The meaning of "fair" in DnD

Ive seen questions of fairness come up over the years with regard to dnd.  And some people seem to think that a dm can do whatever they want and be fair because the first rule is the dm's word is final

Im going to say thats a "lawful" answer to thr question, and if the dm is bad its going to become "lawful evil".

I want to discuss what thr "good" answer to the question might look like.

Checkers is fair because both players have the same set up and the outcome is determined solely by skill.

The card game called Rummy is fair, because all players have the same chances of their starting condition (7 cards dealt from a shuffled deck) and each player has to make the best of the cards they are dealt. If you are dealt three queens, three kings, and 1 discard, you win that hand immediately, but otherwise if a hand takes a dozen turns to resolve, the skill of the good players can usually handle the randomness and adjust.. The game goes until someone reaches 500 points, forcing the game to consist of many hands, and evening out the randomization over many hands. Luck of the draw may help you on one hand, but usually, more skillful players will win in the end after several hands.

But the games above dont have anything resemblimg a DM. We need to look at games like blackjack to find something close.

Blackjack is not "fair". Players get randomized cards dealt to them. But they are not playing against other players, they are playing against the dealer who works for the house, and anyone who knows anything about gambling, the house always wins. In blackjack, your long term return on your bets is 99.5%. If you go to the casino with 100 dollars, mathematically speaking youre going to leave with 99. The house keeps 50 cents of every 100 dollars wagered.

Now, is that "fair"? Is the long term outcome of the game between player and dealer determined by the choices made by the players? No. The house always wins. 

Card counting can raise your chances so that you can profit at blackjack, but casinos responded by putting 6 or 8 decks into the chute, and reshuffling the chute well before its empty. And if you win too much, all casinos reserve the right to refuse service to you and ban you from the premises. 

So blackjack is not fair.

So why do people keep playing it? Because blackjack, to some, is very entertaining. Some find it tedious and boring. And some immediately focus on the fact that its just a waste of money. And then there are some with gambling addictions who simply can NOT play until they've hopelessly indebted themselves.

Dnd is a lot like blackjack.

Dnd is a group of players faced off against a single dungeon master. The house makes all the rules. When there is a disagreement, the house's word is final. The house can change the rules. The house can refuse service to anyone.

So,  in dnd, is the players outcome based only on their choices and their skill as a player? Is dnd "fair" in the absolute sense? No. The dm can railroad, the dm can throw totally unbalanced encounters at you. The dm presents a world and choices before thr players, and the players can only, best case, make choices within wat the dm presents.

But even though the absolute player experience of dnd is not Fair, it can be Entertaining, if the dm happens to be providing an experience the player is looking for.

This is why its important to know what kind of dm you are, and know what kind of campaign you are running, so you can tell potential players what youre offereing before they join your campaign. Do you run heroic campaigns? Sandbox campaigns? Is the party going to be the good guys? Or bad guys? Is it mostly dungeon crawl or a naval campaign? 

If you know how you dm and what your campaign will look like, potential players can get a better idea of whether they want to join or not. Not every player is going to like your style and your campaign. Dont waste both your time having them join, and then leave a couple levels later.

Im not sure what the standard rules look like but i think in a 20 level campaign, players can probably expect to die at least once and roll a new charavter. 

If you plan on killing characters a lot, let them know that. And let them know they probably dont need to spend a lot of time and energy on backstory and in game goals for their character.  Dont be surprised if the players build only for combat. If you are running a wargaming campaign, players will wargame.

If you are part of a group that always plays together, and you rotate dms, try to keep in mind that you are dm'ing to a captive audience. Conversations like, hey, i would like to run a campaign where the players are bad guys and pvp is a thing, listen to what everyone else is saying, and try to keep you and moat of the players happy. Being a good/fair dm requires conversation, negotiation, and flexibility.

At a more tactical level, there are usually some things that can affect an absolute interpretation of whether a game is "fair".

