Dungeon Mastering as a Fine Art

[Bawylie]

Yes it can. That's absurd.

 

[Neonchameleon]

One of the best parts of 5e is that this isn't an issue. It took some time for me to realise that it wasn't alignment itself I disliked so much as this aspect of it.

Hah, yes. There's nothing wrong with codes of beliefs as long as they aren't being hammered home by the mechanics, so they just provide guidance. If you take the codes as being given by the Gods or even the mortals and the alignments as alliances of people who believe roughly the same thing it works.

I've only GMed one session of MHRP. Can you elaborate on this?

It's possibly that the first Cortex+ game I played was Leverage, and that informs my play for the other games in the family. But each time there's a 1 in your dice pool in MHRP it adds to the Doom Pool. In Leverage (and, for that matter, Firefly) it creates or worsens a Complication. Which is a thing present in the game world (some times I don't reveal the complication, and I occasionally hold them back as a marker for when I know what they are). Or an asset for NPCs getting 1s. And I treat the adds to the Doom Pool in almost the same way; when there's a 1 and so a dice added or increased in the Doom Pool I describe something happening.

(On a tangent, it's interesting how different the Leverage method of overcoming complications in one go makes the game feel from Firefly's slowly countering them with enough successes so you're always struggling against your Complications).

If memory serves me, the original poster's reason was that the PCs genuinely had no idea where they were in this new city. Are you suggesting the DM suddenly breaks immersion (for himself at least) and feeds players information just to keep the story going?
As a DM I do not find it appealing. Like Abed in Community said "I have to remain objective, otherwise the game has no meaning"

As a fairly seasoned traveller, the idea that I have no idea where I am in a new city is ... anti-immersive. Sure, I can get lost in rabbit warrens. But I'm trying to remember the last time I came to a new city, got lost, and was unable to at least trace my way to a local centre. (I don't mean the city centre in a city with suburbs - I mean the local one). Half the time I can't even say how I do it, but it's something to do with traffic flows and person density. I also am very much aware that the source of information that the player of a character gets is a very narrow datastream, roughly the equivalent to a blind person with no sense of smell and a physical bubble around them being told what is going on by an interpreter. Seriously, in the real world I have five senses. And in unusual situations I use them all. In an RPG I am forced to rely on the very few things the DM is saying. A picture is worth a thousand words - with more if you have movement. A book on tape is recorded at 150-160wpm. Which means that to be worth what I would get from a single physical glance, the average DM needs to talk for around six minutes.

The single greatest impediment to immersion is just how little information is actually provided by the DM. For that matter how little information can be provided by the DM. This is why I'm in favour of games where information flows both ways - they are far more immersive because they allow for much easier matching between visualisations.

As for DM's immersion, this is not a priority. If a DM is immersed in someone's head, they need to get out of it. They won't stay for long. If a DM is immersed because of the consistency of the world they've probably built a planet of the hats. The real world is too big for one person to understand. So I want to know what you mean by "immersion" for the DM unless you're using it as a synonym for flow.

Surely they could have done their research - purchasing maps of the town & maps of the sewers and began tracking their movement or attempt to get a guide (cleaner, architect, perhaps a sewer kid..etc) They didn't think it through, they fracked up, lets not defend the PCs here. Consequences of decision making...this is starting to sound familiar

Possibly they could and didn't. But that is no reason to punish them for not being able to use their physical senses because even Oculus Rift doesn't provide that much information. And if they ed up normally they know it and accept it. Or feel they were stampeeded in the preparation. But there is also "Zipper DMing" - if you didn't specify that you put your junk away before you did your zipper up, your junk gets caught in your zipper. Assuming that the PCs didn't take basic precautions when they had the time to is frequently poor DMing.

What is your opinion in the instance where PCs misread the desires/motivations of the NPC? Surely characters can be wrong? Do we as DMs have to spoon feed the PCs so that all information is readily available and known?

Case by case. When I talk to someone in real life I have the advantage of reading their body language, hearing their tone, and knowing the cultural context they are coming from. When I am playing a PC I can't always do any of those depending on the DM. And then if I am playing a cleric I'm probably playing someone far better at reading people than I myself am.

