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

[Sepulchrave II]

Help me! I can't stop playing this game. I'm stuck in a no-win scenario! I wish I could say "Game over, man! Game over!" but I just can't. Please, somebody, help me.

Here, does this help?


Man, I miss Bill Paxton.

More broadly, I'm interested in why there is such resistance to the idea of winning. I thought everyone likes to win.

 

[Eric V]

In my opinion, it does not reflect well on the 5e GMing community nor 5e as a ruleset that @hawkeyefan 's depicted play excerpt is even in the slightest bit controversial.

A GM shutting that down is completely subordinating both your thematic decision-making and your tactical decision-making as a player. They're basically saying "nah...none of that is true...not the folk hero mythology facts on the ground...not the willingness to risk themselves...not the evasion of pursuit...have this ice cold bath of go eff yourself and fight these dudes!"

Its an egregious use of Force.

This should not net pages of conversation.

Could not agree more. One thing about this situation that I am surprised no one really addresses (AFAICT) is that it's a shut-down of an ability that I just can't see being used very often. Like, if I was the player, I might love that I FINALLY get to use this ability that comes with being a folk hero...and it gets quashed because the DM wants to do something else. Ugh, how many more opportunities am I going to get to use this ability? Will I even bother trying after the DM shut it down "because reasons?"

Did anyone but the DM want the fight? If it's really only the DM who wants the fight, can't they make the fight happen sometime later, without quashing the PC ability? Who's having fun with this scenario?

As for authority over the game...IMO, DMs should really try letting go and encouraging players to do more authorship. Takes some of the burden off. After years of playing 5e, we just got bored of the system and moved to an adjacent game, 13thAge. Players get "Icon Dice" that they can use to actively create fiction (A player can use one of these resources to create the fiction that "The Greyhawk Thieves' Guild understands that we get pinched from time to time, and usually leave a skeleton key behind the fifth brick in the 7th column...aha! A skeleton key! Gimme a minute or two and I'll get us out of this jail cell!") which then gets added to the lore of the world. The rules strongly suggest the GM go along as much as possible. It can be tough at first, but if one embraces it...it's great. "How did our assassin adversary escape?! He was locked up!" "Looks like he might have interned with the Thieves' Guild..."

It doesn't have to be adversarial, but it's great when the players see that their contributions to how the world works last longer than the immediate scenario they imagined them for. It's a real partnership, with real shared fiction, and it just took this long-time GM the willingness to let go of some control issues and trust my players. There's no reason this couldn't work in a 5e game...I think.

 

[pemerton]

Because, functionally, you'd have to rely on the GM or table consensus to create the resolution mechanics to give this teeth. 5e, and I'd argue AD&D, lack any way to resolve conflicts that have teeth. There just don't exist the kind of mechanics to do this. Instead, you have resolution mechanics that are divorced from intent and focus on the atomic nature of task resolution, and I find this fights against playing the game in this way unless the table just decided to implement some kind of additional rule structure for how to pass the conch or resolve conflicts of intent.

I think there are two ways of looking at this.

If I'm comparing AD&D, or Rolemaster, to Burning Wheel, than the contrast you describe is evident. All give you characters; those characters have various numbers on sheets associated with them (for fighting, for talking - that's CHA in AD&D, etc). But the first two are pretty rickety in their action resolution structure.

But not hopeless. For social interaction, as an example, AD&D has a reaction table, modified by CHA, and that can be used to resolve approaches by PCs to NPCs. (I do just this in Classic Traveller.) Rolemaster has the Influence/Interaction table (this is from RM2/RMC Character Law):

-26 down: Your blatant attempt at coercion alienates your audience. They are infuenced to do the opposite of what you were attempting to get them to do. Until a change in circumstances occurs, any attempts by to to infuence them will fail.​

​

-25 to 04: You audience rejects you, causing you to lose confidence and your air of authority. Any influence attempts during the next hour will result in failures (see 05-75 below).​

​

05 to 75: You have failed. Your audience will not be receptive to any of your attempts at infuence for at least 1 day.​

​

76 to 90: Your audeience is still listening. You can continue to try to influence them.​

​

91 to 110: Keep talking, your audeince is becoming more friendly. Modify your next roll by +20.​

​

111-175: You have influenced your audience.​

​

176 up: Not only did you influence your audience, but you receive a +50 bonus on influencing them until you do something to cause them to lose confidence in you.​

​

Modifications: Difficulty [from +30 Routine to -70 Absurd]​

+50 - Audience is personally loyal or devoted to the character​

+20 - Audience is under hire to the character​

+ Skill bonus for Influence and Interaction.​

Note: Difficulty and other modifications are based upon the basic attitude of the audience towards the character and upon what the character is trying to get them to do.​

Ultimately, what gives teeth to resolution in BW is intent and task together with let it ride. AD&D is not inherently unable to incorporate these.

Oddly enough, 5e might be less amenable to "vanilla narrativism" than AD&D: it doesn't have a set reaction table like AD&D (or Traveller) and so needs the GM to set a DC for interactions, which is perhaps less certain/stable and doesn't produce the "intermediate" results that a typical reaction table does. But couldn't that be worked around?

Another issue with 5e is the one I mentioned upthread to @hawkeyefan: there are abilities like the Folk Hero one, or Rangers' favoured terrain, which are (in my view) a bit unclear as to what their actual function is and hence put a lot of decision-making pressure on the GM; AD&D and RM don't have this sort of thing.

There are knowledge and perception-type skills in all these systems. But that's not fatal. Prince Valiant does too, and yet can work with pretty light-touch prep. And in the context of D&D, there is so much published material available it's often not going to be that hard to pull out a map or room or similar, with perception used to spot hidden things and/or people. Investigation probably becomes a pretty unhelpful skill in low-prep 5e D&D, but that's a modest casualty.