First of all, treat all players the same. Many players have experienced the situation where the DM's romantic interest is a player and that usually sucks for everyone else. Dont give all the loot, all the attention, all the in game interactions to one player. Throw every player a bone once in a while.  In combat, shoot the monk, attack the tank, include a hoard for the wizards fireball. If a player unlocks a feature that gives them a new class or subclass ability, dont immediately change tactics so encounters usually negate the new feature.

Second, players assume you are playing the standard dnd rules. If you are NOT, and if you want to be fair to your players, write down your rules, your homebrews, etc, and put it somewhere all the players can read them and familiarize themselves with it. A player that takes an action assuming the standard rules, only to be thwarted by the dm homebrewing on the fly overriding standard rules, is going deep into "unfair" territory.

Third learn the rules before you homebrew. I joined a campaign and we all leveled up after a few sessions. All the players were discussing their new abilities, and the dm stopped the conversation, asked a bunch of weird questions, and announced that they didnt know certain features existed, and on-the-spot banned something for  almost every player. They said they didnt know the rules and would just ban things on rhe fly as they became aware of them if they didnt like it. I left. If you can, play under different dm's for a while before you dm. Learn the rules and learn bad dm styles so you know the experience of bad dm'ing so you have incentive not to inflict it on your players.

Learn the rules because they are generally written to be balanced and play with those rules long enough to get abfeel for what its like as a player. Then you can decide to change them because you want to create some different player experience. But if you dont know the rules and your rules are made up on the fly, then its not only not fair (cause blackjack is never fair) but now its also not enjoyable.

  People will gamble away money at a  blackjack table, knowing the house always wins, if they at least can have an enjoyable time doing it. But if its not fair (cause the housr always wins) and its not enjoyable (because the dealer keeps changing the rules in the middle of the game) then most players will walk if they have a choice.

Lastly, until you have been a player with a railroading control freak of a dm, you cannot possibly fully appreciate what its like to spend hours building a charavter and backstory and months or years of playing, only to have your charavter railroaded into an inescapable death you had no choice to get out of in the first place.  As a player i have chosen to sacrifice my charavter to save the party, which can be an enjoyable choice. But ive also seen my party wiped out in a tpk we never saw coming and had no chance to avoid, which just sucks.  

So, as a dm, if you find yourself asking if youre being fair, remember that at the highest level youre a blackjack dealer and the house always wins, you cant be absolutely fair. And because the game is rigged at the highest level, you can at least try to make the game enjouable. And the way to do thay is you can be consistent with the rules and your players, you can treat your players equally, you can inform potential players what kind of world youre running so they can make an informed.decision about joining or not, and so on.  Try to avoid railroads. Give players options. Let them run away from encounters that are above their weight class.  You cant be perfectly fair, in fact to run a campaign you have certain encounters in the book to run and hooks to try to get the players to "choose" to engage the story hook you present. But keep in mind, on some level, that railroading is part of what makes the game unfair. So, if possible, try to at least make the other parts of the game enjoyable.

Some people enjoy paying money to play blackjack knowing blackjack isnt fair.  

Try to make your dnd enjoyable.

I'd disagree largely with the analogy. 

GM's and DMs are more like the designer of an obstacle course or a video game level designer. When you design an obstacle course you know that the course needs to be possible to complete. Sure you can make it difficult, but there's a balance in design where you're measuring 'challenge' against 'fun'. If you make the obstacle course too difficult, the course becomes too difficult to enjoy the experience. There are courses that are aimed solely around fun, but those seeking a challenge may not appreciate the lack of challenge. The same here is true of video game level design. Largely you're trying to balance challenge and enjoyment in certain proportions. 

When we take on an obstacle course or a video game level then it isn't us vs. the designer. It's us vs. the environment the designer has created. On at least some level the designer wants the person tackling the thing to succeed. As a result, no it's not at all similar to Blackjack. The aim with Blackjack is for the casino to rake in money. They should be winning almost all the time. 

