Something, I think, Every GM/DM Should Read

[TheUltramark]

I have an interesting turn around for this.

Some years ago, I was running a game (2e D&D, as I recall) and threw a manticore at the party. One of the players cried foul stating that manticores don't exist in the terrain where the party was adventuring. He was, in fact, correct by the rules.

So, what should I have done as DM? Should I have stopped the encounter and rewritten it with a setting appropriate creature? After all, this is precisely what you are doing with the Prone Snake question - changing the game based on one person's sense of believability.

So, again, I ask, what should I have done? Or is it only DM's who are allowed to veto player options when their sense of disbelief is violated?

you seem to be not comparing the like terms

the crybaby players are similar in the two stories. As are the placing of the manticore and the snake ruling. You seem to be comparing the ruling with the player in your game that complained.
To answer your question, what should I have done, there are several options, and the one that is normally done at your table should be given the nod. At our table, when I dm, I allow the player to make a case, see what the other players generally think, and then make a ruling. If the players cries, but nobody else at the table cares either, then we are definitely moving on.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

As a player in a role-playing game, I am here to play my role -- not to play God with the whole world! If I do not like some aspect of that world, that is but a little annoyance next to not liking to get dragged out of my role-playing to dictate that a tiger I have (via my persona) perceived is "not really there".

The "trip a snake" problem is fundamentally the problem of putting the manipulation of an abstract mathematical game first and last, reducing role-playing to a superficial "skinning" of the real game.

Only if you define "roleplaying" as superior in certain game models, which rather begs the question and takes a giant leap at the same time.

Even with a "fiction first" approach, in a highly simulative system, the mechanics are still a model, and the logic of your objection would still apply. It is simply for some people, a given model maps to their preferred style close enough that they no longer think of it as a model.

Where the disconnect comes is clamining that "reskinning" and other techniques from other models necessarily preclude that state in other people--which is flat out wrong.

Now if you want to define "immersion" as "roleplaying", then you might have a basis for that argument. It would be on extremely fragile ground, given the assumptions needed to start from there, but you could make such an argument given that start.

 

[Thasmodious]

As a player in a role-playing game, I am here to play my role -- not to play God with the whole world!

I agree, neither the player or the DM gets to play God with the WHOLE WORLD! That's actually pretty central to my point.

If, instead, we are concerned first with role-playing, then I, via my persona, am interacting with the snake in physical ways (envisioned in imagination).
THAT is the first of all things, the archetype of which any 'mechanical' apparatus is just a model.

Agree 100%. That is exactly what I am arguing. By interacting with the snake in ways envisioned with imagination, I have done things to it (damage, prone). Overruling that interaction in favor of a DM preferred interaction is contrary to the agree upon social contract. It would be no different than informing the DM that, after hitting and rolling, I had done 12 damage to the snake and he, in turn, informs me, "I'm gonna call it 5, 12 doesn't work for me."

This being so, we are free to critique any model as being inadequate for the present purpose and to choose instead one that actually does what we want to do.

Absolutely. But not in the middle of a game session. "Hmm, these results aren't working for me within the fiction I am envisioning, therefore we are going to switch to Hackmaster right now!"

The emerging 4e philosophy is more often to emphasize a "pure game" at the potential expense of role playing.

No it's not. This is silly edition-warring.

In such a game, the aspect of limited information, exploration and discovery is not the same as in a role-playing game. Hence, I wonder what the rationale is for having a Game Master in the first place. I suspect that failure carefully to consider that question may be at the root of some people's difficulties.

There is quite a large, large gap between pure storytelling games that don't need a GM and RPGs that respect player's input at the table. Large. Huge, even.

 

[Ariosto]

Agree 100%. That is exactly what I am arguing.

If you really do agree 100%, then obviously you are NOT arguing that we should give a hoot about Power #54(b) for its own sake. You are agreeing with me that we should be concerned with the actual physical process undertaken and its consequences for the snake.

The emerging 4e philosophy objects that the real game now is in the selection of powers for 'builds' and their interaction in the mathematical ideal. That involves critical choices among limited options, and what matters is not the imagined processes in the secondary world but the cost:benefit relationships in how often an investment in Power 54(b) lets a player "get his way". The characteristics of characters, snakes, space, etc., are not in fact being specifically modeled, and so a critique on the basis of fidelity or lack thereof is to miss the real purpose that is balance of the abstract game. References to such phenomena are just decoration, like images of sheep or grain on Settlers of Catan cards that do not really particularly model the behavior of sheep or grain.

