EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
Warning! Incoming wall-o-text. Sorry about that!
So...the DM having the ability to write the world isn't enough? We have to keep players completely ensconced away from certain information, because simply by knowing it, they destroy the difference between the two? I'm sorry, I don't really buy that.
How does one preserve this numinous "mystery" after more than a single campaign? Do players need to edit out their memories of previous games, because they were able to see the kinds of treasure they got there, the kinds of checks they'd have to make and their (approximate) odds of success? The way you're presenting this, it's not possible to preserve this "key element" for more than a single campaign--perhaps not even that long. How can it be "key" to be new to the game, when people are only new to the game once? And if it's not a matter of being new to the game, how do you preserve this ignorance in the face of being exposed to this information by playing through it?
Uh...wow, reaching much?
Firstly, you've switched goalposts--but in a way that somehow makes your argument even more strict. Now players can't even read the PHB, because it tells them information about the game. Also, apparently, players having even a rough idea of how successful their choices could be prevents them from having any "mystery," despite the plain fact that that's the only way to make informed decisions--otherwise, it's about reading the DM's mind rather than playing the game. Is knowing "I have pretty good, but not perfect, odds of swimming across a river if I want to" really such an incredibly deep and significant problem that now drama is dead? I thought that was why we had dice in the first place--so that, no matter how much knowledge you had about your abilities, there was always some chance you could succeed, and some chance that you could fail.
Second, please don't throw "Old School Primer" examples around as though they were obviously the guaranteed consequence of players potentially knowing stuff from the DMG. Yes, some people are going to engage in utterly flavorless, raw-numbers statements. You have not established that knowing some stuff from the DMG (for example, by having been a DM in a different/prior game) automatically causes such behavior--and until you do, it's at best a non-sequitur, and probably a slippery slope too. "I've read the DMG" does not entail "I flip open books at the table, force people to wait while I do calculations, dryly and without any roleplay announce the results of those calculations, and demand satisfaction and appreciation from the rest of the table."
If people are allowed to respond to my statements with, "You should choose not to play with jerk DMs," I think it's perfectly appropriate for me to reply to this with: "You shouldn't play with jerk players." If your players are repeatedly rules-lawyering you, dismissing your authority (which, you'll note, I have never said a DM shouldn't have authority, though you seem to have not noticed that), nit-picking every single statement you make, and otherwise being disruptive, annoying, rude, frustrating, derailing jerks, maybe you need to find better players. (As an aside, anyone who argues that this specific check cannot possibly be higher/lower than Difficulty X is both being an idiot and a jerk, since book DCs are explicitly a suggestion/baseline and always have been, circumstance has always been part of the equation regardless of edition.)
And even if that weren't the case? Again, not a single part of this argument has anything to do with the example I gave: DMs who decide, after they start DMing, that they'd like to play in a campaign. What do you do with them? Are they now anathema, because their "behind-the-curtain" knowledge means that they know what the "typical" difficulties are, and can thus intuitively recognize when something is harder than it "should" be (note quotes! I'm NOT saying they're right!), even as just a gut feeling rather than a "rule" they could point to?
Okay, now I'm upset. Please don't call me "deluded," particularly when you are the one who inserted the "ignoring the distinction" idea. I have never, not once, suggested that there should be no difference whatsoever between DM and player. Never. Not in this thread, not on this forum, and not even on the internet at large. You are putting words in my mouth and then insulting me for those words.
Yes, I said that I think it is poisonous to the hobby to view participants as "players xor DMs." That is not the same as saying I don't think there should be a distinction between them at a given table. I am speaking of the hobby as a whole. Individual people emphatically should not be categorized as "is a DM now and forever, in all games" because they've read the DMG. But the 1e DMG--allegedly, as I've said, because I haven't read it myself--specifically encourages that kind of behavior, because it explicitly says that you can punish people who are players in a game, but have read the DMG. "Player who has read the DMG" includes all people who have ever DM'd a previous campaign, but are now coming in as players in a separate campaign. Thus, the rules explicitly instruct DMs to punish others who have been DMs in the past, but are players now--and therefore implicitly encourages them to categorize all people, at or away from the table, as "players" (someone who has not read the DMG) OR "DMs" (someone who has read the DMG, and therefore cannot play because they'll be punished for it).
