D&D General How much control do DMs need?

[Oofta]

What is? (I don't know what your "it" is referring to.)

Upthread, you posed the following:

Someone upthread mentioned a game where the resolution to jumping a chasm is to roll 2d6 and it's predefined what happens. Except ... what if the chasm is so wide that it would practically take a miracle to jump? What if it should be easy, but don't trip over that root as you leap?​

Your phrase "Except . . . what if . . . ?" seemed clearly intended to pose a puzzle or problem for Dungeon World. But there is no puzzle or problem here. DW has clear procedures for resolving this, and they don't rely on "a judgement call on the part of the GM", as you are using this phrase.

There's a reason for that: every chasm, in DW, is narrated in terms of the threat or opportunity it provides to the characters as played by their players. So we already know, from the sequence of play that led up to narration of the chasm, whether a roll to jump over it is required (was the chasm narrated as a threat, or as an opportunity?) or even permitted (if a threat, was narration of the chasm a soft move or a hard move?). I've posted discussions of just this example in past threads that I think you've probably posted in, although in relation to AW rather than DW so imagining a player who declares that they jump the chasm on their motorcycle.

And this is precisely the difference from DW that underpins @loverdrive's point.

The GM decides how wide the cavern is; how difficult the Athletics check is; and what happens if the check is succeeded or is failed.

DW doesn't have a rule about how far anyone can jump. And doesn't resolve jumping by imagining how far someone can jump. More generally, DW doesn't work by having one person's conception of the fiction - ie the GM's - generate the bulk of the subsequent fiction. (What you call a "GM judgement call".) It works by way of an interplay of the narrative meaning of past narrations (opportunities, threats narrated as soft moves, threats and other unhappy consequences narrated as hard moves) and the salience, to play, of certain sorts of actions that the protagonists might perform ("if you do it, you do it").

Trying to suggest that these are similar processes of play strikes me as no more plausible than suggesting that backgammon and go have similar processes of play. I mean, both use round tokens on a roughly square board, but that's about it; in go there is no movement and no dice; both those things are fundamental to backgammon.

To work out what happens next in the shared fiction, 5e D&D uses GM framing and imagination, informed at the GM's discretion by dice rolls that are called for at the GM's discretion. DW uses a process based around an interplay of narrative trajectory and core salient activities of the protagonists in the fiction, with dice rolls having a fixed role to play in that process. Both games involve shared fiction with similar tropes, both games involve asymmetric participant functions, both games involve dice rolls, but that's about it.

Which game one prefers obviously is a matter of taste (I play heaps of backgammon but very little go). But it strikes me just as muddleheaded to suggest they are played in much the same way.

I don't know how I'm meant to reconcile this remark with your claim that both involve GM judgement calls. It makes me hard to work out what your point is. I mean, the general tone of your posts is one of disagreement with me, @AbdulAlhazred and @loverdrive but here you seem to be making a version of the same claim that we are making.

But all of that is just reframing the issue. In D&D we know how far you can jump without an ability check and in DW you don't. But in either case the DM decides how wide the chasm is - can the characters jump it or not. If it's easily jumped by everyone, it's just descriptive fluff. If the chasm is too wide to jump automatically there's a check.

But in D&D I can describe it as a 20 foot chasm. The barbarian with a 20 strength can jump it with ease, the 18 strength fighter needs to make an athletics check. Does the fighter just hope for the best and make an athletics check? In my game, it's pretty close so if the barbarian jumps first so they can catch the fighter even if the fighter blows their athletics and takes a few points of damage. That 16 strength cleric though? That's getting riskier. Meanwhile the 8 strength wizard doesn't have a chance.

In D&D it's an interesting puzzle. Does the barbarian carry the wizard? Throw them? Jump across while holding a rope so the wizard can use that? You can obfuscate this discussion with terminology and game rule specifics all you want but end of the day if the DM decides that there is a chasm there are 3 options. The chasm can be easily crossed, it can be crossed with a chance of failure or it cannot be crossed at all. D&D just has more fidelity and options.

