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

[Manbearcat]

Yeah.

Also, I was way, way terser than your post deserved, and probably bordered on flippant. You didn't deserve that--apologies. I could (should) have put that post together differently.

For yourself and for any onlookers to our exchange who may have thought you were being flippant:

Thank you for your acknowledgement and your apology.

However, I didn't see your post as flippant at all. I hope anyone else reading it gave you the benefit of the doubt and didn't think you were being a jerk. But if they did, they should check those feelings. You just type that way (matter-of-factly) sometimes. Its no big deal. We're friends. All good.

I think we've probably squeezed all the juice out of this lemon that we can so last word on this!

 

[Campbell]

Let's take it out of D&D and look at something that is arguably very similar on a functional level. Do MMOs like World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy 14 have win conditions? Like D&D they also extend pretty much infinitely though you might have to wait for more prep work to be done.

 

[Maxperson]

Honestly...the more I think about this I see an interesting correlation. I'm DEEPLY FOCUSED on recapitulating and analyzing micro-play-excerpts. I post my own often (with my own analysis and asking for others' analysis). I ask for similar play excerpts often yet its a virtual impossibility to get almost anyone on ENWorld to_actually_post and anaylyze a digestible excerpt of their play. Its impossible to get it! Even when they try to post it, it in no way resembles something concrete that is analyzable!

That is fascinating!

My guess is there is a correlation there!

For my part, I have ADHD so it's nearly impossible for me to remember my experiences in that much detail. I can only give general overviews of my experiences. It's why I generally don't respond to @pemerton when he asks for those kinds of details. I just don't have them to give.

 

[Aldarc]

If I play a D&D game of Curse of Strahd, and we defeat Strahd and the game ends, is this beating a game of D&D?

Because, as I've pointed out soooo many times now, there's this rhetorical sleight of hand that occurs where people say you can't beat D&D. But that's replacing an actual, realized, instanced game of D&D with the abstract concept of D&D. You can't win football, either, because football is an abstract concept. You can win a game of football. You can also win, as in overall, macro-level win, a game of D&D.

The argument usually then goes, "but you can just add an new goal to the instanced game of D&D." And this is trying to introduce some concept of perpetuity or infinite series to show that something can always be added so that not everything is won. But all games end, all games are finite, so, at some point, this series stops, and has to. So, this argument fails eventually because a stopping point is reached. And then you can evaluate all of the points along the way.

And this is all dealing at the macro-level. It's intentionally ignoring that the actual game of D&D (or any RPG) is entirely built from stacked win/loss situations.

Maybe you should call the spade for what it is: it's 'equivocation.'

 

[prabe]

Let's take it out of D&D and look at something that is arguably very similar on a functional level. Do MMOs like World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy 14 have win conditions? Like D&D they also extend pretty much infinitely though you might have to wait for more prep work to be done.

Aren't those more like playing D&D (or a D&D-alike) through an adventure or adventure path? Where the end of the adventure/path is the end of that story? That may apply more to FF14 than WoW.

 

[FrogReaver]

Let's take it out of D&D and look at something that is arguably very similar on a functional level. Do MMOs like World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy 14 have win conditions? Like D&D they also extend pretty much infinitely though you might have to wait for more prep work to be done.

They have encounters that can be won, but the game itself - I don’t think it can be won. That’s interesting.

 

[chaochou]

So I’m going to make it simple. When someone says you can’t win D&D, saying you can win an encounter in d&d doesn’t disprove that claim.

In general, saying you can win at X in d&d doesn’t prove you can win d&d.

So I'm going to make it simple. When someone says you can't win at football, saying you can win a football match doesn't disprove that claim.

In general saying you can win at x in football doesn't prove you can win at football.

 

[Manbearcat]

Alright, I'm going to be a weird and copy my own post and then put some more thoughts out there for folks to respond to.

4) Dogs in the Vineyard - Your backstory initiation scene (the situation is player-authored and the GM plays the antagonism/obstacle) involved you getting picked on (again) and your goal for the scene is "I won't let my temper get the best of me so that I end up beating yet another initiate into an inch of their life." You fail and therefore gain the 1d6 Trait "I can't lick this awful temper." When you deploy it in conflicts its apt to help you when you can use it, but its certainly a much better chance to earn you Fallout than a d8 or d10.

In the course of play, you lose some conflicts and therefore take Fallout. You throttle back that d6 Trait to a d4 which makes it a significantly complicating feature of your life. When you deploy it, it will help you because you've got an increased dice pool, but you're more apt to get Fallout (negative affects to your character that affect them thematically and their attendant PC build structure). Now your Temper is really causing you problems.

In a conflict in a Town, you're able to use that Trait in a social conflict, not escalate to violence, and win the social conflict (you get what you want without having to go to fists/knives/guns). Between Towns is Reflection. That Trait goes back to d6 because it helped you.

