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

[Ovinomancer]

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.

Backstory, as it's being used, is not meant to be character backstory (although that's in there) but rather all of the pre-written material, from setting information to the GM's notes to the character backstory.

 

[pemerton]

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.

Right. There is a resources clock (torches, light spells); there is a wandering monster clock; there might be other clocks associated with particular tricks/traps (eg a door that stays open automatically for 6 turns, then shuts and is unable to be opened for 6 turns).

But a lot of play that keeps the map-and-key resolution drops many or all of these clocks (eg lights spells at will, or "everburning torches" and the like; no use of wandering monsters; etc). I'm sympathetic to dropping the clocks - I personally find that sort of play a bit unrewarding both as GM and player - but then I think you have to change other parts of your system too!

I've never played Torchbearer, but am waiting for the 2nd ed to ship following the fairly recent Kickstarter. I backed it mostly to support the BW crew, but might look at playing it when it arrives.

 

[FrogReaver]

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.

Every rpg begins with backstory/setting - even story now. One might even say that since story now is so player backstory driven that it depends far more on this starting state than many D&D styles.

Going back to living sandboxes - A living sandbox isn't about revealing the initial backstory/setting to players which would imply that it's not backstory first according to your definition above.

It's loop is more like: Players do stuff -> the backstory/setting gets updated (both in the players field of vision and far outside it) -> the updated backstory/setting elements get used as the starting point of the next loop. The constantly changing backstory/setting (and not just in response to player actions) is what makes this style 'living' and that livingness is the reason that backstory first doesn't adequately describe it.

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

I'd say that his also happens in every RPG. The GMing process of every rpg requires the GM to frame compelling scenes. Scenes can be compelling without initially having clear stakes (the stakes may come into focus later on in the scene).

The more we discuss the more I view your terminology/framework as rooted in explaining the difference between traditional D&D play and 'story now'. It's not a broad enough framework to really get at the differences between living sandbox/traditional D&D play/story now.

 

[Malmuria]

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.

OSR fans will often (and loudly) complain about Critical Role or use it as the epitome of everything "wrong" with modern gaming. What these complainers seem to take issue with is less the worldbuilding, which is fairly familiar, but the emphasis the show places on working in character backstory, prerogatives, and relationships to often-recurring NPCs, and the way that the players and audience, in their view, over-identify with those characters. So is the game trad, because afterall its dnd and there is all that world building going on in the background? Maybe, but also quite different in the way it continually focuses on the drama of the characters, which in fact is its appeal. Maybe dnd doesn't provide the "right" tools for this, maybe its "incoherent," but it seems to work perfectly fine for them.

I think I'm just uninterested in axiomatic categorization. Categories can have a heuristic function, but usefulness of them is identifying styles, practices, mentalities, and mechanics that can nudge a game a little bit in one direction, or in another, or in a third. More useful, to me, than saying X game is in the trad/backstory bucket and Y game is in the story-now/situation bucket with brightly painted dividing lines between them. I'm more interested in the reality of these games in how they are played, which I would venture is, from the perspective of rigid categorization, often "wrong" or "incoherent": styles or preferences that cross-pollinate, blur boundaries, or are otherwise unruly.

 

[Lanefan]

It certainly can be. Take a Classic dungeon crawl, B/X style. Pacing is not a concern of the GM. Even in a hexcrawl sandbox, pacing can be something the GM ignores. Pacing really only shows up as a concern in Trad or Neotrad approaches where there is a plot to pace.

OK, perhaps a dumb question here but does everyone mean the same thing when using the word "pacing"?

When you say "there is a plot to pace" you seem to be referring to in-fiction pacing (and-or timing); that things have to be arranged or Forced such that the PCs are at place x when event y occurs. Am I reading that right?

When I think of pacing, I'm usually referring to, in effect, the degree of granularity or level of detail to which the fiction is engaged; which in turn determines how much gets "done" in a typical session. To wit, a low-granularity low-detail table might get through most of a published module in a session while a high-granularity high-detail table might only explore three rooms. In short, how fast-paced is the campaign?

Reading some posts I wonder if some are using "pacing" to mean one of these and having it be read as the other? Both types of pacing are - or certainly can be - a concern of the DM; but beyond that they are independent of each other.