 

[pemerton]

This is a bit surprising. To me it seemed obvious most "tighter" systems are specifically designed to compensate for potential GM's weaknesses.

The idea that (say) Vincent Baker or Luke Crane needs to design RPG systems to compensate for "GM weaknesses" is quite bizarre to me. It only makes sense if we already accept that the GM is almost the whole game is the default state for all RPGing.

But it's not. The design of tighter systems is not to compensate for GM weaknesses by taking some of the game out of the hands of the GM. It's to create RPG experiences in which the GM is not almost the whole of the game.

the D&D toolbox actually provide a huge number of components for this "simple" solution that enables the suggested way to resolve it both highly effective to communicate, and much richer in gameplay opportunities than what might be immediately related.

<snip>

(1) D&D specify that the DM has the authority to make such a ruling. Social bickering and rules lawyering can be effectively shut down, allowing the play to continue.
(2) D&D clearly defines "check" in such a way that the DM can simply state "Give me a dex check", and the players automatically know they should roll a d20 and do a particular kind of math, reading back the result. This process is likely much more effective, and allow play to progress more smoothly, than if the DM had to describe some new dice schemes.
(3) A stat check are having important related concept to it - in partucular advantage and disadvantage. Calling for a check is a prompt that can be responded by the players in any number of ways to frame or modify the situation in order to gain advantage on the roll - using inspiration being the most straight forward example. Hence by the simple action of invoking the request for check the DM has initiated an optional rich "mini game" enabled by D&D beyond the simple rolling of the dice.
(4) Calling for a check passes initiative to the players, as the DM has to wait with narration. D&D provides a ton of various character features the players might try to invoke in this situation - in some cases as part of trying to get advantage, but also in some cases also empowering them to effectively change the nature of the proposed resolution (like forcing the other side to make a saving throw first, or else automatically pass the check).

So in isolation asking for a dice roll to resolve a certain situation might seem bland, but D&D provides the tools for making even such a simple prompt and interesting or effective event depending on player choice. And all of 1, 3 and 4 relies specifically on there not being a strong external structure of play at work.

Point (1) is one line of rules : a statement of authority.

Point (2) is one paragraph of rules: a statement that defines some dice procedures. (Book 1 of Classic Traveller actually state such a rule, on one of the early pages.)

The core of point (3) can easily be incorporated in the same paragraph as point (4). Burning Wheel does this, when it sets out its rules for when and how a player can ask for advantage dice.

What is missing from your account of point (3) is any explanation of how a player might "modify the situation", beyond spending a metacurrency. In other circumstances, does this work by lobbying the GM? By making some in-ficiton move for one's PC? Something else? This is where we get into the terrain that underpins @loverdrive's point.

And point (4) is the core of loverdrive's point. Between asking for the check, and narrating what follows from the check, there lie endless rules such as that "swords do 1d8 of damage". But what is the point of those rules? Are you really saying that they serve no function but to create anticipation about what the GM will say next? I mean, I'm on record as saying that much of D&D's rules, as the game is widely played, are really just a device for making suggestions to the GM, but I got hammered for saying what was taken to be a terrible attack on D&D. Here you seem to be saying a version of the same thing but presenting it as praise!

I mean, nothing that you have posted here does anything to show that the rule that "swords do 1d8 damage" actually creates game play!

 

[pemerton]

The main issue is that building a keep, running a fiefdom is a really different game than D&D's typical target.

Really? Every version of D&D for the first 15 years of the game's life has rules for it.

And what happened to the "hackability" and "flexibility"?

The rules for Prince Valiant fit onto a dozen or so A4 pages, and in my Prince Valiant game there has been no trouble at all adjudicating the players taking control of castles, fielding their forces, travelling the world with their warband, etc.

 

[pemerton]

But all of that is just reframing the issue. In D&D we know how far you can jump without an ability check and in DW you don't. But in either case the DM decides how wide the chasm is - can the characters jump it or not.

This claim is true of 5e D&D. It's false of DW.

