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  #16  
Old Mar 23rd, 2020, 10:14 PM
HansJS HansJS is offline
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Rules that occur to me (probably not the rules I have)

1. I try to meet the players where they are, especially if they have a cool story to tell. Anyone with a cool character/item/quest/downtime concept that bends the rules without making the characcter over-powered is great. Oppositely, if your character maneuvers around not to create anything interesting but get just pure meta-game advantages like "total immunity to X", I have no sympathy.
2. I toss plot hooks at the party but I never force people to pick them up. If the party isn't interested in the old mine shaft with the weird light, they can just move on. Oppositely, if the players really get into something that I initially thought wouldn't matter or would be backdrop, I can add more and more details to that. But doesn't mean that a player can up a rock, imagine it as magic and it becomes magic rock. But the characters want to take up geology, they might learn something interesting. Nothing in the world is pure "backdrop", something you can't learn more about.
3. I never make "the end of the world" a plot arc. All my plots are serious and I seriously don't want to end my world. But even, I like "real world" quandaries. Something bad might happen if you fail but that's how things.
4. I generally get good role playing from my players but I never give experience for role playing. I think that kind of detracts from the joy of playing your character as you wish.
5. Continuity is extremely important to me. When players miss sessions, figuring out what happened to their character can be a challenge but it's a good challenge. No character just gets magically transported in.
6. It is extremely important that NPCs never act as mere water-carriers for the PCs. In my world, my PCs will periodically meet other adventurers who are their equivalent and who aren't going to be any more accommodating to the PCs than the PCs are to them. And "normal people" definitely want to both stay alive and gain some benefit. Like the real world, being miserly and being generous have their advantages and disadvantages. Real, psychotic evil exists but ordinary people can also do horrible, horrible things just out of ordinary selfishness. In my younger days, I knew a lot of scammers and homeless people - the PCs are likely to meet such folks regularly.
7. I like having my work together like a group of soldiers, a work crew or another group united by the possibility of common benefit. That frame makes it logical that otherwise different people would work together. I've never had a problem with in-game fighting (even with player who turned out to hate each out of game).
8. I love economics, sociology, history and so-forth. I want the things to PCs discover to have some relationship with what a different society would actually be like, obviously also taking into account the need for drama and randomness of the multiverse.
9. The best way to stop players from meta-gaming to make it clear all the rule books together are just the accumulated knowledge their characters have of the world but like books in the real world, they may not all be accurate. If something isn't happen the way you expect it, well that happens in the real world too.
10. It's good to periodically stop and give a more sustained narrative of what the situation is, how the players got there and so forth. Add the mood, the sounds, the smells, etc. "You here zombie shuffling just out of view...". This can especially help when there's a complex battle going on.
11. Characters should always be able to succeed at doing things an ordinary person could reliably do - time pressure and related things can require a roll, of course. Similarly, the players should know about the options that an ordinary person surveying the situation would think of. If a player has their character do something a person would see is dumb, I warn them.
... I could go on all day...

Last edited by HansJS; Mar 23rd, 2020 at 10:23 PM.
  #17  
Old May 20th, 2020, 08:33 AM
AsenRG AsenRG is offline
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I play the world, you play characters. Your job is to have motivations and follow them. My job is to tell you what happens when you do that.

I establish the basic facts of the setting and important NPCs, and am improvising on them as necessary. That said, I'm not going to change one bit of what I have established for myself regarding the setting - even if it's the fact that I'm changing a published setting. I believe that I owe you the honesty and respect of not using Schrodinger's Anything on you. Including Schroedinger's Dice. And yes, that means that when you ask me a question, the answer I give you stands (though beware, some NPCs have been known to lie).

Your success is not pre-established, either. Play smart or you're going to fail entertainingly. BTW, I roll dice in the open (unless you have no way of knowing whether you succeeded) and abide by the results. Just keep that in mind.


Strategy and negotiations are more likely to get you a success than straight-up combat. Of course, it's up to you. Just don't expect NPCs to not use them.

