D&D 5E The Pendulum: Player Entitlement & DM Empowerment

[Ahrimon]

I always understood everything is core to mean that everything will be supported as evenly as possible and that nothing would be tagged as optional or ask your DM first. DMs were always free to remove or change things for their campaign though. They just need to be upfront about it.

 

[SteveC]

Very interesting observations, and an interesting topic.

I think the number one thing that "rulings not rules" does it put the burden for more things on the DM's shoulders rather than on the rules system. With a good DM who listens to their players and take their feedback into account, that can be a great thing.

The problem is that the quality of DMs runs like a bell curve, and so you have half of your DMs in the average to poor end of the spectrum. For those DMs, if they're not going to go through the process to be better, rulings can seem arbitrary and contrary to what makes a good game.

I've seen this first hand recently, as I'm playing in Organized Play and the DMs I've been with have been terrible. The thing is, these are the same people who ran decent games under previous editions because they just stuck to the rules as much as possible. They're gaming without much of a net now. I hear "no, you can't do that," a lot, and I'm a "go with the flow" sort of player more than anything else.

I've heard a lot of great stories about 5E from DMs here on ENWorld, and the common thread to all of them is that they've seemed like awesome DMs for as long as I've been reading about their games. Heck, some of them have been great DMs for decades. With a good DM you can play any game system and have a good time (a particular DM I play with could run a Chutes and Ladders style RPG and I'd show up) but, to be honest, if DM quality follows a bell curve, which I believe it does, you've got about half of them who just aren't that great.

I think the trick is to do everything to turn a poor to average DM into a good one, and the best way to do that is to encourage them with good suggestions in the rules themselves, and most importantly in any adventures they might be running.

 

[Dausuul]

I now want to play a Warforged Werewolf. I'd be a Wereforged Warwolf.

Hey, I want to play a Warwolf. I don't crawl dungeons, I knock them down!

...Anyway, to the OP's question: I think the main thing is to observe certain principles when implementing house rules:

• Whenever possible, house rules should be put forward before character creation, and kept in a single location accessible to everyone, such as a Google Doc.
• If players object to house rules, the DM should give them a fair hearing and consider their concerns.
• House rules should be parsimonious: Don't make any more than necessary to achieve your goals, and keep them short and to the point.
• When making house rules, DMs should read through all the relevant rules in 5E and consider how they differ from previous editions. (For example, if you decide to re-introduce flanking, keep in mind that 5E's changes to the opportunity attack rules make it much easier to get on opposite sides of an enemy, and advantage is worth a lot more than +2 to hit.)
• Making new house rules after the game begins should be done only when absolutely necessary.
• If the DM does make a new house rule after the game begins, all players have the option to alter their character creation and level-up choices in response. Such choices include every decision made during chargen and level-up, including but not limited to ability score assignment, race, class, alignment, spell selection, feats, skills, background, etc. If that means a high elf wizard turns into a half-orc barbarian, so be it.

These guidelines wouldn't solve all issues around house rules, but they'd go a long way to let DMs tailor their campaigns as they want without unduly jacking players around.

 

[CM]

As a DM, I feel that 4e empowered me. With its tight balance and codified rules I was fairly sure that no matter what the players brought to the table, the game would still run smoothly. I could focus on creating memorable adventures rather than pull my hair out trying to challenge the players. Really, I feel the whole player-vs.-DM empowerment topic to be incredibly overblown.

If anything, I suspect "rulings, not rules" might make things harder for new DMs in some ways (easier in others), but I would not be surprised if we see more "my DM is a tyrant" complaints as inexperienced DMs enroll in this school of hard knocks.

All that said, I am still a fan of 5e. I'm just not sure if it will be as forgiving to new DMs.

 

[Skyscraper]

I have no problem with DM empowerment. It allows me to bloat my ego to the size of a Jupiter moon and hit my players with ludicrous arbitrary in-game decisions that solely aim at humilitating the player himself through his PC being dragged in the mud.