But in D&D I can describe it as a 20 foot chasm. The barbarian with a 20 strength can jump it with ease, the 18 strength fighter needs to make an athletics check. Does the fighter just hope for the best and make an athletics check? In my game, it's pretty close so if the barbarian jumps first so they can catch the fighter even if the fighter blows their athletics and takes a few points of damage. That 16 strength cleric though? That's getting riskier. Meanwhile the 8 strength wizard doesn't have a chance.

In D&D it's an interesting puzzle. Does the barbarian carry the wizard? Throw them? Jump across while holding a rope so the wizard can use that? You can obfuscate this discussion with terminology and game rule specifics all you want but end of the day if the DM decides that there is a chasm there are 3 options. The chasm can be easily crossed, it can be crossed with a chance of failure or it cannot be crossed at all. D&D just has more fidelity and options.

What you say here may be true of %e D&D: the GM can set a "puzzle" that requires the players to make checks of different degrees of difficulty.

I would note that 5e D&D has no clear rules for what happens if the wizard tries to cross the chasm on a rope. Is this auto-success? A chance of failure? If the latter, is the check on DEX or on STR? If on DEX, does Acrobatics help?

DungeonWorld does not have any way in which the GM can set up a puzzle of the sort you describe. Any more than go has a way of moving the pieces once played. Your attempt to insist that they're the same except D&D has more options is just false. 5e D&D has no way of doing what DW permits in this scenario.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, this puzzles me too.

A Free Kriegsspiel referee, as I understand it, has actual expertise in a particular technical endeavour (military logistics and military operations) which is then deployed to adjudicate others imagined efforts at those things. For me, the closest analogy is this: I can judge a moot, and I can coach moot teams, at least in a few fields of law. But I couldn't be a Free Kriegsspiel referee!

I don't know about masters - when I learned D&D I had read (but not been able to operationalise) the Classic Traveller Books 1 to 3 (1977 version) and had played Warlock of Firetop Mountain (the Fighting Fantasy Gamebook). The book that I learned D&D from was Moldvay Basic.

I don't know if I could have learned direct from the AD&D books - I didn't read them until a year or more later, and when I did read them it was very much through the Moldvay lens.

In my case I first played D&D with some other Boy Scouts, when I was 12. This was pretty early D&D, like I think we had the 'new' combat system and thieves, something like that. I wasn't able to even look at the books! I had played some wargames, though not the TT minis kind, so I had some idea of structured game rules ala Avalon Hill games and such. My sister and I promptly made up our own RPG rules, based on snatches of what I gleaned from D&D as well as stuff 12 year olds think of (like I remember there was a rule that you could kill a dragon with a single arrow, clear reference to Smaug, though how that would actually work is beyond me).

After a few months some other people started getting copies, and when I was able to buy a copy of Holmes Basic we just attached photocopies of parts of the other books to it so we could play higher level PCs. While Wikipedia states it was released in 1977, it had to have been really early in the year because we played it a LOT (it fell apart completely) before we moved.

Anyway, my experience with that Basic set was that the rules were not completely intelligible and even after having played with other people a bunch of times I still couldn't figure out some of the rules. That didn't stop us from being able to play though, we just made up our own rules for most stuff. I drew a map of Xanth and we used it as a 'setting'. The dungeon geomorphs got annotated into a dungeon, etc. (we didn't get any modules until much later). Somewhere along in there I did get handed a set of the original books though.

 

[Oofta]

Really? Every version of D&D for the first 15 years of the game's life has rules for it.

And what happened to the "hackability" and "flexibility"?

The rules for Prince Valiant fit onto a dozen or so A4 pages, and in my Prince Valiant game there has been no trouble at all adjudicating the players taking control of castles, fielding their forces, travelling the world with their warband, etc.

If you have Joe spending significant game time running their keep, what are the rest of the people doing? As far as having those rules for a long time, D&D did grow out of war gaming and then we had the content bloat years.

All I can say is that we never used the rules for running keeps, it's just not generally a group activity. Fortunately there are 3PP if it's something you want to pursue.

 

[AnotherGuy]

I would note that 5e D&D has no clear rules for what happens if the wizard tries to cross the chasm on a rope.

Do you see this as some sort of short-coming?

