D&D 5E Respect Mah Authoritah: Thoughts on DM and Player Authority in 5e

[hawkeyefan]

In Blades? As a GM, not a bit. Don't care. As a player, I'm keenly aware, but I don't expect the game to care or the GM.

That’s kind of what I figured. As a GM I have found that I’m aware of these things…stress use and gear use…and I think it can be a factor, even if an unconscious one. Because nothing’s predetermined and most of what I narrate is either (a) consequences in response to what happens in play, or (b) introduction of some obstacle (which may or may not flow exactly from what’s happened in play)….I don’t always see how resource depletion early on in a Score doesn’t impact my use of both (a) and (b) above, but especially (b).

It may not, and I think I generally push toward not having it matter. But when you’re adapting and coming up with consequences and challenges in play in response to the developing fiction, it’s not always easy to separate.

 

[Ovinomancer]

That’s kind of what I figured. As a GM I have found that I’m aware of these things…stress use and gear use…and I think it can be a factor, even if an unconscious one. Because nothing’s predetermined and most of what I narrate is either (a) consequences in response to what happens in play, or (b) introduction of some obstacle (which may or may not flow exactly from what’s happened in play)….I don’t always see how resource depletion early on in a Score doesn’t impact my use of both (a) and (b) above, but especially (b).

It may not, and I think I generally push toward not having it matter. But when you’re adapting and coming up with consequences and challenges in play in response to the developing fiction, it’s not always easy to separate.

Hmm. I see what you're saying, but this is, in effect, softballing the GM's side of the game and not what the principles of play direct. I get the impluse, though -- I'm not about to say I haven't done this before or will not again. As you say, sometimes it's not as easy to keep the beating going. I think it's very much necessary to do so, or else you end up with a game that just doesn't have the heft it should. I strive for it, at least.

 

[pemerton]

This seems like such a bizarre dichotomy to me. I see these as things that support rather than oppose each other. Does the GM describing environnements evocatively or trying to portray NPCs vividly somehow detract from your ability to engage with the content? I’d think it would rather enhance it!

Only way for GM to not present anything to the players is to be silent. I don’t think that’s gonna work. So as functioning of the game requires GM to present things, I find it bizarre that it is somehow controversial that they should aim to do it well!

Isn't the question what counts as doing it well?

Everything else being equal, a typical way of doing a film or TV show or advertisement well is to have everyone made up and dressed neatly, even beautifully. America takes this further than Britain, but even in British television shows the teeth are normally clean, the hair brushed, the clothes ironed, etc.

Part of the presentation of the car in a car advertisement is that it is clean and shining.

Now - suppose I return home after an extended absence, and my family greets me: is that greeting even better if they have brushed hair and neat clothes? Or is that an irrelevance? If they surprise me by driving to the station to pick me up, and the first I know about it is when I step onto the street and see them standing by the car - is that moment even better if the car has been freshly washed?

Maybe these are matters on which opinions differ, but I don't think the questions are merely rhetorical, with an obvious answer of yes. For my part, I think the answer is no. We are in different domains of value.

In the context of RPGing, what are we trying to evoke with our "evocative descriptions"? When I play a RPG, I want to be engaged in the fiction and inhabiting my character. What will evoke that is not vivid descriptions of things external to me, but the framing of situations that speak to what is internal. Of course the descriptions have to be adequate - tell me who is there, what they're doing, etc - but I'm not looking to be swept away by someone else's storytelling.

Scroll to top of the page. What does it say? Is this general or D&D section? Please understand and respect the context. Stop trying to sell the steaks to the vegans who are discussing how to best utilise the lima beans! It is not relevant and makes it seem that you’re evangelising.

This prompted a few thoughts on my part:

(1) I'm not talking about playing D&D. I'm talking about playing Burning Wheel. So why are you trying to present your D&D-style "storytelling" approach as if it's universal to RPGing as such?

(2) The reason I'm talking about Burning Wheel is because the discussion with other posters has raised questions about how authority can be allocated, what is it like to play RPGs without centring GM-authored backstory, etc. It's a forum conversation, not a blog.

(3) Your conception of D&D is in my view overly narrow. Upthread I posted this:

I don't agree. I've run AD&D quite successfully using shared backstory authority (especially in PC build, but also the GM taking suggestions from players on the way through) and GM authority over situation/scene-framing.

I don't see why 5e D&D couldn't be run the same way if a group wanted to do so.

Now I don't have @Ovinomancer's familiarity and experience with 5e D&D. But I know that AD&D can be used to play a game that is situation first rather than backstory first, because I've done so - and done so over 30 years ago, before Prince Valiant was published and about two decades before Burning Wheel was published. And I don't think 5e is much weaker than AD&D for this purpose.

