On taking power away from the DM

[Quasqueton]

Quasqueton's thread shows he's been thinking about this at some depth as well

No, it does not show that, because I have not.

Quasqueton

 

[Psion]

That was the theory, and if it had worked, then great. But, it doesn't work, as your own experiences tend to support.

You're an expert on my experiences now are you?

Really, it has generally worked in my games. I've had one player who had a total disconnect with the idea of "this is the world, this is what's in it", but other than that, in actual play, I've never seen such furor over PrCs as I have on the net.

When it comes to character design philosophies, I've noted a few:

• The basic "pick what I want out of the PHB, none of this fancy stuff" type.
• The "I wanna do this, show me something that will do it" type.
• The "browse the new book for the latest new shiny" type.

It tends to be a spoiled subset of type 3 that tends to have the entitlement issues. And, in the same vein as Morrus' "jerk DM" observation, I just see this as a jerk player. And really, no rule system is going to be immune to people who can't come to terms with the rest of the group.

This really goes for DMs too. I talk a mean game when it comes to "saying no" to players, but really, if you bring something to my table that enthuses you and gets you to want to play, I generally want to tap that enthusiasm and turn it into something positive for the game. But if you won't meet me halfway on finding a place or a way for it to fit, then you are harshing on my buzz as bad as I am harshing on yours, so I don't have as much sympathy there.

So you tell yourself whatever you want in the name of being a buzzkill DM. But you don't know me.

 

[Celebrim]

No, it does not show that, because I have not.

Quasqueton

Well, I'm confused then.

I thought this link was to a thread that you participated in, http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=170443, and I gathered from the level of detail in the post that you'd thought at some link about how problimatic arbitrating the correct player information level and presumed course of an abstract action can be.

Perhaps you could explain to me what you were deeply thinking about in that thread, because I think I feel safe in assuming you were thinking pretty complex thoughts about something.

 

[Celebrim]

You're an expert on my experiences now are you?

Only in so far as you've related them:

"I find well written PrCs to be a boon, because it gets players to invest in the setting. But all to many players miss that, brush off the backstory, and pronounce their entitlement to play the mechanics."

I took that to mean, "I found it can work, but all too often it doesn't..." I didn't realize 'all too often', meant 'once', though I agree that once is too often.

I'm sure it can work with the right players, right DM, right PrC's, and so forth. And I agree that nothing in the rules is going to work if the DM or the player is going to be a jerk, but...

Where my opinion seems to diverge is that I think rules can either reduce friction or increase it to some extent. In my experience, PrC's tend to increase friction because among other things they blur the line between what is the rightful province of the player (his character), and what is the rightful province of the DM (the setting). Most 'jerky' behavior I've experienced in RPing tends to come when the DM attempts to take on the role of a player (DM PC's, adversarial DMing, DM's attempting to play the PC's for them, etc.) or players attempting to take on the role of the DM (rules lawyering, attempting to take control of the setting in various ways, canon/fluff lawyering, setting other players as adversaries, trying to predetermine outcome, trying to RP the NPCs for the DM (what you might call 'personality lawyering'), etc.).

I prefer classes to be very fluff neutral so that the mechanics can be adapted to whatever happens to be the cultural setting. This isn't to say that the mechanics can't be very evocative, for example, I think the cleric domains are quite evocative when married to fluff. But they don't force fluff onto the campaign except in the most generic way.

The fact of the matter is that originally, the PrC's were put in the DMG for a very specific reason (I don't have a link but I do remember this being discussed by the design team when PrC's were first introduced). Then, they ended up in player material because you could sell more books if you were offering them as player options. Even if that isn't actually taking away DM control, it creates the appearance of taking away DM control. And I think it does it in a way that is far more problimatic than breaking down a PrC into a collection of feat chains would be.

Of course, the whole of my objections to PrC's isn't this (if it was, it would be very trivial); this is just how my objections to PrC's relates to the thread.

 

[Celebrim]

You're free to disagree; you're not free to insult people who disagree with you.

I had sort of the same emotional responce to your argument. I think you are the one taking an argument about social contract and substituting implicitively normative description.

Do you think that someone must be a jerk before you can have a disagreement at the table?

Quite often this subject turns into, "If you think that 3rd edition takes away too much DM power, then you aren't just a bad DM, but you are a bad person.", or conversely, "If you think previous editions gave too much power to the DM, you aren't just a bad player but a bad person." There are a number of posters on the boards who hold that position explicitly.

You may have not brought up the notion of 'jerk', but you ran with it, and you ran with it very much away from the hypothetical context it was originally brought up in. It seems to me that you suggested, if there is table conflict - which would never happen at my table - then someone is a bad person and you shouldn't play with them.

