Mark CMG
Creative Mountain Games
Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Maintaining the Machine)
"What's the Dungeon Master's real role?"
"What's the Dungeon Master's real role?"
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Legends and Lore - Maintaining the Machine
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JamesonCourage
Adventurer
The article is kinda interesting in that I tend to agree with Monte's description of a GM, but it's less interesting in than it feels like another "reflections" article, which I feel excessively "meh" about.
Whatever else I can say, I do think they need someone new to word the polls. They're pretty bad, lately, in my opinion. As always, play what you like
Whatever else I can say, I do think they need someone new to word the polls. They're pretty bad, lately, in my opinion. As always, play what you like
Hmm. Seems to me that it better defines Monte's vision of the game and draws a line in the sand. Those campaigners against GM "fiat" (i.e. to use a loess loaded word: decisions), those worried about Mother-May-I games and those who want GM's to mechanically deliver the RAW and only the RAW might just have found themselves on the wrong side of the line.
FinalSonicX
First Post
I was all with Monte until he commented that perhaps the rules shouldn't handle the action economy and should instead handle the attacks themselves only. That's going to end up with incredibly inconsistent rulings that are going to frustrate people (myself included). What good are combat rules if the rules don't tell you what kind of common actions you can take and how frequently? if I don't know what in the world my options are in a given combat round until I ask the DM what I can do, then this will slow things down and render combat unplayable IMO. This is all of course ignoring the subjective nightmare design and balance becomes when you have no idea how a given DM might treat the action economy.
I buy systems and rulebooks so that I can use them - that usually means they need to do most of the heavy lifting for me rather than basically dumping the work onto me. If my players keep having to ask what kinds of actions they can take on a given round, then it slows down the game and it increases the burden I as a DM must handle. Just tell me how long rounds are, give me a few simple action categories relating to common actions (moving, attacking, casting a spell, drinking a potion, etc), give me guidelines on how to fit unlisted actions into one of the categories, and tell me how many actions of each of these categories a player can normally take in a round. That is all I need to judge what a player can do - they know they can move, attack, cast a spell, etc. and if they want to do something funky then they can go ahead and ask. But please, just give us a robust and simple action economy which only needs my intervention when we want to go "off the tracks" and away from common actions. As a DM, I prefer to spend my time planning about the fun stuff - the content! Let the combat rules be simple enough that the players and DM alike have as little trouble as possible running and resolving combat.
The role of the DM, IMO, is to present a setting and a story full of characters, monsters, treasures, locations, and conflicts to interact with. The players can make it their own and the DM can help facilitate their journey and present interesting situations so everyone can have fun. I really don't know who Monte was talking to that said they just roll for the monsters -that's incredibly simplistic and I have to wonder if the person that said that has ever even been a DM or played D&D for any significant period of time. At best this indicates to me that the roles of the DM and the player need to be better explained to newcomers to P&P RPGs.
I buy systems and rulebooks so that I can use them - that usually means they need to do most of the heavy lifting for me rather than basically dumping the work onto me. If my players keep having to ask what kinds of actions they can take on a given round, then it slows down the game and it increases the burden I as a DM must handle. Just tell me how long rounds are, give me a few simple action categories relating to common actions (moving, attacking, casting a spell, drinking a potion, etc), give me guidelines on how to fit unlisted actions into one of the categories, and tell me how many actions of each of these categories a player can normally take in a round. That is all I need to judge what a player can do - they know they can move, attack, cast a spell, etc. and if they want to do something funky then they can go ahead and ask. But please, just give us a robust and simple action economy which only needs my intervention when we want to go "off the tracks" and away from common actions. As a DM, I prefer to spend my time planning about the fun stuff - the content! Let the combat rules be simple enough that the players and DM alike have as little trouble as possible running and resolving combat.
The role of the DM, IMO, is to present a setting and a story full of characters, monsters, treasures, locations, and conflicts to interact with. The players can make it their own and the DM can help facilitate their journey and present interesting situations so everyone can have fun. I really don't know who Monte was talking to that said they just roll for the monsters -that's incredibly simplistic and I have to wonder if the person that said that has ever even been a DM or played D&D for any significant period of time. At best this indicates to me that the roles of the DM and the player need to be better explained to newcomers to P&P RPGs.
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mhensley
First Post
Whatever else I can say, I do think they need someone new to word the polls. They're pretty bad, lately, in my opinion. As always, play what you like
They also could be coded a lot better. Using radio buttons stink for this. They should use drop down selects and only one submit button. Frickin amateurs...
am181d
Adventurer
I'm not even sure what this article is talking about. "The game system cannot interpret the rules." Of course not! The game system IS the rules. Rules can't interpret themselves.