 

[Lanefan]

All this talk about "GM framing" got me thinking that what we ought to talk about instead is "GM farming", in which we plant seeds in the ground in the spring and then, come fall, harvest a whole crop of fresh new GMs...

...did I get that right?

 

[pemerton]

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.

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.

In both these accounts of using description to frame a scene, I get the feeling that the GM is using the description to establish or reveal what is (or at least might be) at stake in the scene.

That makes me think that these techniques are going to have more, or at least more frequent, utility in "backstory first" play - that is, where the scene is being extrapolated from already-authored backstory and is presented to the players as a response to their action declarations about going to the warehouse or going to the market place. Also, in "situation first" play it's more typical to want stakes to be made clear from the start, and hence things like using frequent narration of smell as "cover" for "meaningful" narrations of smell are less likely to be important techniques. Telegraphing without just coming out and telling the players what's is at stake seems like it is more often going to be important in "backstory first" play that puts a higher priority on "exploration" than does "situation first" play.

That's not to say that these techniques have no use in "situation first" play - just, perhaps, less use, as it is going to be more often the case that what is at stake is already known, as part of the logic of framing the scene.

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.

OK. I don't have the same feeling. What makes me feel that I'm in the world is that I - as my PC - am oriented towards it (in terms of knowledge, aspirations, pressures, etc).

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.

I can only report my own experiences, as player and GM.

For instance, what made me feel the force of Thurgon's reunion with Rufus was not the GM's description, which was pretty minimal - Rufus (by right a Count!) was driving a cart; he seemed cowed, not at all his old self; and he told us that he had to fetch wine for "the master". It was the situation - Rufus on a menial errand; the contrast with both Thurgon and their younger brother; his challenge of Aramina which prompted her shaming of him in response. I couldn't tell you what Rufus was wearing - I can't remember if the GM mention a cape or hat or anything like that - nor whether the cart was being pulled by a horse or an ox or a donkey; but the situation was as "real" as any I can remember in my RPGIng experience.

As a GM, I can deploy detail when it matters to a scene: for instance, the descriptions of the murals and statues in the Mausoleum of the Raven Queen that I think I mentioned upthread. I remember in a social skill challenge in our 4e game - a banquet at a Baronial court - the fact that the deserts were jellies became important, because it fed into the fighter PC's account of how he had fought and defeated two gelatinous cubes with his polearm.

But I am speaking quite sincerely when I say that I don't regard evocative description as crucial to making the situations real. It is the "forces" at work - the relationships, hopes, expectations, etc - that I think do that.

 

[Ovinomancer]

OSR fans will often (and loudly) complain about Critical Role or use it as the epitome of everything "wrong" with modern gaming. What these complainers seem to take issue with is less the worldbuilding, which is fairly familiar, but the emphasis the show places on working in character backstory, prerogatives, and relationships to often-recurring NPCs, and the way that the players and audience, in their view, over-identify with those characters. So is the game trad, because afterall its dnd and there is all that world building going on in the background? Maybe, but also quite different in the way it continually focuses on the drama of the characters, which in fact is its appeal. Maybe dnd doesn't provide the "right" tools for this, maybe its "incoherent," but it seems to work perfectly fine for them.

I think I'm just uninterested in axiomatic categorization. Categories can have a heuristic function, but usefulness of them is identifying styles, practices, mentalities, and mechanics that can nudge a game a little bit in one direction, or in another, or in a third. More useful, to me, than saying X game is in the trad/backstory bucket and Y game is in the story-now/situation bucket with brightly painted dividing lines between them. I'm more interested in the reality of these games in how they are played, which I would venture is, from the perspective of rigid categorization, often "wrong" or "incoherent": styles or preferences that cross-pollinate, blur boundaries, or are otherwise unruly.

No, I'd very much say there's a bright line, wide gulf between a Story Now game and a Trad game. The authorities are very different, the goals of play are different, and the methods of play are different. This isn't really a close thing. I play/run both styles, and my mental positioning for each if very different. There's nothing I'm borrowing from Trad play for Story Now, and vice versa. The only blur I have is that I try to limit my use of Force/Illusionism when I run 5e.

So, yeah, there's a pretty clear difference here. I'm uncertain how you can argue otherwise.

 

[pemerton]

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

That's not what I mean by situation first, though. See @Ovinomancer's post not far upthread about my use of backstory/setting.

