D&D General How much control do DMs need?

[Xamnam]

Dumbo thinks he needs a magic feather in order to fly. He loses the magic feather mid-fall and realizes that he could fly without it. IMHO, Rule 0 is Dumbo's magic feather. I don't see why you need Rule 0 to do the things you do. Why do you think that a GM could not do the same things in other tabletop games without a Rule 0?

This is convincing framing, and I'm compelled to agree with the point of your last sentence.

That said, the stumbling block that I run into is that the Rule 0 of D&D is one that supersedes the Rule 0 that is intrinsic in my mind to the playing of any game: We all will endeavor to play this game by the rules that have been established. It's not that a GM could not do the same things without the permission, but it's that for me, and others, we would not do them. More vitally, perhaps not even think of doing them.

You're right. Any group can agree to change the rules of the game they are playing, there's no external force that will prevent that in this arena. However, much like the difference between not thinking of pink elephants, and not thinking of pink elephants after someone has said to not think of them, the framing causes a fundamental shift in perspective for me. Having it explicitly written out and intended cannot help but force me into a different lens, even if my ability has not shifted an iota.

 

[Oofta]

I think there's a myth that if you just change rule X, a bad DM will become a good DM.

In this case, rule 0. I've had good DMs and bad. The worst DM I ever had ran the game straight by the rules, no rule 0 involved. Come to think of it, the second worst is right up there as well. I've never had a DM that made completely arbitrary rule changes out of thin air that made much of a difference to the game, the closest is DMs that chose to use critical hit or fumble rules. Some of the best DM's I've had simply state "I have a few house rules and here's what they are".

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Side question: can you use miniatures and terrain with DW? Or, I suppose you probably can, but would it make sense? D&D is tactical enough that you can, and if you do combat becomes a sort of sub-game. I am a huge miniatures/terrain enthusiast, so I like being able to put a set out on the table. If DW is a lot like Monsterhearts, it seems to me theatre of the mind would be the way to go, and there wouldn't be much point to using miniatures.

Agreed, DW naturally operates as a 'ToTM' kind of system, but that's not to say you CANNOT use minis and such! In fact I think is a perfectly natural thing to want to do, and I've always been a fan of such game aids. Remember, AD&D 1e melee combat rules specifically eschew the concept of a definite position for each character in melee (I know some people will try to push back on this, they will fail, trust me). Yet it was both common practice and advised by EGG as a valuable technique. In the case of DW you simply have to remember that there are no movement rates, turns, etc. as mechanical constructs within the game, nor any concept of 'initiative'. So, the use of such aids is going to be entirely as a visualization aid and not so much for resolution purposes. That being said, I find that a mapped out battlefield can certainly give the GM a better idea of how to run things. It becomes more apparent when and where things like Defend can happen, or where a DD check may be needed, or simply suggest a natural call out order for action declarations (IE who is most likely to need to take some action next in a logical chronology, probably the guy that is about to take the brunt of that ogre's charge!). There could be a danger of being a bit too rigid I guess. Personally I'm very familiar with 'grid and figure' play, so it seems to work for me, but other DW GMs might not prefer this technique.

 

[clearstream]

You're right. Any group can agree to change the rules of the game they are playing, there's no external force that will prevent that in this arena. However, much like the difference between not thinking of pink elephants, and not thinking of pink elephants after someone has said to not think of them, the framing causes a fundamental shift in perspective for me. Having it explicitly written out and intended cannot help but force me into a different lens, even if my ability has not shifted an iota.

I feel you are right about changing lenses. When I think about the moment-by-moment acceptance... that can be strongly influenced by expectations going in. Do I expect GM to decide X or do I expect to have that power as a player? If the former, then the moment we come to X having that expectation in place will foster greater likelihood of acceptance. If the latter, and the DM chooses to go against it, we're likely in a worse place because of what we agreed up front: I'm offended by what happens in the moment and by the overarching betrayal.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Ok, time for some history clarifications again. My understanding of the situation is that D&D was originally phrased as a inspiration booklet for minimal rule refered play (and as marketing material for chainmail, a more traditional rules based wargame). Actually putting structure to it making it reasemble an actual ruleset was as far as I known firstly done by enthusiasts by the D&D concept that also wanted more rules bound play.

The further profilation of rules addition and hardening was as far as I understand fueled by demands from the turnament scene, that needed a way to make the game play more similarly across DMs.

I hence think it is incorrect to credit Gygax and Arneson with recognising the value of structure. Rather I would say au contraire - they where fighting tooth and nails to keep the game as unstructured and free as posible while harsh market reality was forcing them to move the game further and further from that ideal.

Well, I played since the mid-'70s. I do not know Mssrs Gygax and Arneson, nor ever played with them. I did play TT wargames, and D&D. So, certainly Chainmail came first, and the 'fantasy supplement' formed one of several strands of development which combined in the form of early D&D. The 'Campaigns & Crusades Society' was a group who, as I understand it, built fantasy campaigns using Chainmail, the fantasy supplement, and some sort of campaign 'rules'. I expect it was all ad-hoc. Meanwhile Arneson was involved in the 'Banania' Braunstein, which is loosely based on ideas from FK and various other military/military-adjacent training techniques, as well as possibly some other existing RP and wargaming traditions (Wikipedia has a bunch of footnotes pointing at some different publications).

