D&D General How much control do DMs need?

[niklinna]

I'm afraid I don't get what you mean.

Well you would if you spoke Forge waffle. Even though none of that was Forge terminology, nor is most verbiage claimed to be Forge terminology. But I am capable of learning new terms, and so I am learning that "Forge waffle" quite simply means "I don't understand your words, I am not interested in learning them, also I have an ongoing beef with the Forge".

 

[Clint_L]

"Traditionally, the Dungeon Master assumes god-like powers in a game of D&D. They are the omniscient narrator with power over everything but character choices."

Speaking as someone who has been DMing D&D since 1978..wrong. The DM does NOT have "power over everything"; the DM has control only over the creation of the foundation of an adventure. The DM is similar to the host of a party offering a period of entertainment to other people who can respond in such a way as to make that time period entertaining for the DM.

"They build and tell the story..."
Again, wrong. The players build and tell the story. The DM builds the story foundation which then provides an environment for the actions of the characters of the story.

"They even have the power to set aside rules and rolls, at their discretion..."
Once more, wrong. The DM, as game referee, is obligated to inform the players when the DM wishes to alter the published rules the players are using. Only if the players agree to the proposed changes can the DM set aside rules and rolls. Or the players will just set the DM aside.

People who DM as if they have god-like powers are simply playing the game incorrectly and, frankly, selfishly. As you've found out, not being a narcissistic dictator but allowing players to contribute meaningfully in major ways to a campaign greatly increases the DM's enjoyment of the game as well as that of the players. One of my best campaigns occurred when I told the players I had build a calendar of events for my world which would automatically occur unless the characters influence them otherwise, and that their characters could literally do anything they wanted to in the world as long as the players understood their characters' actions would always have consequences, just like in real life. Then I ran my NPCs as if they were my PCs with each having a general list of personal ethics that would help me guide their behavior. If things go badly for an NPC, that's just too bad for the NPC even if it would dramatically change the campaign. Very soon, the campaign world took on a life of its own, not just for the players but for me too.

It was amazing! This is how I run all my campaigns and one-shots.

1.You say wrong, but then you describe exactly what I said but in slightly different language. So...okay. I agree.

2. This is a partial quote, but again you are describing exactly the same thing as me. The DM is the world-builder, the person who decides what it is in the world and what is not, and the players decide how to react. So, again, agreed.

3. The DM absolutely has the power, as written in AD&D and continuing to this day, to set aside rules and rolls. The players do not have to agree. Your argument is something different: that the DM should not use this ability in an abusive way or the players will likely opt out. I agree! But the game explicitly gives that ability to the DM and trusts that they will use it wisely. I don't feel like I have to once again dredge up the various quotations; this is common knowledge.

4. You then describe what sounds to me like a fantastic but also typical campaign, where the DM creates a world and invites the players to play in it. Realistic consequences for their actions, etc. Yes! That is a good, normal way of playing D&D. But not what I am talking about in my OP or at various other points in the thread. I am discussing giving players the ability to take an active role on the world-building end of things. For instance, letting your players change that calendar not through your rulings, but through theirs.

This is how a game like Fiasco works - world building is completely communal. D&D is explicitly not intended to work that way; it is intended to have an all-powerful DM, aside from the free-willed player characters (as you describe in your campaign). What I am interested in is the degree of bleed that can happen between those roles while still keeping D&D viable and fun. The degree to which a player can say, "I suddenly notice a fire coming from over the ridge, and as I get closer I hear the screams of villagers" and have the DM (to whom this is news) respond, "yes, and..."

 

[hawkeyefan]

Inconsistency is definitely something that can happen with an approach that is more open and not defined (for example a game that says backgrounds give this or that specific ability or bonus, that is going to be consistent). Where I think less defined can work well, if people are comfortable with the approach is allowing for a more fluid application of the character's history to be applied to situations (maybe in one circumstance a +1 bonus makes sense, maybe in another a damage die bonus or an ability to understand a particularly complex document, or perhaps an ability to simply follow all the rules of etiquette at a particular occasion without make a roll). The older I get the more I enjoy a more open and fluid approach to this stuff, but I can also enjoy games where the rules or the spirit is one more of consistency (3E was a very RAW type game but if you engage that it can be rewarding---but frustrating if you don't realize that is what is going on).

