D&D General How much control do DMs need?

[Clint_L]

D&D is a peculiar game in that it has always be learned through kind of osmosis - it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to play D&D if you just bought a PHB, a DMG, and a MM. I know that starter sets have always been designed to rectify this, but for the most part, you learn D&D through being taught by someone else. Maybe nowadays from watching it online.

This is very different from an RPG such as Fiasco. You can play it right out of the box, and it doesn't take long to figure it out. It walks you through every step - within minutes you can be playing the game. Of course, it is far less complex.

 

[Oofta]

D&D is a peculiar game in that it has always be learned through kind of osmosis - it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to play D&D if you just bought a PHB, a DMG, and a MM. I know that starter sets have always been designed to rectify this, but for the most part, you learn D&D through being taught by someone else. Maybe nowadays from watching it online.

This is very different from an RPG such as Fiasco. You can play it right out of the box, and it doesn't take long to figure it out. It walks you through every step - within minutes you can be playing the game. Of course, it is far less complex.

I learned to play from the books when the rules were much more incomprehensible. We probably got a lot of things "wrong" but we still had fun. Nowadays? Now there's a ton of streams to get an idea along with starter sets.

It could be improved of course, hopefully they will with the 2024 edition.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Individual members come and go, sometimes retiring from adventuring for a while to do their own things (or just for some R&R) before returning, and sometimes just dying out.

Sure, but what does that do about players' ability to become engaged with other players' characters? To care about what happens to them?

I had similar - a large party got completely split up. Email very quickly became My Friend.

Much harder to do this with D&D and similar games than it is with others, for sure.

You don't need the entire world, but I think you do need a fairly big piece of it. Why? Because otherwise when talking about what else is out there it's far too easy to talk yourself into a corner (i.e. dreaming something up about the world that on later reflection really doesn't fit there), or into inconsistencies (i.e. contradicting something established earlier).

There's always the risk of contradicting something... we've all done that at times. I don't think the risk is greater when you haven't determined it all ahead of time... in fact, the risk is far lesser.

I'm an awful note-taker during the run of play, and I've no way of knowing what snippets the players (or I!) will remember later - maybe years later - and what they won't.

I mean, if the players forget things, then no harm to contradict it, right? The point of whatever detail is to enable play.

Personal preference for my settings.

Fair enough, but I think it's clear that almost everything you're proposing is your preference, and not what's "needed".

For one thing, it's 99.99% certain that initial Dwarf won't be the only one played in the campaign; so why should the first player to play one get that authorial favouritism? Never mind that first Dwarf PC could well be dead within two sessions. For another, the next player to play a Dwarf might have vastly different ideas about what Dwarves are like, leading to conflict. Far better that a neutral arbiter - i.e. me as DM - set the parameters up front and have done with it.

Why not let the player decide? If someone later wants to play a dwarf, they know what they're like... they can decide to play one or not. How is this different than if the GM decides? Or, maybe there's more than one type of dwarf, or more than one dwarf culture... again, if you don't commit to this stuff all before play, then you can allow these things to come up in response to the evolving game.

To a point, I agree with this. I mean, I love playing murder-hoboes, but even they have roots and (living or dead) family somewhere. And I agree about the advantage and disadvantage being about equal; in my view this is best achieved by the player not abusing the situation (i.e. no "I'm the daughter of the Baron which means I'm rich and what I say goes") and the DM largely ignoring their existence unless the player brings it up.

I think murder hoboes tend to not have connections to the world at all. At least, not any that will matter in play. As for the advantages or disadvantages of background... I don't think you need to be so alarmed about abuse. You've never had a character of noble rank? Or from a wealthy family? As I said, any advantages that brings can be paired with a disadvantage so that it's a mixed blessing.

If you've agreed to play a pre-gen you've already self-imposed all those limits, I'd say.

Depends on the campaign, though. If the whole campaign is no more than a hard-line AP where the characters are never intended to stray from the tracks then nothing external really matters; and while I know WotC love DMs who run their games this way because it sells more adventure books, it's not appealing to me and I'd argue isn't the best way to present the game.

Not at all. How does "hot jungles of the south" limit the player more than a specific jungle with specific concepts attached to it?