 

[Malmuria]

Here, does this help?


Man, I miss Bill Paxton.

More broadly, I'm interested in why there is such resistance to the idea of winning. I thought everyone likes to win.

 

[pemerton]

First: I hope I didn't do your position too much violence, trying to explain it.

You did not!

I don't think I've ever claimed to be running sandbox campaigns, but there have been moments that were plausibly sandboxy, when the characters had finished one thing and were trying to decide what was the next thing they wanted to do. This is how one campaign ended up in a city I didn't have prepped. Since those moments are occasional, I personally wouldn't object to someone describing it as "less sandboxy" than some West Marches style campaign somewhere.

Maybe what I'm getting at, at least here, is that the sandboxy aspects may be less the focus of my game than someone else's, and it would seem reasonable to describe my game as "less sandboxy" than theirs. Is that clear?

Sure. I'm not saying there is no issue of difference, resemblance by degrees, etc. These don't mean there is a spectrum.

Some bread is cake-y. Some muffins are cup-cake-y. But there is no cake-bread-muffin spectrum.

I haven't looked up a dictionary or wikipedia, but it seems to me that a spectrum requires not just that some things resemble others, but that there be a single dimension of comparison (colour, in the literal case) which permits any exemplar of that dimension (eg any coloured thing) to be placed in a linear relationship, such that - in respect of the relevant dimension - it more closely resembles those on either side of it than any others on the spectrum.

Even if we focus on degree of authority over situation in RPGing I'm not persuaded there's a spectrum, because there are not exemplars, like colours, that can be "lined up" - to use more technical language there is the determinable (degree of authority) but no individual determinates (ie particular shades). Another example like this is loudness - of course noises vary in how loud they are, and we can even measure it, but that doesn't mean there is a spectrum of loudness, because different volumes don't themselves manifeset particular properties/qualities (unlike colours). In this respect loudness is more like brightness, not shade.

The reason I think this is of more than just pedantic interest is because reference to the so-called sandbox/railroad spectrum is a very frequent occurrence on these boards which paints a completely false picture of the range of possible approaches to RPGs, and in my view even to D&D.

In an absolute sandbox the DM just lays out the setting, sits back, and turns the players loose on it to find/create their own adventures if they can.

In an absolute railroad the players (and PCs) do exactly what the DM tells them to do, no variance allowed and with most if not all outcomes pre-ordained.

There's a clearly-visible spectrum between these two extremes

Not all differences are spectrums. I mean, when I look at my couch I can see that it's soft and comfortable to sit on. When I look at the bluestone rocks that edge my garden bed outside, I can see that they are hard and even sharp in places, and so not very comfortable to sit on. Thus have I discovered the couch-bluestone spectrum!

If we actually look at the process of play, what does turn the players loose mean? It doesn't mean they get to read through the GM's notes and write their own fiction that builds on those. It means that a particular approach is adopted to action resolution and scene framing, in which GM-authored backstory plays a role.

In the "absolute "railroad, GM-authored backstory is also there, but a different approach is adopted to scene framing and to (some) action resolution.

We can talk about that without needing to use metaphors and without having to posit meaningless "spectrums".

 

[Ovinomancer]

Only if you mangle how game theory defines infinite vs finite games.

You referred to game theory in a later post as well. I'm extremely curious about this game theory, where can I read more about it?

 

[pemerton]

On win-conditions: I'm open to the suggestion that some RPGing lacks win-conditions. Eg in the Cthulhu Dark one-shots I've run, I'm not sure there were win conditions, beyond perhaps a very generic success condition like bring things to a satisfactory resolution by the end of the session.

But I have certainly played RPGs with win conditions. Module X2 has a win-condition: escape from being trapped and return home.

My 4e D&D campaign had moments with win-conditions: winning a particular fight; succeeding at a particular skill challenge. We know the PCs have lost the fight if they all fall to zero hp. We know the PCs have won the skill challenge if they get N successes (for N = 4, 6, 8, 10 or 12) before 3 failures. Etc.

I think it can be interesting to think about how that 4e play differed from Cthulhu Dark. There is stuff to be said about that. But I don't see what the point is of insisting that D&D (or even RPGing as a whole) cannot have win conditions. That seems to be belied by some very common experiences.

 

[pemerton]

On "traditional" RPGs and how authority is distributed, I found the following in RM2/RMC Campaign Law while looking for the Influence/Interaction table that I posted not far upthread. The original publication date for this is 1984, I think. I'm quoting from pp 131-32 of the RM Classic version:

Ask each player about their desires for their character. Maintaining reason and play balance, attempt to incorporate them into their PC background. . . .

Discuss any family background, taking note of any adventures connected with family members. . . .

Discuss the early goals and activities of the PC.
• Adventures
• Schooling
• Language . . .

Be clear about things the player wishes to keep secret. . . .

Get clear any long or short-term goals each PC may have at the time the game begins. . . .

Allow for any common goal or goals that might keep them together. . . .

Based on the area and the PC group’s desires and stated goals, construct a variety of adventure options with which to start the campaign.​

Now, that's not Burning Wheel's system of player-authored Beliefs and robust scene-framing by the GM. But it's not "man with no name", GM has sole authorship over backstory either.

This is the sort of thing that makes me feel that some statements about what is the norm in "traditional" RPGs are exaggerated.

 

[overgeeked]

Note how its equally true with an edit to football, given this attempted pedantry.

You think football isn’t a specific game? Wow. Good luck.

 

[Ovinomancer]

You think football isn’t a specific game? Wow. Good luck.

You, um, completely missed his point, which wasn't this, and the attempted mockery is backfiring.