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

[Manbearcat]

For the record, I’ve run multiple 4e games 100 % No Myth Story Now (2 x 1-30, 1 x 1-10, 1 x 1-8).

No prep beyond communication between games to clarify player-authored Quests and clarify our accreting setting conceits.

Play just progressing as an outgrowth of situation framing > action declarations > mechanics > consequence > rinse/repeat.

4e is extremely amenable to this type of play.

 

[FrogReaver]

For the record, I’ve run multiple 4e games 100 % No Myth Story Now (2 x 1-30, 1 x 1-10, 1 x 1-8).

No prep beyond communication between games to clarify player-authored Quests and clarify our accreting setting conceits.

Play just progressing as an outgrowth of situation framing > action declarations > mechanics > consequence > rinse/repeat.

4e is extremely amenable to this type of play.

What mechanism in 4e keeps that playstyle from completely being DM fiat?

What differentiates that playstyle and a sandbox style?

 

[Manbearcat]

What mechanism in 4e keeps that playstyle from completely being DM fiat?

I think what you're asking is "what about 4e makes it not conducive to a GM just imposing a metaplot upon the game?"

A host of them:

1) The game is overwhelmingly table-facing and transparent. The more a game is table-facing and transparent, the more difficult it becomes to impose metaplot.

2) Conveying win conditions in combat and the way the mechanics robustly work to facilitate is a huge factor. To wit:

"You're on a big lake. The little girl and her father are on a flatboat fishing when they're attacked by a big kraken like monster with huge tentacles. The father is a Standard Soldier w/ x Defender abilities (show the players) and this 1xEncounter protection ability for his daughter. His daughter is a Minion with this "Get Tiny" At-Will ability that lets her escape trouble. The Tentacles are all Minions. The Monster is a Solo. If you are able to protect the daughter (and possibly the father) long enough to defeat the monster (ablate the Solo HPs while you protect the daughter and maybe father) or get them out of the lake (a Skill Challenge), then you succeed at saving the daughter and possibly father."

Subsequent situation framing will be contingent upon what happens on the lake:

Did they rescue the daughter?

Did they rescue the daughter and the father?

Did they rescue just the father?

Did they rescue no one?

Who is this father/daughter combo (perhaps a subsequent social conflict will render them important to player goals and either helpful or an adversary?...perhaps what happened on the lake will reorient the players' relationship with a group or an ideology that they were in a particular orientation toward prior to the lake's events?).

3) Skill Challenges (the conflict resolution mechanics + the GMing Principles that undergird play; Fail Forward, Intent/Goal Changing of the Situation (after each moment of action resolution), Honor Success (if they achieve their goal subsequent framing is constrained by that) are transparent in both machinery and ethos/technique.

4) Player-authored Quests and Theme/Paragon Path/Epic Destiny drive play.


Put that all together and its straight-forward.

* Its HARD to railroad a game. Its EASY to not. Its REWARDING to run a completely No Myth Story Now game.

* If its more difficult to railroad a game (particularly because of the intersection of 1 and 3 and 4 above) and rewarding and easier to run a No Myth Story Now game...why would someone do the opposite!

 

[FrogReaver]

I think what you're asking is "what about 4e makes it not conducive to a GM just imposing a metaplot upon the game?"

Not really.

What I am attempting to point out is that with no prep and no mechanism to rely on for determining how your improv should go, that ultimately you have nothing to base your in play GM decisions on - they are completely fiat. I question whether a gamestyle that is based on complete GM fiat can appropriately be called Story Now.

I'm also thinking that what D&D players call sandbox is often very similar to Story now (just with some added world background so that in game decisions aren't completely fiat.

2) Conveying win conditions in combat and the way the mechanics robustly work to facilitate is a huge factor. To wit:

"You're on a big lake. The little girl and her father are on a flatboat fishing when they're attacked by a big kraken like monster with huge tentacles. The father is a Standard Soldier w/ x Defender abilities (show the players) and this 1xEncounter protection ability for his daughter. His daughter is a Minion with this "Get Tiny" At-Will ability that lets her escape trouble. The Tentacles are all Minions. The Monster is a Solo. If you are able to protect the daughter (and possibly the father) long enough to defeat the monster (ablate the Solo HPs while you protect the daughter and maybe father) or get them out of the lake (a Skill Challenge), then you succeed at saving the daughter and possibly father."

