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What if you sat down at an open table and the GM said “I always play with the following house rules; Shields shall be splintered= any time you take damage in combat you can sacrifice your shield to avoid it, heavy crossbows = heavy crossbows do x2 damage but take x2 to load, all PC’s get +10 hp, and lastly gnomes have a 90% to hide in shadows if they don’t move, but NPC’s will not trust them and they get a penalty to their reaction rolls to non-gnomes. Those rules are posted on my GM screen if you need to reference one.”

 

What if you get caught in a flood at night while camped, you only have moments to grab your gear. The DM says “Make a Save VS Acid for each of your magic items, weapons, and spell books to see if you can hold onto them as the water swirls around you. The water is up to your chest and rising.”

Oct 30, 2012 -- 5:44PM, bluespruce786 wrote:

What if you sat down at an open table and the GM said “I always play with the following house rules; Shields shall be splintered= any time you take damage in combat you can sacrifice your shield to avoid it, heavy crossbows = heavy crossbows do x2 damage but take x2 to load, all PC’s get +10 hp, and lastly gnomes have a 90% to hide in shadows if they don’t move, but NPC’s will not trust them and they get a penalty to their reaction rolls to non-gnomes. Those rules are posted on my GM screen if you need to reference one.”

I don't think rules laid out ahead of time are a problem. I also think that it's easy to deal in absolutes on a forum like "the DM must never make a ruling against the text", but in reality the DM makes those kinds of rulings all the time - even at tables where people are willing to come out and say the DM must never do it.

As you said in the OP, these games are far too long winded and complex to make the text stand on its own. I mean, you could, but it's boring.

The other thing to consider is if a DM has come up with a really neat plotline or a really neat backstory that they want the players to explore and it requires the game be changed in certain ways in order for the exploration to happen. One popular example is the game with no elves, but I think that's kinda boring.

Instead, let's use a game with no warrior classes.

Just assume for a moment that the DM wants to explore a world and they come up with a really interesting story about a whole prime material plane that has managed to do away with warfare. They've tamed the plane, they resolved their differences... swords are in museums but nobody knows how to use them anymore. There's still crime and petty violence (rogues) but there's no organised military or fighting tradition that would give rise to any true warrior class.

Crazy idea, but it could be intriguing to play. What's so wrong with going ahead and trying it? If the DM doesn't administer the idea, who would? Surely whoever suggested it would end up DMing the concept, right?

Sometimes you need one person to step out of the box and suggest a crazy idea. Since it's their crazy idea, they should then be given the right to arbirtate the game that uses that crazy idea. Crazy ideas like that have large implications on the game that cannot be entirely anticipated; you absolutely must have someone at the helm of that crazy train to make sure things to go plan. As long as folks are having fun, does it really matter?

DM Fiat is usually positioned as a player issue, and as a player I've certainly seen questionable DMs cause some damage with it (usually DMs whose desire to fiddle with stuff exceeded their competance, rather than outright malicious DMs, although there's a tendency amongst some DMs to "balance" stuff they simply have a personal distaste for, often for "realism", rather than just forbidding it.)

Where I, though, have the most issues with fiat as a DM. First, to get two things out of the way, I see fiat as a continuum and I also see a big difference between allowing for fiat and relying on fiat. It's very hard to design a tabletop RPG that doesn't allow for some level of fiat. That's a fine and good thing. Similarly, every game relies on fiat to some extent (since you can't model everything), but there's a vast number of places to be within that space. One reason that it's important to distinguish between allowing for fiat and relying on fiat is to make clear that "but it's important for DMs to be able to step in where the rules don't make sense or where the group would have more fun a different way!" has absolutely nothing to do with reducing the extent to which a game relies on fiat. If the goal were to reduce the extent to which the game allows for fiat, then sure, that might be an issue, but that's not really what anybody cares about, nor is it something that I would even know how to begin doing.

There's two places where, as a DM, reliance on fiat bugs me. The first is in situations where I feel like I'm basically deciding whether the players succeed or fail at something. Maybe it's just the way I think, but every time I set a DC, I know I'm setting a probability, and I know what that probability is. Every time - in Next - when I decide that an arbitrary situation does or doesn't grant advantage, I know what I'm doing. I like to feel that the world has rules that are just kind of there, and I feel sort of lame every time I know I'm just deciding whether or not a semi-reasonable action will work. Can't be eliminated entirely, but can be controlled.

Second place is balance. I know that as a DM, I can smack down whatever I want, but it always feels arbitrary. It'd be nice if to the greatest extent possible the rules didn't require DM intervention to function at a basic level.

Lastly, the place where excessive reliance on fiat bugs me as both a player and as a DM is in terms of expectations. I feel that to the greatest extent possible, nobody should ever be surprised about what kind of check is required to do something or generally the ballpark of its DC. If some athletic feat is easy or hard or dependant on strength of dexterity is something that the actual characters would know, and is something that the players thus should know, but it's not always clear. One thing that I like about PF's maneuver system (which is awesome and should just be outright stolen for Next) is that once somebody understands the maneuver system then they understand their relative ability to do a massive number of assorted combat maneuvers, can ballpark more or less someone else's ability to defend against the maneuver (or to perform one), and will understand the cost and risks associated with each one. Pushing, pulling, dragging, repositioning, swiping something, smushing dirt in his eyes, whatever. No "around how hard would it be to do this, and what sort of check would it be? What about this? What about this?" Just smooth sailing.

Oct 30, 2012 -- 8:36PM, Maelphaxerazz wrote:

It has already been mentioned several times in this thread, but I'll reiterate it in short form since it is such an important issue.

People enjoy making tactical decisions. Without knowledge of what exactly your character is capable of doing and what effects it can have, tactical decisions are meaningless. Ideally a DM isn't a permission-giver, rather, he is an arbitrator... and an opponent. If one has clear rules and guidelines for what your character and his targets can do, then one can play an encounter not just as a storytelling component but also as a challenge. Without them you aren't playing the game, you're playing the DM. The rules can't cover every possible circumstance, of course, and even then concrete rules matter: if a person can make a decision based on a point of comparison then their ruling is going to be more consistent and reliable than one made on whim alone.

In my games the only input I have is either if
A) The player is unsure what check(s) to make in order to do said task.
or B) If the task is out of the ordinary or obviously hard to do/outlandish. Then the players must ask if it's possible. I generally find a way to work with them, but sometimes it's just not.