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

[Faolyn]

Reading about them as casual suggestions and advice in the book (not hard rules), and learning about them from more experienced GMs and players.

And if the more experienced GMs and players are actually really bad at what they do?

 

[Faolyn]

By the laws of aerodynamics neither bumblebees nor jumbo jets should be able to get off the ground and yet there they are, flying around like they often do. If one considers a dragon to be, aerodynamically, similar to a living breathing jumbo jet then it all works fine.

It's well known now how bees fly--they flap their wings in figure eights.

Amusingly, the dragons--or at least the swam dragons--in the Discworld books do fly like jets. With propulsion flames coming out of their butts.

 

[Faolyn]

The problem is this writes off whole categories of social science as "not science" because all you can get are anecdotes. And sometimes you can only get so many of them. Arguably, any intermittent phenomenon that can't be duplicated experimentally is "anecdote" but that doesn't stop people from using them because sometimes that's all you've got.

Data is data. The desire to make collecting it as rigorous as possible is a virtue, but writing it off because that's not, in practice, possible does assessing the world no favors.

In order to get data for social science, you still have to perform structured experiments. You need to define the variables, actually design the experiment, analyze the data, and so forth.

The gaming table is not a structured experiment, and I doubt that many, if any, players or GMs have actually done the necessary steps.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

But one person do not have all the power in this scope! The social dynamics at play in a typical game group rarely look like what you describe here.

When we say the GM is not bound by any of the game rules, that is a voulentary social agreement between everyone that wants to participate in the game that features this as part of the game description.

I have previously talked about how I was critisized for binding myself to the rules in two of my games. The GM isn't not bound because the GM is somehow doing a social power play. They are not bound because the social group demands it from them given the activity they collectively decided they wanted to engage in.

There are also other unwritten things that also affects what has actually been agreed to be the activity beyond the game system. A group coming together to play a game of homebrew looney tunes characters using the D&D ruleset as base is putting a completely different set of expectations on what the GM should be doing, than one wanting to reenact a realistic depiction of the crusades with no magic using the same basic ruleset.

There are nothing written separating these groups, but I will argue these social circumstances sets bounds on GM behavior that is stronger than what some know-it-all designer we don't know personally happened to write in their rulebook.

And I argue every unwritten rule will be broken. Especially in an environment where it is one specific person doing the breaking, when everyone else is incredibly tightly bound by hard, explicit rules.

 

[Enrahim]

"Steady stream" probably overstates it. Keep in mind, again, I'm talking about information I've gathered over a half century. Most people who have these sorts of problems aren't going to talk about them constantly--but they'll still tell stories about events over time, and you also see things like GMs who talk about a top down approach who suggest that their players are all fine with it, and then see some players in a different place that you know are talking about the same game, and have a very different story.

I've also sometimes seen players complain about GMs who are too lenient or favor some players over others. But over time its not hard to start noticing trends in frequency. Add in noting the sensitivity some GMs have to being challenged--at all in some cases--and it doesn't require a big reach to conclude this approach isn't exactly optimal, even if it works for some people and groups.

(And just to make it clear, this can even be a problem with GMs who manage to hang onto players well; there can be all kinds of reasons for that including limited options, player expectations that the next GM will just be the same, or the GM involved being really good at some parts of running a game so that their players will tolerate really annoying top down behavior. Just like you can have GMs who have a very good set of player relations skills who are terrible in other areas).



I come from an information sciences background, so I'm aware of the risks of selective perception and limited data. Yet, at a certain point in life, even with things which there are no experts, you have to come to some conclusions to operate. In these particular cases while I'm aware that I have certain sorts of data sources, I've never seen anyone come up with any sort of explanation of why these sorts of sources would particular bias toward producing the conclusions I've had. I'd at least look at that.

(Its why when someone says "That hasn't been my experience" I'm sincere when I say "I'll take that as a data point". Its just that at this point in my gaming life, I have a rather large number of data points.)

A lot of my experiences and discussions have been at gaming conventions or game days in cities where I don't DM. Again, it's not that I haven't had a small handful of bad DMs here and there or discussed bad DMs with other people. It's this all controlling dictatorial DM that seems to be nigh on mythical. It's all preference of course but in my experience I would rather have one person who clearly makes the final call in most group related activities.

Ok, it sound actually to me like your experiences might not e contradicting, merely that you talk about somewhat different phenomena.

