Waibel's Rule of Interpretation (aka "How to Interpret the Rules")

The only CORRECT interpretation is the one I say!

The sooner the rest of the world gets that, the sooner we can all sit down and have fun...and end all fantasy rpg forum arguments everywhere.

heheheh.

[Seliousry though, nice chart. ]

 

[DaveDash]

Any good DM will make such major mechanical decisions outside the game--before or after a session, for instance. At which point, a prolonged discussion is absolutely acceptable.

At no point have I suggested that PCs shouldn't have any input into rules changes. (My own technique is usually to say to the group, "I'm considering Changes X and Y. Do you guys see any problem with this?")

But...

It still, ultimately, comes down to the two-step process I've been describing.

1) Discuss it (politely, out of game) with the DM.

2) If the DM still rules in a way you don't like, decide if you can live with it or if you'd rather leave the game.

Any DM who's consistently unreasonable will eventually find himself with no group.

I think that implicit promise you speak of however goes both ways.

The players do need to respect that ultimately the decision rests with you, but you also have an implicit promise to provide them with a consistent set of boundaries (set of rules) so they can do predictable actions and overcome challenges within those boundaries.

And given the ambiguity of many rules in 5e, I think it's much wiser to get your players input on these interpretation than just doing what makes sense to you [the DM] (not you specifically).
As an example, the hiding in combat rules don't make a lot of sense to me, so in my game, I asked my players "Do you think it makes more sense to have disadvantage on your stealth roll to hide in the same place after attacking?". All my players agreed that yes, that makes more sense.

The table decided, not me alone, and everyone is happy.

According to the OP however, I should only do what makes sense to *me*. It's *my* game after all.

View attachment 65970

 

[pemerton]

If a player doesn't like it, he's welcome to politely leave the game. And obviously, if a whole group doesn't like it, the DM can either change or can lose the group.

I gave an example of this upthread. The only response I have had is [MENTION=69074]Cyberen[/MENTION] implying I am an unreasonable player. [MENTION=67338]GMforPowergamers[/MENTION] has noted, upthread, similar responses to his previous anecdotes of leaving games. And [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] has also been criticised, in past threads discussing similar issues, for indicating a willingness to walk from a game that he didn't care for.

Assuming that the GM does not want to lose the player/group, how is s/he expected to know that change is needed? To me, it seems the best way is for the players to let him/her know, either by direct communication or by implicit signals about what they are enjoying and what they are not enjoying.

In my home-brew campaign setting, I reworked the MM goblin.

<snip>

Four of my five players were old hands at D&D. Two of them had been playing (on and off) since 1e. I did not tell the players in advance that I'd used the various monster-building guidelines and rules in the MM and DMG to create my goblins. I just sprung them on the party (when they were first level, at that). So, is this messing with 'D&D canon' (which, if indeed there were such a thing, we know just from this thread, would be subject to change with every edition)? If so, should I have forewarned the players of this deviation from official monster listings? Should I explain to players before introducing a new creature to the game how that creature works? If I don't, am I not diverging from 'canon'?

What does a first level PC know about 'canon', by the way?

I don't look at the issue from the point of view of "1st level PCs" - as I see it, the issue is one about player expectations, it's not an issue about the PCs in-game knowledge.

With that autobiographical detail out of the way, I can't answer your (rhetorical/hypothetical) question about what you should have done - I don't know you (other than some interesting posts on these boards!), I don't know your players, I don't know your game.

But I can give an anecdote of my own. When I started my current 4e game, I gave the players a few instructions:

(1) We'll be using default 4e lore from the PHB, MM and DMG;

(2) In your PC's backstory, please give your PC one person/thing to which s/he is loyal;

(3) In your PC's backtory, please give your PC a reason to be ready to fight goblins.​

I set out to make goblins a focus of the game, at least at low-levels, within an express framing of default lore. I regarded myself, then, as obliged to present goblins as prospective enemies which dovetailed into the PCs' backstories. When the players wrote backstories involving previous wars between goblins and dwarves, or wrote backstories involving goblins sacking towns and villages, I had to incorporate all that too.