Absolutely. But not in the middle of a game session. "Hmm, these results aren't working for me within the fiction I am envisioning, therefore we are going to switch to Hackmaster right now!"

Absolutely in the middle of a game session! Why even consider for a moment using a ludicrously irrelevant rule?

There is quite a large, large gap between pure storytelling games that don't need a GM and RPGs that respect player's input at the table. Large. Huge, even.

There is quite a large, large gap between respecting a player's input at the table and having a game in which combative rules-lawyering takes the place of role-playing. Large. Huge, even.

 

[Thasmodious]

If you really do agree 100%, then obviously you are NOT arguing that we should give a hoot about Power #54(b) for its own sake. You are agreeing with me that we should be concerned with the actual physical process undertaken and its consequences for the snake.

Yes! And that physical process has been described a few dozen times, including by me in the first post you quote.

The emerging 4e philosophy...snip

What you describe is the abstract attitude of the rules in every edition of D&D, not just 4e. So it is not an emergent philosophy, its core to the game.

Absolutely in the middle of a game session! Why even consider for a moment using a ludicrously irrelevant rule?

We haven't been discussing ludicrously irrelevant rules. We've been discussing minor disagreements in the imagined interactions between character and foe as they arise from the mechanics.

There is quite a large, large gap between respecting a player's input at the table and having a game in which combative rules-lawyering takes the place of role-playing. Large. Huge, even.

I agree. The DM should not engage in combative rules-lawyering. A player stating the results of his action is not rules-lawyering. In what way is describing an action, and the necessary mechanical effects that must be conveyed to the DM, as I showed in my example (and others in many other examples), not playing a role? The DM snapping immersion to squabble with the player due to his limited imagination is the problem.

 

[Raven Crowking]

But what if the one player dictating for his own purposes at everyone else's expense is the DM?

He ends up sitting in a room, in the dark, alone.



RC

 

[Crispy Critter]

I have an interesting turn around for this.

Some years ago, I was running a game (2e D&D, as I recall) and threw a manticore at the party. One of the players cried foul stating that manticores don't exist in the terrain where the party was adventuring. He was, in fact, correct by the rules.

So, what should I have done as DM? Should I have stopped the encounter and rewritten it with a setting appropriate creature? After all, this is precisely what you are doing with the Prone Snake question - changing the game based on one person's sense of believability.

So, again, I ask, what should I have done? Or is it only DM's who are allowed to veto player options when their sense of disbelief is violated?

I'm sorry. I'm just trying to wrap my head around the fact that your player cried foul over a creature being in the wrong terrain instead of his character being incredibly curious about a wyvern being so far from home? I mean where's the sense of adventure and discovery. Is the minutia of the rules that much more important than the story being told?

 

[Fifth Element]

He ends up sitting in a room, in the dark, alone.

Indeed. Which is why he needs to keep his priorities in place and realize what the point of playing the game is.

 

[Ariosto]

We haven't been discussing ludicrously irrelevant rules. We've been discussing minor disagreements in the imagined interactions between character and foe as they arise from the mechanics.

No, the only reason you have this problem at all is because you insist on interactions that "arise from the mechanics" instead of just the opposite (which has been the mainstay of RPGs from the start).

Get agreement first on what is actually being done, and on what the relevant considerations are, and the "mechanics" follow sensibly enough.

That is, very simply, where you are really having whatever misunderstanding or disagreement you are having.

 

[Thasmodious]

No, the only reason you have this problem at all is because you insist on interactions that "arise from the mechanics" instead of just the opposite (which has been the mainstay of RPGs from the start).

That doesn't even make any sense. Interactions in the game world are framed in the mechanics. The DM doesn't judge how well you describe swinging your sword at a troll to determine if you hit. You roll dice. If you hit, the damage expression isn't determined at whim by the DM based on your description, its weapon damage. In 3e, its weapon damage plus maybe some effect or bonuses from a feat that you have. In 4e, its weapon damage plus some condition. These are just extensions of the same mechanics that have determined interaction with the game world since the beginning of D&D. At no point has the basic mechanical model been different, much less "just the opposite".

I would be equally opposed to a DM in 1e deciding that, despite that I hit and rolled my d8 damage, resulting in a 7, he decides to make it a 2, just because 7 seems a bit high. The DM, at least one I would play with, does not just make up results, cancel player actions, and do whatever he wants whenever, because he's behind the screen.