Making up for the tiny channel you as a DM use is not spoon feeding the PCs. It's not destroying immersion by being either deliberately or accidentally secretive. Failing to communicate your game world is not a sign that you are DMing well.

 

[Ahnehnois]

The trouble with this is that D&D magic is a collection of spells & effects drawn from a wide variety of fictional & mythical sources, many of which were explicitly designed to be dungeon-exploring/problem-solving tools, collected over the course of several decades now.

ie - it's a bit of a mess. A big, honking mess (not that there's anything wrong with that).

Add to that the fact D&D magic is supposed to exist in settings which happen resemble the worlds of classic fantasy fiction & film, if not actual medieval Western Europe.

ie - worlds different from what would reasonably result from D&D magic existing.

It reminds me in many ways of Star Trek, which is likewise a patchwork of technological "magic" with equally far-reaching implications.

I do think you're fudging on some level, because of course truly playing everything all out is impossible. I think the point is that if you make common-sense assumptions necessary to play the game, things fall into place. If we were playing a Star Trek rpg, you wouldn't be able to transport into a bank and rob it. In D&D, you can't teleport into a bank and rob it. Why? Either wealth isn't stored that way, or it's protected somehow. What rationale you come up with is less important than the simple fact that when a player tries to use the supernatural travel method of choice to lay waste to the world's economy, that isn't going to work.

If you haven't thought about it, it might not be obvious, and a DM might read the Teleport spell, see nothing in the spell description itself to invalidate this type of plan, and let it go forward. Thus, advice.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It reminds me in many ways of Star Trek, which is likewise a patchwork of technological "magic" with equally far-reaching implications.

I do think you're fudging on some level, because of course truly playing everything all out is impossible. I think the point is that if you make common-sense assumptions necessary to play the game, things fall into place. If we were playing a Star Trek rpg, you wouldn't be able to transport into a bank and rob it. In D&D, you can't teleport into a bank and rob it. Why? Either wealth isn't stored that way, or it's protected somehow. What rationale you come up with is less important than the simple fact that when a player tries to use the supernatural travel method of choice to lay waste to the world's economy, that isn't going to work.

If you haven't thought about it, it might not be obvious, and a DM might read the Teleport spell, see nothing in the spell description itself to invalidate this type of plan, and let it go forward. Thus, advice.

That's a good analogy.

However, I wouldn't say you necessarily couldn't do that in all D&D settings - how common Teleport is, how real a threat it is relative to other threats, and how worthwhile protecting against, it is, matters. If a handful of Wizards in the world can cast it, banks probably rate protecting against it similarly to protecting against tunnelling or the like IRL - which is to say it's low on the priority list - but if the bank is big enough, they will have it.

Further, banks in medieval settings are typically protected more by reputation than defences - after all, no bank can stop a few dozen soldiers getting together and robbing it - but if it's owned by the crown and it's known that vengeance will follow, they will likely be discouraged.

That said, if it's just a straightforward and reasonably-priced spell or ritual to ward an area against teleportation or similar magic, then that'll be done.

I totally disagree with your suggestion that the rationale doesn't matter though - on the contrary, the rationale is more important than preventing a PC getting a lot of cash/ Which, let's be real, he won't even be easily able to spend - you need to think about the consequences of actions, not just preventing actions with DM fiat - all that stolen money will have to be spent very carefully if he doesn't want literally hundred of angry assassins, curses, dragons and so on descending upon him - so carefully, in fact, that's probably his life's work.

So I would suggest two things:

1) Just using DM fiat to block things is very short-sighted DMing. When the player or PCs comes up with a terrible plan like this, just spend some time thinking through the consequences, and, if you want, hint at those consequences (as in reality, the PC would have hours or days to think about it, not the minutes they likely do at the table), and if they go through with it, inflict those consequences. And smile.