I adamantly believe that DMs can, and should, exercise discretionary authority. I also think it is absolutely best (for most groups) that there be a "final arbiter." I also believe that the DM, in a very important sense, takes a "primary" role in crafting the campaign (whether that be "initial," only setting up the initial details; "leading," continually defining the new details but not necessarily fleshing every detail out; or "central," producing most if not all of the background/'fluff' for the game), and that's before you consider any amount of mechanical creation (monster, trap, and terrain design, just to start).
The thing I take extreme umbrage with is the "viking hat" DM--the one who un-ironically says, "This isn't a democracy, this is a dictatorship, and I do whatever I feel like regardless of what you say." The DM who, for no reason other than "I think it's stupid," vetoes a perfectly normal, polite request for something--not because it doesn't fit the campaign theme, not because it's broken good or broken bad, simply because "it's stupid and I hate it," and resolutely refuses to even consider any form of adaptation, compromise, or whatever else. The DM who might as well not even listen to a player's appeal, because they're going to rule how they're going to rule and no amount of discussion (no matter how polite, well-reasoned, and non-disruptive it is) will make even the smallest difference.
And before anyone asks: yes, I absolutely have seen people talk this way. It tends to be about things like classes and races, but it can extend to pretty much every part of a campaign, and I never, ever want to play with a DM who behaves this way.
So...now you're agreeing with me that it's essentially impossible for a DM not to have some level of DMG-knowledge creep into their behavior, and moving the goalpost by saying that it's only when it's disruptive knowledge...which means you (in theory) actually agree with my above point as well, that players who read those books but do not behave disruptively are perfectly fine. I really don't understand how to respond, now, because you seem to have negated your own argument from above. Anyone--a DM or just a player who casually read "DM books"--should be perfectly acceptable as a player, as long as they're not disruptive with their knowledge. What need, then, is there for this "punish people who have read the DMG" rule? You should deal with disruptive players regardless of the reason for their disruptive behavior, so the rule is superfluous, merely highlighting a particular form of disruptiveness, which could have been addressed all at once. Its only other purposes are (a) to give license to the DM of a particular group to engage in petty/passive-aggressive punishment, and (b) as I've argued, to discourage someone who decides to become a DM from ever playing in anyone else's games.
I guess then I don't understand why it only started with 4e and its stuff, because at least in theory 3e was trying to do exactly the same thing with its CR system--which has exactly the same name as the 5e system. 5e's system is slightly more complex to use, what with the multipliers and such. From what I hear, it's more useful than the 3e version, but only somewhat so, in the sense that it can be useful if you don't have creatures that cast spells (where, just as with 3e, it becomes almost completely useless due to the incredible variety of effects that spellcasting brings) but may not always be (especially in the <2 or >10 range).
Okay, yes, we were using highly orthogonal definitions of "adapting." Just to make sure I understand your meaning, you are saying that the 1e/"old school" game was centrally about adapting because the DM must (almost mandatorily) take the system and re-mold it in her hands, shape it into the thing she wants it to be, because the system-as-written almost certainly will not be that thing, and may even fall very short of the mark. On this point, I am more or less fully agreed.
My point was not about "the DM must adapt the system." My point was that, it seems to me, DM empowerment--especially the way its defenders usually speak of it--seems to extremely strongly encourage DMs to not do what you put in a parenthetical, which is a very different and (IMO) fantastically important part of the art of Dungeon Mastering: the DM adapting his expectations. Hence my use of the word "compromise." You cannot have a real "compromise" between the DM and the system, because the system cannot negotiate, it simply is, and the DM can (and, even I would agree, sometimes should) make decisions about what to keep or toss, what to obey and what to ignore, what to tweak and what to preserve, etc.