When one gets down to the actual maths of the game of D&D you can easily begin to see that D&D starts from a point of nearly 55% success in favour of the players. That figure does increase as the characters level up and grow. The DM meanwhile is building obstacle courses, or designing levels that they want the players to beat while still offering a challenge. The game when played RAW is actually built to favour the players across all the levels and tiers of play. So it's definitely not a 'the house always wins' scenario. In fact RAW, it's nearly always by level 4 a case of the player characters always win. Short of freak unlucky streaks or poor decision making, the favour is always with the players. 

So, I would argue that 'fair' within D&D means being a DM who wants the players to succeed, but is willing to offer a challenge. If you're actively starting from a point of the DM has the advantage and the game is unfair by design; my assumption is that either you didn't read the rules thoroughly, or you're just not the type of person who ought to be DMing. Though that is a personal opinion.

Blackjack is a poor analogy. Blackjack isn't designed to be 'fun', casinos are designed to trick people into playing more and more to ensure the house profits at the end of the night. Casinos do not respect or care about the players, they would be perfectly happy to turn everyone into a gambling addicts and leave them bankrupt and depressed. Blackjack is designed to appeal to a certain type of clientele who want the respectability of history but without the complexity of poker. 

In contrast, D&D is a cooperative game where everyone is trying to have fun. The DM is the level designer, but also the enemy AI. Sure they want to design the level so the players have fun, but they also want to have fun themselves while playing as the enemies. The fundamental basis of D&D is mutual respect, the DM must respect the players and want the players to have fun, but the players should also respect the DM and want to engage with the levels the DM has designed for them.

Fairness in D&D is similarly a two-way street. It is both the DM making consistent rulings and treating all players equally, and the players not trying to undermine the rulings the DM has made or trying to subvert or disrupt the game the DM has designed. It is both the DM being open and up front about rules they have homebrewed, and players being open and up front about unusual things they want to do. 

As martintheactor and Agilemind already pointed out, fariness in D&D comes from the mutual respect between the DM and the players. Sure, the DM has the final word, but if they abuse this power to always do as they please and never giving the players a chance, then we're talking about fairness. Circling back to the blackjack analogy: it's like if the dealer chose the cards you get instead of dealing your cards at random from a face-down deck.

Fairness for the DM comes down to treating all your players equally and giving everyone a chance to play, not unnecessarily piling all monsters on a single player in a combat, giving clear enough hints and clues for the players to know the "correct" course of action without affecting their autonomy, and treating all creature abilities (both characters and monsters) the same way. If a group of monsters pile up on a single character there needs to be a clear and logical reason for them in doing so, such as the character was isolated 50ft. away from everyone else, the monsters (and players) know one character to carry an important artifact the monsters want/need, or something similar.

The players cannot really affect the rules as much... since the DM has the final word, but players still affect fairness and it's mostly to do with respect: a player shouldn't constantly talk on top of others and not giving other players a chance to shine. Even if you know the correct answer to a puzzle or the suitable roleplay for a social interaction, if you're not part of the scene, you should let the other players handle it, unless they ask for advice (and then it comes down to the DM if they'll allow you interfering a scene they're not in). And they should respect and value the effort the DM has put into the game.

So yeah... D&D is not the DM vs. the players, it's the players vs. the game. The DM is just the narrator.

Quote from Scruvy >>

If a group of monsters pile up on a single character there needs to be a clear and logical reason for them in doing so.

 Well, "Using focus fire to eliminate one PC instead of spreading damage around will help us win" is a clear and logical reason. Whether this is appropriate has more to do with table standards than fairness per se.

Quote from Pantagruel666 >>

Quote from Scruvy >>

If a group of monsters pile up on a single character there needs to be a clear and logical reason for them in doing so.

 Well, "Using focus fire to eliminate one PC instead of spreading damage around will help us win" is a clear and logical reason. Whether this is appropriate has more to do with table standards than fairness per se.

