D&D General How much control do DMs need?

[Alzrius]

You can down load this stuff yourself man, its not that hard to find! Here for instance some of Dalluhn are reproduced The Dalluhn Manuscript: In Detail and On Display There's even a paper about it written by Peterson. https://img.4plebs.org/boards/tg/image/1454/51/1454516675578.pdf None of this stuff is some secret!

With regard to the Dalluhn manuscript, it's absolutely not a secret; even beyond his blog, Peterson was talking about it in such diverse publications as the second issue of the now-defunct Gygax Magazine (pg. 20-21, 65).

But as noted before, that's a far and away different cry from Arneson's original notes to Gary Gygax. As the PDF you linked to noted (p. 28), "Moreover, since the Manuscript shows clear signs of collaboration in typing and artwork, it could not be the work of a sole fan, but must instead be the work of a team."

Arneson's notes, by contrast, are the work of Arneson himself, presumably with little-to-no additions from the rest of the "Blackmoor Bunch" (as his gaming group is now called), though I'm sure they inspired Arneson to come up with new rules and responses to their activities. Contemporary (i.e. written) presentations of Blackmoor as it was being played before 1974, however, remain elusive, and so any presentation of the original notes that Dave sent to Gary would be a huge find for D&D historians, amateur and professional alike.

 

[clearstream]

All human interactions are forms of cooperation. This is elementary and should be kept in mind at all times. You, I, @pemerton, etc. are all MORAL AGENTS, we are free to act in any way within our physical power, and nothing can prevent that, aside from literal physical intervention by other persons. This is reality. Everything else is a mental construct which simply builds a system of greater cooperation between moral agents. You can look at it from any angle you want, but POWER? Aside from the literal physical power of your own arm, does not exist! It is a fiction which we create in our own minds, and communicate to the minds of others through convention and culturally modulated signals in order to achieve things. So, no, there is FUNDAMENTALLY no such thing as 'GM Power', the very notion is absurd. I think you will find that we have all stated this fact in various ways.

For this reason, it is better to speak in terms of influences and likelihoods. So while there may be no such thing as a certainty of GM-power, there is such a thing as a greater likelihood of GM-power in virtue of some context and preconditions.

However, if you are going to rely on reduction of all your arguments to that level, then we can hardly have any meaningful discussion of human relations, let alone RPGs. We must instead, as the proper focus of our attention, rest on these, as I call them, mental constructs/social conventions. Pemerton studies personal law, this is a structure of such things. It has meaning because people accept it as effective, probably though long ages of usage and tradition. However, we do have an additional problem when dealing with a fairly unimportant (in the overall scheme of things) activity like TTRPG play, which is that even strong social conventions may not be terribly binding in respect of that play. That is, if I go back on my word WRT some issue of game rules, this is not a thing of great consequence in life, and is likely to hold rather little weight in people's calculations compared with say "Oh, I can have a bit more fun here if I do X, even though I promised not to." The assumption will be that the other participants will also understand this lack of serious consequence, and in fact most such incidents have little import outside of play.

To me, the view that play is of no great consequence is a relic of outdated cultural conceptions. Read for example Huizinga and onward.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Right, and you said that you have those as a PDF on your hard drive, so I'm asking you to please post them here, share them via a PM, email, etc.

I bring this up because, insofar as I know, instances of "Arnesonian Blackmoor" (i.e. Blackmoor as Dave himself ran it during the early 70s) are vanishingly rare, typically being either after-the-fact reconstructions or thoroughly edited by someone else. The archetypal instance of this is Supplement II: Blackmoor (affiliate link); as Shannon Appelcline notes in his write-up: "Decades later, Tim Kask would say that the book "was about 60% my work, 30% Dave Arneson’s and the remainder came from Gary and Rob Kuntz"."

Likewise, First Fantasy Campaign (released by Judges Guild in 1977) is much closer to what Arneson was doing in those early years, but it's still something that he cobbled together from his notes after play had largely ceased (a lot of which was due to Dave's involvement, and subsequent departure from, TSR at the time). The same can be said for Arneson's two-part "Garbage Pits of Despair" adventure, published in Different Worlds #42 and #43 in 1986. Similarly, Jon Peterson's incredible research on the Dalluhn manuscript, Mornard fragments, Guidon D&D first draft, and COMTAX suggests that all have some degree of Gary's influence present, since by that point early designs of D&D were starting to proliferate throughout the Lake Geneva/Twin Cities region.

As such, a copy of the original notes that Dave sent to Gary constitute a glimpse into how Blackmoor was being played at the time by him and his group, without any "contamination" (for lack of a better term) from any other groups or individuals, which is unprecedented. If you have a copy of that, I urge you again to please make it available to the wider community...or at least just me.

nobody has, or has claimed to have, anything beyond what is already known and at least parts of which can be accessed online quite easily. You are all latching onto some trivial aspect of my argument, blowing it up into some giant thing that it never was, and then using that to bury the REAL LOGIC, which is quite simple: Dave and Gary produced a LARGE QUANTITY of rules text! They clearly valued having this rules text, and this throws considerable shade on the idea that either of them was of the opinion that "less is more." Nor am I an absolutist in this argument, as I've already stated several times. It is quite possible, probably even, that the opinions of these authors evolved over time, that they weren't consistent, and that they believed in BOTH the value of rules texts intended to codify and convey techniques, as well as an open-ended attitude towards play which is probably much closer to 'rulings over rules' than it is to 'invisible rulebooks' IMHO as someone who played D&D in the 'early days' and is familiar with what was articulated back then.