Sure. I think expectation is a big part of it. If the rules have a specific way of working, and the GM then decides to use judgment instead, that can be frustrating. I like the Backgrounds in 5e because they (some, at least) give specific benefits. Much like a feat or a spell… they work in clearly defined ways. Or at least, they should… some folks seem to think they’re less specific than other rules.

They also help to serve as inspiration for potential advantages or drawbacks in play. Those more freeform situations that you’re describing. So a Noble may not need to make a roll to know a custom or to be familiar with heraldry, but they may also find it hard to move about unnoticed in the affluent district of a city. That kind of thing.

To connect it to the idea of DM control, I’ve gotten very used to letting players decide when a background applies or not. If they declare an action and then say “do I get any kind of benefit due to being a Criminal?” I usually turn it right back on them. “How does being a Criminal help you here?” Unless their reason is total BS, I give them advantage or determine that no roll is needed.

I think sometimes we don’t want to let the players have it “too easy” and so we resist this kind of thing. I think there’s a lot of conditioning that takes place in the hobby to make it seem that way. But 95% of the time, there’s nothing disruptive or unbalanced about this stuff. Generally, all it does is improve chances for something that may have succeeded anyway.

I also find that having the player explain their reasoning on why their background applies can help to flesh out the character for the other participants, which is never a bad thing.

 

[pemerton]

That is sort of where our conversation go in circles. It is fully true that D&D not only do not handle these easily. It actually do not handle it at all. The reason is that it trough rule 0 hands the reins to the DM to handle those. And I can say that I as a DM can handle all of those with more ease by winging it in real time rather than having to follow some structure design by someone else (I consider that one of my few talents as a DM)

I can however accept that there might be DMs out there that would indeed struggle massively with this.

<snip>

we need to settle on a "level of acceptance" for what rule 0 allows us with regard to flexibility if we can meaningfully compare a system designed with rule 0 in mind with a system designed to "avoid" rule zero.

The flipside of what I've quoted seems to be saying that Cthulhu Dark can handle small unit skirmish combat, because the GM can graft on (say) the Warhammer rules, or just make up their own variant.

I mean, I guess it's true in some abstract sense, but is noting that possibility a meaningful part of evaluating what Cthulhu Dark can and can't do?

I've read many posts that talk about how a paladin's mount is useless or a mere ribbon (no horses in a dungeon, horses are vulnerable to fireball, etc). In my Prince Valiant game, incorporating horses into play (including better-than-typical steeds) is straightforward and an intelligent warhorse would be prized by its owner. Is this experience really irrelevant to judging whether one or the other system better accommodates knightly tropes?

What do you think is added to the analysis of a game to say that "it hands the reins to the DM"? Clearly that doesn't magically give the GM game design skills (which is a version of @loverdrive's point). Are you emphasising the normative expectations it might generate? Do you think the player of the PC thief is expected to just suck up Luke Crane's decision to give the fighter a better chance of hiding via an ad hoc roll because the GM is applying "rule zero"?

My questions in the previous two paragraphs are sitting somewhere between the literal and the rhetorical: I don't understand what work you think "rule zero" is doing in increasing flexibility, and it is opaque to me what meaningful work you think it can be doing.

In other words, it is not realy possible to reason about ease of flexing D&D without taling the DM into account. This is because D&D by design leaves these responsibilities to the DM.

What does this mean? In case it's not clear, I'm not having trouble reading the sentence and attributing content to its words and syntax. But - to reiterate the earlier parts of this post - I am having a lot of trouble understanding what you think is actually contributed to the account of what the game can do by pointing to the GM. An instruction to players that says Ask your GM doesn't in itself give the GM any powers to generate an answer.

