D&D General What is adversarial DMing?

[overgeeked]

People talk about it fairly regularly and seem to assume everyone just knows what they mean by it, but what is it? A particular attitude towards the players and/or the game? Specific actions in isolation? What? DMs that are out to get the players. DMs who try to win the game against their players. Killer DMs. Rocks fall, everyone dies. DMs drunk on power and abusing it. The extreme end of combat as war. Laughing at players when their characters roll badly. Cackling when monsters crit PCs.

But how much of it is adversarial vs a misalignment of expectations? People not used to the harsher early days of the game could easily mistake that style of "the world is dangerous and if you're not clever and careful, you will die" for adversarial DMing. Granted, sometimes it absolutely was, but more often than not it's just the style of play rather than the DM out to get the PCs. And there's a lot of really adversarial advice for DMs in the AD&D DMG, so that doesn't help.

My experience with adversarial DMs is the DM who will agree to anything, any character, any race, any class, any homebrew, any magic items...just to get you at the table, then once play starts, punish you for those choices he allowed. Some examples, a player wanted to have a drow character and the DM allowed it, but promptly had the town guards murder the character at the first town...this was five minutes into the game, if I recall. Someone else was playing a drunken master monk and wanted an everfull mug (we started at 5th level for that game)...the DM allowed it, but in the first combat...again, less than five minutes into the game...the DM forced the character to drop the mug (I think it was a disarm) and described the mug shattering when it fell. I'd played with that DM long enough to know better than to get "creative" with characters. To me that's a clear example of adversarial DMing. If you're not going to actually allow someone to do something, play some character, or have some item, just say no. Don't say yes then snatch it away.

Most people seem to agree on a few extreme cases of adversarial DMing but not so much on the rest. So help me out. How do you define adversarial DMing?

 

[Nefermandias]

I do half of the things you've listed here.

 

[Yora]

It's giving the players deliberately false information and then laughing at them for having fallen for it.

 

[J.Quondam]

I'd probably go with something like:

"An adversarial GM is one who plays the game contrary to the expectations of the other players, and continues to do so when called out on it."

Basically, it's a GM playing for their own jollies, at the expense of everyone else's. That could mean a lot of things, imo: screwy homebrew rules, ignoring/changing the agreed genre or tone, pushing players' buttons (violating social contract), power-tripping, and so forth.
It does not necessarily mean being a "mean" GM, or running deceptive NPCs, or using save-or-die mechancis, or things like that, as long as the players are all agreed on that sort of thing.

IMO, it just boils down to a GM consistently not playing in the way the table has agreed to.

 

[payn]

Your point about misalignment is a good one. Sometimes folks like to take a specific instance and make a general case out of it. For me, if the GM constantly punishes the players for their decisions, no matter how much thought and care, it moves into the adversarial category. Its a consistent pattern of choices and behavior that outs an adversarial GM.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

I think fundamentally an adversarial DM is one who views player losses as some sort of victory for themself.

 

[overgeeked]

I do half of the things you've listed here.

Which half?

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Most people seem to agree on a few extreme cases of adversarial DMing but not so much on the rest. So help me out. How do you define adversarial DMing?

This isn't easy, because the term is often thrown around by people who use it to simply refer to, "DMing styles I don't like." Which is a definition, just not a very helpful one!

I think that there a lot of examples of DMs that abuse their authority that aren't adversarial DMs. For example, a DM that fudges in favor of monsters when the combat is "too easy" might be adversarial, but maybe she's more into illusionism and wants the combats to feel more meaningful.

Or there's the classic "Give and Destroy DMs" - the DM that will Monty Haul a campaign, because it feels good to have the players happy and getting stuff, and then she will realize that the players are OP, so will devise a way to take the player's stuff away, but then repeat the cycle. That's really bad DMing, but not adversarial.

Finally, there's the Killer DM. The Killer DM might be adversarial, but might just be running a really hard campaign and letting the dice fall where they may. They're not trying to kill the players, but death is by-product of their style (and surviving an accomplishment).

If those examples (IMO) aren't adversarial DMing, then what is? I go to the root of the words- an adversarial DM is one who believes their role isn't to be a fan of the players, or to be neutral, but to actively oppose the players.

It can take many forms- but the view is that the DM is the opponent (and the DM thinks that the players are the opponent). The DM isn't providing challenges for the players to overcome, but providing challenges to defeat the players. A DM that delights in "gotcha".

It's a constellation of behaviors that usually go to the same problem; the DM views themselves as a participant in a zero-sum game, and that their role is to win.

 

[Desdichado]

Mostly, a non-adversarial DM looks at his group of players, and wants to have a good game with them, so he accommodates to at least some degree what makes the game fun for them. An adversarial DM is one who refuses to do that, for various reasons, including his holding on to ideas about how the game "should" be run that are contrary to what the players think is fun. It reeks of either 1) passive-aggressiveness on the part of the GM, or 2) unwillingness to accept that his role as the facilitator of the game is first and foremost about making the game fun.

One common example here is the notion that the players better create a balanced party, or the world will punish them for their character generation choices collectively. To me, that violates both of the rules above.

Sometimes adversarial can be misapplied, though. If a DM can't let go of some precious idea he has about what D&D is about, even if none of the players enjoy it, then he may just be a bad DM, or at least a bad DM for this group, without actually being adversarial. Adversarial also implies at least some degree of conflict. I don't mean conflict IN GAME, I mean conflict between the players and the GM. By the same token, I've seen many cases of adversarial relationships between PCs that are managed cooperatively by the PLAYERS in such a way that it's loads of fun for everyone involved. Adversarial implies adversity at a meta-level.

 

[TheSword]

DMing adversarially is seeing the game as DM vs Players, where their aim as DM is to beat the players, by killing or thwarting them.

In can often include appealing to authority in the form of the setting or published materials to abrogate responsibility for why players fail or die.

It fails to acknowledge the essential imbalance between DMs and players.

It’s of no interest to me in any way as a player or as a DM.