D&D General How much control do DMs need?

[AbdulAlhazred]

But that principle specifically states...

Think offscreen too
Just because you’re a fan of the characters doesn’t mean everything happens right in front of them. Sometimes your best move is in the next room, or another part of the dungeon, or even back in town. Make your move elsewhere and show its effects when they come into the spotlight.

It isn't saying to create the cause elsewhere... it's saying make your move somewhere else and show it's effects when they come into the spotlight. To me that's a different beast entirely to what you are claiming.

Think about this in practice though... Why would a GM ever say to himself "aha, the PCs decided to spend more time searching for the lost sword! I'll have the orcs burn down their house while they remain away." It just doesn't really make sense. Sure, I don't disagree it might be a logical consequence, but there are other principles at work here, like making things exciting, and being a fan of the PCs. The GM is much more likely to invoke such a hard move in a more immediate context where the action is immediately relevant. Like, "as you return to your house, you see a couple of orcs setting fire to it!" This can simply be scene framing, though I guess it amounts to a 'move'. You could account for it through some earlier offscreen move I guess, that's OK, but I see little of interest in presenting the results of a hard move later on as just a 'done deal'.

If this is the case how can one...make a move "elsewhere"? How can one show it's effects at a latter time? What you seem to be stating is a move must both be made and it's effects take place immediately...

Honestly, I think this is one of those cases where there are differences of opinion on how DW should be played. As I said above, it is hard to come up with good cases for making 'detached moves'. I would say there needs to be a pretty explicit foreshadowing or something like that, like some sign the orcs are out on a spree, before this offscreen house burning can happen. To be honest the only moves that I would really consider making that way would be for threats that the PCs have explicitly ignored, almost surely fronts and their dooms. So if I have an 'orc invasion front' and I declare a doom "the orcs appear to be burning outlying farms to the north" then maybe the PCs who go on about unrelated business come back to find orcs setting fire to their place, and the setting fire move was 'offscreen' when I made it.

Point taken I think I was talking to it's effect being applied.


EDIT: Just to be clear I'm digging at this because there have been times on this board where I have stated that I've run a game and then been told my experiences with that game couldn't have arisen if I had actually run it correctly... or worse I didn't actually play or run the game. To me this is a big example of how that type of situation can arise. I am reading and interpreting these rules (at least as they appear to me) in a totally different way than proponents of this style of play and I'm trying to understand why we are getting totally different understandings here.

There is a Dungeon World 'guide' book out there, if you haven't run into it already. I think I read it years ago and I don't honestly remember specifically all of what is in there, but I think it codifies at least some practice a bit beyond what the rules text says straight out. The main things I've seen people do that IMHO diverge from the intent of the game is centering play on GM plot and moves that arise out of the GM's own idea of 'how things should be', and then things like anemic play where the GM either doesn't make moves, or makes moves that don't put any pressure on the PCs. I have not really seen a 'too harsh' DW GM. I've seen cases where people quibbled about specific moves, and there's certainly wiggle room in most situations, but usually the GM is exercising one of several good options, maybe one that is more aggressive than some player wished, but is not out of keeping with the rules etc. Lots of players would like it, for instance, if the GM didn't hit them with some damage that they have earned, lol. Often the GM COULD interject a DD or something in there, but really you should hit the PCs with what they have earned! And sometimes the only way through as a PC involves losing some skin!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

But there's a difference between a game that has some rules clearly spelled out and games that are more narrative (?), right? One of the issues that people seem to have with D&D is that it's clearly spelled out that you take 1d6 points of bludgeoning damage per 10 feet you fall, but when it comes to other situations the DM just makes a ruling. For some people that means the rules are incomplete and people have to "design their own game".

Well, I'm not sure that narrative and 'incomplete rules' are synonymous. There are a wide variety of games falling under this rubric. Some, like Burning Wheel, have very elaborate and complex rules! Played in a certain way, 4th Edition D&D is a quite narrative game, and yet it has quite detailed rules for a lot of things (though I admit, some of those are in tension with narrative play at times). I agree that narrative games tend to be more concerned with outcomes than with situation and process. So the Fate example where falling could generate a number of mechanical outcomes is true, the outcome "you suffered a falling injury" is more significant than the idea that the fall was a certain distance, which would be the overriding concern in D&D. It isn't that the game is incomplete, it is that the game is about "how does a character cope with a broken arm?" vs "you are now short some hit points, what do you do about it?" This is also why things like Magic are likely to be less codified in many narrative games. D&D can simply have 'cure light wounds', whatever the injury was, its fixed now. Fate might be coupled with a magic system where the characters need to do a ritual, with some sort of story cost, to heal a broken arm, and maybe they choose not to! Casting CLW is pretty much just SoP, if you're choosing not to its merely a resource allocation decision. One game is not 'more complete' than the other, it is just focused on a DIFFERENT THING.