This is why I keep returning to the following puzzlement: the only practical sense I can make of what you're saying is that a game with "rule zero" is telling the players to go along with whatever the GM tells them happens next, perhaps with the GM being guided by some ad hoc die roll in making that decision. But the idea that this makes a game flexible is bizarre to me, because any RPG can trivially graft that rule onto the rest of its system and thereby obtain exactly the same degree of flexibility. In other words, on this account being "flexible" is an utterly trivial property of a RPG, arrived at by appending a sentence or two to the rulebook. But those who assert that D&D is flexible clearly intend the assertion to be a non-trivial one.

Now, if the claim was that D&D had certain features - say, structural features - that made GM-authored extensions and additions and extrapolations particularly straightforward in some fashion, so that (eg) the Luke Crane thief vs fighter problem wouldn't come up, that would be a different kettle of fish altogether. In that case, rule zero wouldn't just be a trivial addition of two sentence, but an actually considered and operationalised component of the design.

The only version of D&D I know of that fits the description in the previous paragraph is 4e D&D.

 

[loverdrive]

The flipside of what I've quoted seems to be saying that Cthulhu Dark can handle small unit skirmish combat, because the GM can graft on (say) the Warhammer rules, or just make up their own variant.

Please don't graft Warhammer rules on Ctulhu Dark, it would never work, the system doesn't support it. Graft rules from Infinity instead!

 

[Bedrockgames]

Sure. I think expectation is a big part of it. If the rules have a specific way of working, and the GM then decides to use judgment instead, that can be frustrating. I like the Backgrounds in 5e because they (some, at least) give specific benefits. Much like a feat or a spell… they work in clearly defined ways. Or at least, they should… some folks seem to think they’re less specific than other rules.

They also help to serve as inspiration for potential advantages or drawbacks in play. Those more freeform situations that you’re describing. So a Noble may not need to make a roll to know a custom or to be familiar with heraldry, but they may also find it hard to move about unnoticed in the affluent district of a city. That kind of thing.

To connect it to the idea of DM control, I’ve gotten very used to letting players decide when a background applies or not. If they declare an action and then say “do I get any kind of benefit due to being a Criminal?” I usually turn it right back on them. “How does being a Criminal help you here?” Unless their reason is total BS, I give them advantage or determine that no roll is needed.

I think sometimes we don’t want to let the players have it “too easy” and so we resist this kind of thing. I think there’s a lot of conditioning that takes place in the hobby to make it seem that way. But 95% of the time, there’s nothing disruptive or unbalanced about this stuff. Generally, all it does is improve chances for something that may have succeeded anyway.

I also find that having the player explain their reasoning on why their background applies can help to flesh out the character for the other participants, which is never a bad thing.

I am very much in favor of letting the players weigh in and generally going with the flow unless it’s unreasonable. Usually when I make a ruling I ask then if they think it’s fair. I don’t try to set the game on hard mode (though somethings are intended to be challenging). This is from my last session and it may give you an idea of how receptive I am to player input (just for context they fairly easily assassinated two major NPCs which seemed fine to be, I didn’t think I needed to make more challenging rulings just to protect major bad guys or make them more of a challenge): HERE

 

[Enrahim2]

But those who assert that D&D is flexible clearly intend the assertion to be a non-trivial one.

And here I think the key to our communication problem might be I am one of those having argued D&D's flexibility over for instance dungeon world or burning wheel. And that has purely been on the trivial basis of D&D handing explicit rules control to the DM.

If a group decides to hand rules control over to the GM in dungeon world or burning wheel, this would be a trivial act in your words, and would indeed "elevate" those two games to the same flexibility class in my eyes as D&D.

My point is that while it might be trivial in terms of words needed, I believe those few words has profound effects on how the game would be percieved, played, and should be analysed. And this is what I think also the no rule zero proponents recognized.

To illustrate how this could have profound effect, let me make another shot at explaining how this connects with the topic at hand - the DM having control over the fiction/worldbuilding. The thread starter started by describing how he during a D&D session voluntarily released control over some of this. The framing was the benefits of less DM control. The conversation then pensed onto systems that claim to give their GMs less control. And I believe those claims to be true.

However a requirement for that claim to be true is as far as I can see that the GM is not granted control over the rules and procedures of play. If the game grants the GM the procedural power, any guarantees the game otherwise tried to put in place to ensure players having a word in the worldbuilding could validly become overruled as part of valid accepted play.

