything I said. But in 30 years of gaming, I can count on one hand the number of times that a player chose death, retirement of the PC, or maiming of the PC as preferable to the sacrifice of what the PC believed in. And in general, I find that if you examine the priorities of the PC's ethos, players who prioritize their PCs interests above the interests of NPCs and above any higher philosophical cause vastly outnumber the contrary.

As best as I can tell, they are all 'engaging the fiction'.

But flawless victory for the PCs certainly isn't the only thing that will tick that box, at least in my experience.

That's not what I asserted. In fact, you yourself have agreed with what I asserted - trading loss of an actual game resource for the color of increased adversity in the fiction is a win-win for the average player. Not only do they get to keep all their stuff, but they get to feel good about it. However, I'm not at all convinced that this sort of metagame doesn't in fact change the way that player's approach play and challenges within play, nor is it clear that this is the same experience as having actual 'loss loss' be a possibility. If you want to say, it's good for the PC's to never really lose, then sure, make that argument. But I think it is a mistake to assume that the players don't have the mindset, "Any crash we can walk away from is a good landing." or that there is necessarily any difference between "failing forward" and "winning at cost".

And since in general, most players treat loss of anything that isn't on their character sheet as mere color, mostly "failing forward" means "winning".

Finally, on the railroad - if players using a 13th Age-style mechanic declare a retreat, then the GM deciding upon the campaing loss is not railroading or circumventing the rules. S/he is following the rules, which the players have enlivened.

"Following the rules" is not a contradiction to "railroading". It's quite possible to write rules that encourage or even require the GM to engage in railroading. That is to say, the rules can require and explicitly encourage the GM to metagame not only in the creation of the myth (that is to say, in protagonizing the character Luke within the Star Wars universe by making Darth Vader actually his father) but in recreation of the fiction and extemporaneous invention to respond to player propositions. Paranoia for example explicitly encourages the GM to railroad in sadistic, creative, lethal ways to every player proposition, so that every plan not only goes awry but becomes profoundly and ludicrously complicated. Indeed, Paranoia even encourages railroading as a metagame construct - for example, punishing the PC in game for any assertion that the player makes about the rules. Rules lawyering is - per the rules - punished by PC death.

Gygaxian D&D treats retreat as a valid strategic and tactical choice that does not bear any special penalty beyond the difficulty of extracting oneself from a situation and the time it provides your enemies to regroup and carry out plans (if they have the intelligence to do so). But, we could always create rules that encouraged the DM to lay a heavier hand on the PC's choices, for example, in penalizing them with the loss of XP if they retreated, causing a certain amount of gold to inevitably spill from their bags, or in some other way forcing a loss on the player by the heavy hand of fiction ("You return to find the village devastated."). That we made this a metagame consideration by also promising the players that a retreat would be otherwise successful if this cost was paid does not make it less railroading. Such rules place the GM in the role of track layer, with the PC's choice being simply "Which set of rails do we wish to follow?" We can at least hope the scenes are broad, because all the transitions are assuredly narrow.

 

[Bawylie]

I think we're getting into frameworks, here. Wherein the game world is a mimetic framework while an adventure might well be diegetic. That is, the train Depot offers a lot of rides to a lot of places. But when you finally pick and board, you're on that track until you reach a destination (alive or dead).

I think so much is made of simulation, narrative, railroading, and meta game that we forget the very appropriate intersections between these elements.

Consequently, we suffer rules debates (what's the appropriate % chance of surviving a 30 ft drop?) instead of trying to work out what's right for the game & the circumstances. As if systems & mechanics hold the answer to "how do I play this game?"

Luke chooses death rather than joining up with Vader. In choosing, he drops - fully knowing the outcome is death. Interesting character choice. And in a "consistent" world, he'd die. But then we get a diegetic deus ex machina that spares him. This happened instead of that. The author or narrator or whatever made something interesting happen out of that choice, even though what was interesting wasn't close to likely.