But that doesn't change the fact that it's complete DM fiat to improvise a combat that looks like this as opposed to some other way.

3) Skill Challenges (the conflict resolution mechanics + the GMing Principles that undergird play; Fail Forward, Intent/Goal Changing of the Situation (after each moment of action resolution), Honor Success (if they achieve their goal subsequent framing is constrained by that) are transparent in both machinery and ethos/technique.

If skill challenges are an answer to my criticism your not doing a good job of explaining how.

4) Player-authored Quests and Theme/Paragon Path/Epic Destiny drive play.

This one in particular sounds very sandboxy to me.

If your saying 4e allowed story now and this is one of the reasons, i'm starting to wonder if maybe all sandbox play in D&D qualifies as Story Now using your definitions.

 

[Manbearcat]

What I am attempting to point out is that with no prep and no mechanism to rely on for determining how your improv should go, that ultimately you have nothing to base your in play GM decisions on - they are completely fiat. I question whether a gamestyle that is based on complete GM fiat can appropriately be called Story Now.

I'm also thinking that what D&D players call sandbox is often very similar to Story now (just with some added world background so that in game decisions aren't completely fiat.



But that doesn't change the fact that it's complete DM fiat to improvise a combat that looks like this as opposed to some other way.


If skill challenges are an answer to my criticism your not doing a good job of explaining how.


This one in particular sounds very sandboxy to me.

If your saying 4e allowed story now and this is one of the reasons, i'm starting to wonder if maybe all sandbox play in D&D qualifies as Story Now using your definitions.

Here is what your thoughts above are missing:

Let us say that at the apex of the "fiat decision tree" (lets call it), I have a creative menu of 1000 possible items. Complete GM fiat (no constraints, no boundaries, no player say and no system say...ALL GM SAY).

1) We have a constraining premise of play.

That creative menu of 1000 possible items is now winnowed to 200 items.

2) We have table-facing and transparent machinery which further winnows a GM's decision-tree (I can't choose framing and action resolution results and consequences that are violations of this stuff).

That creative menu of 200 possible items is now winnowed to 50 items.

3) I have player-authored Quests, Theme, Paragon Path, Epic Destinies and prior fiction which all must be honored as the volitional force of play.

That creative menu of 50 possible items is now winnowed down to 25 items.

4) I have a game with clear principles (cut to the action, fail forward, follow the fiction and change the situation based on goal of conflict) and tools/techniques for those principles to integrate with all of the stuff above.

That creative menu of 25 possible items is now winnowed down to 5 items.



That is BS math, but that is the reality of it. In any given instance of play, your GMing decision-tree (in situation framing and in consequence adjudication is going to be dramatically winnowed down from MAXIMUM FIAT because of all of the constraining factors of the system which winnow your cognitive workspace and focus your creativity to a handful (ish) of "play-honoring framing and outcomes."

You then just follow that stuff and keep play orbiting around Quests/Themes/Paths/Destinies.

Its simple.

And its HARD to do the opposite (impose metaplot despite all of the decision-tree constraining/winnowing aspects of system).

So...again...why would you?

There are games that make it very easy to impose metaplot and consistently situate play in that MAXIMUM GM FIAT space. 4e isn't one of them. So play one of those games (this is where edition warriors say YEAH I KNOW WE DID)!

 

[prabe]

If your saying 4e allowed story now and this is one of the reasons, i'm starting to wonder if maybe all sandbox play in D&D qualifies as Story Now using your definitions.

I don't think it can, because the definitive "this is a sandbox" thing is "the GM establish the world before play and runs it during play" and the definitive "this is Story Now" thing is "the GM doesn't establish anything until it needs to emerge during play."

I suspect what @Manbearcat did was have the players define (or help define) the world-parts relevant to their Quests, as part of defining the Quests, when the Quests emerged in play. Whether that's something 4E encourages or merely allows I don't know: I never played it.

EDIT: Ninja'd. You can compare my guess to what @Manbearcat described.

 

[Manbearcat]

I don't think it can, because the definitive "this is a sandbox" thing is "the GM establish the world before play and runs it during play" and the definitive "this is Story Now" thing is "the GM doesn't establish anything until it needs to emerge during play."

I suspect what @Manbearcat did was have the players define (or help define) the world-parts relevant to their Quests, as part of defining the Quests, when the Quests emerged in play. Whether that's something 4E encourages or merely allows I don't know: I never played it.

