Why we like plot: Our Job as DMs

[Janx]

You believe then that the fictional world or space the game takes place in is in the sole hands of the GM then, yes?

The initiating space is primarily the domain of the DM. THe player doesn't have the authority to change or create, to some extent. Obviously, the act of creating a PC is the act of creation, as is tying it to the world. The player has limited rights pre-game. Smart players know how to get away with more, by making things up the DM likes, they inherently get to create more than dumb players who rub the GM the wrong way with their ideas.

Given how we don't really get much more control than that in the real world...

One friend, who's not allowed to DM (for a variety of reasons that the group has deemed him unfit), had a tendency to accept whatever the players said and make it real. Accidentally say "I hope these aren't werewolves" and you'll find that they are. Especially bad when your first level and you don't have any magic or silver.

What if you are not playing a game where you start at a higher level, or does not uses levels at all?

I would expect a higher level char to be older. How much older is always a fuzzy thing, but older would make more sense.

I hate games without levels. Particularly ones where the chars get skills that increase dramatically over the course of play. The problem is that tying those increases to levels gives the GM a handy tool for guaging the strength of the party. Whereas, with no levels, all the GM knows is the PCs aren't new and they don't suck anymore.

However, the foundation is the same, a new unskilled PC is likely young (and I expect the same for NPCs). A PC with higher skills is likely older.

Just a note, in my games, I do make time go by, just to avoid the scenario of PCs who get to level 20 in 3 months game time.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

You believe then that the fictional world or space the game takes place in is in the sole hands of the GM then, yes?

I know you aren't asking me, but I'd like to add something since this built off a comment I made. My comment regarded where the line of appropriateness lies. I still believe that line is determined in a collective manner, but there has to be a final decision-maker and that is the DM. An example, in one campaign set in Greyhawk a player expressed his wishes to play a Warforged. I didn't think this was appropriate outside of Eberron, but I asked the player how he thought his character would fit into the game world. His proposed background and refluffing of the Warforged changed my mind and his character was deemed appropriate for that campaign.

 

[Woas]

The initiating space is primarily the domain of the DM. THe player doesn't have the authority to change or create, to some extent. Obviously, the act of creating a PC is the act of creation, as is tying it to the world.

What if one or more of the players came up with the idea or basis of the fictitious game, but another person offered or was chosen to GM it? You see the GM as more than just "a referee" then I take it?

I hate games without levels.

Ahhh. Now this is an important factor and certainly shows our angles of approach to this question. As for myself, I hate games with levels (and pre-defined class packages).

However, the foundation is the same, a new unskilled PC is likely young...

Then you would not accept a young character claiming in their backstory that they are a child and heir to the current ruling family (or son/daughter to the current Senator or whatever government the game uses), whose skills taken at character generation reflect?

 

[Woas]

In my view, the parts of the whole (that is, everyone who is actively playing in the game) are the final arbiter of what is right or wrong for the game, not solely the GM.

Taking your situation about the warforged, I would have pressed it to the rest of the players. "Does everyone thing warforged, based on his backstory, are ok for the game?"

I know you aren't asking me, but I'd like to add something since this built off a comment I made. My comment regarded where the line of appropriateness lies. I still believe that line is determined in a collective manner, but there has to be a final decision-maker and that is the DM. An example, in one campaign set in Greyhawk a player expressed his wishes to play a Warforged. I didn't think this was appropriate outside of Eberron, but I asked the player how he thought his character would fit into the game world. His proposed background and refluffing of the Warforged changed my mind and his character was deemed appropriate for that campaign.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

In my view, the parts of the whole (that is, everyone who is actively playing in the game) are the final arbiter of what is right or wrong for the game, not solely the GM.

Taking your situation about the warforged, I would have pressed it to the rest of the players. "Does everyone thing warforged, based on his backstory, are ok for the game?"

Do you require a full consensus, simple majority, or some other measrure of rightness? I do take my players considerations into my decisions. If another player had objected to the Warforged player's background I would ask them to present their reasons. I'm just the final decider when there is a difference in opinion, even if I am one of the participants in the difference. This comes fom the "referee" aspect of being a DM.

 

[Woas]

None of the above really... It's more of a refinement process. When someone speaks up and says, "Hey, that idea of yours is a little out there for the game, here is why... blahblah" and raises the issue it is not an automatic veto but more a flag to get others to think about it, brainstorm how it could be made to work or suggest alternatives with the goal of making it stick.

Do you require a full consensus, simple majority, or some other measrure of rightness?.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

None of the above really... It's more of a refinement process. When someone speaks up and says, "Hey, that idea of yours is a little out there for the game, here is why... blahblah" and raises the issue it is not an automatic veto but more a flag to get others to think about it, brainstorm how it could be made to work or suggest alternatives with the goal of making it stick.

This is probably a better description of what happens within my group than I was able to explain above. The group still looks to me to help finalize ideas. I realize my previous comments may have sounded like a heavy-handed approach.

 

[Janx]

What if one or more of the players came up with the idea or basis of the fictitious game, but another person offered or was chosen to GM it? You see the GM as more than just "a referee" then I take it?

The DM is effectively the game. Chaneg the DM, you got a different game. Don't like the game, find a different one. Part of this is supply and demand, part of this is the cold hard reality that every DM is different and they are not hot-swappable.

This is kind of like a director of a movie. It's a vision thing. Change directors, get a different movie, even with the same original script.

Another variable is "persistent pesty child syndrome". If a kid is going to keep asking for Mount Splashmore, I'm inclined to be more resistant to take them there the more they ask. Players get to say what cardinal direction they want to go, or who they want to parley or fight with. They don't get to tell me that the next villain has to be a vampire, or that they're tired of vampires despite the fact that they let the master loose and he's been making more ever since. The world moves where it moves (partly because the DM says so) and the PCs live there. The players don't get to demand what they want to happen next, their PCs will have to do some work.

