D&D General Respeckt Mah Authoritah: Understanding High Trust and the Division of Authority

[Alzrius]

I find it genuinely baffling that this is apparently what "high trust" is supposed to mean. Because it is always used, as far as I can tell, to refer to places where the GM is given absolute, unquestioned and unquestionable authority. The GM will intrude on whatever they wish to intrude upon, and the players will simply accept this. In other words, it is called "high trust," but the descriptors of the environments you just spoke of sound to me like a "low-trust" situation: There is a central authority that can, and will, do anything and everything it likes, and you will put up with that--or you will leave. These so-called "high-trust" games are in fact the ones that have low player agency.

That was my take on this idea too. While I think that characterizing such a style of play as "mother may I" – with regard to the players basically letting the GM dictate what can be done, and the expectation being that their word is final and unquestionable – is the sort of pejorative that invites pushback rather than discussion, the characterization that such a shorthand provides with regard to the aspects of "high trust" play that I find distasteful/undesirable is apt.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Just...I don't see it. Why do something, if you don't actually want to do it? Even OSR games quite clearly expect players to be active and invested. I've read several of them. Some even have rather harsh things to say about players who aren't invested. I don't see how what you've said actually connects to the "practical" here--the actual games written and played.

I agree to one extent or another with most of what you said in this post, but I want to comment about this.

There are absolutely low engagement players, and there are players who aren't all the time but are some of the time.

I'm not the former, but I am the latter. There are parts of the games that engage me, and parts that don't. But the latter engage other people, so its not all about me. And sometimes I'm just not altogether with it (partly because I have the chronic GM disease of getting bored easily).

But I still get things out of the game as a whole, even if I'm not constantly engaged, and probably can't constantly be engaged.

And the people who are borderline engaged are still getting things out of the game, but they don't really want a higher level of engagement, at least in many cases.

I think people in the hobby who don't get that are going to constantly not understand some players and why certain things are useful to some GMs. That doesn't mean anyone has to want to deal with low or intermittent engagement players, but they're very much real and very much a thing some GMs are dealing with.

(To make it clear, that's not an excuse for the generic infantalization of players by some GMs, but there's some middle ground here).

 

[Thomas Shey]

It's a bit more complex.

There is a big difference between

1. A quick ruling to move past a part of the game
2. A houserule intended to be used constantly at the table in your campaign

1 is usually painless and doesn't do much
2 can heavily shift your whole campaign

Gamers have no problem with adding a bunch of Type 1 houserules.
But Type 2 houserules can have be changes on how the game is played and the fun had. That is where the High Trust or Low Trust comes in. It only takes one bad experience for a table to be wary of major major houserules.

I get the latter, but honestly, sometimes you hit a rule that is just dumb as a box of rocks, or is simply not serving what you're trying to do. I do think (these days; I wasn't always as thoughtful about this) that you should get general player buy-in on house rules, and have always felt if you have more than one or two they need to be written down.

 

[schneeland]

My main critique on this article is that I feel it mixes up at least two things: 1) the level of trust required for fair adjudication in absence of written rules, 2) the question of how much control over the narrative different people at the table can exert.
The different editions of D&D have required different levels of trust from players towards GMs (side note: I don't think it is fully accurate to use the word trust in the other direction for OSR games). However, even when in editions that ask for a higher level of trust/provide GMs with more freedom, control over the narrative mostly resides on the GM side in D&D.
Contrarily, the mentioned PbtA games do not require the same level of trust, because moves have conditions under which they trigger and the GMs behavior is also constrained by GM moves (naturally, some PbtA games are designed better than others in this regard). However, players clearly have more control over the narrative because on a mixed success, they get to choose between options that influence the narrative.
Now, I do think that many PbtA games require a high level of trust, but that is not due to their rules design, but rather because of the more sensitive topics that can come up during play.
The one part where I agree is: games where everybody at the table can influence the narrative require a higher level of engagement to create a compelling story than traditional games where the GM takes this job.

 

[Oligopsony]

There has actually been some sniping in the OSR scene recently between blorb people and FKR people, with the former saying the latter concedes too much to the GM and the latter calling the former low-trust. I think this is unnecessary because blorb and FKR are actually completely compatible.