 

[thalmin]

I have no problem with DM empowerment. It allows me to bloat my ego to the size of a Jupiter moon and hit my players with ludicrous arbitrary in-game decisions that solely aim at humilitating the player himself through his PC being dragged in the mud.

Strangely, this seems to be what some people around here think about DMs.

 

[practicalm]

Every player (including the GM) has the same power of veto: Not enjoying the game? Walk away from the table.

The GM has one additional "advantage": if he/she walks away from the table, everyone else will be stranded with nothing to do. On the other hand, with great power comes great responsibility (as they say), so the GM therefore also is tasked with game prep and table management.

Rule sets will certainly impact playstyle, but this fundamental "balance of power" is at the core of the traditional tabletop RPG experience and really can't be altered without changing to "some other kind of game." Any "empowerment" of players vs. GMs or vice-versa comes from members of the group buying into external assumptions– which they may not even realizing they're doing.

That's the problem with social contracts... they're so rarely done in writing.

One of the things I miss about the old Pyramid magazine message boards were proposals of campaigns by one of the players there. To play with that GM, you read the synopsis and applied for the game you wanted to play. Each campaign was a limited run for a planned number of sessions.

This really informed my play as well because if someone wasn't a fit for the campaign I wanted to run, they didn't get invited.

I think this may not be a very common way to play because many people have a group of friends and all those friends who want to play get to play. But if you don't as a GM create some criteria for your players to met, you will not have as much fun as when you select from a pool of applicants. Now you can do this with each player's characters as well (and I did when I ran games that were more about hey its a group of friends and it would have been uncomfortable excluding them).

I probably was lucky in that I always seemed to have a group that worked well. (two interesting exceptions but then I just started my own groups).

Right now I am running a game where because it's at a church anyone can play. It's mostly with kids so it's probably way combat focused than I'd like but I'm trying to get the players to interact with the world more. I'm trying to create the idea that people might talk instead of attacking each other.

 

[Li Shenron]

I always understood everything is core to mean that everything will be supported as evenly as possible and that nothing would be tagged as optional or ask your DM first.

Yes, more or less this is what I tried to say, with the addition that by putting many traditional classes/races to PHB2 and other non-first-tier product, then also even less common or totally new classes and material were put on par.

Please forgive me because I'm going from memory here, but there has been an interview where exactly this point has been made clear. But as far as I know, no other statement, article, or whatever elaborated on the concept. Well, we all know how abysmal WotC's PR is or at least was.

No well honestly I'm going from memory too, and since I have skipped 4e entirely (except for trying it out a couple of evenings when it came out) I am the least qualified person to say what they really meant.

The problem is that the quality of DMs runs like a bell curve, and so you have half of your DMs in the average to poor end of the spectrum.

Hey wait a minute... that always happens. Exactly half of them will always be "below average" even when "average" is impossible to define

 

[Jan van Leyden]

I am pretty sure there was such a thing in the offline character builder. Somewhere in the options you could set what sources are allowed. And save that for profile for further use.

Yes, but:

a) you were restricted to whole books you could switch on or off. No tags, no flagging

b) you could only tell the players what to switch off, not giving them a profile or filter file

Same idea but vastly different solution, and an unsatisfactory one.

 

[SkidAce]

As a DM, I feel that 4e empowered me. With its tight balance and codified rules I was fairly sure that no matter what the players brought to the table, the game would still run smoothly. I could focus on creating memorable adventures rather than pull my hair out trying to challenge the players. Really, I feel the whole player-vs.-DM empowerment topic to be incredibly overblown.

If anything, I suspect "rulings, not rules" might make things harder for new DMs in some ways (easier in others), but I would not be surprised if we see more "my DM is a tyrant" complaints as inexperienced DMs enroll in this school of hard knocks.

All that said, I am still a fan of 5e. I'm just not sure if it will be as forgiving to new DMs.

I agree about overblown.

However, they say you learn through mistakes, so loose rules may eventually breed a more versatile crop of dms.

In a perfect world....