The meaning of Fair in D&D -but more on topic this time

Alright

So we know how the last one went, but I do feel like this is an interesting question to answer. So here's my take:

"Fair" in D&D is something with many meanings, but I think it kinda boils down to "The DM is a "fair" DM if they effectively communicate with the players, and are adaptable enough to change parts of the campaign if it makes some of the players uncomfortable or otherwise unhappy. Because in the end, D&D is a partnership game- the DM agrees to provide a fun experience for everyone, and in turn, the players agree to cooperate with what the setting or campaign is and not be ridiculous about it.

TL:DR A fair DM is a DM who communicates with the players and can adapt the campaign to help everyone have fun and be comfortable.

Thoughts?

Well, the prior discussion heavily mixed 'fair' and 'good', and I think your choice does as well.

Fair does not have any particularly D&D specific meaning, so we can just use a dictionary definition of fair. Particularly appropriate definitions are

a(1) : marked by impartiality and honesty : free from self-interest, prejudice, or favoritism

b(1) : conforming with the established rules : allowed

I would say it's very hard to be a good DM without also being fair per a(1), but being fair per b(1) is optional.

I'd say fair as per b(1) works fine in, say, a board game, where the rules lay out a clearly defined full game, hundreds of contingencies, etc., but not so much in D&D, where the rules are more "Here's magic powers, here's how the system works, and here's how stuff you'll need works. Now go have fun!", and a DM can kinda just put a Tarrasque in front of a level one party for no reason. Is that fair by b(1)? Yes, because the rules say you can. Is that fair by... well, an emotional metric? absolutely not. Now, I am not emotionally intelligent enough to tell you WHY it's unfair, the best I could manage is "because it is not fun", which is faulty by many metrics, but I think we can all agree that it isn't fair. Now, this goes both ways, as for example Silvery Barbs is often rated by DMs as "unfair" and therefore banned because it can result in turning any fight into a cakewalk, which does not tend to come off as "fair".

But I agree, it's very hard, if not impossible, to be a good DM without being A(1) fair, and sometimes to be A(1) fair you have to house rule or homebrew, which breaks b(1)'s definition of Fair

Fair (a) is important, although it doesn't require treating everybody anything close to equally, since not everybody wants the same thing out of the game.

Fair (b) is about the rules of the social contract, not the game mechanics. (Although level of adherence to the mechanics is part of the social contract.) But a lot of the rules of the social contract are unwritten, and that's going to be true even of you have an explicit session zero. "The DM is not going to arbitrarily kill the PCs" is up there along with "the players are going to engage with the game the DM is running".

(And, (a) is really subsumed by the social contract as well.)

If we put aside "good", which to me involves a lot more ensuring all the players are having fun. IMO a fair DM has the following requirements:

1) Making consistent and predictable rulings. This might be consistent with the published rules, or with their homebrew system. 

2) Narrative events and NPC reactions should be consistent with the tone, setting, and themes of the game. A comical surrealist campaign might have the players suddenly fall through a puddle into a land of lollipops and chocolate fairiess, but not a gritty realistic campaign.

3) Not force the player characters into a situation where they will almost certainly die. There should always be a way out, or the players should have made a well informed choice to enter the situation. 

4) Not engineer every situation so that the player characters always win. - For a game to be fair there must be a possibility of failure.

 I think the players and the DM construct whatt fair means at their table. This can be done in an intentional way by starting with clearly communicated expectations and boundaries in session zero and continuing to communicate when things happen and those expectations and boundaries need to be revisited (or reminders need to be made). Or this can be done unintentionally by a group of players and a DM dealing with things in a straightforward, tactful manner as they come up. Both rely on communication, just one front-loads it and the other has it happen on the fly. Either way, it's the players and the DM participating in the social contract with each other and collaborating to build group cultural norms at their table. Consistently following the established norms is fair. Failing to do that is where people start feeling fairness isn't being respected.

I think @ApplePaladin nailed it here. It's very table specific. 

I for example do not allow D&D Beyond Drops at my in person tables. There are players who would immediately hear that and say I'm being unfair. Drops though don't have a physical book that I can pass around to my players and allow them all to benefit from the options within. It's 100% reliant both on D&D Beyond and a Subscription. I do recognise that this isn't a solution that would suit all tables. Incidentally, it's a hang-over from Pathfinder. If you don't have the book, or have the book but aren't willing to share with the table, then the options within are disallowed. Either everyone has access or no-one does.

Similarly, though if the party decide that they don't want to include Multiclassing in the adventure it's entirely fair to disallow those options. Unfair would be allowing one single player to benefit from multiclassing where the others cannot. Sadly, I'm a bit of a soft-touch as a DM and where campaigns have started with 'no multiclassing', they've often played out as 'if you find an NPC to train the character and we can RP that in downtime, you can multiclass'. I like my players to be able to have fun with their characters.

