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

[Crimson Longinus]

It seems to me that there are multiple things going on here that could cause problems.

Sure. That was kinda the point.

First, the GM is using pre-authored notes as an important component of action resolution - eg the presence of the sister in the AoE of the fireball - but does not want that prep to be binding.

Second, the GM is bringing high-stakes material into play - again, the presence of the sister in the scene - but is not revealing those stakes to the players - who therefore risk killing the sister without knowing it.

Sure. But I think both of these would be perfectly normal things that could occur in typical D&D. My of solution would definitely just have the sister be a quantum cultist until revealed, so accidentally killing her is impossible. However, that is something some people feel is objectionable.

Third, the player is performing action declarations, like fireballing in the general vicinity of where they expect the sister to be, and wants a guaranteed outcome of a reunion with the sister.

Different players. And also again a situation that I feel could realistically easily occur.

No wonder it's a fiasco!

There are really straightforward GMing techniques that can avoid (1) and (2), and also encourage players to reduce the sort of hold that is found in (3). One is to prioritise situation over backstory.

Sure. And at least in context of D&D some people feel that doing so is objectionable illusionism. Immutable backstory must exist. I don't agree wit this, but it is commonly expressed sentiment.

Another is to use the AW framework of soft moves before hard ones. In this example, a soft move could be anything from a sign or clue that the sister has joined the cult, to actually catching a glimpse of her face beneath the cowl of her hood. Then the players would know what is at stake when the cult discovers them.

Which may work depending on the situation. Sometimes it might appear as blatant softballing.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It's not mere semantics, in my view.

Every now and then I go running or cycling with a friend. The point is that is an enjoyable experience. We are not entertaining one another.

If you doing it together makes it more enjoyable, then yes you are.

There are many GM advice books that advise the GM on how to be an effective entertainer (eg funny voices, elaborate descriptions, etc). When I say that I don't play RPGs to entertain or be entertained, I am rejecting that advice.

Evocative descriptions and 'funny' voices are about creating immersive environment. I don't understand why you wouldn't want that. I really don't get it, it seriously sounds like you want RPGs to be bland, which I doubt you actually mean.

 

[Campbell]

On one hand I get what you're saying but on the other hand I feel that RPGs, (at least how I like them) are pretty drastically different from, say, poker. It is group improvisational storytelling/theatre, which I feel kinda requires certain level of being in tune with what the others are feeling and what they're going for.

We're worlds apart in preferences here from my perspective. What I value about roleplaying games are the way they combine the fun of acting/directing, watching a good film or TV show, and playing games into a new activity that has parts of what I love about each but feels different from any of them alone. The proportions and priority differ from game to game, but generally I look for the following:

1. Heightened emotional experience. What Nordic LARP calls bleed. That feeling of inhabiting a character in the moment, feeling what they feel, and acting as they would act. Making things feel as real as possible.
2. The thrill of watching a narrative unfold in motion. Being fans of these characters and feeling the tension when we are not sure what will happen to them. This is something I want to be shared with the whole group.
3. The thrill of mastering a game. Getting good basically. That feeling that over time I am becoming more skilled and more capable. Making the play of the game. Working together with (or occasionally against) other players to achieve things in game that are hard won.

For me storytelling is not really something I desire. We need compelling situation for those heightened emotional experiences and watching the narrative unfold, but it's in service to those emotional moments and good gameplay. World building, scenario design, character creation, et. al. are all in service to these three masters for me. It's about that visceral experience, being fans of the characters (often including some NPCs when I am a player), and strong game design with ludonarrative harmony to me.

There is a strong connection to improvised theater, but not Improv with a capitol I. Like any creative endeavor it does require great creative relationships and strong communication.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

We're worlds apart here from my perspective.

I don't think so.

