D&D 5E [Rather Long] DM as Judge vs. DM as Storyteller in 5ed

[haakon1]

I definitely am both Judge and Storyteller -- and a little bit Devil's Advocate and Worldbuilder too.
-- On the CaW versus CaS dimension, I'm strongly CaW.
-- Both AD&D and 3e/3.5e worked well for what I wanted out of the game.

I use random determination a lot, but I don't necessarily need a table. I'll roll dice for anything random to assist my storytelling and randomize things. I won't roll if the answer is obvious.

Examples:
-- What's the weather? I roll a d10. 1 is much stormier, 10 is much clearer, relative to what I rolled last time. 1 is colder, 10 is hotter.

-- Can I hire an architect in this town for my new stronghold? Roll a d20, higher is better. 2. Nope, you ask around but no one knows an architect here.
---- If I wanted to get technical and had the time (like with my email campaign), I'd look in the AD&D DMG for the hiring rules, and check the 3.5e DMG too. If not, I'd totally wing it, with a d20 and a guestimate of what the results mean.

-- Can I hire an apprentice brewer in this town for my stronghold? Me: Yes, I'm sure you can. Remember, there's a large brewery here. Player: I'll go there and ask the owner if he has an apprentice he's willing to part with. Me: He does, but he asks for a fee for training him, and a higher than usual wage of (looks up expert hirling cost, adds 50%). Player: Fine.
----- How this was determined: Pure Worldbuilding. I'd dropped mentions of the Falwur Brewery and its famous Stout several times, so it's totally reasonable there are brewers here -- but the higher cost is because they don't want anyone stealing the trade secrets, and because working for the Falwur Brewery is a better education than working for the average kegmeister. It's not really "Storytelling" in the sense that I want the player to hire a brewer or expected it to happen. I just built a world where doing that was very plausible.

-- Any wandering monsters tonight? Rolled a d10, 1. Opps, that's trouble, hmmm, what should be out here? Maybe this, that, that, that, that, or that. Roll a d6, it's the third one. Hmmm, a pack of up to about a dozen makes sense, roll a d12. 11 -- ooh, bad night.

So I'm neither hidebound by tons of rules, nor completely just using fiat -- it's dice-assisted and rules-assisted storytelling.

To give a clear example of what I’m talking about, imagine that the players are trying to hire an ogre as a mercenary. In 1ed the DM would roll on the reaction table, take the result and then play out the reaction and then decide (fiat!) what the ogre will do. In 3.5ed the DM would choose the attitude of the ogre (fiat!) and then use the rules to decide what the ogre will do. In either case the same amount of fiat is being used, just in 1ed the DM uses it to adjudicate the success or failure of the PC’s action (DM as Judge) while in 3.5ed the DM uses it to frame the scene (DM as Storyteller). This is why I think that neither being a Judge or a Storyteller require more DMing effort, it’s just that the DMing effort pops up in different places.

In AD&D or 3.5e, this would depend on the events leading up to the hiring attempt.

If they met the ogre in a dungeon and offered to spare his life if he'd fight for them, he'd readily agree, more readily if he were freed from being enslaved by some other monster. But unless something changed in his basic attitude to the PC's, or he's not the default CE alignment, he's not really interested in helping them, just saving his own hide. So he'll run for it first chance he gets, preferably while stealing something.

If the PC's saw an ogre in a town (not likely in my campaigns) and tried to hire him, a reasonable offer and a Diplomacy check, plus some thought by me about who the ogre is and why he's in town, would decide it.

That's the other key of my DMing style: I always ROLEPLAY every monster and NPC to its own agenda. The monsters and NPC's aren't necessarily supportive of nor antithetical to the PC's agendas -- often, they are interested in something quite different, most often survival!

Off the top of my head, the ogre is in town because he's a religious pilgrim/refugee, so he's not interested in working for the PC's unless they help his cause, which is, roll dice random determination on a table in my head, LE, so Asmodeus worship (fiat to fit the campaign!). I'll judge the PC's Diplomacy (dialogue and dice roll) on that basis, with money v. difficulty playing a role in the decision too, since an Asmodeus worshipper probably is interested in his own welfare too. What LE Ogre doesn't want a big bag of filthy lucre for a quick easy job of smashing some heads?

 

[Sunseeker]

I've always found it odd that the storyteller and referee roles are tied together. The referee should be the person who knows the rules best and has the firmest grasp on mathematics and probability.

In my gaming experience, that person is almost never the DM.

But there's multiple aspects to refereeing. My friend knows the rules best, but as the DM I know best what I want to do within the campaign. If the rules say that for example, everyone needs to make a stealth check in order to get past the monster, but all but one member have any numbers at all in stealth, then I as DM, may allow certain off-the-cuff rulings in order to allow my party to pass safely. Such as saying "if you follow the sneaky guy's footsteps, your check is reduced by 10."

