D&D General Respeckt Mah Authoritah: Understanding High Trust and the Division of Authority

[Oligopsony]

Worth noting that there are a number of different dimensions of trust and authority.

E.g, in OSR play the GM is expected to have absolute authority over the resolution mechanics, throwing out rules when they don’t apply to the situation, but it’s very much cheating for her to change her notes or fudge a die roll.

In most storygames players have a lot more authority on things outside their character, but may have less authority on what happens inside their character’s head than they would in trad or OSR play.

It’s also worth noting how this changes with medium. In recorded streams/podcasts, and in play-by-post, the cost of negotiation and back-and-forth and switching narrative authority and losing momentum are all much higher, and so you see organic shifts from “each player is in charge of their PC, GM in charge of all else” to “I have this stretch of narration, then I pass it to you.”

 

[Guest 7042500]

Well, see, I don't use commercial settings for D&D; I use my own world. I am the creator demiurge of my world, and thus its ultimate authority. Nobody can tell me how my world works, period.

I also assume that the PCs know the world, and will tell players things their characters know that they may not; "you know that Duke Nuckingfutz is very intolerant and bad tempered. Do you still want to tell him to kiss your horse's hairy holy heinie?" or "If you jump off a 100 foot cliff I don't care how many hit points you have, you will die" or "the bad guy is bound and helpless, if you hit him in the face with a battleaxe he is dead, I don't care what level he is."

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Anyway, in the corporate world, these terms refer to how a company relates to its employees; a high-trust organization is one that has employee empowerment, management oversight is not obtrusive, and employees have the opportunity to independently solve problems. Low-trust organizations, on the other hand, monitor employees closely, do not provide employees the agency (oh boy!) to solve problems on their own, and the organization will often have detailed rules that the employee must follow instead of using their best judgment.

I find it genuinely baffling that this is apparently what "high trust" is supposed to mean. Because it is always used, as far as I can tell, to refer to places where the GM is given absolute, unquestioned and unquestionable authority. The GM will intrude on whatever they wish to intrude upon, and the players will simply accept this. In other words, it is called "high trust," but the descriptors of the environments you just spoke of sound to me like a "low-trust" situation: There is a central authority that can, and will, do anything and everything it likes, and you will put up with that--or you will leave. These so-called "high-trust" games are in fact the ones that have low player agency.

So...I don't see how the term has appeal. Because the description seems completely backwards to the application. The only similarity I can see is the claim that "low-trust" organizations "often have detailed rules that the employee must follow instead of using their best judgment." And if that is where the similarity lies, it seems rather disingenuous to call it an issue of trust when it is actually an issue of whether the rules are detailed or not.

More to the point, proponents of high-trust gaming believed that players should be trusted to use their own creativity to choose what to do and how to do it, and that the DM should be trusted to react appropriately to the player's ideas. This concept of bi-directional trust animated the OSR, and the later FKR, movements.

It would be really nice if literally anyone talked more about this bi-directionality of trust then. Because in the vast majority of cases, I see OSR-style GMs as some of the least-trusting GMs around. Players are at best unwise and foolish, reduced to childish caricatures in need of minding by the gracious parental GM; all too often, they are instead painted as actively antagonistic and needing to be corrected lest they ruin everything. And that's far from the worst characterization I've seen.

The reason that people keep talking about "high trust," then, is because the concept is what animates a subsection of the gaming population. Moreover, we can see that this concept is at least partly incorporated into 5e in the concept of "rulings, not rules."

If it is, then the bi-directionality has already been stripped out well in advance. Which is a pretty serious problem.

Every table is different- a different mix of personalities, a different mix of people. When we discuss D&D, one of the topics that often comes up is that of a DM shortage, or of DM burnout. And this points us to both the great advantage and the great disadvantage of those games that vest more authority in the DM. On the plus side, you only need one player to be the DM. You only need one person that really knows the rules. You only need one person to have a higher level of investment and to "bring it" every gaming night. But that strength is also a weakness- that is a lot to have riding on one person. If that person is ... the BAD DM, then that will be a catastrophic failure. And putting that burden on the same person on a regular basis can lead to burnout.

You have forgotten one of the other critical issues: if so much is placed on the shoulders of a single person, the game should thus go out of its way to help that person as much as can be done within budget and publication limits. That there should be...oh, I don't know, some kind of guide that would provide really good instruction, well-tested tools, and other forms of advice/aid/etc. to smooth the road as much as the designers can.

Unfortunately, 5e has its DMG instead. Which does basically none of those things.

The flip side of that is a model with distributed authority. The best thing about distributed authority (especially when you're playing a Story Now / Fiction First game) is that you don't have all of this prep time foisted on one person. Everyone is invested in the game. Everyone is creating fiction. But this isn't all pop rocks & soda- the downside is that you really do need everyone to be invested in the game. You need them to "bring it" on a regular basis, and be ready to create their fiction. And not everyone is prepared to do that. So while providing the GM more authority provides one point of failure (albeit a catastrophic one), providing more narrative authority to everyone can end up allowing for multiple points of failure.