So while noting Ovinomancer's very cogently-expressed doubts about the last sentence of my earlier post, I stand by what I posted. And the individual reader can form their own view as to whether I am being too generous in my conception of how 5e might be used, or whether Ovinomancer is setting too high a standard of adequacy for a system to support situation-first RPGing.

 

[pemerton]

On pacing:

My own view is that pacing - as in, managing the introduction of new fiction that changes or develops a situation, so that the players are called to make new action declarations in response - is an important aspect of my role as GM.

Burning Wheel expresses it in this way (Revised p 268; Gold p 551 - the text is the same in both editions):

the GM is in a unique position. He (sic) can see the big picture - what the players are doing, as well as what the opposition is up to and plans to do. His perspective grants the power to hold off on one action, wile another player moves forward so that the two pieces intersect dramatically at the table. More than any other player, the GM controls the flow and pacing of the game. He has the power to begin and end scenes, to present challenges and instigate conflicts.​

In the GMing advice found in the Adventure Burner and reproduced in the Codex, there is more detailed discussion of shifting focus across different characters (and hence players) when they are engaged in different but simultaneous conflicts.

Upthread I posted about my own exercise of situational authority in my Classic Traveller game, when the PCs were exploring the Annic Nova and being attacked by Aliens (TM). I was beginning and ending scenes, and helping ensure the dramatic intersection of the players' declared actions (eg Vincenzo turning up with his fire extinguisher ready to spray the Alien that Xander had killed).

The description of this aspect of the GM's role in 4e D&D is less elaborate than that in BW, but not wildly different (PHB p 8):

The Dungeon Master has several functions in the game. . . . Narrator: The DM sets the pace of the story and
presents the various challenges and encounters the players must overcome.​

When I've GMed Cthulhu Dark I've taken advantage of the extremely loose backstory to manage pacing in a further sort of way (ie in addition to ensuring the interweaving of player actions) - as the session is coming to an end, I've narrated consequences and framed scenes in a way that tends to tie things together and bring them to a head, rather than opening up possibilities and introducing new material. I think GMing Apocalypse World may invite similar sorts of decision-making - eg when announcing future, or offscreen, badness does the GM introduce new threats and new possibilities, or bind more tightly together existing threats and possibilities and trajectories so that they are careening towards explosion? Knowing what sorts of choices to make here, and having a sense of how they will open up or close down various possible trajectories of play, is important for situation-first GMing.

Ron Edwards has a discussion of one aspect of this under the heading "Minor issues within Narrativist play":

The final minor problem is to resolve play-Situations rapidly and without developing them much beyond the initial preparatory circumstances: "over before it begins." This typically occurs when people are so floored by the possibility of actually addressing a Premise through play, that they hare off to do so before some RPG god notices and intervenes to stop them. Usually, this sort of play is a short-lived phase as the group builds trust with one another.​

Letting situations develop is important; but so can be a sense of bringing things to a resolution. Some systems do this "automatically", ie through their own working. I've never played it, but I think My Life With Master might be a paradigm example of this - a system which generates its own endgame. Using quite different methods, a 4e D&D combat also generates its own pacing and resolution. (My own view is that this aspect of 4e is a triumph of technical RPG design.)

4e skill challenges are interesting because they do establish pacing and resolution via system means, but they are very demanding to GM because the GM has to narrate consequences which both (i) respect success or failure on individual checks and (ii) generate a trajectory for the overall challenge while (iii) being open to either success or failure as the checks are made and the respective tallies are built up. Whether or not one calls it "pacing", it's certainly a thing - an aspect of narration that the GM has to be rather deliberate about if the fiction isn't going to fall flat or seem rather strained.

I think the idea of using force to manage pacing mostly arises from the use of mechanics that were designed without regard to pacing - ie classic D&D dungeon crawling mechanics, which include map-and-key resolution of declared actions and a lot of hidden backstory that the players are trying to learn - to play games where pacing matters. The system doesn't deliver pacing in itself; and the GM doesn't have the overt authority over scene-framing and consequence-narration necessary to manage pacing in a transparent way (eg because the mechanics being used make scene-framing an upshot of PC movement on a pre-authored map, or more generally make scene-framing something subsequent to a particular class of player-authored action declarations); and so the GM has to use covert means that override what the game presents as meaningful player action declarations.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Isn't the question what counts as doing it well?

Everything else being equal, a typical way of doing a film or TV show or advertisement well is to have everyone made up and dressed neatly, even beautifully. America takes this further than Britain, but even in British television shows the teeth are normally clean, the hair brushed, the clothes ironed, etc.