 True, but then again, not all monsters have such intelligence. It's a viable and believable strategy for most humanoids, but I doubt a horde of zombies or stirges will use such reasoning. If a DM makes a zombie horde ignore everyone else and just focus on a single character, then it's not fair anymore. (Unless of course, it's part of the plot and the zombies are mind controlled by a lich, but then the DM should very clearly hint that this is not normal zombie behaviour. This is going slightly on a sidetracak, you get my point anyway.)

The reason i wrote this is i ran into multiple dms in a short period of time who argued that as long as their actions were following the rules that it was "fair".

thats not how "fair" works.

In a game where both sides get the same number of pieces, like checkers, then sure, "as long as its in the rules, its fair" works. But dnd doesn start with both sides having the same pieces. Dnd, by design, has the dm choose how many pieces they get. And the rules allow them to add as many pieces as they want. The combat encounter guidelines give some indication of how to determine if an encounter is going to be "easy" or "difficult", but the dm could keep adding monsters far beyond the guidelines and it would still be "legal".  There is also no rule to prevent the dm from throwing many combat encounters at the party without even a shoet rest.

And with dms who argue its fair as long as they follow the rules, this can create encounters most players would view as wildly unfair.

Ive played with power-tripping dm's who force players to count arrows, but will throw a hoard of never ending goblins at us until we realize our only option is to run away. They're not dm'ing for the players benefit, they found dnd is a way to be a crypto bully.while defending their actions with "the rules say i can"

Thats the sort of dm who will have a hoard of low intelligence goblins nevertheless focus fire all their attacks on the most powerfule player character before moving to the next most powerful pc. And when players wonder aloud, the dm says theyre following the rules.

So, first and foremost, this was written to call out the lawful stupid dms who say "i was just following the rules" as a way to pretend their unfair behavior was somehow "fair"

Beyond that even dms who try to provide balanced encounters will struggle with the randomness of the game sometimes. You can make an encounter that is "easy" according to the dm guudes, but the players' dice could still all conspire to betray them one night. At which point, there is no single "right" answer as to how to respond as dm. Pull your punches? Dont use the powerful legendary action every turn? Reduce hit points on the fly?  Or try to play the monsters consistently well, no matter how badly things go for the players?  There js no "right" or "fair" answer to this.

The lawful stupid dm would gleefull clap as they tpk the party and say they followed the rules. 

But dms with better intentions are going to have to thread a needle between what the rules say and what works for the situation. If the encounters initial conditions were overly difficult, then maybe pulling punches might be more "fair" response for the dm. If it all comes down to a single roll or the encounter will very clearly devolve into a tpk, maybe allow a "help" action that isnt totally legal, or find cause to.hand out heroic inspiration.  Maybe some npcs spontaneously enter the battle.and draw enemy fire enough to give the players the breathing room.they need.

Or maybe the party is all killed and everyone has to roll new charavters.  

I think at this point, the idea of what is "fair" becomes less important than what would make for the best story for everyone to tell.

If things look grim for the party, but one player wants their charavter to die a glorious death to save the party, let their sacrifice be enough to sway the battle. 

At some point, i think it comes down to the idea that a DM needs to know what kind of dm they are, let potential players know how they dm, and then let players choose who they want as dm. 

If youre looking to create a heroic campaign where death is rare but a heroic sacrifice could turn the tide, then that will appeal to certain players.

If youre a dm looking to wargame lots of battles, where death is constant, and charavters are constantly being created to replace the fallen, then let players know and hopefully you get players looking for that sort of campaign.

A heroic campaign might have characters with long and complex backstories and in game goals. A wargame campaign characters will have a background like "farmer" and theee sessions later they will be replaced by one who has the "guide" background.

The idea is that it requires a certain amount of self-awareness for the dm.to know their style so they communicate their style to possible.players. and then players can choose to.join a campaign that matches what they want in a campaign.

