D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[Don Durito]

It gets brought up as part of other discussions. Say DM authority.

One side argues that the DMG gives the DM absolute authority, but the DM can't just do anything he wants because many things would be abuse of authority and violate the social contract.

The other side then starts pointing out the rare really bad DM who calls his players idiots, teleports the group into the middle of a volcano, accomplishes everything of import with his DMPC, etc. as attempted proof that DM authority is bad.

Then the first side has to point out that bad DMs are really rare, and that those rare bad DMs aren't a result of DM authority. They're just jerks, which is a people problem. No rules changes are going to fix them. It's not like a jerk is going to say to himself, "Well darn! I was going to teleport the party into some lava, because they ruined the encounter, but this rule here says I can't." and then not do it.

Ok I'll stay out of it then as I think there's so many things in there that don't necessarily follow from each other that the whole thing could be broken apart.

 

[Hussar]

/snip

I don't think the game requires an Expert in everything. I do think the DM should know a lot about His world. If the DM says a snake can climb a rope then it can. Are you going to argue with your own eyes when the snake shimmies up the rope?

So, when magical pixies cause the character to fall or succeed that climb check, that's 100% in keeping with sim play because the DM says it? Since the DM cannot be wrong, then any narration I choose must be right.

Does make running sim games really, really easy I suppose.

 

[Hussar]

/snip

The thing is that there is work other than specifically knowing a real-world subject needed for simulationist play, and written rules interpreted and implemented by humans aren't always the best way of doing it.

I 100% agree with this. Which means that for simulationist play, we need written rules that actually SIMULATE something. IOW, they have to provide any information about how a result was achieved. Otherwise, it's just magic pixies all over the place. See, in actual sim systems, my magic pixies narration don't work because that would contradict the information provided by the system. But, since D&D provides no information, then any narration is 100% equal.

 

[Hussar]

I don't see how that keeps the game grounded. I can easily describe something as "I open the door with my energy beam eyes". I'm describing the action, so that makes it fine according to you. What is there that says "but you don't have energy beam eyes"?

And, here we have it again. This is one of the most frustrating things about this thread.

Poster A: I have heard this thing about this game.
Poster B: No. I've played that game. I have lots of experience with that game. That's not true. That's not how it works.
Poster A: I will now contradict everything you say from now on with no proof, no experience and only consulting wiki and Google to repeatedly naysay you.
Poster B: But... I've got direct experience with the game. I KNOW what I'm talking about. I can actually quote page and verse from the rules that show why you're wrong.
Poster A: Lalalalalala Never ending contraditions!!!!

Good grief. Wouldn't it be a HELL of a lot more productive to actually LISTEN to the people with experience rather than your second hand knowledge?

 

[Hussar]

/snip

So if a person should be skilled enough for the task at hand but still failed the roll due to the dice gods, then it can be something out of the character's control that caused them to fail. Should it be pixies (or another living being)? Not unless there's a darn good reason for them. But the cliff crumbling or the rope breaking? Why not?

What's the difference? The game world is being changed as a result of a failed skill check. Had the check succeeded, the rope would have never broken and might never break. So, it's not a weak rope. The cliff face suddenly crumbling because of my climb check? How is that not my skill check (which is ONLY my ability to climb something) causing a physical change in the game world. After all, the next person might climb the same cliff and nothing crumbles at all.

The only difference is that you find one physical change to the game world more palatable than the other. But, in both cases it's a change to the game world being introduced without any connection to anything. Sure, flying pixies are extreme, but, again, it's only a difference of scale, not kind.

How is one skill check changing the physical properties of the game world acceptable, but another one isn't? Other than your personal preference of course. ((And note, I'm being pretty hyperbolic here- I doubt any DM would actually introduce pixies, but, I'm trying to show a point here))

 

[Hussar]

You do realize this entirely writes off any history not backed by archeology, right? I mean, I'm not going to say there aren't problems with history, but that seems an extreme position.

That's not true at all. History is backed by all sorts of primary sources. History that is only backed by oral retellings are notoriously bad.

 

[hawkeyefan]

What is actually at stake here in the argument about how rare bad GMs are meant to be?

Now, as in many times in this thread, camps seem to appear without it being actually all that clear what the argument is supposed to be about.

I’m not sure how rare bad GMs are. I’m far more concerned about bad GMing, as in instances of it, which I think are incredibly common. I mean… we’ve all mad bad calls as GMs.

So whenever this kind of topic comes up, that’s the way I look at it. I’m mostly concerned about my own GMing… I want to continue to improve.