Certain rulings are yes, pure rules lawyering. Some rulings are however, more flavor rulings, and the flavor of the campaign is the realm of the storyteller.

Personally, I agree. I tend to leave the heavy lifting when it comes to rules up to someone who knows better. But I do believe that the DM and the Rules Monger should be the same person, or strive to be. There is no guarantee that your Rules Guy will always be there, but if the game is on, the DM will be.

 

[Hussar]

I've always found it odd that the storyteller and referee roles are tied together. The referee should be the person who knows the rules best and has the firmest grasp on mathematics and probability.

In my gaming experience, that person is almost never the DM.

Yay for rules gurus.

I freely admit that I have on occasion let a player handle the mechanical resolution of many things. If I needed to know how something was supposed to work, I would ask her, and usually abide by whatever she said, because she was OCD enough to know.

Takes an enormous amount of processor load off my shoulders.

 

[Daztur]

DM's are both, though in my experience I have been 70/30 Storyteller/Judge. My parties never really need that much mechanical ruling, they tend to sort it out themselves, and to be honest I've had several players whose brains were literal encyclopedias for D&D stuff. I leave the rulings up to people more versed in the subject, unless I'm making up a special situation.

I think that on the whole, D&D should be about 60/40 Storyteller/Judge. The DM needs to keep the party in line, but on the whole, they're going to be the one creating all sorts of stuff for the players to play in.

For me at least, I like a lot of the spells and other effects that require DM interpretation even if everyone at the table has a D&D encyclopedia in their head (3.0ed and earlier Command etc. etc.).

As for "creating all sorts of stuff for the players to play in" I think there's a important distinction to draw between stuff that you make up during prep time and stuff that you make up at the table. If I write up a location ahead of time (as I'm doing right now even though I can't play D&D for another few months because my wife would not be pleased if I left her alone regularly with an infant) I create it independently of the players. But if I'm making stuff up at the table, I'd much rather have random tables to do the Storyteller job for me since that would make it easier for me to maintain impartiality.

Or to put it another way, if I make up a location in my setting right now and place a Monster of Killer Death somewhere random and scatter some clues about that it's there and if the players stumble across it anyway and get killed I feel like I'm being impartial. But if the players wander off the edge of what I've prepared and I make up "there's a Monster of Killer Death over the next hill" then I feel like I'm being a bastard who's being mean to the PCs, if that makes any sense. I want the players to feel that if they run across something that gets them killed it's because they were dumb or unlucky, not because I'm a bastard DM and doing less on the spot Storytelling helps with that.

I think there is another aspect not mentioned here: Predictability. Earlier editions had Unpredictable Storytellers that pulled rulings and adjudications out the air or their butts and Unpredictable Judges that used random tables that could give you all kinds of challenges and rewards. The later edition favored Predictable Storyteller and Judges due to the increasing amounts ofl rules (that were not ignored).

5E looks like it is trying to do it all. A predictable core to Judge off of and a lot of Storytelling modules that can have a mix of results.

Well at least for me 3.5ed was the least predictable adjudication-wise, especially the skill system since at least with 1ed you KNOW that the DM is going to be making up if you do certain things, but with 3.5ed I never knew when the DM would follow the rules and when they'd make up since none of the DMs I ever played with (including me )could keep track of all of the rules for things like generating DCs.

We did this analysis at one stage also. We actually had a 3rd role...the "Insidious Mind" (Which we just referred to as the IM). Its the part of the DM that is the proxy for the opposition.

So with kobolds for instance, its the part that dictates where they put the traps, how they did ambushes, who they attacked e.t.c.

This is an extension of the story teller, but we were toying with the idea of breaking that aspect into another roll in the game. The IM, then guy who is neither DM nor player, but who's job it is to dictate the behavior of the opposition, leaving the DM utterly impartial, allowing greater focus on story, and ensuring the opposition are as intelligent and realistic in their behavior (for instance, goblin morale?...well, its part of the responsibility of the IM to realize goblins are cowardly and decide when to withdraw). He is almost half way between a player and a DM, a sort of devils advocate.

We never got it working, it was just coffee-break discussion, but it was interesting to be able to break down the role of the DM if nothing else.

Good points. I was wrangling with how to deal with this (which could also include acting out non-hostile NPCs) in my head. So if you assum that the IM is part of the DM's role instead of an additional player you'd have:

1. Rules Adjudication Guy who must be impartial.
2. Guy running the opposition who must be something of a bastard.
3. Guy making up on the fly.