First off - I have actually met the mythic GM Tyrant. I was my friend. I think we were about 13 at the time, and he was running his first game ever. He ran the first part of a module fine. Then he put us in a ship to ship combat with the opposing ship having an endless stream of enemies, and a conspicuously increasing number of balistas as we managed to fight trough the horde he was sure would TPK us. He later admitted doing so anticipating the arrival of a module he rather wanted to run/play. Rather prematurely though, as said module never arrived.

With this out of my system, it appear @Thomas Shey has a lower threshold for the phenomenom observed. It appear we are rather talking about games where the GM has a more authoritative style than the players would prefer.

I am as such curious what @Thomas Shey makes of the following anecdote. When I was peak integrated in the local RPG community the best known and revered GM in the city (possibly in the country) was an individual that provided incredibly imaginative experiences delivered in an extremely professional and engaging maner. He made Matt Mercer look like an amateur in terms of delivey, and I am serious about that. He was also by far the most overtly top down authoritative GM I have ever experienced, and he would not be shy about promoting this as a central part of his "method".

Here we have an extremely well liked GM who's popularity is in part because of not despite a very strong top down approach. How does that fit into the model? My take is that there are certain role models that actually manage to make such an approach work, but that there is a underforest of imitators that try to acheive the same thing, but just don't have what it takes to make it work.

I am in absolutely no doubt that there are lots of groups out there with a GM that is overdoing the authority thing compared with their own skill and player preference. I think this is valuable to increase consciousness about. But I do not think it is correct or constructive to look at the authoritative style of play in itself as a problem. I think it is a hard style of play to master, with many pitfalls. But I have been privileged enough to get to experience first hand what magic it can produce when actually competently wielded.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I had a DM who provided us with “NPCs” that he “suggested” we play in favor of the PCs we had. None of us went with it… it seemed an odd request. Then as we played and we saw that everything that was happening was related to the NPCs and our PCs were simply along for the ride, it became really obvious that we were just meant to play through his novel.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

That raises the question: how do you handle disagreements, without the evenings entertainment becoming an acrimonious argument (like an unmoderated forum)?

How do you have conversations with people you like spending time with (such as friends or your significant other) without them becoming acrimonious arguments when you disagree about something?

Exactly the same things. You lay out your stance openly and earnestly, you show respect for the other persons' points of view, and you work to either accept their position, have them accept yours, or find some kind of middle ground (which might mean compromise, or "my way then your way", or something else).

You don't rely on a mysterious, ephemeral, ever-changing chameleon document that will be undetectably rewritten whenever fancy strikes, and of course how can you assert that it's been rewritten when you can't point to anything that shows anything has changed!

You communicate. You exchange respect, giving and receiving. And, most important of all, when there is any kind of public agreement between you...such as, I dunno, maybe some rules you agree to abide by...you don't just break them and you sure as hell don't break them and then cover it up.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Except there's no recourse when they don't except taking a walk. That's pretty weak enforcement. And any attempt by players to push when a GM isn't doing that is reliably read by many people as the sign of "bad players".

Precisely.

It would be like an employer, where the only response the employees can give to not getting paid for their agreed wages is just quitting the job and walking. No accountability. No restitution for unfulfilled promises. Nothing punitive at all, except "game ends."

And because we live in a world where groups starving for GMs are a dime a dozen, even the worst GMs can always find new groups.

 

[Enrahim]

And I argue every unwritten rule will be broken. Especially in an environment where it is one specific person doing the breaking, when everyone else is incredibly tightly bound by hard, explicit rules.

Strange that I can not remember that ever happening though. Are we talking about "will be broken" as in Murphy's law?

(As a minor side note - one of the things I like with being player in a TTRPG is to feel like I am not tightly bound by hard explicit rules in the way I am when playing a board game. But I assume that was meant as a rethorical stroke, rather than as a central claim)

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I dunno. I once had a player take up 5 to 10 minutes of game time arguing with me about what a piece of particular technology should look like. Never mind that this was under a different technology base than we currently work. Never mind that the character was not proficient with the technology. The player worked for a company that made these devices, so if there was nothing there that looked like that, the "research lab" they were exploring was a fraud....

Likewise, I previously had someone working on a JD degree. I don't...do law stuff really. But law stuff comes up in a social context, frequently. It was quite clear that this player had issues with some things like contracts or enforcement or the like. He kept his peace, but the occasional scoff or (audible rather than visual) "raised eyebrow" made it clear to me that he was skeptical AF about some of this stuff. I just don't know it well enough to do it truly "right"....but most people don't either, so my stumbling around looks okay to most.