Part of the presentation of the car in a car advertisement is that it is clean and shining.

Now - suppose I return home after an extended absence, and my family greets me: is that greeting even better if they have brushed hair and neat clothes? Or is that an irrelevance? If they surprise me by driving to the station to pick me up, and the first I know about it is when I step onto the street and see them standing by the car - is that moment even better if the car has been freshly washed?

Maybe these are matters on which opinions differ, but I don't think the questions are merely rhetorical, with an obvious answer of yes. For my part, I think the answer is no. We are in different domains of value.

In the context of RPGing, what are we trying to evoke with our "evocative descriptions"? When I play a RPG, I want to be engaged in the fiction and inhabiting my character. What will evoke that is not vivid descriptions of things external to me, but the framing of situations that speak to what is internal. Of course the descriptions have to be adequate - tell me who is there, what they're doing, etc - but I'm not looking to be swept away by someone else's storytelling.

How evocative descriptions and skilfully portrayed NPCs so that they feel like real people not help engaging with the fiction and inhabiting your character? These are things that make the world they live in feel real! This is just an utterly bizarre stance and I'm starting to suspect that you just want to be contrary to have an argument.

This prompted a few thoughts on my part:

(1) I'm not talking about playing D&D. I'm talking about playing Burning Wheel. So why are you trying to present your D&D-style "storytelling" approach as if it's universal to RPGing as such?

I am not. Unlike some, I just understand that this is D&D section of the forums!

(2) The reason I'm talking about Burning Wheel is because the discussion with other posters has raised questions about how authority can be allocated, what is it like to play RPGs without centring GM-authored backstory, etc. It's a forum conversation, not a blog.

(3) Your conception of D&D is in my view overly narrow. Upthread I posted this:

Now I don't have @Ovinomancer's familiarity and experience with 5e D&D. But I know that AD&D can be used to play a game that is situation first rather than backstory first, because I've done so - and done so over 30 years ago, before Prince Valiant was published and about two decades before Burning Wheel was published. And I don't think 5e is much weaker than AD&D for this purpose.

So while noting Ovinomancer's very cogently-expressed doubts about the last sentence of my earlier post, I stand by what I posted. And the individual reader can form their own view as to whether I am being too generous in my conception of how 5e might be used, or whether Ovinomancer is setting too high a standard of adequacy for a system to support situation-first RPGing.

I'm sure it can. Would you like elaborate your definition of 'situation first' and how you'd do it in D&D?

 

[gorice]

I think the idea of using force to manage pacing mostly arises from the use of mechanics that were designed without regard to pacing - ie classic D&D dungeon crawling mechanics, which include map-and-key resolution of declared actions and a lot of hidden backstory that the players are trying to learn - to play games where pacing matters. The system doesn't deliver pacing in itself; and the GM doesn't have the overt authority over scene-framing and consequence-narration necessary to manage pacing in a transparent way (eg because the mechanics being used make scene-framing an upshot of PC movement on a pre-authored map, or more generally make scene-framing something subsequent to a particular class of player-authored action declarations); and so the GM has to use covert means that override what the game presents as meaningful player action declarations.

This really resonates with me. One thing about old-fashioned map and key play is that it has procedures to ensure there is always an opportunity cost to actions. This gets back to the point someone made about force/illusionism being needed to stop failed checks from 'falling flat' in trad play. If things are working as intended, a failed investigation check in an old-fashioned dungeon-delve should ratchet the tension up, not deflate the scene, because now you are one burnt-out torch closer to being swallowed by darkness, or one step closer to being overwhelmed by wandering monsters, with nothing to show for it.

 

[pemerton]

How evocative descriptions and skilfully portrayed NPCs so that they feel like real people not help engaging with the fiction and inhabiting your character? These are things that make the world they live in feel real! This is just an utterly bizarre stance and I'm starting to suspect that you just want to be contrary to have an argument.

I'm not being contrary. I'm talking about what I am looking for in RPGing - which is not to be entertained (nor, as GM, to be an entertainer).

The poetic character of a description is important to (some) poetry. I don't regard it as important to GMing. As I said, I think advice to GMs that emphasises evocative descriptions and the like - and such advice in my experience is pretty common - is not very helpful advice. I think the key GM skill is to be able to frame compelling scenes, and then narrate powerful consequences. And what makes these compelling and powerful is their content - in particular, the patterns/connections/relationships that are part of that content, and that locate it as meaningful to the PC and thus the player who is inhabiting that PC.

What makes it feel real is the reality of that meaning.