But in Fate the consequences of falling are always a decision/ruling by the DM. The nature and extent of that ruling may be prescribed by the game rules, but I would say that in most cases DMs are going to be effectively limited to results of their ruling in D&D as well. It may not be explicitly spelled out in the same way as other games, but the social contract is the only thing binding at the table anyway.

Well, as certain people have argued endlessly here, rules tend to bind game participants, though they are not literally obligated to follow them. So, isn't it likely that, in a D&D game, where the 30' fall killed the fighter, that the almost trivial nature of the incident and interest in the fighter's ongoing story arc are of no consequence in this decision? While in a Fate game, the 'same' character might suffer an injury which then bears on some other element of their story arc, but an NPC might crash to the bottom of the pit and lie stone cold dead as a matter of course. So, yeah, the people playing each game are equally bound. the results of play of each game will simply be different, and they each have a different agenda. Neither is particularly arbitrary, one might see the fact that 3d6 yielded 11 instead of 10 dictating fighter death in D&D as pretty arbitrary, and likewise that the GM deemed the Fate fighter's story to need further development could be thought arbitrary, but both follow rules.

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.

4e is built, however, on 'exception based design' which allows for any needed elaboration of, or replacement to, any specific part of the rules whenever required. So it is really no less flexible than any other RPG. In fact I don't think it even has more rules than 5e, particularly (more material, but in terms of rules structure the two games are pretty comparable).

 

[Lanefan]

A more general restatement of what you are asking is - can there be such a thing as unwritten rules? To me the answer is yes. All that's required is for a person to be able to have in mind what they think counts as following the rule, and choose to follow it.

Which is fine until-unless someone chooses not to follow it, see below.

In a sense, all rules have an unwritten complement, which is the rule as interpreted. Any time two people have different ideas about what counts as following the same rule, that's because they have in mind their own unwritten version of the written rule.

Which, when it happens, to me means the written rule should be rewritten to codify and lock in one of those interpretations; and if this means eventually rewriting large parts of the game then so be it. This was a big factor in us long ago deciding to rework 1e, to lock in and clarify our translations and interpretations of the often-vague Gygaxian language.

As @EzekielRaiden pointed out, there are many advantages to written rules, not least that they are more reliably communicated and taught.

And more reliably enforceable if-when someone (intentionally or otherwise) violates them, should it come to that.

 

[Lanefan]

No, but the PCs are at the centre of attention.

Just like in our real world, Gherman Titov is less important to the history of the first space flight than Yuri Gagarin, so a fictional or historical work about Vostok-1 would probably gloss over him and relegate him to the role of a supporting character.

The same way a fictional or historical work about Vostok-2, the first long-duration space flight, would gloss over Gagarin and focus on Titov.

OK, let's take this analogy a step further:

What if instead of writing about a single mission, you're writing about the overall history of Soviet space flight? To me, that overall history would map to post-hoc looking at the story of a long D&D campaign as a whole, while each mission/flight you mention above would map to a single adventure within that campaign.

So, the "PCs" involved in Vostok-1 (Gagarin would be one) would be the centre of attention for that "adventure", then cycle out and be replaced by the "PCs" involved in the Vostok-2 "adventure", including Titov. Meanwhile, there'd be some important continuing NPCs in the background e.g. whoever was in charge of the Soviet space program during those years, whose actions would often directly or indirectly impact the "PCs" and who thus become a significant part of the story.

 

[Lanefan]

Given that's actually the opposite of the example @loverdrive gave - which was of a NPC sniping at a PC - then the answer to your question is NO.

Yes it's the opposite example, which was the point: I was trying to establish whether PCs were subject to the same constraints (in this case, a sniper being unable to hit a target before the target even knows the threat exists) as NPCs.

 

[Lanefan]

Suppose that promises are not binding. Then they are not ways of creating or imposing rules, and hence we can set them to one side.

Never mind that a non-binding promise isn't really a promise at all.

