"GM-as-pressure-valve" is a great metaphor and fits with everything I've learned over the decades.
I wonder, too, whether fictional genres in general can be "dialed in" using this metaphor. In one of your games, or a game of Mothership, the GM's job is to double-down on pressure when, in a game of 5e or Daggerheart, the GM should be letting up. It also helps create a rhythm that you can later subvert to create new expectations.
I think this is close to what I had in mind when I wrote a tiny manifesto a little while ago about "being a fan of the world as much as you are of the players." You're a fan of the PCs, and of all their attempts to master the world... But you're also a fan of the world, its cohesion unto itself, and you're a fan of the ways it fights back to avoid being changed or influenced.
I'd hazard that many players also fall more deeply in love with a world that resists them.
What do you mean by "[when] the GM should be letting up" in 5e and Daggerheart? Are you just referring to common playstyles, or to something in the game systems?
Definitely playstyles/cultures around those games ... at least, I think! That's an interesting question about the systems, and what in the system enforces a certain style.
Certainly nothing like GM pressure is mandated by either, but I think the abundance of Advantage/Inspiration in 5e and the use of metacurrencies in Daggerheart feel (to me) like they invite the GM to just give ground to the players once they've gotten over a certain hump.
But this also brings up something else I've been thinking about a lot lately, which is paratext. While nothing in 5e or Daggerheart *systemically* mandates that you should be light-handed with pressure as a GM, *aesthetically* they both present as power-fantasy games where too much pressure and danger aren't to be expected. Certainly you *can* make things darker, harder, more brutal in either game, but not without creating a certain dissonance with the fantasy sold by the art and the actual writing of the game.
Note that I don't say dissonance within the *system*. It could well be that either system can handle almost any genre you want (along with the modulations in pressure those genres imply). But the aesthetics of eg. Daggerheart tell me that it just doesn't *want* to be the kind of grounded, high-pressure game I want to play, and so I'm not inclined to try and make it be that thing, even if it's possible.
This is getting far afield of your original question, but it's a good one, and makes me think even more about that murky middle ground between system and playstyle. Aesthetics and presentation can definitely influence system interpretation and play culture well before anyone picks up dice, lol.
Erp, the app buggered up and sent too soon, double reply it is!
Its also fascinating to me the differences in experience or interpretation we have! My impression of Advantage/Inspiration (which, lbh, 5e inspiration is a clunky af system that doesn't actually *do* much...) is that it has the opposite effect: rather than inviting a GM to ease up on pressure or give ground, it reads like an invitation to make things harder & more intense - to put the pressure on. Advantage means they've got better odds of success... which means I can throw harder challeges at them that without advantage, would just be plain cruel.
(Or it means they have successfully found a way to "win out". It rewards smart play by tilting the odds, just like smart dungeon crawling - knocking on walls for hollow sounds, spiking doors, all that - does. One is simply more meta-level than the other.)
And I think similarly for Daggerheart, but I've only played DH as a player, not a GM (yet) (that changes next week). Probably even more so - the metacurrency, especially the GM's Fear and the fact that it's *capped*, seem to me to encourage raising the pressure.
Which isn't to say you're wrong, I don't think there is necessarily a right or wrong here - as you say, in play it comes down very strongly to the table!
That's a cool way to use inspiration — I hadn't thought about it like that, but it does signal to the players something equal but opposite. Thanks for sharing!
These are REALLY good points I'm going to need to keep chewing on.
Actually, my way of coming around to a similar place has been to start using something that is, admittedly, really close to Daggerheart's "Fear" mechanic. There's something about having a pool of resources that lets me feel entitled to pile on the consequences. (Now as I realize my hypocrisy, I need to revisit why I bounce off Daggerheart, lol).
Another thing I've done that I think hits a little better for me, personally, is introduce the concept of "taking a risk" from LANCER. I've modified it a bit, but essentially, if a situation is "Risky," all the normal target numbers apply, BUT ALSO, you need to beat your DC by 5 or 10+ in order to *avoid consequences*.
