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Respect Mah Authoritah: Thoughts on DM and Player Authority in 5e
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<blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8435885" data-attributes="member: 16814"><p>I'm going to address all of this at once, because it's interconnected. You seem to lump "make it up on the spot" with "already has detailed prep" with "has to stop the game to go create detailed prep" together. These are either the same thing or aren't the same thing, and it's going to depend entirely on how you define how and what the GM's allowed prep/improv space is. Because, according to this, the players can declare their going over that hill to the north, and the GM can respond with their notes -- nothing there. Then the players keep going north, but the GM has notes, a detailed setting even, and everywhere nothing is pretty much nothing. So the GM indulges the players by letting them just keep going north and describing nothing (I mean, except probably some terrain features). Alternatively, the GM can make up this same thing on the spot without notes. According to your construct, both of these are equal. This, unfortunately, means that a GM can, on the spot, decide to effectively negate actions by just making up nothing, and this is as valid a strong sandbox as a detailed, prepped setting to explore!</p><p></p><p>Now, I'm sure you don't intend this, but this is the issue with the vagueness of your metrics -- they don't actually define anything very well and encompass quite a lot of play space (before we even get to alternative fiction creation, we're still in GM-sole-creator-at-GM's-desire territory). I mean, the example above is unlikely to actually occur (although there are stories of "sandboxes" where the players can do whatever they want, it's just not going to get anything from the GM until they get back to the prepped bits) but the construction you've created allows it.</p><p></p><p>Also, I'm not agreeing a spectrum exists and we're haggling price, I'm looking at your proposed spectrum and seeing if it has any useful description to it. So far, you have to bring in so many additional yet unspoken assumptions about what play is that I can't use it at all to categorize games in a way that actually tells me something useful.</p><p></p><p>Okay, can you tell me what I should expect to be different from a 60% sandbox game and a 40% sandbox game? I can't figure out what I should expect different from these two middle positions. It seems being above and below the mid point, and with a 20% spread, that there should be differences that we could decidedly pick out. What do you think defines these two points on your proposed spectrum? What should I be looking for in these games if they were offered to me?</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ovinomancer, post: 8435885, member: 16814"] I'm going to address all of this at once, because it's interconnected. You seem to lump "make it up on the spot" with "already has detailed prep" with "has to stop the game to go create detailed prep" together. These are either the same thing or aren't the same thing, and it's going to depend entirely on how you define how and what the GM's allowed prep/improv space is. Because, according to this, the players can declare their going over that hill to the north, and the GM can respond with their notes -- nothing there. Then the players keep going north, but the GM has notes, a detailed setting even, and everywhere nothing is pretty much nothing. So the GM indulges the players by letting them just keep going north and describing nothing (I mean, except probably some terrain features). Alternatively, the GM can make up this same thing on the spot without notes. According to your construct, both of these are equal. This, unfortunately, means that a GM can, on the spot, decide to effectively negate actions by just making up nothing, and this is as valid a strong sandbox as a detailed, prepped setting to explore! Now, I'm sure you don't intend this, but this is the issue with the vagueness of your metrics -- they don't actually define anything very well and encompass quite a lot of play space (before we even get to alternative fiction creation, we're still in GM-sole-creator-at-GM's-desire territory). I mean, the example above is unlikely to actually occur (although there are stories of "sandboxes" where the players can do whatever they want, it's just not going to get anything from the GM until they get back to the prepped bits) but the construction you've created allows it. Also, I'm not agreeing a spectrum exists and we're haggling price, I'm looking at your proposed spectrum and seeing if it has any useful description to it. So far, you have to bring in so many additional yet unspoken assumptions about what play is that I can't use it at all to categorize games in a way that actually tells me something useful. Okay, can you tell me what I should expect to be different from a 60% sandbox game and a 40% sandbox game? I can't figure out what I should expect different from these two middle positions. It seems being above and below the mid point, and with a 20% spread, that there should be differences that we could decidedly pick out. What do you think defines these two points on your proposed spectrum? What should I be looking for in these games if they were offered to me? [/QUOTE]
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