Here are examples of backstory: There is an Order, the Knights of the Iron Tower; I have a mother, Xanthippe, whom I left behind in Auxol when I left to join the Order; There is (or was) a faction in the Order who crossed paths with Evard and his demons; Xanthippe is the daughter of the demon-summoner Evard.

In my BW game, I (the player of Thurgon) wrote the first two bits of backstory. My GM wrote the second two.

Here are examples of situation: You come upon a ruined fortress of the Iron Tower, the stones scorched as if by a great fire; As you approach Evard's tower, there is a demon! . . . It says something about the "Sunstone" [something also mentioned in journals found in the ruined fortress]; You find letters in Evard's tower, addressing him as "Papa" and signed "Xanthippe"; When you step into the hall at Auxol, you see Xanthippe. She looks much older than you remember. She starts to chide you for having left her for so long . . ..

The GM framed all of these, but in each case with a different prompt to do so. The first was narration of a new scene, largely unprompted - the sort of thing that the AW rulebook says the GM should do when the players all look at the GM to see what happens next. The second followed from two successful checks - first a Great Masters-wise check (by Aramina) which confirmed the accuracy of her recollection that Evard's tower was "around here"; and then a Circles check by Thurgon to meet a former knight of the Order who could ferry the two of them along the river to near the location of the tower. The demon was the GM's addition!; and his subsequent narration of what the demon said and did as Thurgon fought it established the third bit of backstory mentioned above. The third situation was narrated as the consequence of a Scavenging check in the tower, I think a failure; it established the fourth bit of backstory mentioned above. The fourth situation was a scene that I as a player was entitled to ask for, as - as part of PC build - Thurgon has a Relationship with Xanthippe, and (Revised, p 109) "Meeting and consulting with a relationship character doesn't require a roll. . . . So long as it is reasonably feasible in he game context, a player can have his character visit his relationship contacts freely and often."

I hope this makes clear how situation and backstory are related in a "situation-first" approach to RPGing. And that it further brings out the contrast to a backstory-first sandbox.

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.

Well, there can't be a scene without content - place, people, some sort of history (unless it's an amnesia-focused game), etc - but where does this come from, and what is it's relationship to the PCs and to action resolution?

Look at the difference between @FrogReaver's description of how the Iron Tower might be used as an element of the game in a living sandbox, and look at my descriptions in this post and earlier in this thread. They are different processes! They orient the participants differently in relation to the fiction.

Look at how Scavenging checks are adjudicated. The situation is first - Here's this place, I'm looking for this thing - and then the backstory follows - You find this, or you find that - as is appropriate to success or failure and the broader context of the PC's goal in undertaking the search.

That is a very different process from how a search of a tower or a homestead is adjudicated in map-and-key resolution.

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.

In any given moment of adjudication there's no spectrum: either the backstory is consulted and used to determine the consequence of the action declaration (eg according to the key, there's nothing here - so the answer is You find nothing; according to the key, there's no friendly former knight in this place, so the answer is No, you don't find any friendly ferryman; according to the key, Rufus is unable to be turned from his forced loyalty to "the master", and so there is no chance to bring him into alignment with Thurgon and his aspirations to liberate Auxol; etc); or the situation is framed, the resolution process deployed, and then appropriate backstory is established as a result of that (eg Rufus fails his Steel check, and so we know he is still capable of feeling shame; or in Classic Traveller, the reaction roll tells us that the enemy captain is friendly - You remind me of my kid sister!, and so now it is established that the captain has a younger sister and that the PC reminds him or her; etc).

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

The key passage from your quote on OC/Neotrad is 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.

I don't think this is an approach that really involves strong situation, as the GM is curating, not applying pressure, with the aim of realising the players' aspirations. This can't work if situation is taken seriously, I don't think.

 

[pemerton]

I think I'm just uninterested in axiomatic categorization.

My interest is in a posteriori categorisation that serves an analytic or explanatory purpose.

For example, I think in this thread I've explained why certain traditional techniques for feeding prep into resolution - ie map + key - generate pressure to use GM Force to manage pacing. And have suggested, for those who prefer to avoid the use of Force, an alternative approach - "situation first" - which I think is feasible with 5e D&D.

None of those categories is an axiomatic one. They are based on the interpretation of play, and deployed to practical ends - ie identifying actual and possible processes of RPG play, and the sort of experience these can provide.