When the GM tells me (as Thurgon) that I find letters in Evard's tower, what makes the scene matter is not any description of the feel or smell of the paper, or the texture of the ink. It is the description of what those letters say, because what they say reveals something new and disturbing about my (ie Thurgon's) mother and heritage.

Would you like elaborate your definition of 'situation first' and how you'd do it in D&D?

Well, I feel like I've been articulating "situation first" in most of my posts over the past 10 or 20 pages. In short, it is what it says on the tin.

Here is "backstory first": the GMing process begins with backstory/setting, with the basic process of play being that the revelation of that backstory/setting to the players - in response to their action declarations like we go <here> or we talk to <so-and-so> or we search <this place or thing> - "activates" the scenes/situations latent in that backstory. Often the significance of such a scene/situation won't be known to the players immediately, because that depends on learning more of the pre-authored backstory by declaring more of those actions that oblige the GM to reveal bits of backstory.

Here is "situation first": the GMing process begins with framing a compelling scene. What is at stake in the scene is known to the players - that is (part of) what makes it compelling. The content of the scene is based around prior shared understandings of what matters to these characters - normally this means that the players will have exercised some authority over backstory in PC building, to establish families or mentors or rivals or other sorts of orientations towards and connections to the fiction, that give their PCs inbuilt "momentum" and dramatic needs. In AD&D, thieves and paladins and monks and most OA characters are good for this; fighters and magic-users and rangers will tend to need more work done than the books instruct you to in order to establish sufficiently "hook-y" PCs.

Backstory is as much an output of framing, and of action resolution, as an input into it. It is built up - "accreted" - as new elements of content are needed to establish compelling scenes or narrate powerful consequences.

In 5e D&D I would say that warlocks, clerics, paladins, druids, monks are good for this; other classes might need a bit of extra work done at PC build because the requisite hooks won't arise purely from PC building. I would also lean heavily into backgrounds. There are 10 billion maps and stat blocks suitable for 5e D&D, so there should be no issue getting the material a 5e GM needs to frame a scene, often via a quick Google or flip through the MM. Setting DCs for action declarations will be a key issue, I think, and by comparison that's not really a challenge in AD&D as checks (stat checks, thief skills, etc) tend to be against a fixed difficulty. Honouring success and failure is important - that is what builds up the material that drives situations forward and allows the framing of new ones.

As I already posted upthread, I suspect that Investigation becomes a largely useless skill on this approach, but that seems not a very big cost to me. (Perception is still useful, because it can be applied in the context of the framed scene without needing to invoke additional setting/backstory external to the scene.)

 

[Fenris-77]

I think when it comes to description there's a pretty huge divide between what I think @pemerton is describing as poetic and what I might describe as evocative. When I say evocative description I mean specifically useful description in one of two ways. The first is engaging multiple senses to fully draw a scene. Here I'm really talking about engaging things like smell and feel when a lot of description stops at the visual. The point is not just to draw a pretty picture, but to leave room for something like smells to matter when it matters. If I never mention the way things smell and then all of a sudden I do I'm probably telegraphing more that I want to. But when smell is always a part of my description it puts the ball back in the p[layers court to figure out when it matters, which is skilled play. The second way this matters, to me anyway, is to describe in a way that I might describe as tag-friendly. By that I mean I'm describing things that might actually impact the outcome of a scene should the players choose to engage that 'tag'. So you're in an abandoned warehouse and I describe it as shadowy and cluttered with old crates that are dry a bone. So sure that helps set the scene, but those are also both things the players can engage with - they have shadows to sneak in and dry wood to set on fire. Let's say I added to that description that you smell a faint whiff of lamp oil, uh-oh, now someone else is maybe setting things on fire. Anyway, the point in general is to provide handholds for player engagement, not just a pretty picture.

 

[Fenris-77]

I just realized I have an addendum to my post above, which has to do with word count. DMs do not have infinite word count. You have to try to manage brevity somehow to keep things moving. So the question then becomes what are you going to spend that word count on. Are you going wax poetical about the exact flavour of urine this tenement smells like or are you going to describe some things the players can use should a chase scene break out in the stairwell? I know what I'm picking.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I am not. Unlike some, I just understand that this is D&D section of the forums!

I'm going to address this head on as the silly canard that it is. Discussion of D&D does not mean you cannot hold up other things as a counterpoint, or to illustrate an idea, that then bears back on D&D. The idea that the gates must be kept from any mention of a game other than D&D in order to successfully discuss D&D is intellectually bankrupt. This is especially apparent in a thread discussing the authorities in D&D. I mean, you're essentially saying that no other authority structures can be discussed if they aren't already D&D. That's just bogus.