Is this auto-success? A chance of failure? If the latter, is the check on DEX or on STR? If on DEX, does Acrobatics help?

If there is a meaningful chance of failure then the DM would call for some sort of skill check.
If one is using the rope for climbing (i.e. under the rope) I'd call for a STR check.
If one is using is tight-rope walking then this would be an Acrobatics check.

D&D provides the tools and allows the DM to use the tools that are best appropriate for the situation at hand. That flexibility is usually viewed as a benefit.

 

[AnotherGuy]

I mean, I'm on record as saying that much of D&D's rules, as the game is widely played, are really just a device for making suggestions to the GM, but I got hammered for saying what was taken to be a terrible attack on D&D. Here you seem to be saying a version of the same thing but presenting it as praise!

That's because "making suggestions to the GM" could be considered reductive.
How do you view weapon tables which list the weapons' damage, weight and their properties? In your opinion is that suggestive to you or prescriptive?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Then it just means I'm thinking how I can convince the DM how to use my arcana skill to get a success. Doesn't really change anything.

And that is different from outside of an SC how? I mean, the player uses some sort of criteria in their head to decide what it is they are going to deploy in order to achieve some objective, right? Then they have to tie that resource/game element through the existing fictional position and justify it. This is not changed because 'skill challenge'.

That wasn't how it was run by other DMs. I ignored the official rules after a while for my home game, but most DMs were pretty strict in LFR games.

I've never done organized play like that, so I have no comment on what was or was not allowed in LFR. However, if I was being told by someone that I, as a GM, wasn't following the rules and I said to a player "you win, that idea is just too good" there's a section in the DMG1 on SCs that says "you can do this", so my critics can go hang, basically. Frankly LFR sounded heinous to me...

I use variations of skill challenges now and then. It's just that they were too cut-and-dry when released. They also talk about complex challenges in the 5E DMG and I think it's something they could expand on in the future. Nowadays I just handle it differently with more degrees of failure along with success at a cost in addition to success, exceptional success and completely bypassing the challenge. I also try to take into account previous actions far more than what was typical for skill challenges while being more descriptive. If it's something that each individual needs to accomplish I'll give them some suggestions on what they can try or how they can assist a fellow PC.

Oh, and I can't look back at my old books. I was pretty much done with 4E when 5E came out but my wife was ready to burn the books as a sacrificial offering to Gygax's and Arneson's ghosts. I convinced her to give our books to the one guy in our group who still loved the edition.

I keep my D&D books, hehe. My wife has given up campaigning to rid us of them. lol. Anyway, the version of SCs in the RC from 2012 is both shorter and better than the other descriptions. The differences are subtle, but quite solid. I don't think you have to stick too hard to the 'rules' either, if you want to have 4 failures on a challenge, by gosh do it! I mean, you could always logic it back to legality by the original rules anyway (IE something removes an existing failure, whatever). Its definitely a less rigid framework than combat encounters.

And, I understand some people argue that something closer to BitD score handling (clocks and such) would be better, but I'm fond of my SCs and I think they can definitely work great 90% of the time (and heck, combats can get boring too once in a while).

 

[pemerton]

Do you see this as some sort of short-coming?

<snip>

D&D provides the tools and allows the DM to use the tools that are best appropriate for the situation at hand. That flexibility is usually viewed as a benefit.

For my part, yes it is a shortcoming because I have zero interest in RPGing where the GM is almost all of the game.

But my point in the post you quoted was (i) to point out that the relevant D&D rules or procedure had not been fully stated by @Oofta (ie "the wizard can use a rope" is set out there, but the actual process of resolution of this is elided), and (ii) to explain that D&D and DW don't work the same at all, and that in fact DW is not just a version of D&D with less attention to the details of chasm widths.

If you have Joe spending significant game time running their keep, what are the rest of the people doing?

There is very little game time spent of "running the keep" in a logistical sense: occasionally the players perform calculations about how much gear they might be able to buy for their warband.

The castles and armies figure as elements in framing and resolution: the PCs attack them, defend them, persuade owners of them into "advantageous" marriages, etc.