Where does this "stripping power away from the DM" meme come from originally?

I started gaming late 1980's. The only house rules I've ever made to games that I run is adding a rule if the game didn't include one for something the group was interesting in having rules for. 99% of the time I've GM'd I've never needed to have a house rule nor wanted a house rule for games that I've GM'd. 100% of the time I've been a player in the game I've never wanted nor needed the GM to house rule the game. I played in a Wheel of Time game that was completely made up by the GM that I thought was pretty cool, but I knew going into it he had written it. If someone asks me if I want to play 1st Edition AD&D, then I expect to play by the rules as written. If I tell players that I'm going to be running Call of Cthulhu, then I expect them to realize that I'm going to be running the rules as written. If someone asks me if I want to play chess with them, then I expect standard tournament chess, not speed chess or one of the tons of variants. I played sports most of my youth. Sports have rules and nobody shows up to play basketball at some guys house where he lets you know that at his house there are no 3 pointers, travelling results in free throws for the other team, or some other house rule that "fixes" a rule. I expect the same out of my roleplaying games when I run them or play in them. Now if that's not how you run your games or how your group likes things, that's fine. It's your right to change the rules if you want the same as it's okay to play variants of chess or card games at your house with your friends. It's just not what I want to do when I play the game with my friends.

Dungeons and Dragons is not like Chess. In Chess, both players are equals and they stick to the rules in order to determine who is smarter and / or better at Chess. In dungeons and dragons, take the situation of a two person game, one player gets to select the power levels of both sides while the other player has to take whatever amount of power he is given. If the Game Master tells you to make a first level character and then fills the world with nothing but werewolves and vampires, tough shit, that is the game you are playing.

Amazingly though, the player who has to except the level of power he has been given by the Game Master tends to "win" dozens to hundreds of encounters for each one he loses. How is this possible? Probably not through his mastery of the rules or his brilliance... it is probably because the game master is letting him "win."

If you get +1 and the bad guy gets +2, you might think it isn't fair because said bad guy shouldn't have +2. So you go through the book and prove that the bad guy gets +1. First off, this makes you an asshole. Secondly, it makes you a short sighted dildo because the person you are bitching to was probably letting you win. Third, it is futile because even if the GM lets you get away with it, from then on he can just pick shit that comes with a +3, so what did you gain?

Rules lawyering is ignorant, short sighted, and stupid.

Role playing games aren't a test of wits between GM and player because the GM can decide to "win" whenever he wants. Instead, he lets you win. Telling him that his Bishop can't move like a pawn is so god damned stupid it hurts. They aren't like football because in foot ball, one team doesn't also control the refs or pick the starting points, or call all of the time outs, and then let the other team win anyway.

Yes, it is amazing to me how often there are players who feel that they need to get into a battle of ego with the GM.  Its like, do you fuckers not understand how an RPG works?!

RPGpundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;427884Yes, it is amazing to me how often there are players who feel that they need to get into a battle of ego with the GM.  Its like, do you fuckers not understand how an RPG works?!

Some people are spoiled brats and have always gotten their way, and expect the same thing in an rpg game?

In my experience, I haven't come across many spoiled brats in my rpg games over the years.  Though of the spoiled brat players I have come across, almost every single one of them fit  exactly into the stereotypical pattern of "battle of ego with the GM" whenever things don't go their way.

More generally the spoiled rotten brats I've known in person, generally tend to have very little to no interest in rpg games.  Their "geek/nerd" activities of choice is stuff like playing video games in "god mode".

I don't think the rules are any more partial to the brats, in fact it's quite the opposite because the rules won't change their mind to shut the fucker up.

When I was a freshman in high school, I moved to Denver from the sticks, where I'd been playing AD&D, essentially as written. The school had a D&D club, which was something I had never seen or heard of before. You could play whatever you wanted, but there was house game there that had been going for quite a while, and I wanted in on it. They played about half AD&D, using a specific list of things from Arduin. The expectation was that you would go and get the Arduin books.

The Arduin rules were mana points, bigger starting but slowly escalating hit points, shorter intertwined combat, things like that. We houseruled languages altogether. The game was fun. It took a bit to draw a dungeon, because you had to refigure monster movement and a few other things. There were side-effects of the rule changes that made the game a little more deadly and less predictable. The group figured those were all features rather than flaws, and as I learned the game from them, that was my predisposition, as well. We played almost daily for four years, and occasional vacation games a few years after that. I internalized the rules we used, both the rules I loved and the ones I didn't, because that was th way we played.

When I think about playing D&D, these house rules are what I think about. I have to take a moment and remember there aren't any mana points in D&D. Like a lot of folks who learned to play this way, I'm always a little surprised when I go back to look at AD&D rules raw, because it just wasn't very close to what we played. So now, years later, it would be difficult for me to put together a group that would find consensus in the rules I think of as D&D. They might never have played Arduin, or they might be invested in some other set of hoserules. We likely would have to go back to raw to have a starting point to build a new system of out own. And there wouldn't be a lot of point in that, would there?

Because there aren't many places left where a particular piece of game folklore can be handed down to new players as "the thing we play" anymore. There may be a few strange Gene Weigle-esque basements across the country. And a few odd old game clubs. But for the most part, in these parts, old games aren't looking for new people. When enough players move or die, the game is over. The folklore ends. The language dies out. Groups that come together come from players that want to try a new game (and thus play raw) or spin off from Living groups (and thus play raw) or come from kids that picked up a box or a book and want to find someone to play with (and thus expect to play raw).