I think we should do this more often. Not turn to system to adjudicate every action, but find a way to make these big decisions interesting. Switch between mimesis and diegesis to subvert expectation. It's more exciting, anyway.

 

[Celebrim]

I think we're getting into frameworks, here. Wherein the game world is a mimetic framework while an adventure might well be diegetic.

I'd like to hear more of your thoughts on that because it's the first time I've heard the terms applied to RPGs. It would seem to me that normally in the classical RPG mode, the players are mostly mimetic while the game master is mostly diegetic save when he speaks 'in character' as an NPC. But, in another sense, depending on what you mean by the terms, is an RPG mimetic since everyone is pretending not to be who they are? And as film uses the terms, the divide seems to be between things that in an RPG are IC and OOC. So I'm not sure where you are going with that, but it's got my brain fizzing.

Consequently, we suffer rules debates (what's the appropriate % chance of surviving a 30 ft drop?) instead of trying to work out what's right for the game & the circumstances.

Again, more questions than answers here. If the rules aren't for working out what's right for the game and the circumstances, what are they for and don't we need some new rules? Are you saying that the rules aren't broke because of DM fiat?

As if systems & mechanics hold the answer to "how do I play this game?"

That almost sounds like a statement of Celebrim's Second Law of RPGs. Let's say that I grant you that system doesn't matter, how do you work out what the right story is?

Luke chooses death rather than joining up with Vader. In choosing, he drops - fully knowing the outcome is death. Interesting character choice.

Possibly. Lucas does a lot of showing and very little telling in those scenes. It's clear Vader doesn't really expect Luke to die. Especially in the original cuts, Vader is moving to rescue Luke. It is true that Luke is out of resources and defeated, and the only real question is whether he'll end up with Dad (and ultimately be converted to the Dark Side) or whether Luke's loyalty to his friends will be rewarded when we get the Leia reveal.

And in a "consistent" world, he'd die.

That depends. In a superheroes game, he's just pulled an 'obscure death' option, which consistency demands he survive in some improbable fashion. Since IMO Star Wars is firmly and wholly in the fantasy genera, his surviving a fall from a very high place is consistent with the rules of fantasy. It would be wholly inconsistent with the rules of detective fiction, where falls are invariably instantly lethal.

But then we get a diegetic deus ex machina that spares him.

Luke is spared by Leia. Explain what you mean by diegetic in this case, please. Also, if the Leia reveal is deus ex machina (in RPG terms, she's already a 'player character'), isn't the Vader reveal also a sort of deus ex machina. Afterall, if Vader isn't Luke's father, then surely he would have killed Luke without mercy before this point. But at least with the Vader reveal, in context it all makes sense and was clearly foreshadowed, and in the context of the Vader reveal the Leia reveal is also clearly something that was there all along. Isn't there a difference between Deus ex Mechina and Chekhov's Gun?

This happened instead of that. The author or narrator or whatever made something interesting happen out of that choice, even though what was interesting wasn't close to likely.

I'm hesitant to fully endorse any simple comparison between RPGs as art and other mediums as art, particularly in the areas where RPGs diverge from other artistic mediums. In an RPG, the audience is a participant in the creation of the art. The overall story is one which is collectively constructed, and there are aesthetic agenda's present in the audience of a game that just aren't present in the case of film. The audience of a movie isn't eager to see if he actually can navigate his way to the end of the story through his wit and cunning. How does it change your viewpoint of this scene if it is Vader and not Luke which is the PC?

 

[Manbearcat]

On the notion of character creation.

<snip>

In a group where everyone works together to build a group, it makes sharing the spotlight a lot easier.

