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

[Minigiant]

As far as I'm concerned 1 and 2 here are the same thing; as in my view a "quick ruling" should set a binding precedent for the remainder of that campaign. If it doesn't, and the ruling can change from week to week, that's where trust in the DM will very quickly go out the window.

Which is why even "quick rulings" should be thought through and got right the first time, even if it means stopping a session for ten minutes and thinking/talking it over.

I've been kitbashing and houseruling for decades. Some changes work, some don't, so what? Trial and error.

Type 1 is stuff that are inconsequential to the major fun or balance to the game or events that would only happen once in the campaign.

Type 2 is stuff you would have to stop and think about before creating and might temporarily create a Type 1 rule until to figure out a proper Type 2 rule.

 

[Thomas Shey]

As monsters, opponents, and things that frighten people, yes. But not as characters to actually play.

No, they're pretty damn popular as potential player characters too. In terms of the post-nothing-but-humans-elves-and-such races they're probably second-only to tieflings.

 

[Guest 7042500]

As far as I'm concerned 1 and 2 here are the same thing; as in my view a "quick ruling" should set a binding precedent for the remainder of that campaign. If it doesn't, and the ruling can change from week to week, that's where trust in the DM will very quickly go out the window.

Which is why even "quick rulings" should be thought through and got right the first time, even if it means stopping a session for ten minutes and thinking/talking it over.

I've been kitbashing and houseruling for decades. Some changes work, some don't, so what? Trial and error.

If I can remember, sure, I'll do the same again.
If I can't remember but my players can, I trust them and will do that.
If none of us can bloody remember, which is the usual case, I will do what seems reasonable at the time.

I guess the folks I play with and I just have a larger "don't worry about it" zone than most people.

 

[MGibster]

As far as I'm concerned 1 and 2 here are the same thing; as in my view a "quick ruling" should set a binding precedent for the remainder of that campaign. If it doesn't, and the ruling can change from week to week, that's where trust in the DM will very quickly go out the window.

That's how I run things, though if I'm making a ruling on the spot I may tell the players something like, "We'll do this now, but I'll examine this more closely when I have time and figure out how we want to handle this in the future." When there's a conflict in the rules, I typically adjudicate in the player's favor. And when I make a bad ruling, I make it a point to come back and acknowledge the bad ruling and tell the players how I'll handle the same situation from here.

 

[Micah Sweet]

No, they're pretty damn popular as potential player characters too. In terms of the post-nothing-but-humans-elves-and-such races they're probably second-only to tieflings.

Perhaps not in 1989 when 2e came out though.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Perhaps not in 1989 when 2e came out though.

I couldn't say, back then. But then, back then was there much post elves-and-dwarves at all?

 

[kenada]

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).

One example of a game that does something like that is Konosuba TRPG. It includes a replay that’s almost 80 pages (digest-sized). The replay starts with character creation and goes through the phases of a session. When it gets to checks and combat the first time, there are sidebars explaining the appropriate procedures.

 

[JAMUMU]

I trust my players. My players trust me. Whenever something does comes up, we fight it out with broken beer bottles and wrists lashed-together like we're in the Smooth Criminal video. Every once in a while, we hold a massive gang conclave and someone shoots Cyrus, and then it's all "WARRIOOOOOOOORS COOOOOOOOME OOOOOOUT TO PLAAAAAAY!" and I refuse to believe every table and VTT isn't exactly like this.

 

[kenada]

I agree. I think it goes back to the mentality that gaming styles are all or nothing, or else “incoherent,” where in reality games and gaming styles exist in between.

Hmm, no. It seems like a stretch to try to tie it to that particular jargon. I think the issue is something more fundamental like getting trapped in binary thinking. Consider the example by @Oligopsony in post #25 where two approaches to OSR play are viewed by some proponents as lacking some dysfunction the other has. I don’t see any issue with “incoherence” there, but I do see a false dichotomy and binary thinking, which is the problem I’m identifying.

 

[Malmuria]

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.

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.

I understand that this is a caricature of high trust games, but in these games there are good GMs and not so good GMs, and the good ones distinguish themselves by creating scenarios for player agency and earning the trust of their players. It's similar to how pbta games rely on GM principles to suture the mechanics to the overall place experience; in fact, modern OSR games are more explicit in borrowing that technique (i.e. including GM principles) to describe how the game should be run. For example, from Into the Odd Remastered:

The difference is that you'll find "be fair," to be a principle in the OSR, more than "be a fan of the PCs." Meanwhile, the notion--boogeyman really-- of the authoritarian GM seems a bit exaggerated with respect to the reality of GM burnout even in 5e, where people commonly complain that PC power levels and player social expectations leave GMs without good ways to create meaningful stakes. I'd be more interested in reasons for why a particular balance in authority is interesting more than as just a reaction to a caricature of a 90s style trad GM