But no-one wrote a backstory that connected to goblins having a +2 bonus to Thievery by the default rules, and goblin thievery has never come up in the campaign, even after 6 years of playing it. That's a detail that I don't regard myself as bound by (though nor have I deviated from it - it's basically irrelevant to how the game has unfolded).

If one of the players had built a thief PC whose guild was a rival to the notorious house-breaking second-story goblins, this issue might have been different.

Having good judgement on these sorts of things is part of GMing skill, I think. Like most matters of judgement, I think it is very hard to give hard-and-fast rules about what should or shouldn't be done. An ability to grasp the situation, what is at stake in it for oneself and others, what is possible consistent with those stakes, and bringing others along with a decisions, are all part of it. (I'm reminding myself of Selznick's Leadership in Administration.)

One of the primary responsibilities, and primary joys, of DMing is world-building and setting design.

For you, perhaps. For me these are secondary - for me the primary joy is in adventure/scenario design, and adjudicating the game in play. (This hasn't always been true. Like many people, my tastes have changd over the years. I can't predict how they might change further into the future.) I think [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] has said in the past that he has very little interest in world-building as a GM activity.

For instance, when I told the players that their PCs must have one loyalty, I was leaving it open to them to build (or foreground) those parts of the setting: what I got back was two PCs loyal to the Raven Queen, one loyal to the ideals of the fey and the Elven gods, one loyal to the dwarven strongholds and his mother, and one loyal to the memory of his fallen city. The joy for me was finding ways to make these loyalties a focus of play, to develop connections between them, to push the players to make decisions around them, to see what sorts of conflicts might exist between them.

the DM has to know his players, and the players have to know the DM. But that goes back to what I said about "minimum trust." Unless it's a brand new group that I'm just starting to get to know, I always take into account what I believe my players will enjoy when designing a new campaign. AFAIAC, that's such a basic part of the process that it doesn't even warrant being called out. It kinda goes without saying, I think, that a DM who doesn't consider his friends' preferences when designing a campaign isn't going to have players very long.

You are framing this in terms of campaign design. Why is scenario design, or encounter design, in a radically different category?

When I conceive of scenarios, or encounters, I try to design things that the players will enjoy. I've never had a player who cared about the habitat of manticores, but if I did, I would have regard to that. (And how would I know unless the player told me? - perhaps, in the limit case, by voicing an opinion about an encounter I was in the process of framing.) The nearest example I can think of to the manticore one is when, in my 4e game, I was starting to frame an encounter in which the PCs had to overcome some sort of opposition/objection from some NPCs in relation to XYZ. (I can't remember the details at the moment.) One of the players reminded me that, last session, the players had succeeded in a skill challenge in relation to these NPCs, which meant that the issue of XYZ was already sorted between them. I agreed, and corrected my framing to reflect that. I regard that sort of correction, when a player points to a problem with an encounter framing, as part and parcel of good GMing.

 

[GameOgre]

I never really understood the whole this monster is found here thing.

I mean who gives a $%$%? Elves are found in the woods and Dwarves underground but do they stay there?

What kind of #$#$ player is going to turn to the DM and say " A Red Dragon all the way up here in the frozen north? Not bloody likely, try again!

I would just laugh at that point and tell the rest of the party "you really can't be sure what happened but it looked like, it sounded like, It's very possible you just saw your team mate commit some bazar form of suicide involving crawling up into his own $#$# .

You know, cause that would be his habitat.

 

[Sacrosanct]

*edit*

Nevermind. not worth it

 

[Henry]

I never really understood the whole this monster is found here thing.

I mean who gives a $%$%? Elves are found in the woods and Dwarves underground but do they stay there?

What kind of #$#$ player is going to turn to the DM and say " A Red Dragon all the way up here in the frozen north? Not bloody likely, try again!

I would just laugh at that point and tell the rest of the party "you really can't be sure what happened but it looked like, it sounded like, It's very possible you just saw your team mate commit some bazar form of suicide involving crawling up into his own $#$# .

I wouldn't go that far, that's a little obnoxious-sounding for the average table, but I would say something to the effect of, "As hard as it is to believe, there flies a Draconic creature, scales crimson as blood, slightly rimed over, bearing down straight for you? It's your action -- what are you doing?" And count to ten.