 

[Enrahim]

I have not. Ever. Not once. I frankly find it baffling that such a thing would ever occur.

So there we have a problem. You have a set of experiences that indicate that the chances of a breach of the unwritten premises of a game is significantly higher than the chances of a similarly problematic rules dispute. I have a set of experiences that indicate the opposite.

It might very well be that we are the problem ourselves. We appear to both be rules nerds, but we might still have different approaches to how to interact with rules in a social context. In particular it might be we have different relationship to written and unwritten rules.

It might seem like you find unwritten rules brittle and rigid due to the challenge of communicate around it, while written rules are easy to bending and forming to your needs as you can readily talk around it, and that way build an explicit consensus.

Meanwhile I find the unwritten rules more flexible as any reasonable interpretation of them are generally accepted, while written rules are tight and brittle as their written form works as an outside authority that need to be interpreted and might have different meaning and importance to the various members of the group.

That is while consensus building is more possible for the written than the unwritten rules, the actual process of building that consensus might be really hard in a group of players that is strongly opiniated about various subtle details in the rules.

I do recognise that this category of people might be in a minority. Me and both of my brothers happens to be so, which mean I have likely been exposed to the issue a lot more than average. I have had clashes with other players as well, so my family is not unique. But that means that if you yourself are quite lentinent and accepting about what rules are at play, and how they are interpreted, (as long as they are explicit and written down) it might not be so surprising you have not found yourself at a table where this type of situation has been a problem.

 

[Enrahim]

But was it really? Or was it just that in his particular case it let him produce a result that in other ways was very appealing, and he didn't seem to know how to do one without the other?

Those are not the same things. One is a price one pays for the internal process that allowed this particular GM to work in a way, that was, on the whole, very appealing. The other says that the top-down approach was desirable in and of itself, and if he could have done otherwise while still otherwise producing a similar result, some if not many people would not have preferred it.

Basically, at this point I have to ask where your last sentence comes from, because it doesn't come naturally from the rest of what you've said. Essentially, do you have reason (from statements by others) to believe its literally true, or is it just your read of the situation?

I absolutely cannot phantom their magic being possible without a heavy top down approach. He was very active in our local RPG theory community, and clearly extremely reflected around exactly what he was doing and why it worked. This was no accident.

Well, more to the point, if my premise is true, there's a lot more GMs who lack the talents in other areas to make up for it (or worse, negatively reinforce it; as I said, there's a big difference between a GM who always wants to have the final power and one who does that but also can't take suggestions that he's made a mistake well).

Now we are getting to something material. There is a huge difference between a top down approach to GMing and being unable to take feedback constructively. It might be that these two traits are correlated and a unfortunate combination. But the later is a generally accepted bad trait. That it happens to correlate with a certain playstyle shouldn't reflect badly on the playstyle itself.

The thing is, it doesn't actually matter to my premise if it works well for a subset of users and groups. That's never been a suggestion on my part can't be true. My point is that the passive encouragement of it as a default approach is, and always has been, bad for the hobby.

There are a lot of things like that in life, like certain techniques in physical skills that can work really well for some practitioners that you still want to discourage because the chances are, the person you're encouraging it to isn't one of those, and encouraging them to go there will make them worse, not better at it.

And here I think we get to some real substance. It is a big difference between saying "being a circus artist is bad" and "please don't try this at home". The argument against top down authoritative GMing very often come across as the former.

A major challenge here is where the filtering step should be. I think it would be rather uncontroversial to claim that far from everyone is fit for sitting behind the metaphorical screen at all, independent of system and guidance regarding style. Might the problem indeed be that we are doing too much general encouragement to pick up the mantle? If everyone actually starting GMing was indeed decent people with above average ability to receive critisism in a good way - would it then be a problem in your eyes if the encuraged default mode of GMing is the way you perceive it to be, and complain about?

 

[clearstream]

I 100% agree with this. Which means that for simulationist play, we need written rules that actually SIMULATE something. IOW, they have to provide any information about how a result was achieved. Otherwise, it's just magic pixies all over the place. See, in actual sim systems, my magic pixies narration don't work because that would contradict the information provided by the system. But, since D&D provides no information, then any narration is 100% equal.

I don't agree with your conclusion, but I think you know that by now

Central appears to be our different ideas about the capacity of DM to be part of the simulative means of play. Seeing as I count DM into 'system' that way, the textual mechanics of D&D suffice.

I also argue that in play someone always must add something more than textual mechanics specify. Whilst armed with a very thorough knowledge of the texts, I have noticed far more detail than you credit. In essence, it seems we have different ideas of what is there and how much is enough.