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

[Crimson Longinus]

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.

If you mean that content matters more than presentation, then that would sound pretty sensible. But you seem to dismiss presentation altogether. But I strongly feel that presentation is vital, it is what makes you feel that you're in the world. The GM is not portraying NPCs vividly just to make the players marvel how funny, weird or scary they are. They do it to make the players feel like they're actually interacting with this fictional character, making them feel like a real person. Same with describing the environments and situations. It is to make the players feel that they're truly there. I think that making the world seem real is one of the most important jobs of the GM, as it is the prerequisite for the payers to immerse in it, and interact with it as part of it.

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.)

Yeah, I have no doubt that you can run D&D like that. And I suspect a lot of people do, or at least in a way somewhat resembling that. My GMing definitely has elements of it. Backstory exist, but it is more advisory rather than binding, characters are more important. Though with my current campaign I intentionally give prep more weight, as I wanted more old school D&D approach, some sort of faux sandbox. Albeit I'm sure anyone who actually likes old school D&D and/or sandboxes wouldn't recognise it as such.

 

[Fenris-77]

Huh. I'm always happy to combine some player-authored backstory with a pretty bog-standard sandbox approach. I find it helps engagement.

 

[Fenris-77]

I just want to toss out a light warning here, we're veering dangerously close to consensus.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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.

It is just gets pretty tiresome when every "I find X in useful (in D&D)" is met with "In this non-D&D game you don't need X." Which may be true, but also pretty much besides the point.

 

[prabe]

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.

I've been thinking also that choosing to describe a scene in more detail can serve as a cue for the players that something is about to happen and also establish something like the stakes of what they will (I kinda expect) be fighting for/about. Like ... if it's yer average shopping trip, there's not a lot of scene-setting there. So, if the party goes shopping and I stop to describe the colors of the banners and the light hitting the glassblower's wares and the smells of grilled food and the calls of the hawkers ... the players probably know there's going to be a disruption, and they have a sense of what's being disrupted.

So ... description that is differently useful, I think.

 

[Fenris-77]

I've been thinking also that choosing to describe a scene in more detail can serve as a cue for the players that something is about to happen and also establish something like the stakes of what they will (I kinda expect) be fighting for/about. Like ... if it's yer average shopping trip, there's not a lot of scene-setting there. So, if the party goes shopping and I stop to describe the colors of the banners and the light hitting the glassblower's wares and the smells of grilled food and the calls of the hawkers ... the players probably know there's going to be a disruption, and they have a sense of what's being disrupted.

So ... description that is differently useful, I think.

This is certainly true. The uses of description very much escape the gravity of my little dualistic bon mot. I wasn't trying to constrain description in general, but rather be specific about how I use in most cases. I completely agree with the notion of setting a fragile scene specifically so you can smash it with an interruption. That's good storytelling (if you can stomach the term).

 

[prabe]

This is certainly true. The uses of description very much escape the gravity of my little dualistic bon mot. I wasn't trying to constrain description in general, but rather be specific about how I use in most cases. I completely agree with the notion of setting a fragile scene specifically so you can smash it with an interruption. That's good storytelling (if you can stomach the term).

Yeah. Wasn't disagreeing, was just bouncing the thought I'd been turning over some off your thinking about useful description. I think what you were describing and what I'm describing both count as "describing what matters."

 

[Malmuria]

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.

Framing itself seems to be such a huge input of backstory to begin with. The backstory "input" here is seemingly derived from mostly from character generation (including session 0, emails with the players, and the like), and then maybe also from a shared understanding of theme, some ideas for setting and factions and so forth, and improvisation; that's all the stuff that 'goes into' GM framing. I'm willing to say at this point that I probably just don't get it, but to me it still seems that the "backstory/situation," "input/output" distinctions are a matter of style and technique, and are on (to use an apparently controversial term) a spectrum.

Put another way, here's one characterization of a style of play that freely mixes backstory and situation in a way that blurs the posited boundaries

OC basically agrees with trad that the goal of the game is to tell a story, but it deprioritises the authority of the DM as the creator of that story and elevates the players' roles as contributors and creators. The DM becomes a curator and facilitator who primarily works with material derived from other sources - publishers and players, in practice. OC culture has a different sense of what a "story" is, one that focuses on player aspirations and interests and their realisation as the best way to produce "fun" for the players.

As an aside, and per the long forgotten original concern of the thread, I still contend that "framing" can feel very coercive in practice, though maybe that's just a matter of expectations (i.e. in a "strict time records" sort of game)

 

[Fenris-77]

In terms of D&D the input/output distinction is actually kind of crucial and not so much a matter of style. The players develop background, which the DM then will use, as she sees fit, to occasionally aid in framing scenes that pluck at characters. Backstory, as we might commonly construe it, is at least as much a scaffold for future framing as it is anything else. It's not a binding contract or anything of that sort, but a series of handholds the DM can use for character specific framing as the need/opportunity arises.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Framing itself seems to be such a huge input of backstory to begin with. The backstory "input" here is seemingly derived from mostly from character generation (including session 0, emails with the players, and the like), and then maybe also from a shared understanding of theme, some ideas for setting and factions and so forth, and improvisation; that's all the stuff that 'goes into' GM framing. I'm willing to say at this point that I probably just don't get it, but to me it still seems that the "backstory/situation," "input/output" distinctions are a matter of style and technique, and are on (to use an apparently controversial term) a spectrum.

Put another way, here's one characterization of a style of play that freely mixes backstory and situation in a way that blurs the posited boundaries



As an aside, and per the long forgotten original concern of the thread, I still contend that "framing" can feel very coercive in practice, though maybe that's just a matter of expectations (i.e. in a "strict time records" sort of game)

That example doesn't do what you say, though. It's very much a Trad approach, where the GM is usually running a prepped adventure in a Trad way. The difference is the the authority is shifted somewhat from the GM to the rules or the setting or both, such that things are more open. The examples of that kind of play are the 3.x era Living Greyhawk campaigns, where GMs are restricted to official setting material and expected to run the game very much by the rules of the game. It's not at all about the mixing of backstory and situation in the play loop. Things are still very much framed by backstory just like Trad play.