To some extent combining them all into one person runs the risk of undermining the impartiality of 1., which is important if you like rule systems with lots of subjective effects. Being a bastard (role 2) can undermine the impartiality (or at least the appearance thereof) of role 1 and it's really hard to be constantly making up on the fly while still being impartial. That's why I like stuff like FATE points (spreads the power of role 3 around the table) and random tables (random wandering monsters etc. etc.).

Yay for rules gurus.

I freely admit that I have on occasion let a player handle the mechanical resolution of many things. If I needed to know how something was supposed to work, I would ask her, and usually abide by whatever she said, because she was OCD enough to know.

Takes an enormous amount of processor load off my shoulders.

I'm more or less the opposite. I got to the point where I could stat out d20 characters in my head (as long as they weren't too high in level) but I'm more than happy to offload on the fly worldbuilding onto the players

I use random determination a lot, but I don't necessarily need a table. I'll roll dice for anything random to assist my storytelling and randomize things.

Yeah, my last DM did that all the time. Whenever he made up about the world he'd come up with a range of probabilities in his head and then roll a d6 or d100. That way, of course, still has come subjectivity but it worked really well to communicate a feeling of "the DM is a neutral and uncaring god who cares not whether you live or die" that was a good fit for the campaign.

If they met the ogre in a dungeon and offered to spare his life if he'd fight for them, he'd readily agree, more readily if he were freed from being enslaved by some other monster. But unless something changed in his basic attitude to the PC's, or he's not the default CE alignment, he's not really interested in helping them, just saving his own hide. So he'll run for it first chance he gets, preferably while stealing something.

An idea that's been floating around in my head is to give critters a list of desires (possibly randomly determined) and use those to help determine NPC behavior along with rules like random reaction tables and/or Diplomacy. For example if the ogre has the desires of "hunger," "kill kobolds" and "find wife" and the PCs offered to let him eat all of the kobolds and all of their pet weasels if he helped them kill the kobold tribe that is holding a beautiful ogress captive then he'd be gung ho to join them (as long as he didn't attack them before hearing them out, as determined by the reaction roll) but if they offer him bags full of gold he'd be a lot more leery. The idea would be to give the DM something to base their adjudication off of while avoiding both "I roll 30 on Diplomacy, he does what I says" or the DM just pulling random stuff out of his butt extremes. Perhaps player social skills would provide them clues about what the ogre wants.

As you say the agenda of the critters is vital.

If the PC's saw an ogre in a town (not likely in my campaigns) and tried to hire him, a reasonable offer and a Diplomacy check, plus some thought by me about who the ogre is and why he's in town, would decide it.

That's the other key of my DMing style: I always ROLEPLAY every monster and NPC to its own agenda. The monsters and NPC's aren't necessarily supportive of nor antithetical to the PC's agendas -- often, they are interested in something quite different, most often survival!

 

[FireLance]

It may just be the unintended connotations of the words, but I don't think "DM as Judge" and "DM as Storyteller" accurately captures the issues discussed in the OP. For example, to me, going outside of the rules does not mean that the DM ceases to be a Judge. Instead, the key element which determines whether or not the DM continues to be a Judge is whether he continues to be impartial when he is required to step outside of the rules.

My rule of thumb is as follows:
The DM as Judge asks, "What is the most logical thing that should happen?"
The DM as Storyteller asks, "What should happen to keep the narrative on track?"
The DM as Entertainer asks, "What is the most interesting thing that could happen?"

There are possibly other types of DMs, who ask other types of questions.

There might even be a type of DM that asks, "What is the most balanced thing that could happen, given the level of resources that the PC has expended to achieve the effect?" I don't have a snappy title for it, though: DM who uses Page 42 and DM who is a Combat as Sport Judge probably come closest to what I have in mind.

 

[Minigiant]

It may just be the unintended connotations of the words, but I don't think "DM as Judge" and "DM as Storyteller" accurately captures the issues discussed in the OP. For example, to me, going outside of the rules does not mean that the DM ceases to be a Judge. Instead, the key element which determines whether or not the DM continues to be a Judge is whether he continues to be impartial when he is required to step outside of the rules.

My rule of thumb is as follows:
The DM as Judge asks, "What is the most logical thing that should happen?"
The DM as Storyteller asks, "What should happen to keep the narrative on track?"
The DM as Entertainer asks, "What is the most interesting thing that could happen?"

There are possibly other types of DMs, who ask other types of questions.

There might even be a type of DM that asks, "What is the most balanced thing that could happen, given the level of resources that the PC has expended to achieve the effect?" I don't have a snappy title for it, though: DM who uses Page 42 and DM who is a Combat as Sport Judge probably come closest to what I have in mind.

DM as Umpire/Referee

 

[pemerton]

Sounds like pretty much the standard Indie RPG style of GMing.

Yes. (I also think it's the best approach for 4e, although the 4e books aren't as clear about it as the best indie books.)

