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

[Crimson Longinus]

On second thought, there's little point in engaging someone that starts by labeling you someone engaged in quasi-religious revelation. That so many points are just way off-base doesn't make it better.

It might be good to be aware, that this is how you've come across. Several people here (me included) have made that observation. You sound like a person who has found the faith and thinks that issue just is that everyone else hasn't studied the holy book hard enough and if they do, they too will see the light.

 

[Numidius]

So what on earth this has to do with the point I was trying to actually make? Did I suggest that the GM literally shows the player a film?

Ah ah! Not really. But since you're asking, I'll just add that lots of visuals limit my imagination and immersion at the table. Half my group uses voices, the other half not FWIW

 

[pemerton]

Sure, the situation is important, but I think it works together with the presentation. At least to me presentation matters a lot if we want to to get straight to the feels like @Campbell describes. It's the difference between watching a movie with all the music, actors, lightning etc and just reading the script.

I'm not sure about @Numidius's comment on words vs images; but I think I'm on board with @soviet's remark about audience vs contributor.

What makes the situation compelling is its content - especially its relational content vis-a-vis the PC I am playing; because this is where the invitation comes to action declaration.

I think that the idea of presentation, performance and entertainment is more about getting caught up in the fiction as if it were a story (like a book or film) rather than getting caught up in the fiction as a participant.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I sometimes get a strong sense of being preached at, or evangelized to, by some of the story-now crew around here; so it's interesting you'd say this.

The evangelizing is part of why I push back against it; as I push back whenever someone tries to preach at me even if I might otherwise agree with their viewpoint.

Interesting. Do you not think that the way you promote your play could be viewed this way at all? And, if so, do you think that you're actively engaged in evangelizing your play?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I'm not sure about @Numidius's comment on words vs images; but I think I'm on board with @soviet's remark about audience vs contributor.

What makes the situation compelling is its content - especially its relational content vis-a-vis the PC I am playing; because this is where the invitation comes to action declaration.

I think that the idea of presentation, performance and entertainment is more about getting caught up in the fiction as if it were a story (like a book or film) rather than getting caught up in the fiction as a participant.

This seems like such a bizarre dichotomy to me. I see these as things that support rather than oppose each other. Does the GM describing environnements evocatively or trying to portray NPCs vividly somehow detract from your ability to engage with the content? I’d think it would rather enhance it!

 

[prabe]

This seems like such a bizarre dichotomy to me. I see these as things that support rather than oppose each other. Does the GM describing environnements evocatively or trying to portray NPCs vividly somehow detract from your ability to engage with the content? I’d think it would rather enhance it!

It might depend. More description of the environment won't make the situation engaging if there's nothing there to engage with, and if there's the emotional engagement that I think @pemerton is looking for, vivid description might get in the way, if nothing else as like a pacing thing.

I say this as someone who occasionally describes scenes in detail (and who occasionally doesn't).

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It might depend. More description of the environment won't make the situation engaging if there's nothing there to engage with, and if there's the emotional engagement that I think @pemerton is looking for, vivid description might get in the way, if nothing else as like a pacing thing.

I say this as someone who occasionally describes scenes in detail (and who occasionally doesn't).

I pay attention to pacing a lot, but pacing definitely is a part of presentation.

 

[Ovinomancer]

It might be good to be aware, that this is how you've come across. Several people here (me included) have made that observation. You sound like a person who has found the faith and thinks that issue just is that everyone else hasn't studied the holy book hard enough and if they do, they too will see the light.

Sure, I mean, if that's what you need. I mean, it's not like I continuously say that neither approach is better, but that they offer different things and actually knowing both can help people find ways to play that enhance their experience. It's not like I continuously say I run and ply and love 5e and do not use story-now techniques there, in fact I think they do not work at all there and instead play in a very Trad way. It's not like I play other games, like Aliens, and have arguments with other posters about how it's not a very good game for Story Now and should instead be approached in a very Trad/Classic manner primarily and that it's a great game that way.

Yes, all of these things -- the heresy towards Story Now, the frank discussion of where it can fail (@Campbell has a great post here), the claims it's not universally applicable and that it really needs specific game structures to really work, the statements of apostasy where I like games that aren't Story Now. Yeah, totes evangelical here, mate. It cannot be that you're dogmatically defensive because you feel attacked that there's a play approach that differs significantly from yours to the point that it rejects a core conceit of your own play -- that the GM is not a place of primacy and the main, if not sole, source of fun in the game and that the GM must use Force and Illusionism to create that fun. I mean, you've been very, very clear that this is you main ideas about RPGs and how they must play -- that it doesn't makes sense otherwise. So, yeah, I guess it does feel like be attacked when faced with a conception of play that totally eschews these things as foundational. And that means an easy out is just to accuse others of being bad people trying to force "religion" on others.

Don't take the easy out. Do some critical thinking. I'm not preaching religion, or faith here. I have no faith in RPGs -- that's stupid. I have experience, and I play games, and talk about them and analyze them after play. I put my frameworks to the test, every time I play. They aren't fluffy concepts, they're things I look for and strive for in play. And, when I play 5e, I look to avoid Story Now techniques in general because I don't think they work. My last 5e game that wasn't an AP (my players like these, so I run them) was what's being described as a living world sandbox set in Sigil. I deployed Force and Illusionism as pacing tools to keep the game moving along nicely, but gave the players their head to decide what was important to their characters and direct play. There was a very loose metaplot about an artifact that was important, but not clearly defined how exactly it was important, and play was mostly the players deciding a direction of interest and me prepping that for play in a pretty Trad way, with some statically offered "jobs" they could pick up that were more Classically oriented dungeon/hex crawl adventures. All in all a pretty good mix of static prep and prep-to-order sandbox play. And that was just last year. So, it's not like I actually have "religion" and am discarding other modes of play -- this is not even wrong.

 

[prabe]

I pay attention to pacing a lot, but pacing definitely is a part of presentation.

To whom is the thing being paced, being presented? I think the point is that if something is being presented to you, you are not an active participant. In the same way, if someone entertains you, you aren't the one doing it (grammatically, you're the object not the subject).

 

[prabe]

You sound like a person who has found the faith and thinks that issue just is that everyone else hasn't studied the holy book hard enough and if they do, they too will see the light.

I can tell you from experience on this board this is not the case, and you get much different responses from @Ovinomancer if you have at least read the type of game in question. If you've played it and it's not to your taste there is literally no proselytizing.