D&D General How much control do DMs need?

[pemerton]

The entirety of the rules of D&D answer a completely meaningless question: "can a character roll high in this situation, set up by the DM, adjudicated by the DM, with the results ultimately decided by the DM".

As you've probably read upthread, I don't think that this is true of classic dungeon-crawl D&D, or of 4e D&D. Otherwise I don't dissent. I played a fair it of D&D at one high-water mark of this sort of play - 1990s 2nd ed AD&D. My general phrase to capture this sort of D&D is post-DL D&D (so mid-80s onward, non-4e D&D).

Thinking back on your post connecting game design to commercial sales, I think it becomes interesting to wonder to what extent are adventure modules a type of parameterisation of post-DL play, to make it something more than what you've posted. Some probably are - eg ones that basically parcel out situations based on a timeline or a dungeon map. Some are not - one that has stuck with me in this respect is the 3E adventure Expedition to the Demonweb Pits, which I've never played but have read. I was struck by the extent to which it was not a playable scenario except as a sourcebook from which the GM could draw inspiration for saying what happens next.

In terms of the OP's thread, one could ask why this sort of the GM is almost the whole game play is so popular? It's certainly true that to have it, the GM needs a large amount of control!

 

[clearstream]

Take a look at Yoko Ono's Conversation Piece from Grapefruit (which, by the way, predates D&D by over a decade):
View attachment 282017

It's not a hyper-detailed boardgame, it fits on a postcard or just in my memory banks. A computer will never be able to evaluate the rules.

It still has the designer's hand influencing the process, playing it means playing Yoko Ono's game, not yours.

This is a fantastic example. Thank you for posting it!

Apocalypse World (or Monsterhearts, both are PbtA games similar in their design, I just happen to have AW book handy), just like D&D has a player who is responsible for everything except the PCs. Unlike D&D, Apocalypse World has "hard rules" on what the GM (called MC) has to say. She has to pursue the Agenda and adhere to the Principles. A good MC follows the rules closely, a bad MC breaks them (intentionally or not).

I do not feel that MC as game designer is ruled out by the AW rules text, in fact it is ruled in

Custom threat moves are great and good, but the power of custom moves goes far beyond “if you go out into Dremmer’s territory, roll+sharp to notice the ambush before it happens.”

 

[clearstream]

DM in D&D makes the whole game. Your campaign will be different from mine. Because D&D is an unfinished game, it lacks the most important part of any RPG that has a dedicated game master: it lacks rules for the one single canonical way to run it, carefully crafted by the designers to be experienced by the players.

I do agree that D&D is by design DM-curated. I don't yet agree that a single canonical way to run a game is the most important part of every RPG design. Which is to say that I can see value in designs that leave much up to the group. Many groups are capable of - and even enjoy - deciding their own way to run an RPG. I also see strong value in RPG designs that include principles for a canonical way to run them: articulating that which some groups have in mind when they play, to put in mind for all groups, is good design when it matters to you that the RPG is played just that way.

The entirety of the rules of D&D answer a completely meaningless question: "can a character roll high in this situation, set up by the DM, adjudicated by the DM, with the results ultimately decided by the DM".

As others have argued in other places where there is ambiguity as to outcome, DM decisions are constrained. If one believes that isn't true, try DMing a game and making truly unconstrained decisions! Additionally, in the 5e game text holistically, approach (what player says) and consequences (what player and DM says) are in view up front. No check is made, unless it is meaningful.

 

[Oofta]

This whole conversation has gone way off the deep end into game theory and terminology for me. Throw in accusations that I'm saying things about other games that I am not ... it's just not worth discussing other systems. Have fun.

My basic opinion boils down to: there are many ways to design an RPG, whether or not one method is better than another is personal preference.

Speaking to D&D, I don't find any major gaps in the games rule system. The way of resolving uncertainty in the game is clearly defined. It's just defined as "here are some options and you need to decide what works best for you". The DMG can use improvements along that line, that's coming with the 2024 release. That flexibility, the ability to make the game what you want, is a strength of D&D not a weakness.

The group wants to share the authority of the DM? Cool. Go for it, it won't break anything. I've done one variation of that with rotating DMs in the same world. I vote for a more traditional structure because I DM a lot and I'd rather focus on my character's story; having to add to the world outside of my character on an ongoing basis would be detrimental to my focus on a character. It comes down to what I want to focus on when playing the games and switching that focus depending on which side of the DM's screen I'm on. Both sides of that screen are rewarding because of the role you play, but I don't want to mash the two together.

 

[loverdrive]

As you've probably read upthread, I don't think that this is true of classic dungeon-crawl D&D, or of 4e D&D. Otherwise I don't dissent. I played a fair it of D&D at one high-water mark of this sort of play - 1990s 2nd ed AD&D. My general phrase to capture this sort of D&D is post-DL D&D (so mid-80s onward, non-4e D&D).