What I like about a lot of Story Game or Story Game-influenced RPGs is that they distribute a lot of the power of the GM to frame scenes and whatnot to the players so things are very much driven by the players through Burning Wheel artha, FATE's fate point economy or what have you. Having all scene framing authority rest on the GM's shoulders isn't really my preference, I'd rather a lot of it be offloaded onto the players or stuff like wandering monster rolls.

I don't know FATE other than by reputation, but in BW it is still the GM who has responsibility for scene framing - but the players' Beliefs etc will run up flags that make a lot of that scene framing fairly straightforward.

Oh certainly there's a big difference here but for the purposes of this post I'm throwing the sort of scene framing that is advocated in, say, The Burning Wheel and Illusionism in the same broad category.

That's pretty much what I was disagreeing with. I don't think that BW/indie scene framing and Adventure Path illusionism have much in common at all. The first is about the GM following the players' leads. The second is about the GM (perhaps covertly) leading the players.

I don't think this is just a theoretical issue. Obviously it goes to the enjoyability of the game - some people like APs, for example, but others don't. But - and relevant to your thread - it also goes to GM skills.

An Adventure Path GM needs to have a lot of skill in making the colour of the game really come alive, and getting the players excited about that colour and about adding their own colour. Because that's about all the players are adding to the game. The closest I've personally come to this sort of experience is playing in convention CoC and Elric games - and with great GMs these are great games, even though as a player all I'm doing is emoting my PC.

Whereas a scene-framing GM doesn't necessarily need to be able to provide that colour to grab the players - because the content of the scenes, and the scope for choices within them, will do the grabbing. This is quite a different skill, not of evocative presentation of colour, but of the ability to produce interesting scenes, and interesting consequences for new scenes, that respond to the flags and signals you're getting from the players.

Personally I'm not too bad at this second skill set, but I'm pretty ordinary at the first skill set. So players who mostly wanted a GM-driven, colour-rich game wouldn't like my GMing much, I don't think.

 

[Minigiant]

[MENTION=55680]Daztur[/MENTION]

Well that was true. In 3.X, there were so many rules to unpredictablity could creep in when everyone forgets or ignores things. But there were a lot of rules and if the players knew them, they could guess the outcome of their action by their roll pretty accurately if the DM followed something close to RAW. A player knew what a 16 on a frequently used skill meant if the DM played strictly by the rules. But a Storyteller-heavy DM or Entertainer-heavy DM might change it.

 

[haakon1]

My rule of thumb is as follows:
The DM as Judge asks, "What is the most logical thing that should happen?"
The DM as Storyteller asks, "What should happen to keep the narrative on track?"
The DM as Entertainer asks, "What is the most interesting thing that could happen?"
. . .
There might even be a type of DM that asks, "What is the most balanced thing that could happen, given the level of resources that the PC has expended to achieve the effect?" I don't have a snappy title for it, though: DM who uses Page 42 and DM who is a Combat as Sport Judge probably come closest to what I have in mind.

On that taxonomy, I'd be 96% Judge, 2% Storyteller, 1% Entertainer, and 1% Balance Master.

I'm mostly looking to run a world that makes sense as the PC's interact with and as its goes about its own business. I find "making the world logical" fits with having stories that make sense, and provides it own sort of balance and entertainment.

Balance of the immersion in a logic world way: "you heard from the NPC that these monsters were big trouble, so you should have thought about how to deal with them, or avoided them" sort, rather than "I'll mention the big bad threat, but if the PC's take it on too early, I'll steer them away (storyteller) or I'll just nerf the threat or give them help from on-high to make it fair (balance master)."

 

[Hussar]

haakon1 - that's a very distorted view of other styles of GMing.

The Storyteller doesn't railroad in the sense that you mean it. The storyteller should be perfectly fine with the PC's challenging the threat too early, but, instead of simply choosing the easiest route - the threat TPK's the party - he will choose the option that makes for the most interesting story, based on his understanding and the tables agreed upon criteria. So, instead of the big threat just automatically killing the PC's, he'll have the big threat toy with them, kick them around then send them on their way after making them cry in their boots.

IOW, annoy the crap out of the party (and the players) to the point where they really, REALLY have a hate on for this guy and will now do virtually anything to get back at him.

And, the balance master isn't concerned with balance in the way you mean it. If the PC's bite off more than they can chew, that's on them. The Balance Master is concerned with making sure that all the players are engaged in as equal a manner as possible (no one rides the pines if it can be avoided) and that game elements interact in such a way that no option becomes so good that it becomes the default.

Again, it has nothing whatsoever to do with coddling players or anything like that.

I get the immersion approach. I do. But, do we really need to dismiss other playstyles in such a way?