NPCs are not an extension of my will (and do not share in the Referee's omniscience, relying on their own sources of information and experience). A lot of them are doing things I might disapprove of OOC, and "killing PCs" is just one item in the long list. Anyone who suggests that I'm being antagonistic towards you needs to take a breather: if I wanted to kill your PCs, I'd have your PCs die from mysterious causes without a single roll.

The Referee can consult with the players regarding the system, or not. His decisions stand either way. And yes, they don't apply only to NPCs, unless there's a special ability involved. Special abilities can usually be learned, though!
  #18  
Old Jun 27th, 2020, 01:23 AM
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Fool Fool is offline
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One thing that occurs to me that I often take for granted in groups I've GMed in for a few months or more is the idea I try to reinforce that if it's cool enough, anything goes. I use that variant version of inspiration that gets floated around here and there where Inspiration = +1d6 on a roll instead of Advantage, and I ruled that players can stack their own characters' Inspiration points on other chars' roles. Maybe it was stupid, but the time that one player rolled a 7 then proceeded to get a 18 off of 3d6 inspiration (one they spent themself, the other two dice from the other two players, who had saved it up) was one of the best moments I've had in my time playing.

I also use the "roleplaying your personality traits well' = Inspiration idea.
  #19  
Old Jul 23rd, 2020, 10:33 PM
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TADHG TADHG is offline
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I'm not going to say I'm a great DM because I'm not. I will probably never ever DM a game here. I did so in the past because we had a system where we rotated GMs. We played lots of one shots. There was a final goal and a finite area to explore. I'm coming from first edition. Things could and would kill you... but you always had the option of retreat. Kind of like a video game in that they'd forget you as soon as you were out of sight.

We had no rules lawyering. The DM was always right, at least in the moment. When the DM was wrong you'd discuss it out of game AND you better have some data to back it up. "I read it somewhere" is not a good excuse to change FUTURE rulings. The present one stands.

I want to reiterate. It's not the DM's job to kill characters but characters should consider the DM's suggestion to retreat. Oh, also we usually afforded players the opportunity to take sufficient time to rest. We didn't give a specific time frame, but you'd set up a watch in case of wandering monsters/random encounters, and we'd give casters time to study spells, etc. We wouldn't hamper you in that way. It seemed fair. Especially considering the fragility of low level magic users and thieves in that system.
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  #20  
Old Aug 19th, 2020, 09:34 PM
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Lord Morbius Lord Morbius is offline
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Lord Morbius' Dungeon Master Creed:

PRIME DIRECTIVE: Fun and enjoyment is mandatory. The entire point of playing any game is to have fun with friends and enjoy the time together. Failure to enjoy the game and have fun means that the DM is failing at his job of entertaining you. In the event of failure to have fun, the DM is authorized to take ANY steps that may be required to introduce fun and enjoyment to the game.

My approach to running a game is actually not treating it as a role-playing game. It is a game of high adventure and heroic fantasy....that uses role-playing as one of many tools to make the game more enjoyable.

If the players are all drama students and love acting in the spotlight, then the scenario will feature a great deal of negotiations, court intrigue, spying, bluffing, finding clues, unraveling mysteries and diplomacy.

If the players are hard core war gamers, then the game will feature enough flashing steel, splattering blood, crunching bones, screams of the dying and the clangor of pitched battle to sate the blood lust of viking beserkers. Tactics, strategy, valor and bravado will fill the gaming room as heroes revel in their triumphs and the fallen will at least die a death worthy of a song.

If the players come from a board gaming background and that is their cup of tea, the classic dungeon crawl, exploring a labyrinth filled with monstrous horrors, deadly traps and gleaming treasures will be the order of the night.

Know your players and design your scenarios accordingly.