What I value about roleplaying games are the way they combine the fun of acting/directing, watching a good film or TV show, and playing games into a new activity that has parts of what I love about each but feels different from any of them alone. The proportions and priority differ from game to game, but generally I look for the following:

1. Heightened emotional experience. What Nordic LARP calls bleed. That feeling of inhabiting a character in the moment, feeling what they feel, and acting as they would act. Making things feel as real as possible.
2. The thrill of watching a narrative unfold in motion. Being fans of these characters and feeling the tension when we are not sure what will happen to them. This is something I want to be shared with the whole group.
3. The thrill of mastering a game. Getting good basically. That feeling that over time I am becoming more skilled and more capable. Making the play of the game. Working together with (or occasionally against) other players to achieve things in game that are hard won.

For me storytelling is not really something I desire. We need compelling situation for those heightened emotional experiences and watching the narrative unfold, but it's in service to those emotional moments and good gameplay. World building, scenario design, character creation, et. al. are all in service to these three masters for me. It's about that visceral experience, being fans of the characters (often including some NPCs when I am a player), and strong game design with ludonarrative harmony to me.

I fully agree with your 1. mostly with 2. Not really caring much about 3.

But as you already allude to, it is compelling situations that makes the others possible. That's the storytelling part. And I feel (that at least in game like D&D) GM has a lot of responsibility to make that happen. But not just them alone. All players ultimately contribute it, every player can use their character to help create situations that resonate with other characters.

I don't know, this is again those moments where I understand what you're saying and still don't. You often say things like 'I don't care for X' then describe doing X. X being storytelling in this instance.

There is a strong of improvised theater, but not Improv with a capitol I which I am no fan of.

I am afraid I don't understand the distinction you're trying to make.

 

[Lanefan]

Question for you:

If you're that Ranger on that boat and you want to protect that little girl and you have the suite of following two abilities (I'm not going to put any numbers to it, just theme), you don't know anything about the HP/abilities of the little girl and the tentacles, how do you make an informed decision:

COVERING FIRE - You buy time for your target to move nearby. Any mook that approaches the target you protect or attacks them in melee is slain.

KILL THE THING - Do a bunch of damage to the big thing!

This assumes that I a) want to protect the little girl (very likely) and b) feel at least vaguely confident I've got enough going for me that turning the Kraken's attention on to myself isn't just going to be suicide. But OK, let's say both a) and b) are true, and proceed.

If you don't know any of following:

(a) the tentacles are classified as mooks

(b) the mook tentacles don't share the monster's HP pool

(c) the little girl's father is actually capable of protecting here (mechanically capable...not just I'm a dad with an oar capable)

(d) how cover rules work at all (if you do COVERING FIRE, she's either moving to her father for protection or taking cover behind the fishing gear)

(e) that the girl is also a mook (therefore guaranteed 1 hit 1 kill vs perhaps having 4 hp and dealing with a tentacle that does 1d6+1 damage so she survives on a 2 or less)

Re d): if I'm an archer I'd assume that in the fiction I'd have an idea of how cover works, though maybe not in a hard-numeric sense. In my game there's also the complication where shooting into melee carries significant risk of hitting the wrong target (mechanically: a rather large to-hit penalty with a miss-by-that-much meaning I hit someone else in the melee), which I-as-archer would already be somewhat aware of; so I'd have to try for tentacles that weren't already engaged with the boaters.

If you know none of that stuff...how are you acting as an informed agent?

I'm not. And that's the point: I shouldn't be - yet.

If I've never seen a Kraken before, I have to go by trial and error. Here, if I want to start with covering fire I might put one shot into a tentacle and one into the body and see how the Kraken reacts; meanwhile yelling up a storm in order to attract the attention of all involved and in hopes of drawing the Kraken away from the boat. If my one shot knocks off a tentacle then I'm on to something, and can focus on picking off tentacles until the boaters are safe; while if my tentacle shot does nothing but the body shot makes it shudder then I know to focus on the body and just hope the boaters can hold out long enough.

In either case I can yell my findings to the man in the boat, if he hasn't already reached the same conclusions. Conversely, if he finds after a round or two that the tentacles come off with ease he might yell the same to me. (somewhere along the line he might also let me know he thinks he can hold the Kraken off for a moment, but that's probably all)

The one additional piece of information I'd ask from you-as-DM, as I don't recall seeing it noted (though it might have been), is how fast my raft moves; i.e. how long would it take me to get into melee range were I to paddle instead of shoot. If I could get there within ten seconds or so I'd have a very sticky decision to make - to paddle or to shoot for the first round - but if I was a minute's paddling away then shooting would really be my only option and hope the Kraken came to me.