If the players are not invested in playing, why are they playing? I'm serious here. Why do something if you don't actually want to do it?

D&D is always designing for the mass market. For the maximum number of gamers

No. It is, and has been (with known exceptions) designing for its legacy market. The two are frequently not the same.

If they were designing for the mass market, something like dragonborn would have been included in the 2e PHB. Because dragons have mass-market appeal. They always have, since time immemorial. They're literally globally popular.

It's not a perfect solution for everyone, but it's a good solution for a lot of people. When you move away from the theoretical to the practical, it becomes obvious why D&D continues to use the DM-centric method when it comes to the division of authority. Because there's a lot of very casual players out there, and that's a much bigger market than TTRPG afficonados.

Just...I don't see it. Why do something, if you don't actually want to do it? Even OSR games quite clearly expect players to be active and invested. I've read several of them. Some even have rather harsh things to say about players who aren't invested. I don't see how what you've said actually connects to the "practical" here--the actual games written and played.

Anyway, it's been a month. Thought I'd post something. Enjoy, and tell me why I'm completely wrong in the comments.

I mean, you're rarely completely wrong

 

[Minigiant]

I find the lowering thrust in D&D DMs is due to

1. The continuing of bad mechanics which do not match the fiction due to support of tradition
2. The continuing of bad mechanics which do not match newer or additional fiction due to support of tradition
3. The lack of official support in teaching new DMs due to old DMs not liking being told what to do and suggestion of new ideas which might be better than theirs.
4. The discouragement of players in helping DMs craft better rules and encouragement of players to simply accept everything from DMs and simply leave if quality is too low
5. A "Trial by Fire" mentality where undereducated DMs are simply thrown into bad situations and learn via flopping, tragedy, and bad experiences.

It all results in the old sitcom trope of the Mom who can't cook, refused her MIL's advice, and forcing her kids to eat lower quality recipes. And those bad recipes just keep getting passed down to create kids who can't cook and end up ordering out.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I find the lowering thrust in D&D DMs is due to

1. The continuing of bad mechanics which do not match the fiction due to support of tradition
2. The continuing of bad mechanics which do not match newer or additional fiction due to support of tradition
3. The lack of official support in teaching new DMs due to old DMs not liking being told what to do and suggestion of new ideas which might be better than theirs.
4. The discouragement of players in helping DMs craft better rules and encouragement of players to simply accept everything from DMs and simply leave if quality is too low
5. A "Trial by Fire" mentality where undereducated DMs are simply thrown into bad situations and learn via flopping, tragedy, and bad experiences.

It all results in the old sitcom trope of the Mom who can't cook, refused her MIL's advice, and forcing he kids to eat lower quality recipes. And those bad recipes just keep getting passed down to create kids who can't cook and end up ordering out.

Oof. That analogy hits me right in the feels. My parents saw themselves as trying to break out of that cycle. They...did not succeed as much as they believe they did. But as part of their effort to break out, they did their best to teach me and my sister, and I think they did a good job.

 

[RareBreed]

I find the lowering thrust in D&D DMs is due to

1. The continuing of bad mechanics which do not match the fiction due to support of tradition
2. The continuing of bad mechanics which do not match newer or additional fiction due to support of tradition
3. The lack of official support in teaching new DMs due to old DMs not liking being told what to do and suggestion of new ideas which might be better than theirs.
4. The discouragement of players in helping DMs craft better rules and encouragement of players to simply accept everything from DMs and simply leave if quality is too low
5. A "Trial by Fire" mentality where undereducated DMs are simply thrown into bad situations and learn via flopping, tragedy, and bad experiences.

It all results in the old sitcom trope of the Mom who can't cook, refused her MIL's advice, and forcing her kids to eat lower quality recipes. And those bad recipes just keep getting passed down to create kids who can't cook and end up ordering out.

Okay, my mind must be in the gutter because lowering thrust immediately put an image in my mind that probably wouldn't be PG rated I'm going to assume you meant lowering trust

As for the rest of the points, I tend to agree. It's the unfortunate situation pretty much everything gets put in while trying to balance 2 concerns: making the current supporters comfortable, while trying to attract new blood with newer features.

I think 4 and 5 are kind of linked together. But it's not just players; many DMs also feel discouraged to craft better rules. No matter how many times games say "do what you want the rules...they are yours!", many gamers feel that if a rule isn't officially addressed by a game company's product, then it's not good. It's not cannon and therefore unofficial. I guess the feeling is that any house rule can't possibly have had as much playtesting as a "real" ruling decreed in some official text.