The only compromises that can possibly happen in a "running/playing a TTRPG" context are player-player and DM-player compromises. The former should, ideally, be worked out through roleplay, though OOC considerations (like "hey guys let's take a break, things are getting a little heated" or "hey, I'm playing a Paladin and you're a Wizard, would you be okay trading that holy symbol for the wand I found in the previous room?") can factor in as well. DM-player compromise, if the word is to have any meaning at all, requires that both the player and the DM be flexible, considerate, and able to adapt their expectations. A DM who says, "I think the Swordmage class is idiotic, so you can't play one" is being inconsiderate (DM preferences absolutely outrank player preferences), inflexible (no possible re-framing can address the issue), and refuses to adapt expectations (a Swordmage is always a Swordmage, it cannot be any other way). I have seen posters who explicitly stated exactly this--the words were slightly different, but the sentiment was exactly the same. Their personal distaste for "gish"-type characters meant nobody in their games could ever play one. Nothing to do with disruptive behavior, unbalanced mechanics, lack of fitting the campaign theme, or anything else--just a straight up "I hate it, so you can't have it, and there will be no discussion."
I'm perfectly fine with a strongly "themed" campaign. Don't want Evil PCs because your last campaign fell apart due to PVP violence specifically because of alignment? I completely respect that; this restriction wouldn't make me leave, but some people might not like that. A world where humans are the only playable race (because everything else is an eldritch abomination or a non-sentient animal)? Perfectly acceptable. I might choose not to join as a result, but if this is clearly laid out before I sit down to create a character, I have no right to complain. A world where magic is exclusively the province of Malefactores who have sold their souls to Hell, and thus Swordmages (and really all magic-users) don't make sense? I respect that a lot, and if it's an interesting campaign premise, I could probably come up with a character to fit it. "I think Dragonborn are ugly, so they don't exist in this world"? Not much respect for that reason--I don't give a damn whether you think my character would look pretty IRL. "Nobody ever plays Paladins unless they want to be disruptive, so they're banned"? Uh, wow, thanks for assuming that I'm a bad, disruptive player just because I like knights in shining armor!
Just so we're clear, although I adore both Dragonborn and Paladins, there are totally good reasons to exclude them. Dark Sun, a cool and well-made campaign setting, has no place for them--and I'm okay with that, because it's a structural part of the campaign (a rather critical one, in fact). Glorantha, a world I know little about but which I know is quite popular, has no real ability to accommodate Dragonborn-qua-Dragonborn, because the closest equivalent is the Dragonewts, and they're sufficiently alien that it would take some seriously tortured logic to justify one wearing armor let alone adventuring among humans. Similarly, Dragonborn could make perfect sense in the Elder Scrolls universe (Argonians), but Dwarves don't, because the closest equivalent (Dwemer) are extinct--there are explicitly none of them left in the world, they all disappeared (for the pedantic, I'm not counting the corprus-infected one). Some adaptation could make a difference--maybe "Argonians" can spit poison/acid (no fire/cold/thunder breath), maybe the hardy Nords take the place of Dwarves (Dwarf stats, but not Dwarf culture). I've seen several DMs who found great joy in such things--going from "at first I couldn't see him in the campaign, now I can't picture it without him" kind of stuff.
It's all a matter of approach, and both sides being willing to be diplomatic and polite. Sometimes, there is no solution, and that will usually mean someone withdraws. Sometimes, the no-answer is baked into the sales pitch as it were: "I'd like to run a centaur-only campaign--who's interested?" I have no problem with that. But I am just as vehemently against a DM who won't even hear out a polite request as I am against a player who riotously demands playing an aboleth warlock vampyre(half) regardless of the theme the DM wants. Both of them are exactly the same problem, surfacing from different directions: "I must have my way, no one and nothing will stop me." It's just that, for whatever reason, these days the DM gets a free pass for being an autocratic tyrant because it's "their game"...or, like I said before, "it's the DM's world, you just witness it."