OP started a thread on FKR recently so those confused recently, but blorb (terrible name, but better than “OSR” at least in that it actively means nothing rather than misleading anyone) I think deserves wider awareness so I’ll gloss it: it’s a set of principles for GMs - rules to abide by in the same way there are GM-facing rules in PbtA. The principle is that there are “levels of truth:”

1. Facts about the fictional situation which the GM has written in her notes,
2. Known procedures for filling in blank spots,
3. GM fiat,

And the idea is that you only draw on one level when there’s nothing already established in a prior level. So if the question is “what’s in the room?,” if your notes you already prepped says there’s a owlbear eating pasta in the room, there’s an owlbear eating pasta, even if a better idea occurs to you at the moment. If your notes haven’t written anything on it, then rely on your dungeon stocking tables. If you don’t have any of those, only then can you make up something.

Both FKR and blorb are in a way logical extensions of OSR principles, but you can see how there’s some tension, because OSR play really emphasizes GM authority in some ways and restricts it in others - which is also true of most other playstyles.

 

[Guest 7042500]

Crom. I'm glad I don't run D&D any more.

That's a reaction to this whole thread, not any single post.

 

[Lanefan]

It would be really nice if literally anyone talked more about this bi-directionality of trust then. Because in the vast majority of cases, I see OSR-style GMs as some of the least-trusting GMs around. Players are at best unwise and foolish, reduced to childish caricatures in need of minding by the gracious parental GM; all too often, they are instead painted as actively antagonistic and needing to be corrected lest they ruin everything. And that's far from the worst characterization I've seen.

Part (or in some cases much) of a DM's role is that of referee; and the role of a referee in any game or sport is to assume the players are going to try to break the rules and to stop them from doing so using whatever enforcement mechanisms that sport or game provides.

The players of that game or sport have to trust that the referee will be fair and impartial, and the referee has to trust that the players will abide by his/her rulings.

You have forgotten one of the other critical issues: if so much is placed on the shoulders of a single person, the game should thus go out of its way to help that person as much as can be done within budget and publication limits. That there should be...oh, I don't know, some kind of guide that would provide really good instruction, well-tested tools, and other forms of advice/aid/etc. to smooth the road as much as the designers can.

On this we agree.

If they were designing for the mass market, something like dragonborn would have been included in the 2e PHB. Because dragons have mass-market appeal. They always have, since time immemorial. They're literally globally popular.

As monsters, opponents, and things that frighten people, yes. But not as characters to actually play.

 

[Lanefan]

I find the lowering thrust in D&D DMs is due to

1. The continuing of bad mechanics which do not match the fiction due to support of tradition
2. The continuing of bad mechanics which do not match newer or additional fiction due to support of tradition

You left out: 2a. The ongoing addition of new bad mechanics which don't match the fiction, tradition be damned.

 

[Lanefan]

It's a bit more complex.

There is a big difference between

1. A quick ruling to move past a part of the game
2. A houserule intended to be used constantly at the table in your campaign

1 is usually painless and doesn't do much
2 can heavily shift your whole campaign

Gamers have no problem with adding a bunch of Type 1 houserules.
But Type 2 houserules can have be changes on how the game is played and the fun had. That is where the High Trust or Low Trust comes in. It only takes one bad experience for a table to be wary of major major houserules.

As far as I'm concerned 1 and 2 here are the same thing; as in my view a "quick ruling" should set a binding precedent for the remainder of that campaign. If it doesn't, and the ruling can change from week to week, that's where trust in the DM will very quickly go out the window.

Which is why even "quick rulings" should be thought through and got right the first time, even if it means stopping a session for ten minutes and thinking/talking it over.

I've been kitbashing and houseruling for decades. Some changes work, some don't, so what? Trial and error.

 

[Malmuria]

ke this section because it explicates why I dislike the phrase “high trust”. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the play typified by that phrase. It’s that it was developed in response to another game, and the alternative often assumed is play like that other game, which isn’t necessarily the case. One can have a game where the GM is constrained in various ways, and the players play in a (more or less) traditional way. You could have a game where the players play both sides (like this example of play Jon Peterson examines on his blog). It’s like when the assumed alternative to rulings is a 3e-style enumeration of rules for everything. Things don’t have to be like that

I agree. I think it goes back to the mentality that gaming styles are all or nothing, or else “incoherent,” where in reality games and gaming styles exist in between.

preferred to have written novels or screenplays, but getting into the RPG biz is easier.

Jokes on them!