If I were leaving my workplace, and sitting next to my car in the parking lot is a ****ing Grizzly Bear, I am NOT walking up to the bear and saying, "puh-lease. You have no business in the city." and ignoring it, because I'm not insane. Neither would your Player's Character. He might freak out, "what the **** is THAT doing here?" and doing research if possible after the crisis, but honestly, stranger things have happened. Everyone's seen news stories about wild animals that escaped a zoo, or wandered many miles off its normal habitat, it's not like a ship grew legs and ran from DM fiat or something.

Then again, some players might find that more believable.

 

[Mouseferatu]

You are framing this in terms of campaign design. Why is scenario design, or encounter design, in a radically different category?

Because they aren't the same thing. Encounter design and scenario design are ingredients or individual dishes. The campaign is the banquet.

A chef is cooking a banquet for ten of his friends, whose tastes he knows well. If he tries to make sure every guest loves every dish, he's screwed himself. People's tastes just don't work like that. There's always going to be someone who dislikes this, or much prefers that.

So he makes sure not to include anything that any guest is allergic to. But other than that, he sets about making sure everyone will enjoy the banquet as a whole. Out of a dozen dishes, he can be sure that any given person will like at least seven or eight of them, and that makes the meal a success for everyone.

The nearest example I can think of to the manticore one is when, in my 4e game, I was starting to frame an encounter in which the PCs had to overcome some sort of opposition/objection from some NPCs in relation to XYZ. (I can't remember the details at the moment.) One of the players reminded me that, last session, the players had succeeded in a skill challenge in relation to these NPCs, which meant that the issue of XYZ was already sorted between them. I agreed, and corrected my framing to reflect that. I regard that sort of correction, when a player points to a problem with an encounter framing, as part and parcel of good GMing.

Apples and oranges. The player pointed out an in-game even that you had forgotten, and which had a direct impact on the scenario. That's the sort of thing a DM should absolutely pay attention to.

"Where manticores live," especially in a world where that hasn't previously and formally been established, isn't remotely the same thing.

 

[Celebrim]

But when it comes to interpreting the rules, the DM better damn well take into considering my input, and the others players input, if it effects us. If I am playing a rogue character and he suddenly decides after a few sessions that he doesn't like the hiding/stealth rules, he better damn well consult me about it or I will be challenging him at the table and away from the table for sure.

Which is why I challenged the notion that interpreting the rules is simple. You are right. If a rules interpretation or rule change is going to seriously inconvenience a player, a smart DM is going to initiate the conversation about the rules with the player and express his concerns even before he introduces a proposed fix.

For example, suppose you have been playing a 3e RAW campaign, and you as a player tend toward the more power gamer, competitive end of the spectrum (which is great, every table needs at least one), and you are playing a sniper character that breaks the game by being essentially undetectable. You can fire and hide in the same turn, even against enemies with a very high spot check, but simply attacking from 120' away (or more), thereby per the RAW getting effectively a +24 bonus on your hide check. The DM is getting frustrated as you are single handedly wiping out encounters meant for the whole group with no threat to yourself, and the DMs is getting tired of having to metagame against you in his encounter design.

As a player, you've got a significant investment in this character. Obviously, in fairness the DM needs to take that into consideration. But equally in fairness, you know you're using a rules exploit, so you ought to expect at some point the DM to plug that hole. The solution here is not to scream at the DM about what the rules say and demand you play only by the RAW, any more than the solution for the DM is to completely nerf your character by making it the qualifications for hiding basically impossible to meet. One typical problem you run into here is when the rules are obviously bad, you have on one hand a player invested in 'winning' who believes that they have a right to get angry and challenge the DM, and on the other hand you have a DM who probably isn't a particularly good rules smith and believes he has a right to be angry about the player's power gaming and/or angry challenge.

Such is the stuff of internet horror stories.

in general, challenging the DM will never come to anything good. If you stay in the framework that regardless of what the DM did, it's your job to help, it will tend to work out a lot better.

The rule book is there for a reason, otherwise we all might as well just sit around and play cops and robbers "I shot you, nah nah, I shot you first!".