It doesn't help that Gygax seemed to waffle on this very issue. As I recall (and I could be mistaken), he wanted players and GM's to essentially follow the letter of the rules more than the spirit. I think this was a kind of tournament attitude he held from his wargaming days and shows in the wargaming vestiges that are still in D&D.

 

[kenada]

1. What is High Trust, and Why do Some People Keep Yammering On About It?
There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.
To understand a term, it's helpful to understand the context in which the term arose. Mostly because people will often throw around terms like frisbees ... or manhole covers. So, why did people start using this term, and what was it supposed to mean?

As far as I can tell, "high trust" first became a term utilized in the OSR movement in the early 2000s. It was likely borrowed from a similar usage in the corporate world at the time, which referred to companies and workplace cultures as either "high trust" or "low trust." At this point, we should all be thankful that (1) they didn't decide to use the terms "synergy" or "leverage your core competencies," and that (2) OSR didn't arise a decade later, in which case we would all be trying to pivot to video. Ahem. Anyway, in the corporate world, these terms refer to how a company relates to its employees; a high-trust organization is one that has employee empowerment, management oversight is not obtrusive, and employees have the opportunity to independently solve problems. Low-trust organizations, on the other hand, monitor employees closely, do not provide employees the agency (oh boy!) to solve problems on their own, and the organization will often have detailed rules that the employee must follow instead of using their best judgment.

And so you can see why borrowing the term has appeal. OSR was not just a movement for a certain style of gaming; it was also a critique of the direction D&D had taken with 3e and 3.5e. As an aside, the reason that a lot of jargon in TTRPGs can be contentious is that the jargon itself usually arises out of a specific movement that is trying to elevate one style of gaming while critiquing others; this is why you will often see endless debates over terms like "player agency" or "high trust." It's because the terms themselves arose not out of a neutral analysis, but from a critique of a mode of play.

Now the thing to remember with 3e (which I am using as a synonym for 3e, 3.5e, PF, etc.) is that while is a "trad" game, it was also a trad game that a subset of trad players did not like. One of the main reasons behind that was that while 3e (in the eyes of someone used to a narrative game) still had a lot of DM authority, it deliberately set out to make a game that was more rules-bound in terms of DM discretion. For fans of the older TSR-style games, this made 3e a "low-trust" game. Moreover, to the OSR movement, the lack of trust extended to players as well- they were no longer trusted to devise any solution that they could think of, instead depending on certain approaches that would be prescribed by the rules (or the abilities demarcated on the character sheet).

More to the point, proponents of high-trust gaming believed that players should be trusted to use their own creativity to choose what to do and how to do it, and that the DM should be trusted to react appropriately to the player's ideas. This concept of bi-directional trust animated the OSR, and the later FKR, movements.

The reason that people keep talking about "high trust," then, is because the concept is what animates a subsection of the gaming population. Moreover, we can see that this concept is at least partly incorporated into 5e in the concept of "rulings, not rules."

I like this section because it explicates why I dislike the phrase “high trust”. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the play typified by that phrase. It’s that it was developed in response to another game, and the alternative often assumed is play like that other game, which isn’t necessarily the case. One can have a game where the GM is constrained in various ways, and the players play in a (more or less) traditional way. You could have a game where the players play both sides (like this example of play Jon Peterson examines on his blog). It’s like when the assumed alternative to rulings is a 3e-style enumeration of rules for everything. Things don’t have to be like that.

3. Why D&D Will Continue to be DM-Centric
I don’t care what is written about me so long as it isn’t true.
"I don't get why more people don't listen to opera; it's so much better than that hippity-hop music that they're listening to!" D&D is always designing for the mass market. For the maximum number of gamers. For as many people to play as possible. Because they want to continue to be the 800lb gorilla in the room. And, in my opinion, this desire naturally leads to game that will be designed with a DM as the final arbiter of fiction. And I say this not because it's necessarily the best way to do things, and not to excuse the lack of DM support in 5e, but simply because it makes the most sense in terms of designing for the market.

We've all had groups like this-
Amy loves to optimize and get into combat.
Brad loves to roleplay, and is playing a bard again.
Chad is mainly there because he's married to Amy and likes to hit stuff and not read things, so, um, Champion?
Derek likes to drink. MAXIMUM DEREK!
Emma knows all the rules, and believes gaming night is a good excuse to argue those rules.
Fiona likes game night, but she's more into drawing the maps and writing down the treasure. It's your turn Fiona. Fiona? Fiona? Fiona?

We all have friends like this. We all have mixed gaming tables at some time or another. People who are playing for different reasons, and with different expectations- but they want to have fun. Sure, maybe you could get them to play a one shot of Monster of the Week, maybe. But for the most part, they aren't looking to author fiction and "bring it" every night (except DEREK, who thinks "bringing it" means going through your liquor cabinet). And D&D, by placing the final narrative authority in a single person, allows these tables to function. Allows them to have a good time.