That's probably true. I'll specify that I'm talking about 3E and 5E in the future, as I have a very limited experience of anything before that -- well, I wasn't even alive. Post-DL means post Dragon Lance?

In terms of the OP's thread, one could ask why this sort of the GM is almost the whole game play is so popular? It's certainly true that to have it, the GM needs a large amount of control!

I don't really have an answer, sadly. But just like with videogames, I feel cautious about attributing a commercial success or failure to the design, or, at least, to the design alone. Among all other factors, the design itself of commercial games is influenced by things that have nothing to do with making a good game.

If I have to guess, I'd say it's a combination of "well, it's an industry standard" and increased, uhm, gravity pull force. I was hesitant to "leave" D&D because I always knew that all the real game is made by me, and other systems I've tried at the time (GURPS and World of Darkness mostly) did nothing to persuade me otherwise. Cool, I still have to do all the work myself, but now I also need to learn how this new system works, how I need to design the adventure, all that. What's the point?

And then there's this thing where GM is often the only person at the table who even read the PHB, yet alone any other material, so... Yeah.

I do agree that D&D is by design DM-curated. I don't yet agree that a single canonical way to run a game is the most important part of every RPG design. Which is to say that I can see value in designs that leave much up to the group. Many groups are capable of - and even enjoy - deciding their own way to run an RPG. I also see strong value in RPG designs that include principles for a canonical way to run them: articulating that which some groups have in mind when they play, to put in mind for all groups, is good design when it matters to you that the RPG is played just that way.

Well, the designer still has a way for the game to be handled in mind, when they design it. I hope, at least, that nobody just throws words and numbers at blank sheet with no rhyme or reason. It's inescapable. The best one can do is to obscure this vision as much as possible, leaving the end-users to stumble in the darkness.

I honestly don't see any real difference between learning how D&D/VtM/whatever is ran the best and just sitting and designing your own game, both in terms of effort required and, uhm, muscles stretched.

As others have argued in other places where there is ambiguity as to outcome, DM decisions are constrained. If one believes that isn't true, try DMing a game and making truly unconstrained decisions! Additionally, in the 5e game text holistically, approach (what player says) and consequences (what player and DM says) are in view up front. No check is made, unless it is meaningful.

While, yeah, if you roll to pick a lock on the barn and roll 25, but the DM proceeds to narrate how you failed miserably, broke your lockpicks and then exploded, of course everyone will call the DM out.

But the whole situation is setup by the DM. DM decides, whether there's something useful in the barn. DM decides, if the door is locked or not, and if it is, whether it's secured by an old rusty lock or a masterpiece of dwarven engineering.

The DM is constrained only by things they establish, and only in a very short term. I mean, narrative justifications are a dime a dozen.

 

[Clint_L]

First, thank you to everyone who has and continues to contribute to this thread. I know that everyone does so for their own reasons, and am not so narcissistic as to think that I, a stranger on the internet, have much if anything to do with why you made that choice. Still, I feel like I have been given a gift of your knowledge and ideas, and I am grateful.

@loverdrive and @pemerton, you have been very patient in explaining your thoughts and I fear that I have been a bit thick at times. I do now think that I have wrapped my head sufficiently around your ideas to have more useful points to add. In particular, this has become a discussion about authorship. It seems to me that a game such as Monsterhearts reserves significant authorship to the designer, even if the execution is in the hands of the GM and players. A game such as D&D or even Dread gives much more authorial agency to the GM. A game such as Warhammer gives all authorship to the designer, really (you can make up whatever story about why you are fighting that you want, but it has no effect on the game).

This leads me to a couple of observations: first, that this might explain some of the popularity of D&D-style RPGs (another big part I think comes from hard-wired mechanisms that @Snarf Zagyg has been exploring). D&D quite literally intended for the DM to take the role of a benevolent God. It, in effect, reenacts the central patriarchal assumption at the heart of Western culture (I write this not as a criticism, but as an observation). This makes sense, considering its origins with a bunch of mid-Western dudes, and with its chief codifier, Gygax, being a practicing, proselytizing Jehovah's Witness at the time that he was writing the game. These were folks very comfortable with the notion of the hand of a benevolent God in all things.

So when we become the Dungeon Master, we are in effect taking on a role that we have been culturally trained to understand and to covet. I would go further and state that storytelling is a defining trait of humanity, so we want to do it anyway, but the Judeo-Christian model gives us a particular formula for how to execute the job. Gygax himself starts the introduction to the AD&D DM's Guide by speculating on whether the job is art or science (he correctly leans towards art), and he often uses religious language to describe the job (i.e. the DM is the "creator and ultimate authority" of their world, even if somewhat limited by the "mutable" rules of the game). So these sorts of games lean into a worldview that, I argue, we are heavily conditioned to accept, and offer DM's a taste of godlike power. That seems pretty attractive; I get why people keep doing it, despite the "countless hours" (Gygax again) that DMs are expected to put into doing their own design work.