Another buzz concept at the forge period was the concept of system guaranteeing player rights, and protection against the GM. The absence of rule zero is absolutely essential for that to make any sense. Once you do the "trivial" act of grafting on rule zero to the activity, you have changed the nature of the game to such an extent that the system no longer can provide that design value at all.

So it might be that indeed from a practical standpoint given how rule zero is actually practiced, and the fact that a group can decide to override any design (and often do) - rule zero is indeed quite empty. However at least theoreticans in the past appear to have found it to be an important concept to take into account when trying to design around power dynamics at the table. When it come to flexibility analysis it is however not as obvious that it in general is relevant. Position 4 in my previous post (flexibility should be analysed as if rule zero is not invoked - just ignore that) is a valid one, and seem to be closest to the position you are advocating from as I see it? From that standpoint I agree D&D is rigid.

My stance has been that as the main variables we are talking about is flexibility as a function of DM control, rule zero shouldn't be ignored - hence my position 2 analysis (allowing for any addition not conflicting with player accessible rules, but no changing of them) indicate high flexibility compared with basically any system that we are not allowing for any changes or addition to those rules.

And of course if you allow for addition of any rules not conflicting with known rules to non-rule zero games the flexibility analysis might become different again. But then the comparison again seem to lose the GM control variable, so it is hard to see how that exersice would say anything about the effects of GM control? After all, wasn't the reason flexibility was brought in as a topic in this thread in the first place, that someone made the claim that a design cost of limiting GM control could be loss of flexibility? (My memory is a bit hazy, so I might have gotten this wrong. Not having time to dig for the origin now :/)

And again, thank you for insightful comments! It really help me clear my own thoughts. I also hope this helps you see something you might not have seen as clearly before!

 

[clearstream]

And someone new to RPGs would know these features how, exactly? This is one of the biggest blind-spots for a lot of D&D players, counting myself for ages and ages. D&D is the biggest, mostly because it was the first and everyone else played catch-up thereafter, but "skirmish-scale fantasy combat with an action economy" is incredibly specific. Someone looking to get into the hobby will know at best two of those words ("fantasy" and "combat.") And, as we're seeing with the rise of video games like Minecraft and Portal and the plethora of visual novels, a game does not need to have any combat or action economy or anything like that in order to be fantastically successful (nor, for that matter, did prior ultra-successful games like Myst, one of the best-selling games of all time.)

We might be talking past each other. Based on what others have said and analogies they introduced, I have been thinking about flexibility as a toolkit for designers. So flexibility in the sense of designability.

Is it right to understand that you are thinking about flexibility for players (including GM)? I usually think of choice if TTRPG for play as being about whatever experience you're aiming to have, and don't think of flexibility as salient to that.

And yet, as has been brought up in this thread (IIRC by @AbdulAlhazred?) the only way you can make actual Free Kriegsspiel work is by having referees who, in effect, already are living rulebooks.
The rules still matter, they are just internalized by a person; they translate the freeform-stated intent of a player into something productive. Throwing the rulebook out entirely and just making literally everything up as you go is not only not FK, it's actively against what FK was doing, which was teaching young officers. You can't teach something empty of content! (Well, I mean, you can waste time doing so, but no productive learning will come of it, and productive learning was the whole point of FK.)

It's erroneous to confine the kind of play designating itself FKR to what military types were trying to achieve more than a century ago. Yes, there are marked differences. Why should that matter?

It's play: there's no teaching objective. The reason for the choice of label is that GM (and it can also be players) are living rulebooks for their chosen subject of play.

And the answer, a lot of the time, is...looping back to stuff we discussed earlier. Theoretical absolute latitude, whichever side of the screen, limited by an awful lot of practical issues and problems. Or, you accept some tested (and that's critical--by definition you can't test an invisible rulebook) restrictions on your theoretical latitude, and in so doing, achieve reams more practical latitude. And for those who have not so much "tested" their invisible rulebook as subconsciously tweaked it over time in response to "problem" situations (I can't think of a milder phrase, but I mean that very mildly), lo and behold, you quite often find that the ad-hoc, invisible, unstated, tacit, implicit, inaccessible rules end up being...rather shockingly similar to the formally-stated ones, except the latter can be learned and communicated, while the former are trapped within each person's thinkmeats.