It's not a perfect solution for everyone, but it's a good solution for a lot of people. When you move away from the theoretical to the practical, it becomes obvious why D&D continues to use the DM-centric method when it comes to the division of authority. Because there's a lot of very casual players out there, and that's a much bigger market than TTRPG afficonados.

Anyway, it's been a month. Thought I'd post something. Enjoy, and tell me why I'm completely wrong in the comments.

As a corollary to this, I’d add that what makes sense for D&D doesn’t always make sense for other games. There’s only one market leader, and that’s going to be D&D unless Hasbro does something really stupid in the future. In a way, that’s a good thing because it gives other designers the freedom to experiment with different approaches (provided they can find interested audiences, of course).

 

[Minigiant]

Oof. That analogy hits me right in the feels. My parents saw themselves as trying to break out of that cycle. They...did not succeed as much as they believe they did. But as part of their effort to break out, they did their best to teach me and my sister, and I think they did a good job.

Tropes are tropes often because they hint to a bit of truth. Families arguing about recipes and who gets to cook is now timeless.

D&D runs on the idea of the DM being the final arbiter of the rule. But D&D often has a tendency to shy away from or dive deep into aiding DMs into be a good arbiter of the rules. And what goods as good.

You see this in the change of editions and the change of trust. From the 3e/PF line of make a rule for everything. To the 4e line of force to rules to work how we actually want the cool parts to play out. The the 5e14/5e24 line of "Ask the DM. They can make something up."

That and as some friends of the 5e designers stated, they didn't expect 5e to blow up and though old DMs who would not like being told what to do like in 3e and 4e would use their decades of knowledge over the DMG rules so the PHB and MM got all the time and the DMG was rushed at the end.

 

[RareBreed]

I find it genuinely baffling that this is apparently what "high trust" is supposed to mean. Because it is always used, as far as I can tell, to refer to places where the GM is given absolute, unquestioned and unquestionable authority. The GM will intrude on whatever they wish to intrude upon, and the players will simply accept this.

It depends on your perspective. Are you looking at "trust" from a player's perspective or a GM's perspective? Or from Snarf's take, from the employee's or manager's perspective?

Seen from the GM/manager's perspective, the trust means "I trust my players/employees". The way you are seeing it is from the player's point of view. The trust means "I trust my GM/manager".

I actually have never heard the term before this post, so I can't speak from which perspective I have seen it used more.

You have forgotten one of the other critical issues: if so much is placed on the shoulders of a single person, the game should thus go out of its way to help that person as much as can be done within budget and publication limits. That there should be...oh, I don't know, some kind of guide that would provide really good instruction, well-tested tools, and other forms of advice/aid/etc. to smooth the road as much as the designers can.

This is an important point. I've rued "rules-lite" systems for a long time. I find it ironic that so many "rules-lite" systems come with 300+ page core rulebooks, and often get the impression that the authors really would have preferred to have written novels or screenplays, but getting into the RPG biz is easier.

In the good ole days, you could have what would be considered rules/crunch heavy games in 128 pages or less. Though admittedly, that was usually 128 pages of rules and not rules intermixed with setting fiction or 3 paragraphs of exposition how some supposedly simple rule works.

I've felt like now that electronic media is so common, there should be two formats for rules. One is the rules, and just the rules. This is useful for "just the facts ma'am". The other is sample game play explaining how the rules work and a kind of "Game Master's Guide" which gives advice on how to best run that particular system. I've heard of gaming groups that try to switch from D&D to some other game system, but still expect it to play like 5e (or some other edition).

 

[Minigiant]

I think 4 and 5 are kind of linked together. But it's not just players; many DMs also feel discouraged to craft better rules. No matter how many times games say "do what you want the rules...they are yours!", many gamers feel that if a rule isn't officially addressed by a game company's product, then it's not good. It's not cannon and therefore unofficial. I guess the feeling is that any house rule can't possibly have had as much playtesting as a "real" ruling decreed in some official text.

It doesn't help that Gygax seemed to waffle on this very issue. As I recall (and I could be mistaken), he wanted players and GM's to essentially follow the letter of the rules more than the spirit. I think this was a kind of tournament attitude he held from his wargaming days and shows in the wargaming vestiges that are still in D&D.

It's a bit more complex.

There is a big difference between

1. A quick ruling to move past a part of the game
2. A houserule intended to be used constantly at the table in your campaign

1 is usually painless and doesn't do much
2 can heavily shift your whole campaign

Gamers have no problem with adding a bunch of Type 1 houserules.
But Type 2 houserules can have be changes on how the game is played and the fun had. That is where the High Trust or Low Trust comes in. It only takes one bad experience for a table to be wary of major major houserules.