RPGs where the hand of the designer is heavy offer less of this heady attraction - to play you have to buy in pretty heavily to someone else's original design intent, and then work with the players to find your own voices while exploring within those parameters. The Yoko Ono performance art piece is a fascinating example of this approach. Indeed, it seems to me that these games can more properly be considered art in themselves, whereas a D&D-style game is more like loose rules to apply to your own art. As @clearstream observes, this does not necessarily make one approach better than the other; as @loverdrive points out, this means that if your PbtA-style game is great you can largely thank the designer, while if your D&D game is great you should thank your DM.

I think Warhammer is really a distinct style of game that is basically just a complicated boardgame; the attraction there is in taking fixed rules and pitting your problem-solving skills against those of another human being - essentially more complicated chess.

@Oofta I get it, and in addition to expressing my gratitude to everyone who has contributed, including you, I express my apologies to those who find this kind of discussion a bit off the deep end, and I am sorry that you have found yourself misrepresented. I heartily agree with your core premise: that ultimately, these are subjective questions of taste. My brain is such that I am quite fascinated by trying to figure out how things work, but in the end, the fact that they do is what matters.

 

[Umbran]

D&D isn't like that. It leaves many decisions that should've been made by the designer to the players (or, well, one particular player) — they have to basically finish an unfinished game.

I think the issue at hand is in the "should have".

There is a big business out there in selling hobby kits to people. If they're selling a mechanical wristwatch, they "should" assemble it for you! Unless, of course, part of the point is for the customer to enjoy the act of assembly, and the feeling of pride they can get from having assembled it themselves when they wear it.

What "should" be done in the large sense is dependent not just on your personal thoughts on what constitutes good design. It also depends on the designer's goals, and what the collected people in the market like. If part of the intent is to require such engagement from those playing the game, if some/many of the users like engaging in that way, then the "unfinished" bits are a feature, not a failure.

Unless you want to contend the OneTrueWay argument that all players would be happier not doing a bit of that design work themselves, then your argument may be entirely true for you, but it does not generalize.

 

[Clint_L]

@Umbran Good point - it reminds me that the most popular video game of all time (aside from Tetris and Solitaire, I suppose) is Minecraft, another game where you could argue that all of the design work is really done by the player, using the tools supplied by the game. It is much more prescriptive than D&D in the sense that your potential actions are much more limited, but the goals are entirely in the hands of the player.

This is going to get even more philosophical, but where is the line (if any) between game and art? And is that relevant to this discussion?

 

[soviet]

It seems to me that a game such as Monsterhearts reserves significant authorship to the designer, even if the execution is in the hands of the GM and players. A game such as D&D or even Dread gives much more authorial agency to the GM. A game such as Warhammer gives all authorship to the designer, really (you can make up whatever story about why you are fighting that you want, but it has no effect on the game).

I don't think that any of this is true. The authorship and control that more story-based games take away from the GM don't give it to the designer, they give it to the players. The notion that D&D with its thousands of pages of rules serves to free up GMs to create their own artistic vision, while indie games with their hundred page digest-sized books are stifling the group with the artistic vision of a distant designer is completely without evidence.

Warhammer (assuming you mean the wargame) still involves a lot of player authorship and creativity. It doesn't have to, granted. But many players take a pride in creating conversions, new colour schemes, and unique model builds to express their vision of a particular army idea. Many players also name their characters or units and may create a backstory. In play many people create their own scenarios and campaigns.

This leads me to a couple of observations: first, that this might explain some of the popularity of D&D-style RPGs (another big part I think comes from hard-wired mechanisms that @Snarf Zagyg has been exploring). D&D quite literally intended for the DM to take the role of a benevolent God. It, in effect, reenacts the central patriarchal assumption at the heart of Western culture (I write this not as a criticism, but as an observation). This makes sense, considering its origins with a bunch of mid-Western dudes, and with its chief codifier, Gygax, being a practicing, proselytizing Jehovah's Witness at the time that he was writing the game. These were folks very comfortable with the notion of the hand of a benevolent God in all things.

D&D is popular largely because it was first, and so became the face of the hobby, and so became the de facto industry leader. New players aren't playing D&D because they've performed a comparative analysis of the rules of 5e versus the other roleplaying games in the marketplace and decided it's the superior system, they're playing D&D because D&D is a cultural signifier of these sorts of games and the one available in all the high street bookshops.

If Traveller or Runequest had been first to market, do you think D&D would still have become the industry leader?

I'm not even going to touch the 'GMs have god complexes' stuff.

