D&D General How much control do DMs need?

[AbdulAlhazred]

Right. Anyone can change any game. I've even seen variants of Chess Monopoly with different rules. The point of a written Rule 0 isn't to allow people to change the game. It's to make it easier for the DM to change the game as a written Rule 0 is perceived as official and that perception means that the players are far more likely to accept a change than if there was no written Rule 0.

But you understand the huge difference between 'Rule 0' which states that the GM has total authority over the rules and the proposition that the rules 'hackable' in some way shape or form by some process which presumably requires at least a modicum of consensus of the same degree as that required to decide on which RPG to play in the first place? These are two entirely different, and unrelated, things.

 

[Oofta]

Let's say that you were playing in this game as a player. How would you think it apt to decide this matter?

Well, it's just a question since I don't play the game. I'm not trying to "prove" anything.

But in a related example, we're playing a cooperative board game recently. While playing the game a rules discussion came up. There are 4 players and 3 of us disagreed with what the 4th player wanted to do. Being a bit stubborn occasionally, they argued about it for a bit and then decided to look it up on the internet because they wouldn't just take the judgement of the other 3. This in a board game with pretty straightforward rules, but the player was questioning the wording.

It took several minutes to resolve, and this is just a board game. Many games with no discrete authority figure seem to be more rules light than D&D (and being rules light is not a bad thing, Go is incredibly rules light while also being incredibly complex). I don't want to discuss rules when I play D&D during play for more than a minute or two even when I'm right and the DM is wrong.

In any case it's easy to say "We come to an agreement". It's also kind of meaningless. Do you vote? If there's a tie what do you use as a tie breaker? Does it just come down to who argues the longest? Because that's what I've seen in some cases. If it's contentious, the person that is most eloquent or is willing to voice their opinion the loudest wins a lot of arguments. Or it just comes down to who bought the game.

This is not a gotcha question, even if my example was not meant to be realistic and is a bit exaggerated .

 

[Xamnam]

I don't think it's bad to do what you can to not change or break any written rule. But even if Rule Zero didn't exist, there are going to be instances where the rules don't suffice, or where they lead to something absurd. In those instances, what would you do?

In the case of not sufficing, of there being blank space that is not addressed, there I would do what I could to resolve it a way that best conformed to the other rules. Because it's not changing or violating somethings that is written down, I feel more comfortable talking with the other players and coming up with a solution that everyone is happy with on the spot. Happens a reasonable amount with board games.

In the case of something absurd, I would go along with it. I don't know what other components of the game I might inadvertently break in doing so, or what aesthetic/design intent is going to be diminished.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

In the case of Bob (not the player's real name) a typical scenario would be something that they want to do on their turn that would require 3 actions and moving further than their base speed. The guy just gets a bit carried away while the rest of us want to follow the rules of the game.

Alternate solutions for Bob's rules' "ignorance" if saying "no" gets too tiresome:

Allow for movement further than base speed but to do so, the PC must succeed on a DC 15(+additional distance in ft) CON check. Succeed and they get the extra movement. Fail and they get half the extra movement (rounded down) plus a level of exhaustion.

Allow for the extra action but also require a successful check to avoid a level of exhaustion. Regardless of success or failure, they endure the effects of the slow spell until the end of their next turn.

 

[chaochou]

There seems to be new claim entering circulation that custom moves in PbtA amount to some sort of rule zero by stealth.

The levels of stupid required to reach that conclusion are quite extreme, but there it is.

 

[clearstream]

Nope. Cut it out. My entire point was that what I was describing about people being able to change the rules is not a rule. Stop trying to make this into a rule.

I can think of a way to reconsider this. Suppose we take fabricating and refabricating rules to be a preexisting human behaviour. Just as humans by nature are tool-wielding creatures, they are rule-wielding. Given the preexisting behaviour, we can then have regulatory rules like this

N. Users of this RPG cannot change the rules.

For those who put rule N in force for themselves, their behaviour is regulated according to that rule. Of course, they needn't do so: I'm speaking only of the norm engendered if they do. So then what sort of rule is Rule Zero? I think it contains further regulations. There are various forms of Rule Zero, but the one I have in mind reads

2. One participant is authorised to fabricate and refabricate rules, unilaterally.
3. The GM is that participant.

We can then have feelings about those rules, separable from our feelings about the pictured preexisting behaviour. A difficulty with this argument is that it's open to further reduction. It's plausible to describe the preexisting behaviour in terms of rules, because it is behaviour in the domains of language and games. If rules govern anything, they govern behaviours in the domains of language and games. However, it would be governed by rules at a very deep level, one we seldom question. It's okay to call those deep-rules, dispositions. They're certainly different from the sort of rules that are written to form games. They're operating system, not application.

For avoidance of doubt, this reasoning puts rule zero on different footing from what I will call (probably indefensibly) a disposition to fabricate and refabricate rules.

