D&D 5E The Neutral Referee, Monty Haul, and the Killer DM: History of the GM and Application to 5e

[Charlaquin]

For a neutral referee to be possible, the system itself needs to be designed in a neutral way. 5E does not want neutral referees. It's designed for storytellers and Monty Haul DMs who are fans of the players and their characters. It's designed to prevent Killer DMs with easy access to healing, high PC hit points, death saves, easy access to resurrection, etc.

I don’t agree. One can be a neutral referee in a system which favors the players. The result will just be that the players win most of the time.

I started a bit late for the proper neutral referee days (the Hickman Revolution was already brewing), but that's how I saw games run for decades and how I've always tried to run games myself. It's simply not the job of the referee to try to force story, story structure, or drama onto a game. Whatever story is generated by game play is emergent, not forced. Forcing story requires limiting player agency and railroading. Which are bad refereeing, though it's exactly what you have to do for the GM to be a storyteller.

You mention a lot of the tools of the trade for neutral refereeing. A set world that's often procedurally generated. Random generation. Random charts. Wandering monsters. Because the referee likes to be surprised, too. But lots and lots of prep. Because without that, the world feels hollow and less real. It's not about fiat and gotchas, it's about player agency and choices actually mattering. Player agency is king. No illusion of choice. No railroading. Choices have to matter. If they turn left and go into a dragon's lair at 1st level...they turn left and go into a dragon's lair at 1st level. What they do there is entirely up to them. If they decide to charge the dragon, they charge...and the dragon reacts accordingly. The referee does not protect the players from their choices.

The referee plays the world. The PCs are not the protagonists of a story, they're "real" people who exist in a "real" place and everyone acts and reacts accordingly. You steal something in town, the guards will hunt you down and throw you in jail. Action, reaction. Cause, effect. Bad decisions, consequences. Not in the sense of the referee punishing the player or the character, but the world is a "real" place. It's not a power fantasy-land tailored to the players' dreams of glory. There is no plot armor. No guaranteed survival. If your character does something incredibly stupid, they'll likely die for it. So player skill is incredibly important.

I agree strongly with the first paragraph, but I think the second is a play preference. Again, if the system favors the players (as 5e does), a game run neutrally in that system will result in their characters being the protagonists of the story. I think it’s a great compromise between DMs who want to strive to be neutral arbiters and players who want to play fantastical heroes.

Emergent story is the key, I think. Completely letting go of any notions of plot, story, structure, scenes, etc and also letting go of any notions of forcing outcomes. It's simply not the referee's job. Doing so robs the players of agency, which is the major sin of this style of play. If the players choose to follow some kind of dramatic structure, that's their choice. If the players choose to run from half-finished quest to half-finished quest, that's their choice, too. Forcing the game to emulate a story is not what this style is after. Letting the game play out however the players and dice decide is the whole point. If that does not result in a "satisfying" story arc...so what? Games are not stories, they're games.

Indeed! I’m a big fan of emergent story. I just don’t see anything wrong with the system being set up so that more often than not, the story that emerges will be one where the players’ characters triumphed. The referee isn’t “supposed to” favor one side or the other, but the rules of the game can.

Along with that is not centering the individual PCs. It's not about spotlight time or making sure everyone has a moment to shine. The PCs are not demigods with epic destinies, but they are special in the sense that they're brave (and/or stupid) enough to want to go on dangerous quests and slay monsters in search of treasure...but they're not special in that they're not the protagonists of an unfolding story with a set end and guaranteed safety until that end. The emergent story is not about any individual PC, it's about the group's play together. We as a group have fun playing a game together. Whatever happens, happens. If this PC's story ends tonight, so be it. The player made a long string of bad choices and so their character is dead. The player is free to roll up a new one and keep playing. Because it's not about that one character's story, it's about the players as a group getting together and throwing dice and having a good time playing a game.