Dave Arneson and others then invented the idea of a location-based adventure using persistent characters (first used in a game called 'Brownstone Texas'). Dave mixed in rules from Chainmail, some mechanics stolen from another game he designed (a naval war game as I understand it) and then developed the basic ideas of classes, levels, and dungeon exploration as Blackmoor, which was located on the Castles & Crusades Society map of the "Great Kingdom" and environs (which became or at least got folded into Greyhawk). At some point the C&CS thing ended/died and Gary took up the task of further codifying D&D into a workable product. I don't think the object was to boost sales of Chainmail, as at that time Gary didn't own Chainmail, it was published by 'Gideon Games'. Anyway, Gary's first idea was to sell the idea to Avalon Hill, but they were not able to see the possibilities and turned it down. Thus TSR was born.

If you read the AD&D PHB and DMG front material you will quickly learn from Gary that codifying D&D was a significant concern of his. Not just in order to make tournament play feasible, but also in order to create a more salable and teachable product. This was the goal with Holmes Basic, which attempted to clean up and codify the existing D&D rules (at least a core part of them). This had nothing to do with Chainmail, which by that point (1976) was rapidly becoming a side note. In fact TSR published Swords & Spells around this time, a mass combat system specifically designed around the D&D "alternate combat system" which is the one Basic and AD&D adopted, dropping all reference to Chainmail, along with the original usage of its combat system (which was originally the main system for combat).

Thus I find no evidence that your conclusion is correct. It may be that Dave and/or Gary were interested in limiting the scope of the rules, but we don't know that. We know next to nothing about what Dave thought. As for Gary, he went on to write UA and AD&D added a HUGE number of new spells, for instance, which seems clearly not a minimalist approach, nor are the large number of rules in the DMG very compatible with that idea. I'm OK with the idea that Gary believed in a loose toolkit of subsystems that could be employed, not employed, or hacked as needed by the DM, but I can't see how this is in any way compatible with the FKR idea of 'invisible rulebooks'.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I really don't see different modes of RPG being in any necessary conflict like this. There's no need for a narrativist crowd versus FKR crowd mentality. We can celebrate our diversity in approaches to play. Generally, I would say that a less diverse ecosystem is a less healthy one.

I'm not putting FKR against Narrativism. In fact MesserSpiel is clearly derived from a Narrativist game design. Minimal super-lightweight games are not a bad thing, I've used several different ones at various times. My reaction to FKR is really like my reaction to any of these 'Revival' things. They're fine, but none of them is some sort of great revelation or incredibly better way to make an RPG. Sometimes the enthusiasm gets a bit out of hand! I'd certainly consider using MesserSpiel for a certain use case. OTOH I'm perfectly happy to use 4e, one is not inherently a better concept than the other.

Modern FKR came about with the benefit of a far greater exploration of the TTRPG design-space than that which DA and GG had access to. Very experienced gamers realised they could achieve the play they wanted more successfully with fewer rules. This poses no threat to narrativists that must be resisted by denigrating FKR. Up thread folk listed some affordances that they desired: many of those are easily met with fewer rules. Want to split the party? I can do that in FKR without a pause. Want to toggle the zoom? There are no rules to get in the way of that. Want to change genre? I can do it in a heartbeat. This doesn't show that FKR is better than other modes.

Again, there's no denigration going on here. I'm quite skeptical about the suitability of very minimalist systems for more than certain niche use cases, but I'm not against them. I also think that there's a certain sense in which the sheer genius of what Dave and Gary did has become kind of discounted. Yes, the game they produced was a bit primitive in some respects, but every part of what they did was carefully considered and battle-tested. If they added rules, this was not some haphazard enterprise. I agree we can do better today, but we're building on the shoulders of giants, and I'd consider Gary's game design chops, at a 'what kind of game architecture will work?' level over that of ANY modern RPG designer.

As I've said above, to me what it shows is that debate about flexibility has no particular value. As a player (counting GM among them) it's not a goal of my RPG game text choices that they can do anything. It's my goal to achieve the distinctive experiences latent in each game text. When I choose Ars Magica, it's not because it offers any special flexibility, it's because I want to play a magi with my loyal companions and servants.

I don't disagree. I'm perfectly happy that there are various games. FKR games are fine, but again I am wise enough to take all the claims of their proponents with a bit of salt.

 

[niklinna]

This is convincing framing, and I'm compelled to agree with the point of your last sentence.

That said, the stumbling block that I run into is that the Rule 0 of D&D is one that supersedes the Rule 0 that is intrinsic in my mind to the playing of any game: We all will endeavor to play this game by the rules that have been established. It's not that a GM could not do the same things without the permission, but it's that for me, and others, we would not do them. More vitally, perhaps not even think of doing them.

You're right. Any group can agree to change the rules of the game they are playing, there's no external force that will prevent that in this arena. However, much like the difference between not thinking of pink elephants, and not thinking of pink elephants after someone has said to not think of them, the framing causes a fundamental shift in perspective for me. Having it explicitly written out and intended cannot help but force me into a different lens, even if my ability has not shifted an iota.

Another pink elephant: Why is Rule 0 (and the game at large) so often presented in terms of what power the GM alone has, rather than the group as a whole playing by consensus? Especially considering that Rule 0 generally gets brought up precisely when a decision needs to be made on the fly. EzekielRaiden's many recent posts on consensus and trust speak quite clearly to that. Sure, somebody has to make the snap decision, but following it up with "Is that cool for everybody?" doesn't seem all that hard to do.

Edit: Fixed a typo.

 

[soviet]

It's baffling to me that anyone would think that games without rule zero simply stall out or blow up whenever there's a rules issue because none of the participants have unilateral authority to change them.

 

[niklinna]

It's baffling to me that anyone would think that games without rule zero simply stall out or blow up whenever there's a rules issue because none of the participants have unilateral authority to change them.

Especially when, as a group, all of them do.

 

[Oofta]

It's baffling to me that anyone would think that games without rule zero simply stall out or blow up whenever there's a rules issue because none of the participants have unilateral authority to change them.

Has anyone said that?