 

[Mistwell]

You can down load this stuff yourself man, its not that hard to find! Here for instance some of Dalluhn are reproduced The Dalluhn Manuscript: In Detail and On Display There's even a paper about it written by Peterson. https://img.4plebs.org/boards/tg/image/1454/51/1454516675578.pdf None of this stuff is some secret!

Neither of those links are "material that Dave sent to Gary at one point sitting on my hard drive. Its substantively most of what is in the 3 LBBs". Wish you would have said that in the first place.

 

[Xamnam]

However, we do have an additional problem when dealing with a fairly unimportant (in the overall scheme of things) activity like TTRPG play, which is that even strong social conventions may not be terribly binding in respect of that play. That is, if I go back on my word WRT some issue of game rules, this is not a thing of great consequence in life, and is likely to hold rather little weight in people's calculations compared with say "Oh, I can have a bit more fun here if I do X, even though I promised not to." The assumption will be that the other participants will also understand this lack of serious consequence, and in fact most such incidents have little import outside of play.

This is the premise I've been missing. If folks are operating under this sort of sentiment, a lot of posts in this thread make more sense.

Unfortunately, it does mean that there's really not much else I can say in regards to this perspective, other than that has not been my experience in many areas of life, including TTRPGs. It's certainly not how I behave. Even entirely self-enforced social conventions have a great deal of force to them. Maybe I have just been fortunate in who I play games with. Regardless, I'm inclined to push back on the likelihood/universality of that assumption, though, obviously, it's a thing neither of us can satisfyingly prove.

 

[Aldarc]

In D&D 3.x (and in a different way 4E) the designers did try to lock down the rules, in 5E they left more openings for the DM and group to decide how to implement things. So when I'm speaking of open ended, everything is on a spectrum. It's just ... interesting that some people who complain loudest about 5E's design direction simultaneously praise games that rely far more on GM (and possibly player, depending on the game) discretion and on-the-spot rulings.

A lot of these games bind the GM in other ways, which you yourself have also talked about disliking in the past. For example, a GM can't fudge in Dungeon World or Blades in the Dark. Or the GM is obligated by the rules to make a Move (soft or hard) under certain outcomes when players roll.

Moreover, while you may think that the GM has more discretion in games like Fate, you should pay attention to the language that is used. In my example about a PC punching a glass table, the example from the Fate SRD explicitly says that everyone - i.e., the GM and players! - may decide when talking about it together that a consequence of "Glass in My Hand" is appropriate and NOT that the GM unilaterally decides this:

But say you’re in a scene where a player decides that, as part of trying to intimidate his way past someone, his PC is going to punch through a glass-top table with a bare fist.

Everyone likes the idea and thinks it’s cool, so no one’s interested in what happens if the PC fails the roll. However, everyone agrees that it also makes sense that the PC would injure his hand in the process (which is part of what makes it intimidating).

It’s totally fine to assign a mild consequence of Glass in My Hand in that case, because it fits with the narration, even though there’s no conflict and nothing technically attacked the PC.

As with the Golden Rule, make sure everyone’s on the same page before you do stuff like this.

Let's be clear about something else here as well: Aspects are often discussed and negotiated in Fate! This is because everyone needs to be on the same page when it comes to understanding the aspects and the fiction they represent, which can affect play.

But can you imagine the reaction of a D&D book saying things like this or even mildly curtailing the GM's authority like this?

Games like Fate, Cortex, PbtA, and BitD often frame the back and forth between players and GM as a conversation about the fiction.

 

[Alzrius]

nobody has, or has claimed to have, anything beyond what is already known and at least parts of which can be accessed online quite easily.

No, that's not right. You were very clear before when you said:

I have a PDF of the material that Dave sent to Gary at one point sitting on my hard drive.

That's something which is materially different than what's in Dalluhn, Mornard, etc. It's quite specifically the notes that Dave sent to Gary after he (Arneson) ran a game for Gygax and several others in November of 1972 (itself recounted in Rob Kuntz's The Game That Changed Everything). To the best of my knowledge, those notes have never been made known to the gaming community; only the story of how Gary would essentially use them to form his own manuscript (see Playing at the World chapter 1.11, second paragraph, "He [Gygax] reacted to Arneson's fantasy wargame campaign notes in much the same way he had reacted to Jeff Perren's medieval rules in 1970, by adopting, expanding, and repurposing them.").