Yeah, on that I agree with you for the most part. Though, again, I think a system can (and 5e does) stack things in the players’ favor so that they are likely to come out looking like the epic heroes of the story that emerges when run by a neutral referee. That might not be the aesthetic everyone prefers, but I think it’s a good way to allow referees to meet “OC” players half-way.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think even in an ideal situation, the fact is that D&D has certain rules, and makes certain things important, and my feeling is that, when you know challenges aren't going to be tailored for you significantly, rather you'll have to tailor yourself to them, then survivability massively increases in value, whereas fragile highly-RNG-based stuff like D&D's takes on skills (in every edition) decreases significantly in value. Part of the issue is that most DMs treat skills as a binary pass/fail and every edition encourages them to do so (4E the least because of Skill Challenges, but they were poorly implemented), so avoiding rolling becomes more useful than having skills. Magic also becomes hard-required, because if you don't have access to it, and the DM isn't tailoring things at all, certain situations will just outright TPK you (especially in earlier editions). It also means Wizards tend to adopt more utility-heavy memorization lists which again, somewhat means RNG-based utility is invalidated.

Hence I believe even in an "ideal" case, you don't get the true "balanced party" (i.e. fighter/rogue/cleric/wizard) encouraged in "neutral referee" situations, you get survival-oriented characters + utility-oriented casters.

Yeah, this is one of the reasons I use a degrees of success and failure system in my game.

 

[Charlaquin]

Is it possible to be a "neutral DM" who roots for the players and the monsters? Because if so, that's me. Kinda.

I think I have told this story before, if so, bear with me:
Back in the early-mid-oughts I was running a 3E game that was a mix of new and old folks. One of the players, who was new to my game once expressed a little consternation at my glee when monsters and other opponents did huge amounts of damage, rolled crits, or pulled off something that put a crimp in the PCs plans. But then one day, one of the other players were not present and I was running them as an NPC and when I rolled a crit for them, I cheered. It was then that the player started to notice something about my style of DMing. I was happy when anyone rolled well and any exciting thing happened. They were so focused on how I acted when their character took a crippling hit, they didn't notice how I acted when the PCs did the same against opponents - which was also with excitement.

I let the dice fall where they fall and I am usually gonna cheer when they fall in a way that makes something dramatic happen.

Yeah, I’m with you. I’m gonna play the world to the best of my ability, but I do want the players to emerge victorious in the end. For many years now I’ve considered my role as DM to be to make the PCs heroes. But part of being heroes is struggling against adversity, so to fulfill my role, I need to give the players that adversity and the opportunity to overcome it. And sometimes that will mean they fail, perhaps even die, and sometimes those deaths may even seem pointless. If that wasn’t a possibility, then the victories they did achieve wouldn’t really be heroic.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don’t agree. One can be a neutral referee in a system which favors the players. The result will just be that the players win most of the time.

I agree strongly with the first paragraph, but I think the second is a play preference. Again, if the system favors the players (as 5e does), a game run neutrally in that system will result in their characters being the protagonists of the story. I think it’s a great compromise between DMs who want to strive to be neutral arbiters and players who want to play fantastical heroes.

Indeed! I’m a big fan of emergent story. I just don’t see anything wrong with the system being set up so that more often than not, the story that emerges will be one where the players’ characters triumphed. The referee isn’t “supposed to” favor one side or the other, but the rules of the game can.

Yeah, on that I agree with you for the most part. Though, again, I think a system can (and 5e does) stack things in the players’ favor so that they are likely to come out looking like the epic heroes of the story that emerges when run by a neutral referee. That might not be the aesthetic everyone prefers, but I think it’s a good way to allow referees to meet “OC” players half-way.

My answer to that is to change the system so it favors the PCs less. I use a lot of house rules to facilitate this, but it's still a work in progress. I explicitly don't want the game to play towards the PCs looking like the epic heroes of the story. I want that to happen if it happens, and if luck and skill are on the PCs side. If not, that totally fine too.

Also, the entire concept of a neutral referee is a play preference. I don't think anyone has suggested otherwise.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yeah, I’m with you. I’m gonna play the world to the best of my ability, but I do want the players to emerge victorious in the end. For many years now I’ve considered my role as DM to be to make the PCs heroes. But part of being heroes is struggling against adversity, so to fulfill my role, I need to give the players that adversity and the opportunity to overcome it. And sometimes that will mean they fail, perhaps even die, and sometimes those deaths may even seem pointless. If that wasn’t a possibility, then the victories they did achieve wouldn’t really be heroic.

That is a different playstyle, but a perfectly fine one.

 

[overgeeked]

I don’t agree. One can be a neutral referee in a system which favors the players. The result will just be that the players win most of the time.