So...the DM having the ability to write the world isn't enough? We have to keep players completely ensconced away from certain information, because simply by knowing it, they destroy the difference between the two? I'm sorry, I don't really buy that.
How does one preserve this numinous "mystery" after more than a single campaign? Do players need to edit out their memories of previous games, because they were able to see the kinds of treasure they got there, the kinds of checks they'd have to make and their (approximate) odds of success? The way you're presenting this, it's not possible to preserve this "key element" for more than a single campaign--perhaps not even that long. How can it be "key" to be new to the game, when people are only new to the game once? And if it's not a matter of being new to the game, how do you preserve this ignorance in the face of being exposed to this information by playing through it?
Uh...wow, reaching much?
Firstly, you've switched goalposts--but in a way that somehow makes your argument even more strict. Now players can't even read the PHB, because it tells them information about the game. Also, apparently, players having even a rough idea of how successful their choices could be prevents them from having any "mystery," despite the plain fact that that's the only way to make informed decisions--otherwise, it's about reading the DM's mind rather than playing the game. Is knowing "I have pretty good, but not perfect, odds of swimming across a river if I want to" really such an incredibly deep and significant problem that now drama is dead? I thought that was why we had dice in the first place--so that, no matter how much knowledge you had about your abilities, there was always some chance you could succeed, and some chance that you could fail.
Second, please don't throw "Old School Primer" examples around as though they were obviously the guaranteed consequence of players potentially knowing stuff from the DMG. Yes, some people are going to engage in utterly flavorless, raw-numbers statements. You have not established that knowing some stuff from the DMG (for example, by having been a DM in a different/prior game) automatically causes such behavior--and until you do, it's at best a non-sequitur, and probably a slippery slope too. "I've read the DMG" does not entail "I flip open books at the table, force people to wait while I do calculations, dryly and without any roleplay announce the results of those calculations, and demand satisfaction and appreciation from the rest of the table."
If people are allowed to respond to my statements with, "You should choose not to play with jerk DMs," I think it's perfectly appropriate for me to reply to this with: "You shouldn't play with jerk players." If your players are repeatedly rules-lawyering you, dismissing your authority (which, you'll note, I have never said a DM shouldn't have authority, though you seem to have not noticed that), nit-picking every single statement you make, and otherwise being disruptive, annoying, rude, frustrating, derailing jerks, maybe you need to find better players. (As an aside, anyone who argues that this specific check cannot possibly be higher/lower than Difficulty X is both being an idiot and a jerk, since book DCs are explicitly a suggestion/baseline and always have been, circumstance has always been part of the equation regardless of edition.)
And even if that weren't the case? Again, not a single part of this argument has anything to do with the example I gave: DMs who decide, after they start DMing, that they'd like to play in a campaign. What do you do with them? Are they now anathema, because their "behind-the-curtain" knowledge means that they know what the "typical" difficulties are, and can thus intuitively recognize when something is harder than it "should" be (note quotes! I'm NOT saying they're right!), even as just a gut feeling rather than a "rule" they could point to?
Okay, now I'm upset. Please don't call me "deluded," particularly when you are the one who inserted the "ignoring the distinction" idea. I have never, not once, suggested that there should be no difference whatsoever between DM and player. Never. Not in this thread, not on this forum, and not even on the internet at large. You are putting words in my mouth and then insulting me for those words.
Yes, I said that I think it is poisonous to the hobby to view participants as "players xor DMs." That is not the same as saying I don't think there should be a distinction between them at a given table. I am speaking of the hobby as a whole. Individual people emphatically should not be categorized as "is a DM now and forever, in all games" because they've read the DMG. But the 1e DMG--allegedly, as I've said, because I haven't read it myself--specifically encourages that kind of behavior, because it explicitly says that you can punish people who are players in a game, but have read the DMG. "Player who has read the DMG" includes all people who have ever DM'd a previous campaign, but are now coming in as players in a separate campaign. Thus, the rules explicitly instruct DMs to punish others who have been DMs in the past, but are players now--and therefore implicitly encourages them to categorize all people, at or away from the table, as "players" (someone who has not read the DMG) OR "DMs" (someone who has read the DMG, and therefore cannot play because they'll be punished for it).