2) If you do need to use DM fiat (I know you hate this term, but that's what it is, and sometimes it's right to use it!) to block something on the fly, stop and think through the consequences for the setting. You don't want to have a setting that is a godawful mess like Star Trek, where nonsense-particles are used by terrible, shamefully bad script-writers to arbitrarily inflict scenarios which make no sense on the characters. Do not emulate that, I say. That's like seeing the original 90210 as the level of story you want to emulate or something. I love Star Trek, but sometimes TNG and Voyager (and ENT and even rarely DS9) needed a good spanking for needless use of nonsense-particles, just because the writers were too lazy/dim-witted to come up with a story that actually USED the technology in that world.

Anyway, I'm getting off topic - if you do use fiat to block something, think about what you are doing. For example, if you say the vault has a magical ward against teleportation, that's fine, but then you need to think about how the ward was created, how easy it is to create others, who did it, and so on - these might not be questions for during the game (but they might), but they are questions for you and your setting, post-game.

I speak from experience here, specific experience, too, as I run a 4E game which has a lot of heists, and I use a mixture of making-stuff-up and consequences to direct the PCs. I don't suddenly introduce fiat elements unless it would be truly stupid not to (which is once in a blue moon). Instead, I'm more likely to say, allow this bank to be robbed, but ensure future/other bank designs defeat that (not in a fiat "on the spot", way, but in a prepared "in my notes" way).

Still, you may need to use fiat to block something like that, and that's okay - but DO consider the consequences for the world - your advice that the rationale doesn't matter is bad.

 

[Ahnehnois]

However, I wouldn't say you necessarily couldn't do that in all D&D settings - how common Teleport is, how real a threat it is relative to other threats, and how worthwhile protecting against, it is, matters. If a handful of Wizards in the world can cast it, banks probably rate protecting against it similarly to protecting against tunnelling or the like IRL - which is to say it's low on the priority list - but if the bank is big enough, they will have it.

The default assumptions about worldwide magic and power level do matter. I think very few games are assuming that wizardry is so rare that power brokers are not using it or aware of it.

Further, banks in medieval settings are typically protected more by reputation than defences - after all, no bank can stop a few dozen soldiers getting together and robbing it - but if it's owned by the crown and it's known that vengeance will follow, they will likely be discouraged.

It is possible that rather than protection, retribution is the order of the day. After all, it's entirely reasonable that someone who was holding a lot of money and then was robbed would have the resources to track the PCs down and deal with them. For a typical game, this is a rather large diversion, so I think faster solutions are more desirable than deferred ones, but there are many.

That said, if it's just a straightforward and reasonably-priced spell or ritual to ward an area against teleportation or similar magic, then that'll be done.

It's interesting how many DMs (including myself on occasion) I've seen refer to a place as "teleport-blocked" or "divination-blocked" without an actual rules basis to support it.

I know that some canon sources have suggested that lead blocks one or both of these things, and lead-lined rooms make sense on multiple levels.

I totally disagree with your suggestion that the rationale doesn't matter though - on the contrary, the rationale is more important than preventing a PC getting a lot of cash

Perhaps I was unclear. I didn't mean that the rationale is meaningless, I meant that from a DMing advice perspective, it is okay to choose whichever rationale makes sense for your campaign. The books don't need to tell everyone to divination-block all the king's chambers, because there are multiple correct ways to handle the situation.

The point is that you know that magic is not upsetting the world to the extent that it conceivably good, simply because it's a given that magic has been around for a while, and there is still a world. So something keeps it in check. What that something is might be different in FR than it is in Ravenloft, let alone in whatever world your individual group DM comes up with.

Anyway, I'm getting off topic - if you do use fiat to block something, think about what you are doing. For example, if you say the vault has a magical ward against teleportation, that's fine, but then you need to think about how the ward was created, how easy it is to create others, who did it, and so on - these might not be questions for during the game (but they might), but they are questions for you and your setting, post-game.

You definitely need to consider the implications of whether, if something can be done once, it can be done again. Whatever solution you come up with should be, on some level, binding.

It's particularly important in cases where the roles are switched. When I had my PCs build a keep and defend it, the question of how to do that in a D&D world became a very interesting one. Thankfully, I didn't shoot myself in the foot with any of my earlier worldbuilding choices.