How are you navigating that decision-point? In the menu of possible moves you can make based on inferences or meta-inferences (eg how HPs work or how genre tropes should impact play), there are plenty of ways this could go wrong.

Of course there are, and that's the point: in the fiction there's also lots of ways this could go wrong, and I don't at all mind having "it goes wrong" as a possible - maybe even probable - result in a scene like this.

If you don't have those crucial mechanical inputs (tentacles are mooks and as long as you hit they're donezo and you've bought time for the father/little girl/you to get to the raft), how are you not mostly flying blind?

Thing is, I am - and should be! - largely flying blind to begin with other than the obvious fact that those two in the boat are in a world o' trouble if I don't help out - and maybe even if I do. I learn some of the mechanics in soft form (e.g. the tentacles come off easily, the man in the boat knows one end of a sword from the other, the little girl's good at staying out of the way, etc.) on the fly as the fight progresses, just like my PC would in the fiction; but I never learn the hard-numeric mechanics.

The agency-arresting prospects become significant and many/most decision-point become fraught with potential EFF ME AND THE LITTLE GIRL outcomes.

Exactly as expected, only I don't feel my agency has been arrested in the slightest.

I neither expect nor want, in a scene like this, any sort of guarantee that whatever I do to begin with will be the right thing; as I've no way of knowing what the "right thing" is until I've had a chance for some trial and error. Hey, maybe I get lucky and get it right the first time. Maybe not, and eventually all that's left are some rowboat splinters and a stuffed doll floating on the lake. Them's the breaks.

But assuming I've any system mastery at all, giving me all the mechanics pretty much tells me the answer "Here's the optimal solution!" before I've even had a chance to ask the question. I find no fun in that.

 

[soviet]

It's not mere semantics, in my view.

Every now and then I go running or cycling with a friend. The point is that is an enjoyable experience. We are not entertaining one another.

There are many GM advice books that advise the GM on how to be an effective entertainer (eg funny voices, elaborate descriptions, etc). When I say that I don't play RPGs to entertain or be entertained, I am rejecting that advice.

I feel the same. It seems to me that there are, roughly, two models of GMing being discussed.

In 'GM as entertainer' it is the GM's role to put on a show. To entertain the group. To service that objective, a little stagecraft - fudging, illusionism, 'nudging' - is understandable, maybe at times necessary. An advantage of this method is that the theatrics of the game and the coherency of the story can be stronger. A disadvantage (for some) is that it can push the players closer to being an audience - there to ooh and ahh and maybe chew the scenery but unable to fundamentally drive the plot.

I prefer the second model, which casts the GM as something closer to a facilitator. When I GM I want to be surprised by what happens. I don't want to tell a story to the players, I want to share in a story-like experience with them. I will do a bunch of prep but that's to create the raw material and situations for them to engage with. I will roll in the open and state my DCs and also be clear about the stakes of what we're rolling for. This has a risk of creating an anticlimax, a too-easy victory, or a disastrous failure, yes. But it also means that when outcomes are dramatically satisfying (which is still most of the time) it feels much more real and exciting.

I think the 'let's enjoy a bicycle journey together' idea is a closer description of this mode of play. I'm not entertaining you in an active sort of way, we're doing something fun together and trusting that entertainment will result organically.

 

[prabe]

I think the 'let's enjoy a bicycle journey together' idea is a closer description of this mode of play. I'm not entertaining you in an active sort of way, we're doing something fun together and trusting that entertainment will result organically.

Or if "entertainment" somehow seems like the wrong word, whatever pleasure you derive from the hobby.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I feel the same. It seems to me that there are, roughly, two models of GMing being discussed.