And no one is going to argue that we should eliminate to hit rolls!
So what is this article really asking? Something vague about actions per round. Honestly, I've never seen this as an issue in any edition of any role-playing game I've ever played. Major actions are categorized as a move, an attack, or a free-action, and anything not on the list is up to the DM.
The closest we've gotten to this being a problem is in 4e where certain actions just aren't possible under the rules unless you have a special power (trip attack, bull rush, etc.).
They should retitle the "Legend and Lore" column something like "Monte wants to make a lot of rules optional and then get rid of a lot of other rules and Lore".
And no one is going to argue that we should eliminate to hit rolls!
So what is this article really asking? Something vague about actions per round. Honestly, I've never seen this as an issue in any edition of any role-playing game I've ever played. Major actions are categorized as a move, an attack, or a free-action, and anything not on the list is up to the DM.
The closest we've gotten to this being a problem is in 4e where certain actions just aren't possible under the rules unless you have a special power (trip attack, bull rush, etc.).
They should retitle the "Legend and Lore" column something like "Monte wants to make a lot of rules optional and then get rid of a lot of other rules and Lore".
Where does the article say this? I can't find this. You understand the implication of quotation marks?
I'm not even sure what you're talking about! It doesn't seem to be this article. However, to follow the putative point that has confused you.
Would you agree that: no written game system can be played without a person interpreting the meaning of the written rules.
This is a difference between an TT-RPG and a C-RPG and it does mean that an individual or a group has to make decisions on how to interpret and apply the rules - particularly for an RPG compared to a boardgame as a mediation of events in the gameworld is necessary.
To me, this column is getting at something I feel no edition of D&D has really understood: DM judgement is both potent and finite. DM adjudication can bring a game world to life in a way no mere ruleset can do, but the DM only has so much time and mental energy, and everything the DM has to adjudicate reduces the player's ability to understand the game world.
1E and 2E understood the potency of DM judgement, but not its finite-ness. They relied on the DM to adjudicate every tiny thing. This resulted in a game of great flexibility, but also put a huge load on the DM and made it hard for players to know what their characters could do.
3E and 4E understood the finite-ness of DM judgement, but not its potency. They set out to lift the burden of constant adjudication, but ended up trying to eliminate any need for DM judgement at all.
Monte seems to be moving toward recognizing both. The basic action economy of the game is something that should be codified in the rules; you do not want to make the DM adjudicate every single round! If your planned action is to run up to the enemy and whack it with your sword, the rules should tell you how many rounds that takes. Deciding how long it takes to flip over a table, grab a cocked crossbow from a dead guardsman, tie a flask of alchemist's fire to the end of the quarrel, and shoot it into the middle of the wall of fire the enemy pyromancer cast around himself... now that's a case for DM adjudication.
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Mercurius
Legend
Go Monte--I love it and couldn't agree more.
I once heard a fellow teacher say that "A teacher should never do something [in a class] that a student could do just as well or better;" in the RPG context, I would say "A rules set should never do something that the humans can do just as well or better." This goes for the GM and players alike.
In D&D there is really only one core rule: you roll a d20, add some kind of number, and compare it to a target number. Then you have a group of what I will call primary elements, which include hit points, levels, ability scores, classes, races, etc; then you have what I will call secondary elements, which include powers, spells, skills, and all the stuff that a character can do. We could further differentiate a tertiary category, which includes stuff like conditions and all of the many possible modifiers that can be applied.
The big flaw in WotC D&D (3E and later) is that it mushed all of this together into a core rule set, with very little differentiation. In early D&D, you pretty much had only the primary elements and then everything else was DM adjudication and player imagination; AD&D complexified this with more secondary elements and a smattering of tertiary elements; 3E brought in a deluge of tertiary elements, which are now strongly codified in the 4E battlemat experience.
This has also furthered the notion of the DM as "machine operator" or arbiter, and in a sense the opponent to the players. This, in my opinion, is directly related to the unacknowledge massive elephant in the room that, whenever it is brought up, causes quite a fuss: the influence of video games on tabletop RPGs. In a video game, the players is fighting "against" the machine; the GM, such as it is, is the program itself. For a generation brought up on video games, the GM is the enemy--the operator of the machine or program that you, as the player, are trying to win. This, I believe, has influenced the basic assumptions that later generations of role-players--those that have been playing for 15-20 years or less, even more so those that have been playing for 10 years or less--have about the role of the GM, and the relationship between the players and the GM (and, really, the individual and the world, but I'll leave that for now).