Into all this, you have brilliant young creative authors who design games as works of art and personal expression, and refute criticism of their games online by explaining how the dissatisfied players are playing wrong. So there emerges an online culture of people playing raw o see if they can poke holes in games written to be played raw, never mind any taste or discretion among players or gms. Never mind people trying to get together or trying to have fun. C'est le guerre. That's the internet, as far as I can tell.

This has come up in the 4e threads, the realism vs emulation threads, the swine threads--it comes up over and over. The part of gamer culture that's changed dramatically in the last twenty years is the idea that games are a means for people to come together and have fun. The desire to seek consensus is gone. Sure, there's always been some choad in every group that can't seem to get along, but gm/peer pressure has generally kept these guys sort of in line without too much discussion or hand wringing.

Now whole groups are comprised of choads. Games are written in their entirety for choads. Games are written more and more frequently by choads. And the only thing that happens is games become stranger, more fiddly, and more narrowly divided within genres. I struggle to imagine how these groups play. Never mind agreeing on rules. How do these guys order pizza or listen to music in the background? One detail about these guys I've noticed repeatedly is their inability to listen to anyone else's music. They pull bizarre, niche-within-a-niche music off the net and decide it's the only thing they're going to like. No wonder fewer genuine friendships emerge from these groups that used to. I'm pulling that anecdote from frequent threads in these boards, as well.

I think--over simply--the internet has created such an easily-available self-selected simulacrum of friendship and culture that the basic precepts of human interaction upon which rpgs were originally built no longer apply. That saddens me beyond words, but I don't think it  will be permanent. Sooner or later, people will emerge from their little cocoons, understanding they have to get along with other people in order to have a satisfying life.

In that bold new era, games will rely more on verbal rules transmission and group consensus, and rules as written will be less important again. Hopefully, though, after having been through the present period, they will be written better than they used to be.

You're funny.

Quote from: 'stu'The desire to seek consensus is gone.

Quote from: DiasporaWe also talk frequently about "the table"
and many things happen in the context of the
table's authority. The table is, simply, the sum
of the players, the referee included, with all
opinions weighed equally. The table is the
consensus, and it is more important than any
single player's authority, including the referee's.
Much of the game is explicitly under
the power of the table, but it is true whether
a game says so or not, that all of the game
ultimately lies within the context of table authority.
Referees and players alike should seek
consensus.

Damn those swine games calling for group cooperation and consensus on what the game is going to be about.  Damn theeeeem!

I don't damn the swine for desiring consensus. I damn the choads for helping them imagine that it's it's an innovative game design.

Quote from: Peregrin;427908Damn those swine games calling for group cooperation and consensus on what the game is going to be about.  Damn theeeeem!

I don't damn the swine for desiring consensus. I damn the choads for helping them imagine that it's it's an innovative game design.

Quote from: stu2000;427922I don't damn the swine for desiring consensus. I damn the choads for helping them imagine that it's it's an innovative game design.

Well whose fault is it that their "play culture" didn't get recorded in books?

If no one bothered to write down proper advice in their books, then it's their fault that all this other stuff seems "new" and "revolutionary."

Quote from: Peregrin;427924Well whose fault is it that their "play culture" didn't get recorded in books?

If no one bothered to write down proper advice in their books, then it's their fault that all this other stuff seems "new" and "revolutionary."

I don't know if you're missing the point or not. I'm not suggesting that anything from "play culture" should have been written down in books. I'm suggesting that the desire for consensus in playing a game shouldn't have to be written down. It used to be taken for granted as a basic rule of getting along with people. Not as a basic rule in games.

My favorite story game is Baron Munchausen, and it may not be a good example for what I'm talking about. But imagine a group of people sitting down together to play a story game. If they're a bunch of the kind of folks I'm referring to as choads--contentious, litigious, determined to win the game by finding a problem with it, rather than choking on their problems in order to have a good time, aren't they going to wreck the game? They would wreck Munchausen. But if a group can function well enough to generate a fun time in a story game, they could probably achieve consensus in D&D. Not that they should, or would want to, or anything else. I'm simply saying they have the skill set.

If you could write a book that explains why that works, the ones who would read it wouldn't need to, and the ones who would need to would spend all day on the internet parsing the language and explaining why the book was wrong. The only thing I assert that may be even slightly controversial, is that I think we're in a hopefully brief period of time in games where the voices of the choads outweigh the voices of reasonable people as the voice of gamers.

Since I don't particularly hope that I'm right, I will gratefully listen to arguments against that assertion.

You haven't got the concept, Peregrin. The various GMs were expected to houserule to their own satisfaction by the designers. How in the world could the designers know and document what the GMs would do? The fact that the GM was the final authority on the game rules, not the designer,  *was* documented - RTFM! Exactly *what* they did couldn't be documented except by each group separately. What you said above just doesn't make any sense.

That attitude toward the rules was a carryover from wargaming. I was a wargamer before I became a GM, and I was *always* modding and kitbashing wargames. We all did it. The first time I read an RPG - some version of D&D, I forget which - I was cutting out rules, adding other rules, and kitbashing with some cool wargame concepts I had run into, all before I ever played the game once. That was the culture at the time.

Occasionally there was cross-pollination - a new menber joins from another group, or departs to another group, carrying the houserules in his head, which might or might not make it into new game groups' houserules - but it wasn't common.

My own group - which consists mostly of kids I taught to play - doesn't even play my *own* games as written. I usually have some houserules in effect that I would not put into the game book because they are specific to the group's play and would not be useful in other situations. I don't think I have *ever* played a roleplaying game RAW, actually.

-clash

In my gaming groups back in the day, the choads were kicked out of our games after a few sessions.  After awhile, the choads got a bad reputation locally that nobody wanted to play any rpg games with them.  Even at local conventions, nobody local wanted to game with them.  They ended up playing convention games with people who are not aware of their local bad reputation.