 

[Oofta]

First, thank you to everyone who has and continues to contribute to this thread. I know that everyone does so for their own reasons, and am not so narcissistic as to think that I, a stranger on the internet, have much if anything to do with why you made that choice. Still, I feel like I have been given a gift of your knowledge and ideas, and I am grateful.

@loverdrive and @pemerton, you have been very patient in explaining your thoughts and I fear that I have been a bit thick at times. I do now think that I have wrapped my head sufficiently around your ideas to have more useful points to add. In particular, this has become a discussion about authorship. It seems to me that a game such as Monsterhearts reserves significant authorship to the designer, even if the execution is in the hands of the GM and players. A game such as D&D or even Dread gives much more authorial agency to the GM. A game such as Warhammer gives all authorship to the designer, really (you can make up whatever story about why you are fighting that you want, but it has no effect on the game).

This leads me to a couple of observations: first, that this might explain some of the popularity of D&D-style RPGs (another big part I think comes from hard-wired mechanisms that @Snarf Zagyg has been exploring). D&D quite literally intended for the DM to take the role of a benevolent God. It, in effect, reenacts the central patriarchal assumption at the heart of Western culture (I write this not as a criticism, but as an observation). This makes sense, considering its origins with a bunch of mid-Western dudes, and with its chief codifier, Gygax, being a practicing, proselytizing Jehovah's Witness at the time that he was writing the game. These were folks very comfortable with the notion of the hand of a benevolent God in all things.

So when we become the Dungeon Master, we are in effect taking on a role that we have been culturally trained to understand and to covet. I would go further and state that storytelling is a defining trait of humanity, so we want to do it anyway, but the Judeo-Christian model gives us a particular formula for how to execute the job. Gygax himself starts the introduction to the AD&D DM's Guide by speculating on whether the job is art or science (he correctly leans towards art), and he often uses religious language to describe the job (i.e. the DM is the "creator and ultimate authority" of their world, even if somewhat limited by the "mutable" rules of the game). So these sorts of games lean into a worldview that, I argue, we are heavily conditioned to accept, and offer DM's a taste of godlike power. That seems pretty attractive; I get why people keep doing it, despite the "countless hours" (Gygax again) that DMs are expected to put into doing their own design work.

RPGs where the hand of the designer is heavy offer less of this heady attraction - to play you have to buy in pretty heavily to someone else's original design intent, and then work with the players to find your own voices while exploring within those parameters. The Yoko Ono performance art piece is a fascinating example of this approach. Indeed, it seems to me that these games can more properly be considered art in themselves, whereas a D&D-style game is more like loose rules to apply to your own art. As @clearstream observes, this does not necessarily make one approach better than the other; as @loverdrive points out, this means that if your PbtA-style game is great you can largely thank the designer, while if your D&D game is great you should thank your DM.

I think Warhammer is really a distinct style of game that is basically just a complicated boardgame; the attraction there is in taking fixed rules and pitting your problem-solving skills against those of another human being - essentially more complicated chess.

I understand where you're coming from, I'm just not sure I agree. At least not for everyone. I don't enjoy DMing because of the control I have over the game (at least not consciously), I enjoy it because it stretches different creative and analytical skills. When I'm playing a PC I can understand their abilities and personality in detail, I can be pretty laser focused. When I DM for the most part I'm thinking at the 10,000 foot level with only a gloss of understanding for 95% of the world; I don't need or want to get into details because I'll get bogged down in things that don't matter to the game.

I'm an introvert. Being the center of attention is generally not a benefit or a goal, it's the cost I pay to tell the story of the world the PCs are interacting with. On a related note, throughout my career I have been told more than once I should pursue more of a management position because I was good at getting the team working toward a common goal. But being that point person, the guy in charge, was never what motivated me. Doing work that was engaging and producing results that I and the team could be proud of was what mattered. Being DM is kind of the same, I just want to have a fun game that's enjoyable for everyone else at the table.

Obviously there are many different motivations for DMing, so the answer to questions like "what makes D&D work" is going to vary widely depending on individual experience, expectations and motivations. It's similar to the questions of why D&D is, and continues to be, the 800 pound gorilla of TTRPGs. There's many factors and trying to narrow it down to one specific thing is never going to be satisfactory.

@Oofta I get it, and in addition to expressing my gratitude to everyone who has contributed, including you, I express my apologies to those who find this kind of discussion a bit off the deep end, and I am sorry that you have found yourself misrepresented. I heartily agree with your core premise: that ultimately, these are subjective questions of taste. My brain is such that I am quite fascinated by trying to figure out how things work, but in the end, the fact that they do is what matters.

No worries, I should know better than to try to explain game theory when I don't give a fig about forge waffle terminology and have never had the opportunity to play dozens of different RPGs. It always ends up the same - people discuss other games in terms defined only by those games or esoteric philosophical terms and then say "You're wrong!" while missing my entire point which is far, far more general. Maybe someday I'll learn.