 

[Manbearcat]

Hmmm...

I think you hit those pitfalls if you reframe scenarios unprompted.

<snip>

If you and [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] don't mind, I'm going to throw a few pennies worth in here.

In a game that is predicated upon hard framed action scene > conflict resolution > possibly a transition scene or straight to another hard framed action scene, there are a lot of player flags and player insurance that the GM is required to observe to even play the game at all. Fidelity to these things is what ensures dynamic, player-driven outcomes as they engage in conflicts that they emotionally and philosophically have already bought into (at the PC build stage and during the evolution of play). By definition, if the GM is doing his job properly and obseving the GM principles embedded in those systems, its impossible for play to achieve an "All Roads Lead to Rome" aesthetic. Now of course, a GM doing a poor/wrong/inept job in observing the principles and techniques that drive play in those systems may very well lead to a railroad, but that is just user error and no fault of the system. Which is why I quoted this perceptive bit above by Bawylie "I think you hit those pitfalls if you reframe scenarios unprompted." That is right on the money.

Take Dungeon World for example. It is precisely what I described above; a quintessential conflict resolution gaming engine, built on fantasy tropes, hard scene framing, player flags/insurance, and GM principles to observe and test PC flags (bonds, alignment statements, PC archetype, PC decisions), "to find out what happens" (eg no metaplot, don't plan much and/or leave much malleable/open to define in play including geography), and to make "fiction first moves that follow from player moves" (all conflict resolution dice is handled player side). There are plenty of other classic GMing principles such as "put them in a spot" and "fill their lives with adventure" but those are general while the ones above are mandate in a game built upon a chronology of framed scenes and resolved conflicts (rather than a mostly serial passage of, and accounting for, time and process sim task resolution). As Bawylie said, framing new scenes requires perception of and obeyance to either system embedded prompts or intuitive prompts that happen at the table (eg the dramatic conflict which charges the scene has basically been resolved and aborting before all procedural elements are addressed would maintain pacing and player interest).

Quick for instance. Let us say that one of the PCs is an Elven Ranger. The relevant bits and bobs to observe might be:

- The Ranger fluff text for archetype.

- The players chosen look (how it might help to "put them in a spot" or "fill their lives with adventure")

- Ability scores and the accompanying basic moves they'll be good at and where they'll be weak.

- Auto PC build components for hunting/tracking, volley, augmented perilous journey, animal companion stuff, and any advanced moves.

- Chatoic alignment statement of "Free someone from literal or figurative bonds."

- 2 of his 4 bonds have to do with another PC; perhaps something about their level of trust and something about a debt (tangible or intangible).

All of the above are prompts. Some of them are about default archetype that insure the PCs thematic material and base archetype proficiency against me framing them into a situation that questions or denies that. Some of it (such as the bonds and alignment statement) are questions/conflicts that the PC wants to engage during play and for that play to resolve.


* As such, I'm never going to frame the PCs into a perilous journey where the scene opener introduces a fiction that makes the Ranger look like a foolish trailblazer et al. I'm never going to frame a scene around the Ranger's animal companion beligerantly disobeying him or not being his steadfast companion. I'm never going to frame him into an archery contest where he looks like a bufoon. I'm never going to frame him into a scene where game/prey has evaded him. I'm never going to frame him into a scene where his alignment statement or bond has already been resolved by my own fiat; eg I decide the level of trust or matter of the debt.

** I will, however, directly frame him into conflicts that test each of those aspects of his PC and we will find out in play through his decisions, the outcome of the confict resolution mechanics, and the subsequent evolution of the scene that observes the GM principle of "fiction first moves that follow from player moves" (which will follow from other GM principles and the outcome of the conflict resolution mechanics; 10 + success, 7 - 9 success with complications, 6 - failure and mark xp). This is the entire point of play.

If the GM consistently observes ** while mindfully staying away from *, a railroad will never, ever be produced.

 

[Sadras]

As a fairly seasoned traveller, the idea that I have no idea where I am in a new city is ... anti-immersive.