 

[Oofta]

Alternate solutions for Bob's rules' "ignorance" if saying "no" gets too tiresome:

Allow for movement further than base speed but to do so, the PC must succeed on a DC 15(+additional distance in ft) CON check. Succeed and they get the extra movement. Fail and they get half the extra movement (rounded down) plus a level of exhaustion.

Allow for the extra action but also require a successful check to avoid a level of exhaustion. Regardless of success or failure, they endure the effects of the slow spell until the end of their next turn.

Well, that was just one example. I'm okay with coming up with something that isn't strictly legal or coming up with some potentially risky option. It's not that Bob's a bad person, it's just as I mentioned before that he's probably a bit on the autism scale and gets excited about stuff he can do. Sometimes that leads to things that are over the top.

But even with your solutions, it's someone (in a D&D game typically the DM) coming up with it. Doesn't really address the authority issue because someone has to have that authority or the group has to have a way of resolving it.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I've had argumentative players who want their interpretation of the rules which simply was different from how I understood the rule. It's rare and if you've never run into that person you're lucky. You've never had someone ask "How do you handle [fill in the blank?" Because that's incredibly common in every public game I've played. It's not a matter of being a jerk or uncooperative, there are just some things that are open to interpretation or intentionally left open ended.

Oh, sure, I've had people ask me how something is handled. I tell them how I've done it, which 99.99% of the time is whatever is written in the book, assuming its covered by the rules. If not my answer is usually fairly hypothetical, or involves "in a previous game we did X" etc. And I agree, usually these are not questions of jerks or whatever, just ambiguity or different common practices. Anyway, from there we work out something if its an issue. Often I'm tempted to try out someone else's solution and see how it works, it might teach me something, but there are cases where I think my way is clearly better, and I'll just put that out there, without "or the highway." I've found there's really few people that WANT to play, genuinely, and also want to wrangle over something. If I say to them "try it my way for one session and lets see how it goes, then maybe we'll try your way" for example, that seems like a position that will almost always be acceptable.

In the current game I'm playing in we discussed this kind of thing in the session 0. We chatted a bit, I made some suggestions and we discussed it but ultimately the DM made a decision. I was fine with it. For example, if I was deciding on what kind of fighter to run I may ask how they handle the shield master feat. I allow people to make the bonus action shield bash to knock enemies prone before their attack, I think the feat is effectively worthless if they have to take it after all attacks are resolved. I'm perfectly okay with whatever the DM decides, it may just change my PC's build. That is the kind of thing I see at the table when it comes to disagreements.

Sure, 4e is filled with this sort of stuff too. From the player standpoint I'd approach it the same way "OK, you have this interpretation, so I will do build X instead." From the GM perspective, as I said above, I can usually go ahead and try it each way or something.

In my example there is no right or wrong, no definitive answer unless you take Sage Advice as gospel. It's just a judgement call someone has to make, including the importance of Sage Advice. Same way with are what source books, multi-classing, feats, etc. allowed.

Sure, I get you. This is by far the most common situation. I feel that games work with either interpretation of these rules, so its really pretty low stakes stuff.

 

[Aldarc]

Well, it's just a question since I don't play the game. I'm not trying to "prove" anything.

I do believe that your question came from a place of good faith. I am also not trying to play any gotcha game or prove anything here. I'm curious how you think it would be best to respond to your own situation.

My own inclination most times is to discuss the matter with the group based upon my understandings of the rules, principles, and fiction of the game. There are game principles in most PbtA games, which @EzekielRaiden discussed earlier, which make this outcome somewhat unlikely, especially assuming good faith play by the GM. I think my gut reaction to discuss the matter would be true regardless of whether we were playing D&D, Dungeon World, Forbidden Lands, Call of Cthulhu, Fate, etc. It may slow down the game, but if all of our characters are dead and buried under a pile of rocks anyway in the fiction, then it's not like we have anything better to do with our time.

 

[Oofta]

I do believe that your question came from a place of good faith. I am also not trying to play any gotcha game or prove anything here. I'm curious how you think it would be best to respond to your own situation.

My own inclination most times is to discuss the matter with the group based upon my understandings of the rules, principles, and fiction of the game. There are game principles in most PbtA games, which @EzekielRaiden discussed earlier, which make this outcome somewhat unlikely, especially assuming good faith play by the GM. I think my gut reaction to discuss the matter would be true regardless of whether we were playing D&D, Dungeon World, Forbidden Lands, Call of Cthulhu, Fate, etc. It may slow down the game, but if all of our characters are dead and buried under a pile of rocks anyway in the fiction, then it's not like we have anything better to do with our time.

Well, rocks fall everyone dies was an exaggerated example.

But maybe it's more of a question of how the complexity, open nature and/or specificity of the rules affects this. If at all. D&D has a ton of optional material, a lot of things like stealth that were left intentionally open. There seems to be a correlation between people who push back against DM as final arbiter and those who don't like the open ended nature the designers decided to go with.

Part of what I personally like about D&D is that open ended nature of the rules. I think having the traditional role of DM helps with that, especially if you play with different groups and not just the same static group year after year.