The Croupier

From p.6 of 4th Edition's chapter, How to Be a DM

What do you need to play the D&D game? The heart of a gaming group is the players, who role-play their characters in adventures set forth by the Dungeon Master. Every player contributes to the fun of the game and helps bring the fantasy world to life. Beyond players, to play the D&D game you need space to play, rulebooks, and supplies such as dice, paper, pencils, a battle grid, and miniatures. Your game can be as simple as that, or you can add items for your convenience (character sheets, snacks) or to enhance the game with digital components (check out www.dndinsider.com).

Players D&D players fill two distinct roles in a D&D game: characters and Dungeon Master. These roles aren’t mutually exclusive, and a player can role-play a character today and run an adventure for the characters tomorrow. Although everyone who plays the game is technically a player, we usually refer to players as those who run the player characters.

D&D is a game of the imagination, all about fantastic worlds and creatures, magic, and adventure. You find a comfortable place where you can spread out your books and maps and dice, and you get together with your friends to experience a group story. It’s like a fantastic action movie, and your characters are the stars. The story unfolds as your characters make decisions and take actions—what happens next is up to you!

Six People in a Group: The rules of the game assume that you’re playing in a group of six people: the DM and five other players.

More or Fewer than Six: Playing with four or six other players is easy with minor adjustments. Groups that are smaller or larger require you to alter some of the rules in this book to account for the difference.

With only two or three characters in a party, you don’t have the different roles covered (see “Covering the Character Roles” on page 10, and “Character Role” on page 15 of the Player’s Handbook), and it’s harder to get through combat encounters even if the encounter is scaled down for your smaller group. With more than six characters, the group gets unwieldy and tends to split into subgroups. We give you some tips and tricks for managing a large group in “Group Size” in Chapter 2 (page 31), but if your group gets too large, you might want to split into two or more groups that play at different times.

Rating: mostly true

My issue with the above acknowledges that what's said is essentially true.  However, what's said doesn't actually "say" anything.  In giving a definition, we don't bother to explain what it means to "role-play" characters; we don't explain what adventures are, or how they're "put forth."  We don't explain how the players are expected to "contribute" or how the fantasy world is "brought to life."  We're told there are two distinct roles, characters and Dungeon Master, and that the roles aren't "mutually exclusive," but without any context for what these statements mean, we're left scratching our heads.

Role-players are used to this.  We know what the phrases mean; We already know how to play.  So we shrug, recognizing empty boiler plate for what it's supposed to do: fill a page with words.  Reading the above, we skip through it, recognize it contains nothing insightful and move on.  No big deal.  Not every paragraph is a gem.

There is a theory in writing that argues that if the words aren't doing anything, they shouldn't be there.  This is the pity.  Here we have this half-a-page of space, just waiting to carry water for the publishers and inform the reader; instead it seems concerned with stirring our anticipation for other pages that we hope will do what this page is not doing: teach us how to be a DM.

Presumably, the physical material the game needs could be in another section, as here it is not explained how they're used. Additionally, how many players we ought to include could also find its way to some other section of the book.  After all, if we knew how to DM, we could decide for ourselves how many players we ought to run.  Personally, I've run as many as 15 people for a space more than a year.  I know of numerous games through online friends and acquaintances who run 10 people or more, including my daughter.  As an experienced DM, there's no question that the number of players that can be run depend on the formulation of the campaign, the DM's ability to maintain order and the maturity of the players (as more mature players have more respect for one another).

I concede that yes, D&D is a game of the imagination.  It incorporates fantastic worlds and yes, in playing the game -- as with any game, we sit at a table and we get together with our friends.

Agreed, sometimes D&D can be like a fantastic action movie ... but since it isn't all the time, and is often very much like a group of people debating in exactly the kind of film that would bore an audience silly, maybe it's not a good idea to belabour that specific angle, and thus cause new players to wonder when the running comes around to the fantastic action movie part.  Additionally, casting the players as the "stars" suggests that they possess some sort of plot armour, or magic writer dust that's going to ensure their success -- and perhaps this is a poor way of addressing the possibility that a bad die will kill a player.  After all, if the story unfolds due to the characters making decisions, there's a chance that the decisions made will be very, very bad ones, like failing to recognize the consequences of failing to buy rope, or deciding a one-on-one contest with the bad guy is a good idea.

Forgive me, but there are some issues I have with the technical delivery here.

The "characters" don't actually make any decisions.  The players make decisions, explaining what the characters do.  This player-character dynamic is extremely important to understanding the structure of the game; it is a really good idea if the people explaining the game made very sure they didn't get confused about which do the "role-playing" and which are "role-played."  For someone reading this, trying to get a handle on how to DM, this is probably very important, what with the book being written by experts and all.

In yesterday's passage, and here again in today's, the book states very clearly that the DM is a player.  This philosophy is held dear by the WOTC and by many others; I think perhaps it stems from a desire to evoke inclusiveness, either by equating the players as every bit as important at the DM, or assuring the DM that others appreciate the effort and commitment being offered.  There's just one little problem with this togetherness: the English definition of the word "player," and what specifically that designation describes in a game.

D&D participants do fill two distinct roles: players and DMs.  It's clear that the writers have attempted to twist the language and the distinction between player and character in order to promote this inclusivity.  There are no characters at the D&D table.  The characters are made up.  But it sounds foolish to argue that there are players and DMs, and that DMs are players also, but a different kind of player ... because it's nonsensical.