To cover some of what I consider obvious, yes a DM will listen to what the players are interested in. If they want to try a murder mystery, he'll probably make one happen. A players are free to stop hunting down all those vampires, but there are obvious consequences that tend to keep the PCs stuck doing vampire patrol. Just like real life, some situations keep people stuck working, instead of pursuing their own goals. What I'm talking about in the previous paragraph is that players do not get to create game content or change. They can suggest or influence the DM. Their PC can try to enact the player's desire on the player's behalf. But the PLAYER does not have any right to direct control.

Ahhh. Now this is an important factor and certainly shows our angles of approach to this question. As for myself, I hate games with levels (and pre-defined class packages).

classes and levels are not tied together. Yes, D&D is a class and level based system. Shadowrun is a skills based and non-level based. It could have been skills based and level based (gaining a level lets you increase skills). The level acts as a metric, for the DM.

This is like folks who say they don't give out XP, they just say the party leveled up. In which case,they effectively gave the 3e PC 1000 times the level in XP. Same diff.

However, the foundation is the same, a new unskilled PC is likely young...

Then you would not accept a young character claiming in their backstory that they are a child and heir to the current ruling family (or son/daughter to the current Senator or whatever government the game uses), whose skills taken at character generation reflect?

I'm not seeing the contradiction in what you said, as it relates to what you quoted when you said that. Being the son of somebody important may justify having ranks in certain skills, but the PC can't break the rules on allocation...


However, I think you may be changing the subject to "what if the PC says they are an heir"? That's OK, let me consider that.

As a DM, when I see that, it's a warning flag. Is the player trying to weasel in some money/power/position? However, as a player, one of my longest running PCs used that tactic. So I'm guilty of doing it. In my case, I worded it as "son of councilman" and "venturing into the world to gain experience to be worthy of joining the council".

This was under my more permissive GM friend (not the bad GM). I was running the first PC in his new campaign world. What I had done in my backstory was lock in the elven nation, we were now a council of lords, fairly big (300+ members) and member ship was granted by reaching 10th level. I'd invented the seeds of an idea that the GM liked, so he filled in the rest. What I'd also done was set myself up as "sure my dad is somebody important, but I'm not getting any extra favors from it right now" as well as set up a goal (reach 10th level, become a council member).

There's a couple of points there. With that PC's 1 paragraph backstory, I just violated the strictest sense of what I've been talking about here. I made a goal for a 1st level PC and I invented a bunch of game world details.

I think the limits I see a DM placing on backstories are more of guidelines. There's a lot of grey area. Some players can make a backstory idea that the DM just loves because it fits. Other players come across as trying to pull a fast one. As a DM, limits and strictness are in place because of the latter type of player.

I think also, for a player, there's a desire to write a backstory that doesn't define your PC as shmuck. Some players go to far, trying to be "son of the king", and then when the GM twists it down to fit the PC's actual starting circumstance, the PC becomes a shmuck, because it's the only way to justify the son of the king NOT having all sorts of cool advantages.

So in some ways, the limits I'm talking about are also guidelines to players for how to avoid the DM from twisting your backstory so you're a loser. The first step is to not overreach.

 

[Janx]

This is probably a better description of what happens within my group than I was able to explain above. The group still looks to me to help finalize ideas. I realize my previous comments may have sounded like a heavy-handed approach.

Honestly, I think most of the problem sections of this thread come up when people assume the worst most heavy handed intepretation of what the other party said.

I think, in practice, most of us are not heavy handed extremists on any of the philosophies being expoused.

Case in point, earlier I said something was "an exception", and the response was to the effect of "that implies there is a rule". Which was a play on the phrase "exception, rather than the rule". That missed my usage completely, as I was referring to statistics.

Where anything outside the standard deviation range (if I recall the parlance), was an exception. Exceptions don't count in statistics. They get averaged out in the long run, or dealt with, as exceptions. This is what Rule 0 or Step 0 in any game or process is for, which is to deal with exceptions as they happen, rather than try to hyper-document and legaleese everything.

The point is, when somebody says "this is how I would do it", the listener should give them some grace and assume that if the situation varied or changed more, the person would adjust their decision and avoid coming to a horrible extreme problem.

 

[Woas]

The DM is effectively the game. Chaneg the DM, you got a different game. Don't like the game, find a different one. Part of this is supply and demand, part of this is the cold hard reality that every DM is different and they are not hot-swappable.

An interesting point of view.

It could have been skills based and level based (gaining a level lets you increase skills). The level acts as a metric, for the DM.

What about games that do not have this metric? For example: Classic (or the more recent Mongoose version) of Traveller?

As a DM, when I see that, it's a warning flag. Is the player trying to weasel in some money/power/position? However, as a player, one of my longest running PCs used that tactic.

When a player writes something down as backstory or as a note about their character you feel they are writing that as a way to 'get one over' the DM? What if a player is writing those things because that is the topics/themes/meme/goals they want to pursue with the character and are completely innocent requests?

What I'd also done was set myself up as "sure my dad is somebody important, but I'm not getting any extra favors from it right now"

I suppose this connects with your belief that first level/new characters need to be young, inexperienced, and have access to only the bare minimum of equipment. What if a player were to write in that their character was the son or daughter of somebody important because they legitametly want to explore that possibility and have those resources (more starting money... 'favors', as quick examples). Is it any different writing that than a player writing in they are a graduate from a wizard school to legitimize the fact they can cast spells?