I agree strongly with the first paragraph, but I think the second is a play preference. Again, if the system favors the players (as 5e does), a game run neutrally in that system will result in their characters being the protagonists of the story. I think it’s a great compromise between DMs who want to strive to be neutral arbiters and players who want to play fantastical heroes.

That's where the contradiction comes in. I'm not neutral if I'm okay with the system being wildly stacked in the players' favor. That's not neutrality. That's being biased for the players. To then run that biased game "neutrally" is to accept the utterly biased outcome...so not being neutral.

Indeed! I’m a big fan of emergent story. I just don’t see anything wrong with the system being set up so that more often than not, the story that emerges will be one where the players’ characters triumphed. The referee isn’t “supposed to” favor one side or the other, but the rules of the game can.

Hard disagree.

Yeah, on that I agree with you for the most part. Though, again, I think a system can (and 5e does) stack things in the players’ favor so that they are likely to come out looking like the epic heroes of the story that emerges when run by a neutral referee. That might not be the aesthetic everyone prefers, but I think it’s a good way to allow referees to meet “OC” players half-way.

Compromise is not when one side simply gives the other what they want. Compromise is when both sides move and give and adjust so that the other is accommodated. If the players say "we want epic fantasy superheroes" and the referee says "I want a grim and gritty AD&D game" it's not a compromise to run 5E...it's running the game exactly as the OC players want and in an opposite manner to what the referee wants. That's not a compromise.

This is why deciding to play together as a group first so often leads to everyone being disappointed. The referee says they want to run a particular style of game. If the players want that style of game, they play, if not, they don't. Simple. If the players want something different they can run the game. The referee is under no obligation to run the game for the players in a style they don't enjoy...nor are the players obligated to play in a game or style they won't enjoy.

 

[Mort]

I think what you're missing is that the game isn't limited in that sense. There aren't only stealth or diplomacy or whatever missions the PCs can pick up and engage with.

Why not? We're talking about a living breathing world. How is it PCs can't find missions etc. that would suit their strengths that, itself, seems pretty artificial!

They also wouldn't have complete enough knowledge of the future to know whether only those kinds of things would come up when taking on any given quest, etc. It's like thinking that because the door of a dungeon is locked all you need is a lockpick to complete the dungeon. Not so much.

Dungeon Delves require different skill sets than a theft from a Noble's house require different skill sets than pirating the high seas. It's actually quite odd that PCs are such generalists all the time. PCs will have a decent idea of what skills are required just based on where/what is going on. Exact? of course not, but a decent genera idea. Even in a generalist game like D&D, specifics emerge during play.

The whole point is to have a living, breathing world that's running in the background. Independent of the PCs and their skills.

In a TRULY living breathing world, PCs will be able to find uses for their skills where they best fit.

The world doesn't care what the PCs are good at. The neutral referee doesn't only put things in the world that the PCs will have a good chance of succeeding at. The neutral referee creates a world and lets the PCs interact with it however well, or however badly, they choose to.

And if they choose to only continue with the missions/adventures that fit their skill set. IE NOT go on the pirate adventure if none of the PCs fit into that role, or choose to not go into the dungeon because none fit into that role. It's a living world, after all, what does it care what adventures the PCs embark on?

So the PCs are focused on stealth and they only try to complete quests, missions, etc they think are tailored to their skills, great. The world isn't designed around that assumption. The world keeps on moving and changing regardless of what the PCs do. It will change and react to the PCs' actions, of course, but if they ignore a problem it doesn't go away. Which means if they ignore the necromancer raising an army of the dead to march on the valley the PCs live in...their home will be overrun with undead. If they try to stealth their way through that and fail...okay, now they're stuck in a massive fight they aren't prepared for because they focused on stealth and not combat.

But a living breathing world will have MULTIPLE threats going on. It only makes sense that the PCs focus on the ones they can best stop. If the DM designs ONE big threat knowing the PCs aren't up for it but will have to engage it anyway - is he really being neutral?

The notion of "the PCs are good at stealth so only put in stealth missions" isn't how this style of running games works. It's the almost opposite of that. Not hammering on the PCs' weaknesses, but the world is what it is...

Yes, that's right. But it's odd to think in a truly neutral, big living breathing world the PCs can't find stuff that goes to their strengths.

The world exists independently of the players and their characters.