In 'GM as entertainer' it is the GM's role to put on a show. To entertain the group. To service that objective, a little stagecraft - fudging, illusionism, 'nudging' - is understandable, maybe at times necessary. An advantage of this method is that the theatrics of the game and the coherency of the story can be stronger. A disadvantage (for some) is that it can push the players closer to being an audience - there to ooh and ahh and maybe chew the scenery but unable to fundamentally drive the plot.

I prefer the second model, which casts the GM as something closer to a facilitator. When I GM I want to be surprised by what happens. I don't want to tell a story to the players, I want to share in a story-like experience with them. I will do a bunch of prep but that's to create the raw material and situations for them to engage with. I will roll in the open and state my DCs and also be clear about the stakes of what we're rolling for. This has a risk of creating an anticlimax, a too-easy victory, or a disastrous failure, yes. But it also means that when outcomes are dramatically satisfying (which is still most of the time) it feels much more real and exciting.

I think the 'let's enjoy a bicycle journey together' idea is a closer description of this mode of play. I'm not entertaining you in an active sort of way, we're doing something fun together and trusting that entertainment will result organically.

Thing is, I don't feel that in practice the difference is that clear cut. I believe most games are some sort of blend of the two, I know mine are. It is mostly the latter, but at the same time I when describing an flavouring things I certainly do my best to make the emergent story as entertaining as I can. And if it seem that things stall, I see no harm in a little force push to get them moving again.

 

[Xetheral]

(incidentally, this makes me realize again why I have trouble with Edward's frameworks, to the extent that I've encountered them, because they seem most interested and keen to separating story now from not-story now, even though they are presented as neutral and universal.)

Your sense is well-founded, according to Edwards himself! In this post he says that story before and story after as terms were "only posed... as dysfunctional failures of Story Now".

While I appreciate the self-awareness required for him to identify his motivation in originally proposing the terms, he seems (in the linked post anyway) utterly unconcerned that he effectively was cloaking a normative argument in the guise of neutral analysis. That unfortunate history can make it difficult to distinguish between those who use the terms intending to convey the originally intended normative context or instead are using the terms in the neutral, descriptive context that Edwards said he "is not pleased by".

 

[Ovinomancer]

Immersion is one of those terms that seems to mean very different things to different people. To me, it means the real world dissolving and the game world taking its place. And in my game worlds, combat with nameless horrors is not a cooly deliberative endeavour. It’s desperate, wild, and terrifying. It happens in real-time (players get 10 seconds to declare an action before I move on), and the players rarely even know what it is their PCs are fighting, let alone their exact likelihood of hitting, special defences, etc. They may learn those things as they fight, but they’re not data stored in a library.

I understand that’s not everyone’s cup of tea. But I have shelves full of tactical, analytical, number-crunching boardgames. And I play RPGs for entirely different reasons, and to engage entirely different parts of my mind. I’m comfortable calling that “immersion.”

Who said anything about a cooly deliberative endeavor? The heroes in the story know how horrific the nameless horrors are, they can judge their chances and that things are desperate, they know their capabilities and pit them against the horrors. What they don't do is stare at the monstrousity, think that this is another opportunity to know nothing at all and figure it out on the go.

This is why I posted that Mushrooming is not immersive -- it actually breaks the character out of the fiction and put the character in the place of the player, not vice-versa. Things can easily be horrific, terrifying, fraught and uncertain even when the hero can look at a horror and accurately judge their ability against what they see. It's not the being a Mushroom that's immersive here, it's the fact that you know things and it's still horrific and very bad.

This is why I deployed escapism vice immersion. The idea isn't to get into the character's headspace, where they're competent and know they abilities because they live it and also live and die by being able to judge situations against their abilities (pro climbers don't look at a cliff and just yeet it because they can't tell anything, and neither do pro fighters). Instead, what's happening is that the player is seeking an experience and forcing the character into the player's lack of knowledge. It's exactly opposite, and the player is seeking escapism into a kind of "wait to see what happens and be surprised" state rather than actually trying to immerse themselves in what a seasoned campaigner should know about a siutation. The emotion connection -- feeling scared when your character is scared -- has almost nothing to do with this, and can be accomplished without Mushrooming.