I'm not talking about an AP type game, necessarily, it was just an example of a game with pre-gens who had minimal world details, as offered by @S'mon ; I don't think your assessment that the designers failed is accurate because either, as you say, those details don't matter to the play offered by that product, or because they leave it up to the group to decide.

 

[Lanefan]

I just got Forbidden Lands RPG in the post. It actually seems to be intended as a complete game, not just a game engine. Which I find rather disconcerting - perhaps showing how unusual this is. Most RPGs don't look like games, they look like instruction manuals for making a game.

One flag might be whether Forbidden Lands (or any other system) has a hard-coded and unavoidable end point of play built into its design. Most RPGs are designed either for fully open-ended play or play that spans an uncertain amount of time and with at most a rather fuzzy end-point that can be bypassed or ignored if so desired. (an example of the latter would be a typical AP - sure the authors' intent might be that play stops when the module is over but there's nothing stopping a table from continuing on into other adventures with those same characters if they want)

 

[clearstream]

I just got Forbidden Lands RPG in the post. It actually seems to be intended as a complete game, not just a game engine. Which I find rather disconcerting - perhaps showing how unusual this is. Most RPGs don't look like games, they look like instruction manuals for making a game.

I've been curious about Forbidden Lands. If you play might you post a review?

 

[clearstream]

D&D is a peculiar game in that it has always be learned through kind of osmosis - it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to play D&D if you just bought a PHB, a DMG, and a MM. I know that starter sets have always been designed to rectify this, but for the most part, you learn D&D through being taught by someone else. Maybe nowadays from watching it online.

This is very different from an RPG such as Fiasco. You can play it right out of the box, and it doesn't take long to figure it out. It walks you through every step - within minutes you can be playing the game. Of course, it is far less complex.

This might not be right. Some groups are playing D&D today as their first RPG. At least according to WotC. 5e is pretty good at teaching how to play. I often talk about Basic D&D, PHB D&D and DMG D&D. The first two are very similar. The last is more of a step. Anyway, there are only a couple of concepts needed to start playing D&D, and 5e doesn't upbraid you for not getting it "right".

 

[hawkeyefan]

I think I agree with most everything above except... the structure of Agon being about "inspiring participants" and the implied... "D&D isn't"... However before I comment further I'd like you to define more specifically what you mean by this.

There's no implication there. D&D's prep is meant to limit the players. It can also inspire, but a big part of what it does is it determines what is possible and what is not.

I'd say it's more restrained (very specific play structure), less specific (components are created at a higher level of granularity for the most part)... and not necessarily more simple (Tying it all together as a whole and making sure the interlocking components all tie to the strife And you follow the exact process... just seems more complex in a different way than a random D&D dungeon might be.

Look at the example islands in the book. They're three pages each, with the same format and components.

I would say that the D&D scenarios that have been prepared that fit in three pages or less are exceedingly rare. There are some one page dungeons out there, that's true, so it's certainly possible, though they tend to be very simple. But it's far from the standard.

I disagree that Mysteries are not hidden. They are specifically things the players don't know the answers to at the beginning of play. Unless hidden means something besides not having knowledge of... I'm not sure how you come to that conclusion. Whether they are revealed or not during play is does not somehow make them not hidden until that time.

They're not hidden in the sense that the answer is not known ahead of time. The mystery is a question that the Strife Player poses to the players and then the answer is determined through play. It's not something that the Strife Player knows and doesn't share with the players.

None of the information in an island entry consists of details known to the Strife Player that they will not share with the other players. There is no hidden information.

There's a reason that the Strife Player is designated as a player as well. All the players, including the SP, are playing to find out. There is no pre-existing story, it emerges through play.

Can you show me where in the book it explains the process for how exactly a mystery is resolved...how the actual truth is decided? You're saying it's decided in play but what does that mean. If the mystery is whether the hermit has been poisoning the villages water supply and my partial answer as GM is he has poisonous herbs in his garden... how is whether he did or didn't actually determined in this game?

From Page 137 of the physical book:

MYSTERIES
What questions do the characters and trials raise? Highlight a few for the Strife Player to answer in play. In an island write-up, we call these questions mysteries.
A good mystery is a loaded question. Include a partial answer with the question, and ask if maybe it's true. Infuse the questions with a strong point of view to help the Strife Player form their own thoughts- either supporting your hypothesis or rejecting it with it's easier to customize when you have something to work with.