If the PCs are bad at combat and they get into a combat, they're toast. If the PCs are bad at stealth and they need stealth, they're toast. This is where the notion of needing a well-rounded party comes from. If they can't handle something, they're going to get hammered there. Not because the referee is targeting their weaknesses, rather because the neutral world inevitably includes all those things they're no good at. But they still have to face those obstacles regardless. So they either have a well-rounded party, ignore a lot of problems (thus letting them get worse), or they flail at problems they're not equipped to handle.

The referee winds up the world and lets it tick away. The players interact with the world however they want. Then the referee reacts accordingly as the world would. You stop the goblin bandits and empty out their lair...then a few weeks or months later something else moves in. You slaughter a cult and bury their bodies under the rubble of their desecrated church...only for a necromancer to come along and raise them...then she uses them to rebuild the church as her new headquarters. You ignore a fire, it continues to burn until put out...if it's near your house, and you do nothing about it, your house burns down. It doesn't matter if you're a firefighter or not.

Not at all. A neutral adventure is the opposite of one tailored to the PCs.

But if a referee designs a world where ONLY a "well rounded" party could possibly navigate through challenges, that's not really neutral - that's encouraging a very specific type of play. Not that that's bad or even undesirable but, IMO, It's not neutral.

 

[Charlaquin]

2) "Killer DMs who hide behind faux-neutrality" - This is the kind of guy who say they're a "neutral referee", but somehow the world they've set up is absolutely full of surprise deathtraps, gotchas, and NPCs who are extremely powerful and will kill the PCs for really any reason or even no reason at all! This was the vast majority of people I played with who claimed to be "neutral". They're very much in tune with the "I get out of bed" "Oh you forgot to say you removed the covers, so you get tangled in them and fall and take 4d6 damage" kind of DM - often they were the same guy. I would say most of them honestly believed they were neutral, though, they were just completely delusional about what actual neutrality would involve.

I think this is a very salient point! I think it can be easy for DMs who strive to be “neutral referees” to fall into the trap of thinking that to be neutral one must be thinking at all times about what could possibly go wrong for the PCs and to always simulate that possibility.

 

[Charlaquin]

My answer to that is to change the system so it favors the PCs less. I use a lot of house rules to facilitate this, but it's still a work in progress. I explicitly don't want the game to play towards the PCs looking like the epic heroes of the story. I want that to happen if it happens, and if luck and skill are on the PCs side. If not, that totally fine too.

Yeah, makes sense. I personally am pretty satisfied with the amount 5e favors the PCs, but I can definitely see it not being to the taste of folks who really enjoyed the higher-risk play of older editions. Though then you have to contend with the question of if it’s more worthwhile to house rule 5e to the point that it’s satisfying for you, or to play another system that’s more suited to your preferences by default. But of course, only you can answer that question for yourself.

Also, the entire concept of a neutral referee is a play preference. I don't think anyone has suggested otherwise.

True that!

 

[Micah Sweet]

That's where the contradiction comes in. I'm not neutral if I'm okay with the system being wildly stacked in the players' favor. That's not neutrality. That's being biased for the players. To then run that biased game "neutrally" is to accept the utterly biased outcome...so not being neutral.

Hard disagree.

Compromise is not when one side simply gives the other what they want. Compromise is when both sides move and give and adjust so that the other is accommodated. If the players say "we want epic fantasy superheroes" and the referee says "I want a grim and gritty AD&D game" it's not a compromise to run 5E...it's running the game exactly as the OC players want and in an opposite manner to what the referee wants. That's not a compromise.

This is why deciding to play together as a group first so often leads to everyone being disappointed. The referee says they want to run a particular style of game. If the players want that style of game, they play, if not, they don't. Simple. If the players want something different they can run the game. The referee is under no obligation to run the game for the players in a style they don't enjoy...nor are the players obligated to play in a game or style they won't enjoy.

Yeah, makes sense. I personally am pretty satisfied with the amount 5e favors the PCs, but I can definitely see it not being to the taste of folks who really enjoyed the higher-risk play of older editions. Though then you have to contend with the question of if it’s more worthwhile to house rule 5e to the point that it’s satisfying for you, or to play another system that’s more suited to your preferences by default. But of course, only you can answer that question for yourself.

True that!

It's worth it if your players don't want to learn what would be (to them) a slightly different version of D&D. The games i would run (mostly OSR stuff) would fall into that category. So I run 5e. But fortunately Level Up does a lot of what I want already.