D&D General How much control do DMs need?

[Xamnam]

WTF? Seriously? I mean, look, I don't know what the agenda is that makes you want to try to cast me as some sort of moral leper or whatever because I admit that I don't find the moral strictures of things happening around the game table to be of the greatest consequence. Its just how it is. You, me, nobody else who's a well-balanced person is going to consider some agreement they made about how to play a game to be THAT CRITICAL. Sure, if I say 'X', then generally speaking I do X, and I'll probably be pretty reliable about it too. But if I find that X is onerous, and it involves some gaming, then chances are I'm going to consider not doing X. I may also consider whomever else I'm playing with and weigh all the different factors. I'll also, generally speaking unless there's some impediment to that, be up front about things. Frankly I've always found that the EVEN MORE important central question is whether you're open with yourself about what your priorities are, what you actually do, and who you are. A lot of people in this world PRETEND a lot of things. Few people are totally honest with themselves, let alone anyone else. I at least aspire to be.

I did not cast any judgement on you, I just remarked that what you said in the prior post is a foreign perspective to me.

 

[overgeeked]

I was noodling around at the time with the idea that fundamentally, rules-lite games (like FKR) and games that came from a more story-now tradition were in many ways, fundamentally getting to the same point.

It's something I've thought about since originally messing around with Cthulhu Dark-

http://catchyourhare.com/files/Cthulhu%20Dark.pdf

It's a cool game. I like it a lot more than Call of Cthulhu because it's so much lighter.

In looking at this very basic ruleset, I kept going to the same two issues.

First, there was the idea that this simple ruleset could be simple because it assumed a shared fiction. This is the same idea that you see in both FKR games (playing the world) as well as PbTA/FiTD game (explicit and narrow scopes).

Yeah. The invisible rulebooks link that I keep posting. As long as the participants are on the same page, the rules can be incredibly light or non-existent. Most people seem to use the rules as a stand in for taking the time to get on the same page in regards to the fiction. Because, for some reason, they confuse the mechanics with the fiction.

The Invisible Rulebooks

When asked to explain the Invisible Rulebooks in person, I usually start with this scenario. If it's any consolation, it rambles in person, ...

rolltop-indigo.blogspot.com

Second, there was the section called unanswered questions-

Who decides when to roll Insanity? Who decides when it’s interesting to know how well you do something? Who decides when something disturbs your PC? Who decides whether you might fail? Decide the answers with your group. Make reasonable assumptions. For example, some groups will let the Keeper decide everything. Others will share the decisions. These rules are designed to play prewritten scenarios, run by a Keeper. If you try improvising scenarios or playing without a Keeper, let me know.

That, right there, is it. Do you need to have a central authority? What does the central authority decide, if anything? Is there prep, or is it improvised? At a certain abstract level, it doesn't matter.

If you mean the specific answers to those questions don't matter, I sort of agree. Only because some answers work better than others, or at least work better for achieving certain results than others. But those questions do need some answer, I think.

In my experience having an agreed upon central authority makes everything go infinitely smoother than if not. It also provides a semblance of unity of narration, theme, calls, etc. If for no other reason than not having what amounts to a schizophrenic gaming experience, unless that's what you want or the game is designed to deliver. Five players at the table all going off and doing their own thing, engaging with the game solo but still at the same table seems like a waste of time. And to me, immersion is a big factor in playing RPGs, so having to adjudicate things when I'm a player moots the entire point of playing.

 

[soviet]

In my experience having an agreed upon central authority makes everything go infinitely smoother than if not. It also provides a semblance of unity of narration, theme, calls, etc. If for no other reason than not having what amounts to a schizophrenic gaming experience, unless that's what you want or the game is designed to deliver. Five players at the table all going off and doing their own thing, engaging with the game solo but still at the same table seems like a waste of time. And to me, immersion is a big factor in playing RPGs, so having to adjudicate things when I'm a player moots the entire point of playing.

This is a wildly inaccurate characterisation of the impact of having no rule zero.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

If you mean the specific answers to those questions don't matter, I sort of agree. Only because some answers work better than others, or at least work better for achieving certain results than others. But those questions do need some answer, I think.