This is all the book says about mysteries. Then it offers some examples in the islands included. Looking at them, none of them privilege information for the Strife Player.

Yes... so then structure/process. We've established this as a difference already but when the components of Agon's structure are taken individually they, t least IMO, very closely align with common components of D&D play.

Really? Your summary didn't really support that.

In Agon, pages 136 and 137, the text offers the following steps to "Creating an Island".

• Concept
• Characters
• Conflicts
• Mysteries
• Special Rewards

What five steps would you say these align with in D&D? And where can I find them laid out so plainly on a two-page spread? Once I determine all these details, will they all fit on one to three pages?

Let's just say I disagree you need this level of granularity to run a D&D adventure...and as I stated earlier I have run D&D with a majority of improv.

Sure, but then you're running D&D in a way that's not really supported.

All you need to run a 1st level adventure...
Resolution mechanic of D&D... attribute (+Skill) if applicable vs. DC of 5/10/15/20.
Base 1st level opponent stat block.
damage by level of traps.
That's all you actually need to run a simple adventure...

Generally, some kind of dungeon map and the contents of the five rooms and dimensions are needed because so many of the rules interact with that... ranges, area of effects, movement, etc.

You can come up with this on the fly, yes, but that's not really described at all in the texts. I can wing Agon to use even less prep, too.

I'd agree in how the books are structured, processes and procedures but when you get down to it you are prepping an "adventure" or an "island" with largely the same general components in both systems. Contrast this with something like the other game discussed earlier... In a Wicked Age and I totally agree there. There is no similar pre-prep between the two.

In a Wicked Age is one of the games that inspired Agon. Though it does use a different method to prepare for play, it's intentionally low-prep. It specifically states this in the text several times.

D&D is not a game people typically cite as low prep, and it's not claimed at all in the text. In fact, the opposite is true. They often cite how much work and effort the DM has to put in, but assure the reader that it can be very satisfying.

EDIT: And honestly it's AGON's similarities in prep to more trad games that has me wanting to try it. Outside of the vagueness I felt hung around resolving mysteries... it's a fairly easy game to grok.

Yes, it's very easy to grasp. It also seems very easy to prep and run. It was designed intentionally to be so.

 

[gorice]

I hear yer mum's isomorphic cohort to cohort.

Anyway...

I think you are speaking of the operationalizing of the game text. What I called previously the distinction between game as text and game as played. Elsewhere I have used the analogy of tools to explain this operationalizing.

Photoshop is then a good analogy. The artistry is in how the tool is operationalized. Why use photoshop at all? The answer is the same as "why do we use tools".

D&D is a tool. It might not be the ideal tool for you. As you say, 100% of the operationalization of the game text is done by you. That's true of every TTRPG. No exceptions. Some are like a version of Photoshop that includes instructions on how you would best use it. In an ideal sense, such TTRPGs could be seen as a version of Photoshop that won't allow you to draw anything that doesn't fit its designer's conception of art.

If one has a strong opinion on what you want to draw, and you see a tool designed to draw just that, then it's reasonable to prefer that tool over a general tool. You might advocate that other people use that same tool so that they will better conform to the kind of drawing you want to see. Why would they want to be free to scribble!?

If we go with the tool analogy, the next question is: what are this particular tool's affordances? In plain language: what is it obviously good for, and how does that work? If I pick up a hammer, it's immediately clear to me that it's going to be good at hitting things, and that those hook thingies on the back can be used to pry and pull things.

If the analogy holds, we should be able to describe the particular affordances of, say, 5th edition of D&D, compared to other RPGs.

I want to note that I don't really agree with @loverdrive that a game should just work by itself. To extend the analogy: a clumsy person, such as yours truly, is perfectly capable of accidentally hurting themselves with a well-made hammer.

As for the uniqueness of every cohort... I think it's entirely possible to have external (even normative) standards for what constitutes (1) play as such, and (2) motivated play of one kind or another.

 

[Lanefan]

Sure, but what does that do about players' ability to become engaged with other players' characters? To care about what happens to them?

Nothing. It's up to the players whether they decide to care about each others' characters, and that can vary character by character even with the same two players.

For example, I play in a game where we've all got multiple characters; and each other player has characters who are friends of one or more of mine, disliked by one or more of mine, considered rivals or love interests or whatever by one or more of mine, and so on.