Now we could say that anyone can do whatever they want with any game. But the thing is, the rules form and guide the game experience. WotC D&D, but especially 4E (which I enjoy, btw), is designed in such a way that there are so many secondary and tertiary elements that the player is further removed from their character, and ends up running their character like a piece on a board game or a video game avatar (at least in combat, which is why some have noted that 4E is like two games in one: the actual role-playing game that takes place outside of combat, and combat that is essentially a miniature skirmish game).
If I had my druthers, 5E would be designed around only the primary elements I mentioned above as core, with secondary and more so tertiary elements being optional, even within a specific context. That is, if a group or the DM wants to consult the rules-as-guidelines in a given situation, go for it; but this approach shouldn't be hardwired into the basic game, but rather optional. Even better, if the designers did their job well, 5E would be able to easily create an "Old School" experience or a 4E battlemat experience, depending upon which secondary and tertiary elements were used (or, to put it in Mearls' terms, how far up the complexity dial was turned).
The only way that D&D is not only going to thrive but survive, imo, is if the priorities are re-envisioned whereby the game system, as well as the technology (DDI, apps, etc), serve that which is unique to the tabletop RPG experience: the play of imagination, the world being within consciousness, not on a computer screen or game board. I'm all for new technology and evolving rules, but they shouldn't be about bringing the game closer and closer to a video game experience; so far that has been the direction, especially from 2E to 3E to 4E. The articles by Mearls & Cook give me hope that 5E may be a change in that trajectory.
I once heard a fellow teacher say that "A teacher should never do something [in a class] that a student could do just as well or better;" in the RPG context, I would say "A rules set should never do something that the humans can do just as well or better." This goes for the GM and players alike.
In D&D there is really only one core rule: you roll a d20, add some kind of number, and compare it to a target number. Then you have a group of what I will call primary elements, which include hit points, levels, ability scores, classes, races, etc; then you have what I will call secondary elements, which include powers, spells, skills, and all the stuff that a character can do. We could further differentiate a tertiary category, which includes stuff like conditions and all of the many possible modifiers that can be applied.
The big flaw in WotC D&D (3E and later) is that it mushed all of this together into a core rule set, with very little differentiation. In early D&D, you pretty much had only the primary elements and then everything else was DM adjudication and player imagination; AD&D complexified this with more secondary elements and a smattering of tertiary elements; 3E brought in a deluge of tertiary elements, which are now strongly codified in the 4E battlemat experience.
This has also furthered the notion of the DM as "machine operator" or arbiter, and in a sense the opponent to the players. This, in my opinion, is directly related to the unacknowledge massive elephant in the room that, whenever it is brought up, causes quite a fuss: the influence of video games on tabletop RPGs. In a video game, the players is fighting "against" the machine; the GM, such as it is, is the program itself. For a generation brought up on video games, the GM is the enemy--the operator of the machine or program that you, as the player, are trying to win. This, I believe, has influenced the basic assumptions that later generations of role-players--those that have been playing for 15-20 years or less, even more so those that have been playing for 10 years or less--have about the role of the GM, and the relationship between the players and the GM (and, really, the individual and the world, but I'll leave that for now).
Now we could say that anyone can do whatever they want with any game. But the thing is, the rules form and guide the game experience. WotC D&D, but especially 4E (which I enjoy, btw), is designed in such a way that there are so many secondary and tertiary elements that the player is further removed from their character, and ends up running their character like a piece on a board game or a video game avatar (at least in combat, which is why some have noted that 4E is like two games in one: the actual role-playing game that takes place outside of combat, and combat that is essentially a miniature skirmish game).
If I had my druthers, 5E would be designed around only the primary elements I mentioned above as core, with secondary and more so tertiary elements being optional, even within a specific context. That is, if a group or the DM wants to consult the rules-as-guidelines in a given situation, go for it; but this approach shouldn't be hardwired into the basic game, but rather optional. Even better, if the designers did their job well, 5E would be able to easily create an "Old School" experience or a 4E battlemat experience, depending upon which secondary and tertiary elements were used (or, to put it in Mearls' terms, how far up the complexity dial was turned).
The only way that D&D is not only going to thrive but survive, imo, is if the priorities are re-envisioned whereby the game system, as well as the technology (DDI, apps, etc), serve that which is unique to the tabletop RPG experience: the play of imagination, the world being within consciousness, not on a computer screen or game board. I'm all for new technology and evolving rules, but they shouldn't be about bringing the game closer and closer to a video game experience; so far that has been the direction, especially from 2E to 3E to 4E. The articles by Mearls & Cook give me hope that 5E may be a change in that trajectory.
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