In my experience having an agreed upon central authority makes everything go infinitely smoother than if not. It also provides a semblance of unity of narration, theme, calls, etc. If for no other reason than not having what amounts to a schizophrenic gaming experience, unless that's what you want or the game is designed to deliver. Five players at the table all going off and doing their own thing, engaging with the game solo but still at the same table seems like a waste of time. And to me, immersion is a big factor in playing RPGs, so having to adjudicate things when I'm a player moots the entire point of playing.

I tend to be more agnostic on this.

If you know sports, it's like the whole thing with the players' coach, and the hardline coach. It's not that one (or the other) is always better. It's that different approaches can be better at different times.

With the right table, you can have a great time with decentralized authority. OTOH, you can also have a miserable time. Same thing with centralized authority. One way I tend to look at it is that centralized authority is great because there's only one point of failure, but when there is a failure, it can be SPECTACULAR (hence, the occasional and terrifying "Bad DM" story).

 

[hawkeyefan]

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.

There's no reason that Apocalypse World couldn't handle this kind of zoom out and zoom back in. I'd say it's designed to suit that kind of play well. And there are other games built around the core PbtA system that really lean into that kind of thing. Legacy: Life Among the Ruins is about generational play over great spans of time.

What is likely different about AW and most of its offshoots is that they acknowledge which characters are the protagonists, and those characters are considered differently than others.

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.

PCs and NPCs do not function the same way per the rules. The big one is that the GM never rolls dice for the NPCs; everything that happens with NPCs is due to the GM making a move, either when the fiction calls for one to be made, or when the dice do.

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.

Where does Rule Zero say that?

This is the problem.... Rule Zero clearly means different things to different people. It's jargon, but because it's not from the Forge, no one whines about it.

 

[soviet]

It's definitely weird that this apparently really important foundation of certain kinds of play seems so vaguely defined.

 

[hawkeyefan]

All RPGs are, by definition, high trust games. You trust the people around the table to follow the rules you've all agreed to, no matter how light, heavy, mechanistic, or principle based. Without that trust, it's impossible to play. So people who've never played FKR games fretting about how they can't trust the referee "with that kind of power" is more than a bit paradoxical. You are required to have an incredibly high level of trust in your referee to play every RPG already. You trust the referee with an endless string of things, but having slightly more control over the mechanics of the game is a line too far. It's honestly weird.

I don't think it's weird. It's just a different preference and point of view.

To lean on the comparison to Free Kriegsspiel, I think what allowed the trust to happen was that the referee was (a) not a participant in the game, and (b) an actual expert on the subject matter.

With RPGs, we're talking about make believe across a potentially wide range of genres/themes/subject matter, so it's quite different. It's not that a GM cannot be trusted. It's that the nature of play and the contents of the fiction can lend themselves to wildly different interpretations and expectations. Having rules for how things work help to narrow that range. They help to create the "onboarding" that you're talking about in your post. It makes it more clear and defined so that there's less likelihood of mismatched expectations. It helps put everyone on the same page.

To take it further, as a GM, I enjoy the constraint. It gives me boundaries to work within, and limits what I can and can't do, which forces me to get creative.

You describe this as "honestly weird" but in the second sentence I've quoted above, you describe it as a given; all RPGs require trust regardless of the number of rules. So then perhaps peoples' choice of game type... or dislike of a game type... isn't about what you think it's about?

 

[pemerton]

In my experience having an agreed upon central authority makes everything go infinitely smoother than if not. It also provides a semblance of unity of narration, theme, calls, etc. If for no other reason than not having what amounts to a schizophrenic gaming experience, unless that's what you want or the game is designed to deliver. Five players at the table all going off and doing their own thing, engaging with the game solo but still at the same table seems like a waste of time. And to me, immersion is a big factor in playing RPGs, so having to adjudicate things when I'm a player moots the entire point of playing.

@clearstream - upthread you asked for examples of what I've just quoted. Here you go!

 

[pemerton]

Are we back talking about Cthulhu Dark? As far as I know I was the first poster on ENworld to post about playing it, and to compare it to other systems. It does not depend on a heavy degree of GM control. It can be played in an "ask questions and build on the answers" style - I know because I've done it.

 

[clearstream]

@clearstream - upthread you asked for examples of what I've just quoted. Here you go!

Yes, I noted that. I strongly disagree about "schizophrenic gaming experience". I've never agreed with anyone predicting that another's mode of play will be dysfunctional for them.