Let's have this out.  Both players and DMs are participants.  Both players and DMs take part in the game.  However, "success" at the game applies only to the player.  The DM has success at providing an effective game, but does not succeed against "the odds".  The DM does not figure out the game's puzzles, or solve the mystery, or survive, or engage in any other action attributable to the adventure.  The DM makes the adventure.  He or she does not play the adventure.

I notice that this distinction is lost on a great many participants, no doubt owing the this tremendous need for inclusivity, and to emphasize that the DM is not on a pedastal, or is not a demagogue.  The invention of DM, the force and will that enables the game, created quite a problem with an egalitarian-based world-view.  It has been attempted to explain the distinction by pointing out that the referee or the umpire do not play the game, but the fact remains that those roles officiate over the game and do not touch the ball except when it is not in play.  Whereas the DM actively participates in the effect of the game by defining the parameters of what's happening and throwing dice.  This seems distinctive from a referee and leads people to argue that yes, the DM is a player.

I propose we think of the DM as a croupier, rather than a referee.  The croupier manages a gambling table, for example, a roulette table.  In roulette, the croupier takes the bets -- that is, accepts the decisions made by the players as to what they want to do in the game -- and then spins the ball on the wheel and reads off the result.  No other participant interacts with the wheel.  The croupier cannot affect the results of the wheel without acting dishonestly or gaining an unfair advantage for the house.  The wheel's result is absolute.  While the croupier interacts in the game, it is the random chance of the wheel that determines the consequences of the game, not the croupier.

While D&D and other RPGs are vastly more complicated than roulette, the fact remains that it is not the croupier's role to dissuade the players from taking action; it is not the croupier's role to adjust the result of the wheel if someone loses.  It is the croupier's role to run the game -- and in running it, to do the absolute minimum necessary to ensure the game runs.

This would mean that while it is the DM's role to invent the adventure, it is not the DM's role to determine how the adventure plays out, what the players do, whether or not the players succeed, or make allowances for the players failing their intent and thereby dying as the dice dictate.  The DM describes the setting; the DM takes the players' accumulated actions and applies them to the setting, then determines the setting's response by rolling dice or judging that, by and large, the most obvious reaction the setting would provide.  The DM does not "play" dice.  The purpose and results of the dice are pre-determined and the DM lives by their result -- and NOT according to what the players wanted or how hurtful it is that the player's efforts failed to succeed.  Thank you for playing.  Place your bets.

The description in the 4th Edition DMG utterly fails to capture this nuance in its description of how both players and characters function within the game template.  The character is utterly dismissed by the words here.  The character's function is not to make the player feel as though they are controlling a "star."  The character exists to limit what the players are able to do, according to the limitations provided by the character's abilities and resources.  That's it.  How the character acts or what the character is emotionally inside the game is NOT a function of the game.  It is a function of how the character is run by the player.

Almost done.  I have one last observation.

The phrase "D&D is a game of the imagination" is an interesting one.  Recently, I came across a copy of Dungeons & Dragons For Dummies, published in 2005.  In that book, the word "imagination" occurs 27 times.  In every case, the word is used in some manner that describes D&D as an outlet, game of, structure for or means of creating a gaming experience; or how D&D allows one's imagination to create fun or be delighted in.  Every single statement using imagination is a trite, throwaway line intended to build sentimentality.  Not at any time is it explained how imagination does any of these things.  The "how" is taken for granted.

The 4th Edition DMG uses the word "imagination" 14 times.  Let me copy out the other 13 times in the book the word is used:

p.7: "Everyone speeds the game along, heightens the drama, helps set how much roleplaying the group is comfortable with, and brings the game world to life with their imaginations."

p. 22: "The game relies on your descriptions and players' imaginations to set the scene."

p. 22 (again, used twice back-to-back): "Your only limit is your imagination.  Your imagination is the only boundary to your description."

p. 25: "For adventures of your own creation, look for fantasy art that sparks your imagination."

p. 25 (again): "Look for anything that sparks your imagination."

p. 28: "I remembered that this is a game about imagination."

p. 85: "A trap's attack is limited only by the imagination of its creator."

p. 132: "On the flip side, you might first read through the Campaign Guide to find a story line that captures your imagination, then plant the seeds of that story in the very first adventure."

p. 133: "In short, use the Campaign Guide as it's intended -- a springboard for creativity -- and let your imagination run free."

p. 172 (used twice back-to-back): "As the Dungeon Master, you continually exercise your creative imagination to present new challenged to your players.  You're not even limited by the encounter rules in this book or the selection of monsters in the Monster Manual -- only your imagination controls what you can do."

p. 172 (again): "This chapter also offers plenty of advice for giving your imagination free rein without unbalancing your game."

Though imagination is not mentioned again for the rest of the book.

In case you're interested, the 5th Edition DMG uses "imagination" once. 

p. 27: "Alternately, you can roll on the tables below to randomly generate an event to inspire your imagination.

The recently released Tasha's Cauldron of Everything uses the word twice.  Once in the way described above, and once in a way that breaks all the rules.

p. 90: "Regardless of your skills or social standing, aristocratic patrons with enough foresight and imagination find a use for agents from any background.

Clearly, the word imagination to describe game play has gone out of vogue.  It was constant and deep in the mid-2000s, but it's largely gone now.  The word doesn't mean anything; it doesn't describe how to do anything; it sounds good, but it has no application.

Unfortunately, that is why I say that the quoted passage from 4e is true, it's also empty rhetoric, which fails to meet the agenda of the book's own topic at hand.  How to Be a DM. 

This series continues with The Dungeon Master