Eg. I'm running a headless troll in my upcoming Friday game. Because no one's in the thing's driver's seat, it's just swiping wildly everywhere. Attacking it head-on is "risky" -- Its AC is still 15, but attacking it immediately incurs damage as though it had attacked you. You can soak half the damage on an attack of 20+ or avoid it completely on a 25+. Obviously, the better decision is to attack it from the back, but if you decide to tank it so someone else can do exactly that, you're DEFINITELY going to want Advantage on as many attacks as possible.
I'm not familiar with LANCER in any detail (just by reputation) - that "taking a risk" concept sounds very cool! (And also rather like how you can treat Success with Fear in DH... ;) )
At the risk of sounding like a proselytizer, I definitely support taking a second look at DH. 😅 But it could simply be a matter of taste, truly - DH's default flavour, to me, rings more JRPG and animated(?) (in that it clearly shares more with modern animated shows and YA fantasy than sword & sorcery pulps or the classic fantasy epics of the 80s & 90s).
Looping back to 5e and Advantage/Disadvantage, the scroll down to the comments thru the original post just now did remind me of something. For 5e-style Dis/Adv systems, one weakness that I could see interfering with the ability to adjust the pressure valve is how high-impact "reroll a d20 and take highest/lowest" is. The -5 penalty to your d20 roll that 5e Disadvantage effectively gives is pretty harsh! (And probably feels worse than a flat -5 in play, because you also see What Could Have Been.)
5e (2014) RAW does include flat negative adjustments, and nothing in the rules disallow it... but I hypothesize that its relatively uncommon to use, with most tables leaning on Dis/Adv almost exclusively. And having such a relatively harsh penalty (vs. a -1 or -2) probably disincentivizes GMs from applying that kind of pressure altogether.
This is one of the reasons I *vastly* preferred Shadow of the Demon Lord's Boons/Banes system (also pillaged by Lancer), where you just roll additional d6s and add/subtract the highest-rolling of those. It's an incremental approach to Advantage/Disadvantage which rewards positioning without getting over-complicated, and also introduces a kind of "ablative" game where you're trying to strip away the Banes certain enemies inherently impose in order to make your action as valuable as it can be.
I'm currently trying to develop a version of this that uses stepped dice, a la Cortex, for some more variability and gameiness in the process; feels very Witcher-like when it works, forcing you to really observe your foes and your environment for options!
Just getting around to reading this now! Paratext is a new word for me, but I think I follow what you mean.
I certainly don't disagree vis-a-vis 5e, but while I'm not tapped in to the pop culture zeitgeist impression of Daggerheart, I do question including it in the 5e "power-fantasy" group. It is certainly *high* fantasy (though not necessarily *epic* fantasy) and its particular marriage of PbtA and (pseudo-)medieval fantasy adventure game, it doesn't natively support the kind of world-focused groundedness of, say, classic dnd or OSR titles. But I think both the system and the presentation of the system (the Age of Umbra mini-campaign that CR did), push primarily high drama and high stakes - which both demand a real risk of failure and failure with meaningful consequences, in a way that 5e & its ilk don't.
I would guess every GM has spent a game session frustrated because players aren’t going for any story hooks (I know I have).
However, (according to your post here) even if you have story hooks (or character drives) to motivate players… if you don’t also place some pressure on them to act… those hooks won’t move the game forward. I think you’re on to something.
I have been there so many times. What I think is a hard push sails right over their heads. Sometimes players just want to hear me make silly voices (which is fair)
Sometimes its definitely that what seems so obviously important or clearly communicated to us (as GMs), just doesn't translate for whatever reason. Alas, the folly of human-to-human communication. 😅🤣
I agree - I think we engage more with a world that gives us more fight and reaction.
I know 5e is right for some - and good for them. For me, I don't want magic to solve *everything* or to meet no resistance. I'm here to fight monsters, damnit.
"GM-as-pressure-valve" is a great metaphor and fits with everything I've learned over the decades.
I wonder, too, whether fictional genres in general can be "dialed in" using this metaphor. In one of your games, or a game of Mothership, the GM's job is to double-down on pressure when, in a game of 5e or Daggerheart, the GM should be letting up. It also helps create a rhythm that you can later subvert to create new expectations.