Nobody has said anything of the sort; they have stated that the solution to social friction is not a game rule, but requires social handling.

Maybe, but this is complete non-answer. I can agree that social conflicts require social handling, but that doesn't really deal with the question of whether bad design can encourage social friction. Consider a rules system like Paranoia with its explicit player vs. player conflict, explicit referee in an arbitrary adversarial role, and explicitly complete lack of player control over proposition outcome. It works solely because its intended to be unserious, wacky, and explicitly humerous. You could subtly imbed the same sort of mechanical assumptions in game that proported to be a serious game, and you might well have groups that could handle it, but I think it is fair to say that that sort of rules system would cause 'a breakdown in the social contract' (as it is called) fairly frequently and in alot of groups where you didn't normally see people acting like 'jerks'.

The question isn't whether or not social friction can be appealed to WotC, or even whether the rules could elimenate jerky behavior, but whether or not rules could tend to subtly increase or decrease social friction. And I think the answer is pretty clear that they can, because you don't have to site RPG's to come up with examples to this problem. Quite arguably, Monopoly has a rules set which tends to encourage player friction, and we can even describe the specific design choices that lead to it.

And even if this isn't true, and the rules couldn't possibly effect social friction and social friction is entirely a metagame construct, it still wouldn't have alot of bearing on whether RPG rules could relatively empower or relatively disempower the referee in his role of arbitrator and judge.

 

[Morrus]

You may have not brought up the notion of 'jerk', but you ran with it, and you ran with it very much away from the hypothetical context it was originally brought up in. It seems to me that you suggested, if there is table conflict - which would never happen at my table - then someone is a bad person and you shouldn't play with them.

This is untrue. I asked why one would socialise with someone they considered "a jerk". If you read anything else into my post, then I'm afraid that's your own inference.

Of course, my understanding of the term "jerk" is that someone is a thoroughly unpleasant person; not that he/she can't DM very well.

I think you are the one taking an argument about social contract and substituting implicitively normative description.

I don't understand that sentence (probably my fault, but would you be so kind as to use words with fewer syllables for me, because "substituting implicitively normative description" doesn't mean anything to me. Thanks.)

The question isn't whether or not social friction can be appealed to WotC, or even whether the rules could elimenate jerky behavior, but whether or not rules could tend to subtly increase or decrease social friction.

I could agree to that; changing one's situation or environment certainly has an efefct on interactions. I don't feel I can agree with the extent of the import you attach to the tules there, though - unless I'm misunderstanding you, which is quite possible since your writing style is one I personally find hard to parse (that's nothing personal - I've said similar to another poster on this thread, too; he was kind enough at the time to rephrase his position in a way I could understand. I think that's why I dropped out of law school over ten years ago!)

 

[SavageRobby]

Having played D&D for over 20 years, I will concede that Old School DMs regularly abused their power [snipped a lot of good points]

The rest of your post I agree with, but this ... despite seeing this kind of claim repeatedly, I have to admit I don't understand it, and never really heard it spelled out coherently. Abused what? Is that really just an Old School thing (you mean, it doesn't happen regularly now?), or as someone mentioned earlier (and what I suspect) is it simply a "jerk DM" thing?

 

[Celebrim]

Of course, my understanding of the term "jerk" is that someone is a thoroughly unpleasant person; not that he/she can't DM very well.

Can we define a difference between 'acting like a jerk', and 'is a jerk'? Because I think that it is quite possible for someone to act like a jerk in some context or from time to time, without actually being a thoroughly unpleasant person. I think a sentence like, "My friend whom I normally get along with quite well, acts like a jerk when he DM's because the power goes to his head and he always wants to show off his uber-DM PC and be the center of attention.", is a perfectly valid one. Or even, "My friend, whom I normally get along with quite well, often acts like a jerk when he plays D&D because he's hyper-competitive and automatically assumes an adversarily role with the DM without even realizing it." Or even, "My friend, who is an excellent DM and a great roleplayer, is a totally dysfunctional player, because he always creates an NPC with this elaborate background and anti-social motivations, rather than a heroic PC that can get along with everyone else in the party." Or even, "My friend's girl friend, whom I like alot in other contexts, is a pain to role play with because she's used to being the DM's pet and always getting her way."

Real world social sitautions are messy.

Someone earlier said:

"It should go without saying that issues exist in and/or stem from the game, not because you have a collection of complete jerks and idiots around the table."