I adamantly believe that DMs can, and should, exercise discretionary authority. I also think it is absolutely best (for most groups) that there be a "final arbiter." I also believe that the DM, in a very important sense, takes a "primary" role in crafting the campaign (whether that be "initial," only setting up the initial details; "leading," continually defining the new details but not necessarily fleshing every detail out; or "central," producing most if not all of the background/'fluff' for the game), and that's before you consider any amount of mechanical creation (monster, trap, and terrain design, just to start).
The thing I take extreme umbrage with is the "viking hat" DM--the one who un-ironically says, "This isn't a democracy, this is a dictatorship, and I do whatever I feel like regardless of what you say." The DM who, for no reason other than "I think it's stupid," vetoes a perfectly normal, polite request for something--not because it doesn't fit the campaign theme, not because it's broken good or broken bad, simply because "it's stupid and I hate it," and resolutely refuses to even consider any form of adaptation, compromise, or whatever else. The DM who might as well not even listen to a player's appeal, because they're going to rule how they're going to rule and no amount of discussion (no matter how polite, well-reasoned, and non-disruptive it is) will make even the smallest difference.
And before anyone asks: yes, I absolutely have seen people talk this way. It tends to be about things like classes and races, but it can extend to pretty much every part of a campaign, and I never, ever want to play with a DM who behaves this way.
So...now you're agreeing with me that it's essentially impossible for a DM not to have some level of DMG-knowledge creep into their behavior, and moving the goalpost by saying that it's only when it's disruptive knowledge...which means you (in theory) actually agree with my above point as well, that players who read those books but do not behave disruptively are perfectly fine. I really don't understand how to respond, now, because you seem to have negated your own argument from above. Anyone--a DM or just a player who casually read "DM books"--should be perfectly acceptable as a player, as long as they're not disruptive with their knowledge. What need, then, is there for this "punish people who have read the DMG" rule? You should deal with disruptive players regardless of the reason for their disruptive behavior, so the rule is superfluous, merely highlighting a particular form of disruptiveness, which could have been addressed all at once. Its only other purposes are (a) to give license to the DM of a particular group to engage in petty/passive-aggressive punishment, and (b) as I've argued, to discourage someone who decides to become a DM from ever playing in anyone else's games.
I guess then I don't understand why it only started with 4e and its stuff, because at least in theory 3e was trying to do exactly the same thing with its CR system--which has exactly the same name as the 5e system. 5e's system is slightly more complex to use, what with the multipliers and such. From what I hear, it's more useful than the 3e version, but only somewhat so, in the sense that it can be useful if you don't have creatures that cast spells (where, just as with 3e, it becomes almost completely useless due to the incredible variety of effects that spellcasting brings) but may not always be (especially in the <2 or >10 range).
Okay, yes, we were using highly orthogonal definitions of "adapting." Just to make sure I understand your meaning, you are saying that the 1e/"old school" game was centrally about adapting because the DM must (almost mandatorily) take the system and re-mold it in her hands, shape it into the thing she wants it to be, because the system-as-written almost certainly will not be that thing, and may even fall very short of the mark. On this point, I am more or less fully agreed.
My point was not about "the DM must adapt the system." My point was that, it seems to me, DM empowerment--especially the way its defenders usually speak of it--seems to extremely strongly encourage DMs to not do what you put in a parenthetical, which is a very different and (IMO) fantastically important part of the art of Dungeon Mastering: the DM adapting his expectations. Hence my use of the word "compromise." You cannot have a real "compromise" between the DM and the system, because the system cannot negotiate, it simply is, and the DM can (and, even I would agree, sometimes should) make decisions about what to keep or toss, what to obey and what to ignore, what to tweak and what to preserve, etc.