Good post (but can't xp) and agreed completely. I think this is a very underestimated cog in the machinery of a coherent game. Something like Fate's character creation or Dungeon World's Bond system works wonders to unify the characters' goals (and thus the conflicts they will be vested into), backstory interests, and/or thematics. Players who are invested in a fiction-first approach to play are a GM's best friend (unless you're intentionally trying to play a Pawn Stance game - which is a fair and fun way to play but completely at odds with a table dynamic that purports to value immersion or emergent story) and any technique or systemic means to reward or embolden that investment is win:win.

 

[Bawylie]

I'm on my phone so forgive any format issues.

Let's say that I feel mimesis is the representation of an internally consistent game world that is portrayed according to its nature (along with any elements therein).

And that for purposes of RPGs, diegesis is the assumption of narrative control outside of the mimetic frame.

So you have a world that, by default, operates according to its nature except where a player or DM exercises some power to author the situation. For instance, combat. Or, in some more extreme cases, player authorship of game elements (the "Yes, and..." approach). In which case, play departs from what would theoretically be expected to happen, and we say "This happens," and it's so.

Let's leave it at this for now. We're either playing things according to how we truly feel they should be played or we decide to depart from expectation. Simple, but I don't want a novella here.

As a player, portraying my character, my only real burden is to set a goal, and decide how I want to achieve it. I can do this mimetically (acting as my character and speaking in their voice) or diegetically (simply stating what happens, picking powers, meta-gaming, and conveying my PC's desires outside of dialogue).

As a DM, my goal is to portray a fantastic world, adjudicate fairly, identify my players' goals, and set obstacles in their paths. Doing these, I have a sandbox (mimetic) world, but very experience-driven adventures. Meaning that events and plots that unfold in the world are tailored to a specific experience I want the players to have (vs what would strictly make sense in the world). I switch frameworks depending on how we're playing the game at the moment, appropriate to the moment - not in service to the mechanics.

While mechanics exist and help me adjudicate fairly, that's not where I go first when DM-ing. This brings us to Luke.

I wasn't clear enough when I said he was spared by Deus ex Machina. See, he chose death rather than evil and dropped what is established as a lethal distance (functionally bottomless). But instead of plummeting down to the planet or going splat at whatever the eventual bottom of the place was, he sort of curved Into a chute and came sliding to a stop, right over a trap door that deposited him beneath the city. THAT is the d.e.m. It's the diegetic moment in which the author decided that, instead of splat, this series of implausible events would happen.

So you asked what good are rules if they don't work out for the circumstances in the game. I'm saying we're to quick to jump to the rules, FIRST, instead of our judgement. If Luke was my player, and I present him with a choice of falling down a bottomless pit or conversion to evil, I should NOT give him the odds of survival. I want Luke's player to decide what to do based on the situation & circumstances, not the rules and math. If Luke chooses death, I may well take narrative control and let him slip down a chute and get stuck in a pickle from which he may or may not escape. I may kill him. In either case, using the system has not added anything to this moment. That doesn't mean the rules are broken. It means they don't apply here and shouldn't reasonably be expected to. The "right story" is the one that's created by the diegetic action (the departure from the true nature of the game world).

Luke's player, beaten within an inch of his life, looks at me and says "I'd rather die," then let's go and falls. I need to honor that decision somehow. And the system is too heartless, too arbitrary, and does not match the frickin metal Luke's player just laid down. The right story matches that metal.

That's not to say the system is broken. Obviously, we use the system to adjudicate fairly those situations with unclear outcomes. It's just that sometimes, the possibilities are more important than the dice might grant. In other words, if Luke is going to die from being so metal, it's not going to because he rolled a 2. If he lives, it's not because of a 20. It's because the DM must decide between the two and faithfully say what happens. Mimesis (epic fall to death) or diegesis (any outcome).