EDIT: Ninja'd. You can compare my guess to what @Manbearcat described.

Yessuh, that is pretty much it.

Bog standard 4e.

* Make characters (Class > Race > Background > Theme > Quests).

* Campaign Theme corresponds with that (134 DMG). We basically just used the 4e conflicts/premise/theme straight from the books (the PoL stuff is laden with conflict).

* Sketch a rough map of the immediate locale that we start in and leave blanks to flesh things out. There is a PoL map that we mostly used (Fallcrest I think is the opening town?). DMG 151:

You don't have to of course (make a map that has a lot of stuff on it before play), but even if you do its a good idea to keep it sketchy. As the campaign progresses, you'll find that you want certain terrain features in specific places, or an element of the campaign story will lead you to fill in details of the map in ways you couldn't have anticipated at the start of the campaign.

Mind you, this preceded Apocalypse World by a few years and Dungeon World a few years more than that!

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I don't really see how 4e mechanics help or hinder with any of that. You could do the same in 5e if you wanted.

 

[Lanefan]

2) Conveying win conditions in combat and the way the mechanics robustly work to facilitate is a huge factor. To wit:

"You're on a big lake. The little girl and her father are on a flatboat fishing when they're attacked by a big kraken like monster with huge tentacles. The father is a Standard Soldier w/ x Defender abilities (show the players) and this 1xEncounter protection ability for his daughter. His daughter is a Minion with this "Get Tiny" At-Will ability that lets her escape trouble. The Tentacles are all Minions. The Monster is a Solo. If you are able to protect the daughter (and possibly the father) long enough to defeat the monster (ablate the Solo HPs while you protect the daughter and maybe father) or get them out of the lake (a Skill Challenge), then you succeed at saving the daughter and possibly father."

Why on earth would you ever give all that bolded technical info in the narration of the scene when the players-as-PCs in the fiction would have, at first, no way of knowing any of it? (unless you're presenting the scenario to the players as an isolated one-off connected to nothing, in a manner akin to a chess puzzle "here's the position, Black to mate in three moves, figure out how")

Subsequent situation framing will be contingent upon what happens on the lake:

Did they rescue the daughter?

Did they rescue the daughter and the father?

Did they rescue just the father?

Did they rescue no one?

Who is this father/daughter combo (perhaps a subsequent social conflict will render them important to player goals and either helpful or an adversary?...perhaps what happened on the lake will reorient the players' relationship with a group or an ideology that they were in a particular orientation toward prior to the lake's events?).

3) Skill Challenges (the conflict resolution mechanics + the GMing Principles that undergird play; Fail Forward, Intent/Goal Changing of the Situation (after each moment of action resolution), Honor Success (if they achieve their goal subsequent framing is constrained by that) are transparent in both machinery and ethos/technique.

4) Player-authored Quests and Theme/Paragon Path/Epic Destiny drive play.


Put that all together and its straight-forward.

* Its HARD to railroad a game. Its EASY to not. Its REWARDING to run a completely No Myth Story Now game.

* If its more difficult to railroad a game (particularly because of the intersection of 1 and 3 and 4 above) and rewarding and easier to run a No Myth Story Now game...why would someone do the opposite!

Devil's advocate time:

Why would someone do the opposite? In this example because, say, the daughter has some intended future relevance and thus this encounter is designed to facilitate her first contact with the PCs so they remember her later, rather than see her get killed off by fluke. Or because the whole thing is a staged encounter with the predetermined outcome of having the Kraken drag the PCs down to its underground lair, where the real adventure awaits; the dad-and-daughter are there merely to draw the PCs into the scene. Or because this is a completely random encounter that has no real relevance to anything other than offering the PCs a chance to either be heroic or die trying. Or because the father is in fact a player's new PC and this is how he meets and joins the party. Or ........ (I could go on for ages, but the point is made)

And this is all, I think, largely edition-agnostic in principle; though the specific mechanics may differ from one to another.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Why on earth would you ever give all that bolded technical info in the narration of the scene when the players-as-PCs in the fiction would have, at first, no way of knowing any of it? (unless you're presenting the scenario to the players as an isolated one-off connected to nothing, in a manner akin to a chess puzzle "here's the position, Black to mate in three moves, figure out how")

It leans heavily into 4e's strengths as gamey tactical tabletop MMO. Some people loved that, others loathed it.

What that has to do with 'story now' or railroading I have no idea.