I agree entirely. We get pretty much no where if we assume that any problems someone encounters are entirely because those people that had them are complete jerks and thoroughly unpleasant people, or even merely bad DM's or players. That doesn't perclude that from being the problem from case to case, but it's not a very good general answer. Even the above cases of dysfunctional behavior don't imply that the people involved are thoroughly unpleasant people, or even that the dysfunctionality is always so bad that a good time can't normally be had by all.

I don't understand that sentence (probably my fault, but would you be so kind as to use words with fewer syllables for me, because "substituting implicitively normative description" doesn't mean anything to me. Thanks.)

I believe that you persisted in arguing that if there was a problem it was because there was something mentally/spiritually wrong with the person, even when Reynard tried to assert that game play issues were at least a partial cause of the problem - not necessarily that the players were bad people.

I don't feel I can agree with the extent of the import you attach to the tules there, though - unless I'm misunderstanding you...

Unless you say what you think the extent of the import I'm attaching to the rules is, I can't tell you whether you understand me or not.

I'm certainly not saying that the rules entirely create the social problems, but I think that they can contribute to them. For example, in Monopoly you have an explicitly adversarial game which most of the time deadlocks early in play (no one owns a complete set and so no one can obtain enough advantage to bankrupt anyone because the average payout per round of the board is greater than the average total payment). The only way to break these deadlocks is through negotiation. The assumption of fair play is that the deadlock will be broken in a way that doesn't explicitly favor one party over another (people will only trade when doing so furthers them to victory), but in practice even if this is possible the game is often thrown when one party on a whim favors losing to one opponent over another one (spouse, favored parent, same gender, etc.) If the game had a better deadlock resolution mechanic, it would avoid this potential source of friction.

Look, I'm as transparent as mud, as unabrasive as sandpaper, and as pithy as Tolstoy. I know that I'm hard to read sometimes. However, between your strong declarations of not understanding the point in one post, and strong declarations of understanding in another, and the fact that you seem to want to simplify complex problems down to breezy dismissals, you are pretty hard to understand as well. So, I'll comprimise. If you have the time or inclination, why don't you do me the honor of stopping not saying what you are actually thinking even at the risk of being rude or sarcastic, so at least I'll know what you are thinking, and I'll try to remember this isn't a Mixed Martial Rhetoric ring.

 

[Glyfair]

The rest of your post I agree with, but this ... despite seeing this kind of claim repeatedly, I have to admit I don't understand it, and never really heard it spelled out coherently. Abused what? Is that really just an Old School thing (you mean, it doesn't happen regularly now?), or as someone mentioned earlier (and what I suspect) is it simply a "jerk DM" thing?

I'm not sure what he's specifically referencing. However, I do think it happens less often today. Some of it is gamer culture. Back in the early days of D&D the DM trying to "win" was a lot more common than today, and was even somewhat acceptable. Today we tend to operate with different assumptions. No one knew what a "social contract" was, although I'm sure a few groups had them.

Today we realize that the players aren't just there to jump through the DMs hoops. The systems have moved more control and responsibilities to the player's end of the table. They are given more control of their character's systemically, but have an added responsibility to make the game fun. Like most things, just because players have more responsibility doesn't mean they'll take that responsibility and those that don't are the problem.

Essentially it's a "jerk DM" issue. However, I found there were more of that sort of DMs when the rules went out of their way to say "whatever the DMs says is right, don't question it." I've heard a lot of them specifically justify their actions with those phrases. Once the paradim softed so that it's acknowledged that the DMs don't have absolute say, some of those DMs became passable (and even good) DMs.

 

[Celebrim]

The rest of your post I agree with, but this ... despite seeing this kind of claim repeatedly, I have to admit I don't understand it, and never really heard it spelled out coherently. Abused what? Is that really just an Old School thing (you mean, it doesn't happen regularly now?), or as someone mentioned earlier (and what I suspect) is it simply a "jerk DM" thing?

The 1st edition DMG can be read as explicitly encouraging a highly adversarial role for the DM - beating the players down with every tool available - in order to continually challenge the players so that it might produce what the text calls 'superior play'. While the text does contain warnings not to abuse the players or DM authority, much more emphasis is put on maintaining DM authority and keeping the game sufficiently difficult. The DM was supposed to never give player's an even break. A shallow reading of the text then combined with the absolute authority the DM had over the rules and every other aspect of play (player's were supposed to not even be allowed to know the combat resolution mechanics, if they showed signs of using this knowledge, were to have thier characters taken away from them), definately could contribute to DM ego tripping especially if the personality of the DM was so inclined.

Alot of players from the 1st edition era got burned so bad by bad DMing which they felt was justified by the text/approach of the game, that they've got serious chips on thier shoulder about anything that they consider a 1st edition mindset.