Now, I'm reasonably sure that's the only time Arneson sent his notes/rules to Gygax, though he certainly had continuing correspondence with him (e.g. "Over the next several weeks, Gygax continually expanded the rules until he had a hundred-page first draft to send to Arneson--with a title page that read "Dungeons & Dragons."" -The Game Wizards, p. 30). Subsequent iterations of pre-publication D&D, however, can't be attributed to Arneson alone, and so any such PDF(s) that you have in that regard are something I'll again ask you to share.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Then come up with a real world example, can a GM pull what most would consider a dick move? I know there has to be a chance for the characters to counteract, but can't the GM make those options to respond difficult to impossible?

I guess it depends on your definition of 'can'... I'm sure GMs can find ways to be dicks, sure. I believe that any such behavior is breaking the letter or the spirit of some part of the agenda and principles of GMing for Dungeon World, and probably for any other PbtA (I guess I could imagine PbtA Paranoia where being a dick GM is actually the point, but I don't think that's what we're talking about here). So, IF the rules are followed scrupulously, the GM cannot 'be a dick' in Dungeon World, one of the players will be able to point out how these actions are unprincipled, and the table will take action (or put up with it I guess). Remember, PbtA eschews the idea of a 'rule 0'.

Now, if you are considering the possibilities of HIDDEN dickness, like the GM making such a move 'off table' the same considerations still apply, but obviously it may be less easily regulated. That is, say, the GM decides for their own reasons that they don't like the dwarf owning a castle, then offscreen they make a 'hard move' that takes it away. That's a dick move, but its obviously not going to immediately come up. I'd say many moves of that type violate the 'follows from the fiction' principle. Generally I'm of the opinion that a GM move needs to follow from the CURRENT fiction, if a PC makes a move, you need to make a response which is related to that. There are plenty of opportunities to make more general moves. Those of course still need to follow from the GENERAL fiction. This may not be an absolute rule though, and other DW GMs may disagree. Still, it seems wise, as it avoids these sorts of 'gotcha' invisible disconnected moves that the character has no way to answer.

That's not a rule in most TTRPGs? Because it's spelled out in the D&D DMG as well. It's also quite vague.

I would just say that DW is quite explicit in terms of what is spelled out. Nothing about DW is particularly vague! In fact it is one of the tightest games I know.

All I can say is different things work for different people. From what I've read and heard, DW wouldn't work for me, it would feel more like story time than my character interacting as a real person (perhaps with options I don't have) with the world around them. It's just a different mindset, neither is right or wrong.

But you know what? It's great you have a game you enjoy.

Yeah, I personally give everything a try. Time and energy depending. We all have different priorities and such though, its not like anyone has to try any given thing. You never know though, it might be fun! I mean, you can always enjoy multiple styles of play...

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

nobody has, or has claimed to have, anything beyond what is already known and at least parts of which can be accessed online quite easily. You are all latching onto some trivial aspect of my argument, blowing it up into some giant thing that it never was, and then using that to bury the REAL LOGIC, which is quite simple: Dave and Gary produced a LARGE QUANTITY of rules text! They clearly valued having this rules text, and this throws considerable shade on the idea that either of them was of the opinion that "less is more." Nor am I an absolutist in this argument, as I've already stated several times. It is quite possible, probably even, that the opinions of these authors evolved over time, that they weren't consistent, and that they believed in BOTH the value of rules texts intended to codify and convey techniques, as well as an open-ended attitude towards play which is probably much closer to 'rulings over rules' than it is to 'invisible rulebooks' IMHO as someone who played D&D in the 'early days' and is familiar with what was articulated back then.

First rule of holes is ...stop digging.

This isn't about your argument. IIRC, I've tried multiple times to get you to read the various histories of the game- ones that I've written about a lot here. So it's kind of weird that you somehow think that the rest of us are ignorant of the actual history of the game ... or that we wouldn't know about Jon Peterson's work (I mean, really?).

You made a claim. Multiple times, people came back at you because of that specific claim, and you kept dodging, before finally providing ... not the .pdf you claimed to have on your computer of the material that Dave sent to Gary, but just links to the very things we told you were not it!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

A hard move doesn't get "resolved" - it's not an action declaration. It's just a description of some fiction, and in some cases (like dealing damage) it also triggers a game mechanical notation (like hp loss).

Yeah, there may be some confusion on the most basic part of this point. GMs in PbtA games never touch dice. A hard move is NOT "the orc attacks you", it is "the orc's battleaxe slices into your hauberk, take 5 damage!" So, by the time you get to the hard moves (granting that 'hard move' is a somewhat ambiguous term) there isn't any sort of resolution mechanics involved. The thing that the GM described HAS HAPPENED.

This is why hard moves cannot simply be launched out of nowhere in a game like DW. They can, as you suggest, arise from 'offscreen forces' but they would never arise from something that is completely unknown to the PCs AND not triggered by something the character's just did. If your character races down the hallway without checking for traps, the GM may spring a trap on you, which is part of their 'map' and you might take damage. Even then it is likely to be "you feel the floor beneath your foot sink slightly, and then you see a spear spring from the wall out of the corner of your eye!" which is a softer move. However, given the PCs reckless behavior "you spring a spear trap, take 4 damage" seems perfectly kosher to me (the golden platter rule). This would be ESPECIALLY true if the environment was described as 'trap filled' or something like that.