Suppose that promises are binding. And suppose that I promise to X not to stick to the written rules of a game, without changing them. Here are three possibilities that I believe cover the field.

The bolded bit doesn't quite parse - I think there's an extra "not" in there. But I get the idea.

X is someone who has no connection to the group of people with whom I am playing (eg I made the promise to my dying aunt on her deathbed). It then has no binding effect on anyone in the group but me. If others choose to play by the rules out of respect for my promise to X, that's a choice they make moment-to-moment. Promising makes no difference here except to reinforce the weight some might accord to my desire to play by the rules as written.

A promise even only to yourself is still a promise, though.

X is one of my fellow players, and we are playing in a social/friendly context: X can release from my promise at any time, and hence the promise has no effect on what rules are binding.

Well, it does until-unless X releases you from it and you also release yourself from it; because a promise to X is also a promise to yourself.

And without such release, a promise becomes a lie the moment it is broken.

X is one of my fellow players, and we are playing in an institutional context such as a tournament: my promise is part of the institutional infrastructure, and it is that infrastructure that does the work of establishing which rules are binding (as per my post not far upthread).

In my view, the preceding disposes of the relationship between promise-making and RPG play.

Promises are promises regardless of the context.

 

[Lanefan]

* Rule 0 is not about hacking. Rule 0 is about discretionary GM Rulings, in-situ, historically unilateral, to move the game forward in some GM-desired direction. At GM discretion, a given ruling may reference input from system and/or players.

I disagree, in that I think Rule 0 very much does include hacking and kitbashing. Hacks and kitbashes are really nothing more than discretionary GM rulings writ larger and deeper into the system, and (usually) done up front before play begins rather than on the fly at the table.

 

[Lanefan]

I guess the only real point here is that all games are based on what works for the group. Lines of text in a book cannot enforce what goes on at the table, only the people at the table can. It may be more explicit in some games but I'll go back to the intro of the 5E DMG that no one reads "You’re the DM, and you are in charge of the game. That said, your goal isn’t to slaughter the adventurers but to create a campaign world that revolves around their actions and decisions, and to keep your players coming back for more!"

I've found that sometimes the two bolded bits can work surprisingly well together.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

So ... you don't have it. You literally just wasted my time. And everyone else's.

You made a specific claim. You understand that you're talking to a bunch of people that are incredibly familiar with this history. People that care deeply about this, and are active here and other places as well. That know all about this.

And ... you kept going on. And when cornered, after several posts, you do this- which, you know ... I can't. You LITERALLY just posted the same things we all knew and you were told.

Good to know. You could have just responded immediately with, "my bad."

You little slippery weasel, are you going to address substance of what I said or not, Snarky Poo. S**t or get off the pot. You jumped to a conclusion about what I said, perhaps that's attributable to how I put it, but if you cannot address the POINT OF THE STATEMENT, after you've made all these insulting and dismissive remarks to me, then maybe you should just go away? Eh? In fact, that's it. You are now gone, congratulations, you're the ONE ENTIRE PERSON on EnWorld that I have ever put on ignore in 14 years of posting. Good riddance.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

You little slippery weasel, are you going to address substance of what I said or not, Snarky Poo. S**t or get off the pot. You jumped to a conclusion about what I said, perhaps that's attributable to how I put it, but if you cannot address the POINT OF THE STATEMENT, after you've made all these insulting and dismissive remarks to me, then maybe you should just go away? Eh? In fact, that's it. You are now gone, congratulations, you're the ONE ENTIRE PERSON on EnWorld that I have ever put on ignore in 14 years of posting. Good riddance.

Well, me and every other person who read your statement "jumped to a conclusion." The conclusion that might be reached when you stated unequivocally that you had ... wait for it ...

I have a PDF of the material that Dave sent to Gary at one point sitting on my hard drive. Its substantively most of what is in the 3 LBBs... No, it wasn't written down in a very fleshed out form, that is where Gary came in, was to make it comprehensible to other people.

And I immediately responded ....

Really? You have the material that Dave Arneson originally sent to Gary?

And I also linked to one of the threads were people discussed that no one has seen those famous notes?

And multiple people explicitly told you about ... their misimpression? And you kept doubling down without clarifying that everyone else was confused?


Hey, it is what it is. I'm sad because even though I was 99% sure you were full of it, there was 1% of me that was like .... It would be so awesome if he was telling the truth. Oh well.

Anyway, it's usually considered poor form to do what you did ... but I think your poor form has already been evident.