Rince, repeat in another Town. Now its a d8 (a major asset).

Win Con? No? Ok...

Rince, repeat another Town. Now its a d10.

You've mastered your temper and its an asset to your life as a Dog.

Win Con now?

Alright.

So see what I've written above? Your seminal background conflict (where you authored the situation) was about your temper getting the best of you (and therefore making your effort as both a human and "One of God's Chosen Watchdogs" much more difficult).

It got worse before it got better.

Then it got much better. You're finally in a position to not just control your temper, but to harness it to help you. Its kind of like Luke and the Dark Side in Star Wars.

However, there is no guarantee that this relationship persists. Like an addict, you may fall right back off the wagon. Next Fallout or Reflection might throttle back that d10 for your Temper Trait. Maybe it goes back to d4?

What if play ends that way (with a d4 Temper Gets the Best of Me Trait)? Did you lose that win from earlier? Though your triumph wasn't permanent, was it meaningless?

I don't think so. At all. It mattered. It mattered to play. It mattered to how I perceived this character. Honestly, the triumph amidst the ultimate loss may have made that fleeting win more substantial...more compelling.

And then there is the other reality that getting Temper Got the Best of Me to d10 may have been huge for other conflicts and trajectories of play. Maybe you ultimately didn't lick that temper (at the end of play it was a d4). HOWEVER, your momentary wins allowed you to master your temper (in game that means deploying that collection of d10s during conflicts) sufficient to win other conflicts and profoundly affect your life as a Dog and the lives of "the flock" and/or your war on Sin and/or your effort to uphold The Faith and/or to redeem your friend/parent/chaplain/ancestor. Or maybe just to successfully make the dangerous journey into the mountain redoubt of The Mountain Folk to hand over your well-worn and nearly ruined Coat to the Mountain Folk woman who made it for you before you ultimately retire (a show of love and synthesis between you and her and The Faith and The Mountain Folk finding a common path forward).

There are lots of ways that temporary d10 Temper Trait could dramatically impact play, despite the fact that you may have ultimately lost to it (maybe you were a d6 but got Fallout sufficient in that last effort to return the Coat she made for you that its now a d4 and you have to retire because "you just aren't good with people no more.").

I don't accept (and I really don't like) the all-or-nothing framing of "if your Temper Trait isn't d10 at the end of play, then you lost."

And its not about some nebulous concept of "fun." It concretely mattered to play that you got that d10 Temper Trait...even if it was just fleeting.

 

[hawkeyefan]

What's the relationship between the task at hand, and the goal? And also, how long does it take for the player to deploy their resource?

Eg if the goal is rob a bank, and the task is break into the safe from underneath without being detected, and the resources are an extensive equipment list that includes shaped charges of all sorts, sonic dampeners, diamond-tipped drills, etc, and the deployment of those resources is two hours of planning and discussion about how the job can be pulled off, then maybe I've just described a successful session of play in a slightly futuristic (eg cyberpunkish) RPG.

If the goal is overthrow Lolth and the task is make Lolth cease to exist with a word and the resource is a Wish spell, then that probably seems like pretty boring play! (Hence why high level D&D has such a countermeasures/rock-paper-scissors feel to it.)

I hope that's the beginning of an answer to your question.

Absolutely. It seems that based on the few responses that people are mostly okay with such abilities conceptually (with the exception of @Lanefan ) but that they expect them to be either smaller in scope or perhaps limited in use in some way.

We had the previous examples that have come up…the Folk Hero feature and the Ranger’s Natural Explorer ability. So I was thinking of those.

But I think spells would also often qualify here. Many fall short of auto-success by allowing a saving throw or similar roll, but many others are not. Many of them grant a player the ability to establish facts about the game that lead to success. As you point out with Wish, though, very often if the ability is deemed too strong, it’s mitigated in some way, or the GM is given wiggle room to somehow subvert or thwart the attempt.

It’s interesting to see where folks’ lines are on this.

I personally quite like things like Rustic Hospitality and Natural Explorer. I like when the players can just say what their character does, and under the right circumstances, it just happens. They just win succeed.

For me, I prefer when they’re rooted in interaction with NPCs and or exploration of the world. That’s probably because I think those two areas of D&D 5E are left mostly to the GM.

But your Lolth example is interesting given much of the conversation here in the thread. Let’s say that a Wish spell could erase Lolth from existence. I feel like most folks here would object to that. But why? Hard to imagine what issue they may take if they are also arguing that there’s no end to D&D. So Lolth’s gone….just do more D&D.

 

[prabe]

@Manbearcat

The ways in which you're talking about gaining control of your temper there sound like story things to me. That doesn't mean there aren't mechanics there--that's how TRPGs generate story--but you can look at it as a narrative arc as much as wins/losses, IMO, and for me the narrative matters because generating it is why I play.