The only compromises that can possibly happen in a "running/playing a TTRPG" context are player-player and DM-player compromises. The former should, ideally, be worked out through roleplay, though OOC considerations (like "hey guys let's take a break, things are getting a little heated" or "hey, I'm playing a Paladin and you're a Wizard, would you be okay trading that holy symbol for the wand I found in the previous room?") can factor in as well. DM-player compromise, if the word is to have any meaning at all, requires that both the player and the DM be flexible, considerate, and able to adapt their expectations. A DM who says, "I think the Swordmage class is idiotic, so you can't play one" is being inconsiderate (DM preferences absolutely outrank player preferences), inflexible (no possible re-framing can address the issue), and refuses to adapt expectations (a Swordmage is always a Swordmage, it cannot be any other way). I have seen posters who explicitly stated exactly this--the words were slightly different, but the sentiment was exactly the same. Their personal distaste for "gish"-type characters meant nobody in their games could ever play one. Nothing to do with disruptive behavior, unbalanced mechanics, lack of fitting the campaign theme, or anything else--just a straight up "I hate it, so you can't have it, and there will be no discussion."
I'm perfectly fine with a strongly "themed" campaign. Don't want Evil PCs because your last campaign fell apart due to PVP violence specifically because of alignment? I completely respect that; this restriction wouldn't make me leave, but some people might not like that. A world where humans are the only playable race (because everything else is an eldritch abomination or a non-sentient animal)? Perfectly acceptable. I might choose not to join as a result, but if this is clearly laid out before I sit down to create a character, I have no right to complain. A world where magic is exclusively the province of Malefactores who have sold their souls to Hell, and thus Swordmages (and really all magic-users) don't make sense? I respect that a lot, and if it's an interesting campaign premise, I could probably come up with a character to fit it. "I think Dragonborn are ugly, so they don't exist in this world"? Not much respect for that reason--I don't give a damn whether you think my character would look pretty IRL. "Nobody ever plays Paladins unless they want to be disruptive, so they're banned"? Uh, wow, thanks for assuming that I'm a bad, disruptive player just because I like knights in shining armor!
Just so we're clear, although I adore both Dragonborn and Paladins, there are totally good reasons to exclude them. Dark Sun, a cool and well-made campaign setting, has no place for them--and I'm okay with that, because it's a structural part of the campaign (a rather critical one, in fact). Glorantha, a world I know little about but which I know is quite popular, has no real ability to accommodate Dragonborn-qua-Dragonborn, because the closest equivalent is the Dragonewts, and they're sufficiently alien that it would take some seriously tortured logic to justify one wearing armor let alone adventuring among humans. Similarly, Dragonborn could make perfect sense in the Elder Scrolls universe (Argonians), but Dwarves don't, because the closest equivalent (Dwemer) are extinct--there are explicitly none of them left in the world, they all disappeared (for the pedantic, I'm not counting the corprus-infected one). Some adaptation could make a difference--maybe "Argonians" can spit poison/acid (no fire/cold/thunder breath), maybe the hardy Nords take the place of Dwarves (Dwarf stats, but not Dwarf culture). I've seen several DMs who found great joy in such things--going from "at first I couldn't see him in the campaign, now I can't picture it without him" kind of stuff.
It's all a matter of approach, and both sides being willing to be diplomatic and polite. Sometimes, there is no solution, and that will usually mean someone withdraws. Sometimes, the no-answer is baked into the sales pitch as it were: "I'd like to run a centaur-only campaign--who's interested?" I have no problem with that. But I am just as vehemently against a DM who won't even hear out a polite request as I am against a player who riotously demands playing an aboleth warlock vampyre(half) regardless of the theme the DM wants. Both of them are exactly the same problem, surfacing from different directions: "I must have my way, no one and nothing will stop me." It's just that, for whatever reason, these days the DM gets a free pass for being an autocratic tyrant because it's "their game"...or, like I said before, "it's the DM's world, you just witness it."
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