I agree. I would also say that some of the most intense and satisfying RPG I've ever experienced has been what would now be called FKR. For me "rules-light" is a better label, because (like Messerspiel) we did have a few written rules and players put together character sheets.

From my point of view, it's not a goal of FKR to teach or communicate rules. If one has that goal, as you imply a written ruleset is better. On goals, I feel that it has to be emphasised that what we're about is play. Hopscotch can't benefit from flexibility because when we play hopscotch our goal is to play hopscotch... not some other game.

 

[Enrahim2]

Ah, while I am at it. Including in writing any procedure for adding, changing or overriding rules during active play would likely according to my thinking qualify as adding similar kind of flexibility as the procedure of handing the GM control over the rules. I actually find it a bit puzzling that I haven't actually seen any example of such. I am curious if anyone else can think of any? It seem like such an obvious thing to do if you were making a game trying to make a point out of transfering powers of the traditional GM to the players.

 

[pemerton]

I am one of those having argued D&D's flexibility over for instance dungeon world or burning wheel. And that has purely been on the trivial basis of D&D handing explicit rules control to the DM.

<snip>

I also hope this helps you see something you might not have seen as clearly before!

It does help me understand your posts, thank you.

I don't think other posters who have asserted that D&D is notably flexible have been intending the same thing, though. At least, that is not at all how their posts have read to me.

My point is that while it might be trivial in terms of words needed, I believe those few words has profound effects on how the game would be percieved, played, and should be analysed. And this is what I think also the no rule zero proponents recognized.

This is the proposition I flagged in one of my posts not too far upthread: ie that "rule zero" changes the normative expectations about game play, and that "flexibility" describes a type of normative expectation.

Again, this is not what I have taken most of the D&D is flexible proponents to be saying. To me, they seem to have been pointing to elements of the rules considered as a framework for play, rather than to normative expectations of the participants towards various participant roles.

However at least theoreticans in the past appear to have found it to be an important concept to take into account when trying to design around power dynamics at the table.

My understanding - as someone who did not take part in the discussions you're referring to, but has read quite a few essays, blogs, message board discussions, etc that came out of them - is that the principle concern was to design complete and functional games that did not rely on GM-as-glue. That's an important design goal, and one that I've discussed with others in many threads over the years. But I don't see it as having very much bearing on the flexibility issue. In the last part of this reply I will explain these doubts.

To illustrate how this could have profound effect, let me make another shot at explaining how this connects with the topic at hand - the DM having control over the fiction/worldbuilding. The thread starter started by describing how he during a D&D session voluntarily released control over some of this. The framing was the benefits of less DM control. The conversation then pensed onto systems that claim to give their GMs less control. And I believe those claims to be true.

However a requirement for that claim to be true is as far as I can see that the GM is not granted control over the rules and procedures of play. If the game grants the GM the procedural power, any guarantees the game otherwise tried to put in place to ensure players having a word in the worldbuilding could validly become overruled as part of valid accepted play.

To me, all this seems to point to a necessary condition of the sort of flexibility you are describing: namely, without "rule zero" the appropriate normative orientation will not be present.

I personally have doubts about that claim, which I've illustrated upthread by pointing to the "Advanced F***ery" chapter of AW. Similarly, the existence of various BW supplements like The Blossoms are Falling, Burning Sands (? is that the right name - the Dune one), plus stuff in the Magic Burner and Monster Burner, clearly shows that "kitbashing" is expected: the supplements just happen to be the kitbashing that the designers are offering for sale. Etc.

But even if the claim about a necessary condition were accepted, that wouldn't establish that D&D meets whatever conditions are sufficient for being a flexible system. And that is what I have been focusing on in my posts. The Luke Crane hide-in-shadows anecdote is intended as one illustration of how D&D struggles to meet those conditions. (Outside of 4e D&D.)