Let's leave Luke and assume Vader is the PC. Vaders goal is recruitment of his son, and accumulation of power. He's defeated Luke (an NPC) and put him in a bind. Does Vader's player roll to see whether Luke joins him? Is that what diplomacy checks are for? I don't think so. So I don't dip into the rules. Instead, I rely on Luke's nature. Vader tells me he wants to seduce or manipulate Luke into joining him. And, he's clearly got leverage. Luke's beaten and has no escape route. However, I know Luke cannot be corrupted in this way and Vader doesn't even get a cha-check. This is an auto-fail. I simply play Luke true to himself. He falls. Vader's player curses as he's just let his whole goal slip from his grasp. This could be game over for Vader, but later, I tell him he senses his son in the force, alive, and reaching out for him. I've played Luke mimetically, and then turned diegetic to re-up Vader's player on his quest. I turned a total fail into a setback. Vader redoubles his resolve. No system.

I get your hesitation to compare disparate media. But I'm saying we can run better games if we actually understand what we're doing, dramatically, or imitatively, instead of jumping to the system first.

Dang. I ran long. TLDR -part of The Fine Art of DM-ing is asking "What would be metal RIGHT NOW?" before reaching for the dice.

 

[Sadras]

It really bugs me that the 3.5 DMG says that it's okay to cheat. It should have included a discussion on why you should or why you shouldn't, and that different DMs have different styles.

If I'm remembering correctly 2e did too - where the story could superseded rules. It certainly wasn't a new concept by the time 3.5 came out.

4e broke most of those historical shackles (at least within D&D).

 

[GX.Sigma]

If I'm remembering correctly 2e did too - where the story could superseded rules. It certainly wasn't a new concept by the time 3.5 came out.

4e broke most of those historical shackles (at least within D&D).

I'm not saying this is a 3e issue, or a DM cheating issue. The issue is that every DMG tries to tell you what kind of DM to be.

4e tells you to skip past "boring" non-setpiece-combat encounters. 3e tells you the "best way" to deal with character death. Gygax assumes you're running an open-table sandbox where the dice fall as they may. None of them encourage you to figure out your own style.

 

[pickin_grinnin]

It really bugs me that the 3.5 DMG says that it's okay to cheat. It should have included a discussion on why you should or why you shouldn't, and that different DMs have different styles.

What you are calling "cheating" goes back into earlier editions of D&D, too. Even Gygax said that DMs should alter rules as they see fit.

On one end of the spectrum are highly mechanistic DMs/players who basically see D&D as a wargame with roleplaying added on top of it. On the other end are those who see it as cooperative storytelling with some dice rolls to throw in a bit of randomness. Most people that I have met fall somewhere between those two extremes.

Those who tend to enjoy the more mechanistic aspects of it would see rule bending as "cheating," while those who fall more on the storytelling side tend to see it as making adjustments so the game and story are more satisfying to all. It's just two different ways of looking at the same thing.

 

[Ahnehnois]

What you are calling "cheating" goes back into earlier editions of D&D, too. Even Gygax said that DMs should alter rules as they see fit.

There's a distinction there, though, if not multiple ones. A DM changing the rules beforehand and telling everyone (houserules) is not cheating by any definition.

The cheating being referred to here is different in that it is:
1. Inconsistent. The rules for Finger of Death are still the same. You still die if you roll below the DC. The DM is making an exception just on a particular occasion and for a particular character.
2. Covert. The book explicitly and firmly tells you not to reveal what you've done to the players.

The merits of doing that are debatable; not that it's necessarily wrong (most of us probably do it at least sometimes), but it shouldn't be dogma that it's right either.

 

[pickin_grinnin]

1. Inconsistent. The rules for Finger of Death are still the same. You still die if you roll below the DC. The DM is making an exception just on a particular occasion and for a particular character.
2. Covert. The book explicitly and firmly tells you not to reveal what you've done to the players.

I work hard to make sure things balance out for everyone, and that if I alter a rule dramatically (even temporarily) it is beneficial to the character. I don't alter things frequently, but when I do there is a reason for it. I wouldn't reveal it to the players in most cases, though. I don't tell players "the goblin has an armor class of blah blah." I say "roll a d20" (or whatever). All they know is what their character knows - they hit, or they didn't.