I think this is close to what I had in mind when I wrote a tiny manifesto a little while ago about "being a fan of the world as much as you are of the players." You're a fan of the PCs, and of all their attempts to master the world... But you're also a fan of the world, its cohesion unto itself, and you're a fan of the ways it fights back to avoid being changed or influenced.
I'd hazard that many players also fall more deeply in love with a world that resists them.
What do you mean by "[when] the GM should be letting up" in 5e and Daggerheart? Are you just referring to common playstyles, or to something in the game systems?
Definitely playstyles/cultures around those games ... at least, I think! That's an interesting question about the systems, and what in the system enforces a certain style.
Certainly nothing like GM pressure is mandated by either, but I think the abundance of Advantage/Inspiration in 5e and the use of metacurrencies in Daggerheart feel (to me) like they invite the GM to just give ground to the players once they've gotten over a certain hump.
But this also brings up something else I've been thinking about a lot lately, which is paratext. While nothing in 5e or Daggerheart *systemically* mandates that you should be light-handed with pressure as a GM, *aesthetically* they both present as power-fantasy games where too much pressure and danger aren't to be expected. Certainly you *can* make things darker, harder, more brutal in either game, but not without creating a certain dissonance with the fantasy sold by the art and the actual writing of the game.
Note that I don't say dissonance within the *system*. It could well be that either system can handle almost any genre you want (along with the modulations in pressure those genres imply). But the aesthetics of eg. Daggerheart tell me that it just doesn't *want* to be the kind of grounded, high-pressure game I want to play, and so I'm not inclined to try and make it be that thing, even if it's possible.
This is getting far afield of your original question, but it's a good one, and makes me think even more about that murky middle ground between system and playstyle. Aesthetics and presentation can definitely influence system interpretation and play culture well before anyone picks up dice, lol.
Erp, the app buggered up and sent too soon, double reply it is!
Its also fascinating to me the differences in experience or interpretation we have! My impression of Advantage/Inspiration (which, lbh, 5e inspiration is a clunky af system that doesn't actually *do* much...) is that it has the opposite effect: rather than inviting a GM to ease up on pressure or give ground, it reads like an invitation to make things harder & more intense - to put the pressure on. Advantage means they've got better odds of success... which means I can throw harder challeges at them that without advantage, would just be plain cruel.
(Or it means they have successfully found a way to "win out". It rewards smart play by tilting the odds, just like smart dungeon crawling - knocking on walls for hollow sounds, spiking doors, all that - does. One is simply more meta-level than the other.)
And I think similarly for Daggerheart, but I've only played DH as a player, not a GM (yet) (that changes next week). Probably even more so - the metacurrency, especially the GM's Fear and the fact that it's *capped*, seem to me to encourage raising the pressure.
Which isn't to say you're wrong, I don't think there is necessarily a right or wrong here - as you say, in play it comes down very strongly to the table!
That's a cool way to use inspiration — I hadn't thought about it like that, but it does signal to the players something equal but opposite. Thanks for sharing!
These are REALLY good points I'm going to need to keep chewing on.
Actually, my way of coming around to a similar place has been to start using something that is, admittedly, really close to Daggerheart's "Fear" mechanic. There's something about having a pool of resources that lets me feel entitled to pile on the consequences. (Now as I realize my hypocrisy, I need to revisit why I bounce off Daggerheart, lol).
Another thing I've done that I think hits a little better for me, personally, is introduce the concept of "taking a risk" from LANCER. I've modified it a bit, but essentially, if a situation is "Risky," all the normal target numbers apply, BUT ALSO, you need to beat your DC by 5 or 10+ in order to *avoid consequences*.
Eg. I'm running a headless troll in my upcoming Friday game. Because no one's in the thing's driver's seat, it's just swiping wildly everywhere. Attacking it head-on is "risky" -- Its AC is still 15, but attacking it immediately incurs damage as though it had attacked you. You can soak half the damage on an attack of 20+ or avoid it completely on a 25+. Obviously, the better decision is to attack it from the back, but if you decide to tank it so someone else can do exactly that, you're DEFINITELY going to want Advantage on as many attacks as possible.