So if I'm playing one of my characters (A) I'll very much care about another player's character (B) who (A) is in love with, but if I'm playing a different character (C) I might not give a flying fig about what becomes of (B) and want to kill that same player's other character (D).

There's always the risk of contradicting something... we've all done that at times.

We have, and I consider it an unacceptable failure when it happens to me. Thus, I do what I can to ensure it doesn't happen (again).

I mean, if the players forget things, then no harm to contradict it, right? The point of whatever detail is to enable play.

In theory. In practice we have game logs that largely take care of such things.

Why not let the player decide? If someone later wants to play a dwarf, they know what they're like... they can decide to play one or not. How is this different than if the GM decides? Or, maybe there's more than one type of dwarf, or more than one dwarf culture... again, if you don't commit to this stuff all before play, then you can allow these things to come up in response to the evolving game.

The risk there is having to retcon things that in hindsight should have been obvious all along; which for me is a complete non-starter.

For example, the player of Dwarf #1 might place a Dwarven realm in the Althasian Hills as his home. Fine...until a few years later another player running Dwarf #6 places another Dwarven realm in the Thraci Hills...meaning that Dwarves #2-5 could have been from there as well if that choice had existed at the time. Never mind that the sudden emergence of a Dwarven realm in the Thraci Hills might cause all sorts of retroactive knock-on effects elsewhere ("Crap - we were getting slaughtered near there in that Flame of Chaos adventure, we could have gone there for refuge had we known it existed!" <stink eyes all round> )

Retcons are a very hard no, so let's not give them reason to rear their ugly heads.

I think murder hoboes tend to not have connections to the world at all. At least, not any that will matter in play. As for the advantages or disadvantages of background... I don't think you need to be so alarmed about abuse. You've never had a character of noble rank?

By sheer chance and against long odds (as such things are and always have been randomly rolled for in our systems) the very first character I ever played was a high noble - a prince first in line to a throne. Not that it gave him any advantages in play - in fact, it probably shortened his lifespan considerably: as he was a crown prince I decided he was used to a) giving orders and b) his word pretty much being the law, but he wasn't in his homeland (nor even on the same world!) and the rest of the party quite understandably didn't take well to such a high-handed attitude. Some murderous infighting later (very long story!), he was dead.

I don't think I've ever hit nobility on those tables again.

Incredibly, a long time ago some players were rolling up characters to bring into my first campaign and side by side (and I watched these rolls) two players almost simultaneously hit "high noble" at what was then something like a 2-in-1000 chance. One turned out to be a crown prince, the other was a prince second in line to a different throne. "Yikes!" says I-as-DM, because as the adventure was set within the realm of the second one, with the crown prince's realm fairly close by, it naturally made sense they'd come equipped with bodyguards and so forth; their introduction more than doubled the party size and way more than doubled its power (the party was 1st-2nd level at the time).

Didn't help 'em much. The second-in-line guy died pretty fast, while the first-in-line guy did OK but retired after that one adventure, went home, and died defending his realm from invasion.

 

[Lanefan]

They're not hidden in the sense that the answer is not known ahead of time. The mystery is a question that the Strife Player poses to the players and then the answer is determined through play. It's not something that the Strife Player knows and doesn't share with the players.

None of the information in an island entry consists of details known to the Strife Player that they will not share with the other players. There is no hidden information.

There's a reason that the Strife Player is designated as a player as well. All the players, including the SP, are playing to find out. There is no pre-existing story, it emerges through play.

From Page 137 of the physical book:

MYSTERIES
What questions do the characters and trials raise? Highlight a few for the Strife Player to answer in play. In an island write-up, we call these questions mysteries.
A good mystery is a loaded question. Include a partial answer with the question, and ask if maybe it's true. Infuse the questions with a strong point of view to help the Strife Player form their own thoughts- either supporting your hypothesis or rejecting it with it's easier to customize when you have something to work with.

This is all the book says about mysteries. Then it offers some examples in the islands included. Looking at them, none of them privilege information for the Strife Player.

How does that not immediately put the Strife player in violation of Czege, though? The Strife player is told to ask the question/pose the problem and then to help answer/solve it.

Or is the above intended as advice for what the GM is supposed to do? In which case, the "supporting your hypothesis" clause kind of indicates the GM does have an idea in mind as to the answer before point the Strife player to the questions.