Fair to me means everyone playing by the same rules. Everything is consistent. Now that gets a little grey when talking about the DM of course, but the principle still applies. I'm not out to kill the player characters. I'm not out to create a puzzle that's impossible to solve. 

Every table is different however, and the specifics vary. I think then it comes down to the agreement that the group of players and DM have made before the commencement of the adventure.

Quote from martintheactor >>

Fair to me means everyone playing by the same rules.

Having lurked on that other thread before it got zapped. Honestly, I've always thought this is the best definition of fair in D&D.

I do think @ApplePaladin also really gets it right. It's really about your table. You want everyone to know what to expect, and you definitely want to feel like the DM is also playing by the rules everyone agreed on. Or at least that the DM isn't playing Calvinball. Our game is just among our friends, but even still I send out an e-mail whenever I want to change a rule between one session and the next. 

I mean, the DM can and sometimes should change the rules on the fly. You can certainly have a bad guy or an environment that's dangerous because it upends a table's expectations. But it definitely stops being fun when it feels like the DM is just arbitrarily changing the rules as they go along. Like, there's absolutely a difference between "You were ambushed and had to scramble. You only have 6 arrows in your quiver, that's all you had time to grab. Make them count." vs. "You shoot your arrow at the monster! You're now out of arrows, because I've decided it will make this fight harder to start counting ammunition."

Still... I think if I was really looking for an all-purpose, black and white rule on what is fair, this would be it. A DM might get the fun wrong, or misjudge an encounter or something. But I think it's safe to say that in all cases, what's not fair is if the DM changes the rules to treat some players differently from others. 

EDIT - I wish I could find it, but Matt Colville actually had a great video where he discusses the whole reason for food, water, light, ammunition, etc. It was something about running the dungeons. But basically, he talked about how in O-G Dungeons and Dragons, the game was a much more straightforward dungeon crawler. The whole campaign might take place in a single dungeon, and the players were far weaker than they are today. So keeping track of these things really mattered, because they fueled an entire game built around scarcity, survival and pushing your luck in an environment that was more survival horror than the heroic fantasies we play today. It's a terrific clip if anyone can find it.

The whole thing about DND is how adaptable it is. To be "fair" requires that all sides of something follows the same parameters and have the same constraints. That would  be fair. Everyone and everything has an equal opportunity. But the DM is allowed, if not encouraged, to change the rules and adapt the circumstances, not for being fair, but for having fun. Any number of board games could be considered fair, because every player has to follow the same rules, but the reason people play DnD is because it operates outside of those boundaries.

I think there's a strong argument that everyone being the treated the same doesn't necessarily work out to be fair in practice. I think people get accustomed to using that as a shorthand for fairness and lose sight of the complexities of real life and real people. I'll also say a DM can be adaptable and still be fair, as long as they aren't being arbitrary. 

Personally, I think there are four general categories of fairness a DM should have.  You do not necessarily have to excel in all of them to be “fair”, but utterly failing in any one category would likely land them in the unfair category in my book.

1. Fair in application of the rules. Notably, I do not think strict adherence to the rules is necessary here.  A rule of cool DM could, and often is, “fair” if their decisions feel reasonable and consistent with the table’s standard for the rule of cool.

2. Fair in their treatment of each player.  Notably, this is not “equitable” in treatment - a nuanced, but key distinction.  At some tables, treating everyone equal might be fair; at others it might not be. Speaking for my own table, I have players who both enjoy high risk of death and who would be devastated by their character dying.  Treating them all equitably would be unfair - neither side could get the experience they want - so the fair option is to do things like target those who want to be targeted more.  More generally, things like Fighters are more loot dependent at high levels to break through martial and caster differences, so being more generous with loot to some classes might result in more fair treatment. Taking into account each players personal red flags and hang ups also falls in to this category. 

3.  Fair in design of encounter. Encounters should be designed to match the understanding of the game.  For me, that means my encounters are extremely dangerous, but can generally be won (though there’s a reason folks carry lots of diamonds in my group) - or if they cannot likely be won, it is because the party ignored lots of warning signs and proceeded regardless or because there is another exit ramp available.  This balance will be different for each group.

4. Fair in arbitration between players.  Conflicts arise in D&D both at and above table and the DM is often the one to resolve these matters at the person with typically the most authority over a game.   A DM should be able to resolve these conflicts without favoritism or bias, which can be difficult given many D&D groups also have preexisting friend, romantic, or familial relationships. While similar to point 2, this point is really more about dealing with acting fairly between players in a dispute at the table level, instead of fairly acting within the game at the character level.

One can of course break our infinite striations with more specifics, but I think fairness in rules, fairness in design, and fairness both at and above table make a good baseline under which everything else can generally fall.