Its no longer the lawful-stupid dm saying "i was just following the rules, so its fair", and becomes more of a "i wanna run a gritty, low magic, brutal campaigns. Anyone wanna play?" Or "i wanna run a heroic campaign where the players save the world and a great sacrifice can turn the tide of battle. Who's in?"

Once you get to that level, the "i was following the rules, so i was being fair" response becomes exposed for the silliness it is.

Quote from SunIsGettingRealLow96589 >>

The reason i wrote this is i ran into multiple dms in a short period of time who argued that as long as their actions were following the rules that it was "fair".

 

 
So, here's the thing both can actually be true. 

For example, if I as a GM build an adventure and setting for a game and I decide that multiclassing does not make sense within the world that is within the rules as written. Multiclassing in 5e is clearly an optional rule. In 5.5e the word option is used, but in my opinion is written in a more messy way where either interpretation is possible. In either case, I'd offer the adventure to my player group and ensure that I'm either clear in the advert that multiclassing won't be allowed; or I'd negotiate the matter in a session zero.

That nuance is where the heart of this issue lays. 

For 5e specifically both Multiclassing and Feats are optional rules that are described as to be used 'with the DM's permission'. The number of players I've had sign up to a game where it's been advertised as core rules with no optional rules who were surprised to learn they wouldn't be able to multiclass was significant. Some definitely saw it as majorly unfair because they couldn't run the cool character they were hoping to run. However, my compromise if someone is dead set on multiclassing and is new to the game is to say that if their character uses some downtime to find a trainer to train them in their new class they can multiclass.

None of this is however the GM that you're referring to.

You mention 'low intelligence goblins' which reveals I'm afraid your own ignorance here. Goblins have an intelligence of 10, and a Wisdom of 8. That's pretty close to the stock average commoner. Like it or not then, it's pretty reasonable for goblins to focus fire on a single party member. Now, personally I would suggest that if the tide looks like it's turning and the Goblins are taking serious damage self preservation comes in and they're going to want to run away...unless they are devoted to a cause or have some tribal code of honour which prevents such actions. Even if they're just defending their own home might be enough of a reason that the Goblins won't flee.

Reading the passage on the TPKs, I may just be seeing shadows where none exist but it reads like you're a player who recently experienced a TPK. I'm sorry and that sucks. It really does. No good DM is hoping for this outcome. No good DM likes to see it. However, it does happen from time to time...usually because of either chronically bad dice rolls, or due to poor player choices. Players running characters that are healers still attacking despite their fellow player characters getting seriously low on health for example. It really feels reading your post though that you had an experience as a player that you didn't enjoy and that undoubtedly sucks.

Here's the thing though, if I'm correct and you were a player who experienced this I'd offer some advice: ask about the style of campaign before you begin. This isn't all on the DM. I know in the past I've advertised old school hack and slash mega-dungeons and still got players who want the deep roleplay character focused game. I'm not a DM capable of marrying those two styles...better DMs can...but I'm not that skilled. I explained at session zero that character deaths were possible and likely, that this would be focused primarily around the exploration of the mega-dungeon and would feature a high amount of combat. Yet the player who I doubled checked this with was still somehow expecting deep roleplay conversations with NPCs, expected to be able to talk down wandering monsters who saw the party as invaders. My point is not to blame players here, but to emphasise the role of communication here. Did you as a player go into the game with a set of expectations that weren't made clear to the DM. Did you join a game where you forgot to ask or consider the information given to you by the DM. These kinds of miscommunications happen all the time. It's not necessarily anyone's fault, but rather a good reminder that DMs should be clear when offering the adventure, and players should be clear about what they expect from the adventure. If there's an incompatibility, then the table is likely not suitable and the player should walk away. No hard feelings on either side, because everyone has different tastes.

If I'm misdiagnosing here, I do apologise. I've definitely made assumptions based off prior experience. DMs and players better communicating expectations is always good advice and a good reminder for us all though.