While I agree with the general idea, D&D is not and can never be a purely competitive game. The DM has way to much power. It's in the power of any DM to create impossible scenarios where the PC's couldn't possibly triumph. A moderately clever DM can do it with the suggested level of resources simply by putting them together in combinations. The rule book is there for a reason, but that reason is not and can never be to ensure balance between the DM and the players, as if the DM and the players are in competition. Beating the players as a DM isn't your job and by and large is something you hope not to do. As such, the rules also belong to the DM. Sure, a smart DM consults with his players, but ultimately it's the DM's call. And that's usually pretty explicitly called out in the text of the rules, so there is no sense in which a player can legitimately stand on the rules either, since those same rules provide for the DM modifying the rules.

All that said, it's not usually rules per se that really trigger table arguments. Most table arguments are about rulings in ambiguous cases, fictional positioning, gotchas, GMs trying to tell players how to play their characters, or players trying to tell the GM how to run their game, or players trying to promote guidelines or flavor text to the level of rules.

 

[DaveDash]

Which is why I challenged the notion that interpreting the rules is simple. You are right. If a rules interpretation or rule change is going to seriously inconvenience a player, a smart DM is going to initiate the conversation about the rules with the player and express his concerns even before he introduces a proposed fix.

For example, suppose you have been playing a 3e RAW campaign, and you as a player tend toward the more power gamer, competitive end of the spectrum (which is great, every table needs at least one), and you are playing a sniper character that breaks the game by being essentially undetectable. You can fire and hide in the same turn, even against enemies with a very high spot check, but simply attacking from 120' away (or more), thereby per the RAW getting effectively a +24 bonus on your hide check. The DM is getting frustrated as you are single handedly wiping out encounters meant for the whole group with no threat to yourself, and the DMs is getting tired of having to metagame against you in his encounter design.

As a player, you've got a significant investment in this character. Obviously, in fairness the DM needs to take that into consideration. But equally in fairness, you know you're using a rules exploit, so you ought to expect at some point the DM to plug that hole. The solution here is not to scream at the DM about what the rules say and demand you play only by the RAW, any more than the solution for the DM is to completely nerf your character by making it the qualifications for hiding basically impossible to meet. One typical problem you run into here is when the rules are obviously bad, you have on one hand a player invested in 'winning' who believes that they have a right to get angry and challenge the DM, and on the other hand you have a DM who probably isn't a particularly good rules smith and believes he has a right to be angry about the player's power gaming and/or angry challenge.

Such is the stuff of internet horror stories.

in general, challenging the DM will never come to anything good. If you stay in the framework that regardless of what the DM did, it's your job to help, it will tend to work out a lot better.



While I agree with the general idea, D&D is not and can never be a purely competitive game. The DM has way to much power. It's in the power of any DM to create impossible scenarios where the PC's couldn't possibly triumph. A moderately clever DM can do it with the suggested level of resources simply by putting them together in combinations. The rule book is there for a reason, but that reason is not and can never be to ensure balance between the DM and the players, as if the DM and the players are in competition. Beating the players as a DM isn't your job and by and large is something you hope not to do. As such, the rules also belong to the DM. Sure, a smart DM consults with his players, but ultimately it's the DM's call. And that's usually pretty explicitly called out in the text of the rules, so there is no sense in which a player can legitimately stand on the rules either, since those same rules provide for the DM modifying the rules.

All that said, it's not usually rules per se that really trigger table arguments. Most table arguments are about rulings in ambiguous cases, fictional positioning, gotchas, GMs trying to tell players how to play their characters, or players trying to tell the GM how to run their game, or players trying to promote guidelines or flavor text to the level of rules.

I find myself in agreement with you.

 

[Ranes]

Assuming that the GM does not want to lose the player/group, how is s/he expected to know that change is needed? To me, it seems the best way is for the players to let him/her know, either by direct communication or by implicit signals about what they are enjoying and what they are not enjoying.

Sure. But grinding the game to a halt for a discussion, not just a query about the placement of a monster doesn't seem like an appropriate place to have that kind of in-depth communication, to some of us.

I don't look at the issue from the point of view of "1st level PCs" - as I see it, the issue is one about player expectations, it's not an issue about the PCs in-game knowledge.

That certainly speaks to the issue but that's kind of my point. The payers should be reacting - to such a thing as an arguably incongruous monster placement - through their characters and, by so doing, giving everyone at the table a chance to keep the game going. This isn't a suddenly egregious case of DM fiat, as was the case in the example you gave earlier in the thread, when your DM suddenly stripped away all your PC investment in your campaign's lore (I felt for you there; that was awful).