I'm not familiar with LANCER in any detail (just by reputation) - that "taking a risk" concept sounds very cool! (And also rather like how you can treat Success with Fear in DH... ;) )
At the risk of sounding like a proselytizer, I definitely support taking a second look at DH. 😅 But it could simply be a matter of taste, truly - DH's default flavour, to me, rings more JRPG and animated(?) (in that it clearly shares more with modern animated shows and YA fantasy than sword & sorcery pulps or the classic fantasy epics of the 80s & 90s).
Looping back to 5e and Advantage/Disadvantage, the scroll down to the comments thru the original post just now did remind me of something. For 5e-style Dis/Adv systems, one weakness that I could see interfering with the ability to adjust the pressure valve is how high-impact "reroll a d20 and take highest/lowest" is. The -5 penalty to your d20 roll that 5e Disadvantage effectively gives is pretty harsh! (And probably feels worse than a flat -5 in play, because you also see What Could Have Been.)
5e (2014) RAW does include flat negative adjustments, and nothing in the rules disallow it... but I hypothesize that its relatively uncommon to use, with most tables leaning on Dis/Adv almost exclusively. And having such a relatively harsh penalty (vs. a -1 or -2) probably disincentivizes GMs from applying that kind of pressure altogether.
This is one of the reasons I *vastly* preferred Shadow of the Demon Lord's Boons/Banes system (also pillaged by Lancer), where you just roll additional d6s and add/subtract the highest-rolling of those. It's an incremental approach to Advantage/Disadvantage which rewards positioning without getting over-complicated, and also introduces a kind of "ablative" game where you're trying to strip away the Banes certain enemies inherently impose in order to make your action as valuable as it can be.
I'm currently trying to develop a version of this that uses stepped dice, a la Cortex, for some more variability and gameiness in the process; feels very Witcher-like when it works, forcing you to really observe your foes and your environment for options!
Just getting around to reading this now! Paratext is a new word for me, but I think I follow what you mean.
I certainly don't disagree vis-a-vis 5e, but while I'm not tapped in to the pop culture zeitgeist impression of Daggerheart, I do question including it in the 5e "power-fantasy" group. It is certainly *high* fantasy (though not necessarily *epic* fantasy) and its particular marriage of PbtA and (pseudo-)medieval fantasy adventure game, it doesn't natively support the kind of world-focused groundedness of, say, classic dnd or OSR titles. But I think both the system and the presentation of the system (the Age of Umbra mini-campaign that CR did), push primarily high drama and high stakes - which both demand a real risk of failure and failure with meaningful consequences, in a way that 5e & its ilk don't.
I would guess every GM has spent a game session frustrated because players aren’t going for any story hooks (I know I have).
However, (according to your post here) even if you have story hooks (or character drives) to motivate players… if you don’t also place some pressure on them to act… those hooks won’t move the game forward. I think you’re on to something.
This is a really cool observation.
Thanks for writing!
I have been there so many times. What I think is a hard push sails right over their heads. Sometimes players just want to hear me make silly voices (which is fair)
Sometimes its definitely that what seems so obviously important or clearly communicated to us (as GMs), just doesn't translate for whatever reason. Alas, the folly of human-to-human communication. 😅🤣
I love that you bring up the importance of pressure!
I've always been of the opinion that a game without real stakes is not worth playing. Because if there are no stakes, why even do anything?
But stakes without pressure just becomes fear of taking action, so they need each other to create a satisfying experience. They go hand in hand.
This whole post very much aligns with my post from yesterday, where I talk about closed-loop design and forward momentum: https://dawnfist.substack.com/p/designing-a-solo-engine-closed-loops
Glad to see a fellow likeminded GM :)
This is really insightful - thank you for sharing!
It’s all about Pressure, man. Glad to see someone else pushing this kind of content. Good stuff.
Fantastic framing, and super useful! I think I missed the last post, will have to go check it out
I agree - I think we engage more with a world that gives us more fight and reaction.
I know 5e is right for some - and good for them. For me, I don't want magic to solve *everything* or to meet no resistance. I'm here to fight monsters, damnit.