Okay, fair enough, but these adventurers were in the sewers, I'm sure you are not a seasoned traveller of sewers unless the Ninja Turtles have made a strong comeback. But generally I get what you saying in the rest of your post regarding a DM does not 5 senses make. I tend to agree with you on most points, but would not discount the possibility of getting lost, I would certainly provide further information - if they travelled in a mostly eaterly direction, number of drains, noises they have heard, where they entered from...give some clues.

As for DM's immersion, this is not a priority. If a DM is immersed in someone's head, they need to get out of it. They won't stay for long. If a DM is immersed because of the consistency of the world they've probably built a planet of the hats. The real world is too big for one person to understand. So I want to know what you mean by "immersion" for the DM unless you're using it as a synonym for flow.

Contrived scenarios break immersion from the story I'm telling. It would feel forced and fake. The PCs are a stumbling point and I create something in the story for them to figure out. Id prefer to say using your character's intelligence of 17 you essentially have the ability to fast track the mathematical puzzle before you (as a DM I start decreasing the goal posts of the puzzle's answer), giving the player something to work with. I'm still allowing him to figure it out and benefit from his high intelligence. And as time passes I could narrow the goal posts further, hopefully the player/s will get the answer on their own.
I generally use a lot of puzzles, riddles and such like in our games - attempting to make things challenging enough and that no matter that I've given some hints/clues (if any) the players themselves must feel like they solved puzzles/riddles. You can do the same with social interactions, research, insight rolls...where you begin leading PCs, but up to a point.

So in the instance of the sewers - if I have imagined this area of the sewers is empty and the adventurers are lost, I generally do not adhoc create a character to appear to assist them - that destroys my story, even if done creatively - likey they hear the distant crying of a child. My immersion of the world I created, it needs to feel natural and unforced. Hope I'm making myself clear.
And every other point you mentioned further in the discussion which I have not included I agree on.

 

[Lanefan]

Now 4e is a lot like AdnD. The DMG is written with a very strong voice. But once you get into later books like the dmg2 things change a lot and the advice gets a lot broader.

My 4e rulebook* buying stopped at the first round of three (DMG-PH-MM) so anything after that is lost on me.

* - as opposed to adventure buying (I have several), minis (I have far too many) and expansion books e.g. Adventurer's Vault (I have a couple).

Lanefan

 

[Lanefan]

I wonder if the issue is related to the control of flow of information. The players want to know where they are in the city but they also want to minimize risk.

The DM otoh generally wants to increase risk because that makes for an exciting game.

So the DM rules that the pc's cannot know their location in the city. A perfectly reasonable answer which nicely dovetails with what the DM wants.

So far we're in perfect agreement.

The problem now though is the players can't make an informed decision...

Of course they can't make an informed decision. That's the whole point.

...and assume that if the go up and check, they will be caught or otherwise engaged in some problem.

Bluntly put, that's their problem; and if they want to hamstring themselves by making assumptions like that I have little sympathy. Adventuring is risky business!

At this point the players-as-characters have three choices, none of them optimal:
1. Keep moving ahead despite not knowing where they are or what they might be getting into
2. Send someone (or have everyone go) topside for a look around, in full realization there could be risk involved
3. Turn around and retreat, abandoning the mission either temporarily (spend some time pacing out the streets next day to give a better idea how they correlate to the underground) or permanently.

The point is, they still have choices; and need to make one.

What's wrong with giving the players what they asked for at this point? They've indicated that they don't want an encounter at this point, so what's wrong with just giving them What they asked for and moving on?

If they don't want an encounter then what the bleep are they doing wandering around in the sewers beneath a dangerous town?

Lanefan

 

[Hussar]

[MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] I presume that they were in the sewers to travel from A to B. In my mind, B is the important part. Having that one random encounter as you move from A to B is usually pointless.

It's not like they are hexploring the sewers. The point of the session isn't the sewers, that's just a means to an end.
[MENTION=6776133]Bawylie[/MENTION] - can you elaborate how I'm being ridiculous? How can I get a storyline where Luke (the NPC) joins Vader in the Dark side if Luke is predetermined to be impossible to convince?