With that autobiographical detail out of the way, I can't answer your (rhetorical/hypothetical) question about what you should have done - I don't know you (other than some interesting posts on these boards!), I don't know your players, I don't know your game.

Thank you for that. And yes, my questions were rhetorical.

But I can give an anecdote of my own. When I started my current 4e game, I gave the players a few instructions:

(1) We'll be using default 4e lore from the PHB, MM and DMG;​

Just to interject here: had I framed my example campaign in this way, my re-worked gobbos would have been, if not unreasonable, then a little bit naughty, I think. My players would have had every right to expect by-the-book goblins (assuming they were familiar with the game). But if standard 4e said creature X usually appears here and I made such a beastie appear over there in one case, I would still be unhappy with a player wanting to engage in a discussion on that issue right in the middle of the game. I would refer the player to the word 'usually'. Similarly, I would still consider it within my purview to create 'deep goblins' or something similar, that the PCs may never have encountered or heard of before.

...I set out to make goblins a focus of the game, at least at low-levels, within an express framing of default lore. I regarded myself, then, as obliged to present goblins as prospective enemies which dovetailed into the PCs' backstories. When the players wrote backstories involving previous wars between goblins and dwarves, or wrote backstories involving goblins sacking towns and villages, I had to incorporate all that too.

But no-one wrote a backstory that connected to goblins having a +2 bonus to Thievery by the default rules, and goblin thievery has never come up in the campaign, even after 6 years of playing it. That's a detail that I don't regard myself as bound by (though nor have I deviated from it - it's basically irrelevant to how the game has unfolded).

If one of the players had built a thief PC whose guild was a rival to the notorious house-breaking second-story goblins, this issue might have been different.

Having good judgement on these sorts of things is part of GMing skill, I think. Like most matters of judgement, I think it is very hard to give hard-and-fast rules about what should or shouldn't be done. An ability to grasp the situation, what is at stake in it for oneself and others, what is possible consistent with those stakes, and bringing others along with a decisions, are all part of it. (I'm reminding myself of Selznick's Leadership in Administration.)

This I understand, agree with and want to thank you for, because it's given me an idea for my game.​

 

[pemerton]

Ranes, thanks for your reply! There was only one bit I wanted to pick up on; and Henry's post also relates to it.

The payers should be reacting - to such a thing as an arguably incongruous monster placement - through their characters and, by so doing, giving everyone at the table a chance to keep the game going.

If I were leaving my workplace, and sitting next to my car in the parking lot is a ****ing Grizzly Bear, I am NOT walking up to the bear and saying, "puh-lease. You have no business in the city." and ignoring it, because I'm not insane. Neither would your Player's Character. He might freak out, "what the **** is THAT doing here?" and doing research if possible after the crisis, but honestly, stranger things have happened.

I don't think it really helps progress our understanding of GMing and play techniques, though, to frame this the way Henry has, as an in-game thing. The player whom [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] described wasn't roleplaying his PC's ingame response. He was expressing his own, real-world aesthetic response.

Ranes's comment addresses this issue directly, with a suggestion about how the player should respond, within the context of the game, to being irritated by an incongruous monster placement.

My own feeling is that if the player's response really is as strong as [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s player's seems to have been, then while telling the player "Please don't respond to this out-of-character" is one possible way of replying, it probably isn't going to make the player's aesthetic response change. It might be a way of trying to keep the game moving in the moment (assuming the player complies), but it isn't going to change the player's dislike of what happened.

I see a connection here to the example I gave of walking from a game over a kobold. In that sort of situation, I don't care how much the GM tells me about the ingame explanations for the kobold's ineptitude, and urges me to roleplay my character's response to that. My irritation towards the GM is not an expression of an in-character response. And it's not a complaint that the gameworld is inconsistent. I'm complaining that the GM is blocking the players' attempt to turn the game from one of reaction and railroading into one of proactivity and player-driven action.

That's an out-of-character, real-world reaction. It seems to me that the GM can't deal with it (or, at least, can't deal with it successfully) just by reiterating imaginary facts about the imagined gameworld.