******

Game Mechanics:

No deadly dice: Stupidity kills, not random dice rolls. I never allow players who have done everything right be killed by a random roll of the dice. Now, to be sure, if the players make foolish decisions, the consequences can, and will, get characters killed or injured, but not an arbitrary roll of the dice because that isn't fun for anyone.

Mind you, there are some traps that cannot be disarmed and villains/monsters that cannot be defeated (they will crush you like a bug). The heroes are supposed to use intelligent forethought to realize when they are in over their heads and cleverly find ways to circumvent traps or bypass monsters that they cannot best in combat. ("Ye could 'ave gone around the mountain....ye could 'ave gone over the mountain, but no....NOOOOoooooooo... Ye had to go THROUGH the Mines of Moria and piss off the Balrog...didn't cha?")...

"But, its what my character would do!" doesn't bother me as a DM at all. The reason why, is because when your rogue steals from the other heroes...and they find out....you asserting that "But....its what my character would do!" will get met by the other heroes doing...."What their characters would do when they catch your character betraying them"....and I, as your impartial Dungeon Master will not lift a finger to stop them...

THE SPICE OF LIFE: Rolling dice and saying "I hit the orc for 3 hit points damage", "Okay...I missed"...."I hit him for 5 points"....is boring (Save vs spells or suffer the effects of a sleep spell).

With a lusty howl of battle rage, the barbarian's iron war hammer crashes into the evil Knight's shield, caving in a massive dent and sending a blast of pain rippling up his forearm bones.

The evil Knight's black plate armor, adorned with its ornate pattern of sharply pointed spikes, staggers back under the force of the barbarian's mighty blow...but spins around with a growl of fury, his sword blurring in bright flash of honed steel, striking the barbarian's exposed left side with a wet, meaty smack of a blade biting deeply into flesh.

The barbarian's eyes widen in shock, as the black Knight takes a massive stride backwards, ripping his sword from its position embedded in the barbarian, sending a spray of crimson blood high into the air.

"Undisciplined Curr...you were never a match for one such as I" snorted the Knight, in utter contempt of the wild land savage. His self righteous, arrogance in his noble birth, shines bright and strong.

The Knight's chest heaves as he draws his blade back, horizontal to his torso and poised, with the point of his sword ready to thrust into the nomadic tribesman's heart....

"Any last words, your filthy...worthless...son...of...a...." the villainous Knight's words trailed off, as both he and the barbarian become aware of movement in the darkness of the open cavern behind them....something big...and leathery, shifted in the dark shadows...a tremor ripples through the living rock and both the barbarian and the knight felt the ground shake with the massive impact....followed by another....then another...one footstep after another...until finally the ancient, leathery, scaled visage of the Dragon emerged from the cavern's shadows and into the light. It's yellowed fangs were a long as full length pikes, tendrils of sulfurous smoke waft upwards from its flaring nostrils and the enraged hatred of a thousand years burned within its serpentine eyes, as they glared upon the two warriors.. The wyrm's jaw begins to open, its cavernous maw gaping like a gateway directly to the fiery inferno of hades...the monster's chest begins to expand as air begins rushing into the beast for the flaming doom that was about to be unleashed....

...yeah....far more exciting than just rolling dice and reporting numbers for damage.

********

Rules Lawyering is Heresy. The DM role-plays the gods themselves, literally, whatever the DM says is LAW.

Before you start expounding about what a spell can and cannot do, do NOT assume you know which spell was actually cast. Was it the spell from the book (your opponent isn't likely to tell you which spell they actually cast)?

Was it a custom, higher level of the spell in the book that has extra features (It may look like a standard fireball, but is it a higher level fireball of seeking that has no saving throw)?

Was it a different spell that just looks like the spell you think it is? The wall of boiling smoke and the fills the room, from the caster's palm....was it a wall of fog?...a stinking cloud?....a cloudkill spell?....a unique spell created for the NPC that you've never heard of before (The fog could be about to swirl into a fog golem for all you know)?

Are you assuming you know all the details about the NPC you just encountered? Is the foe alive or undead and could you always know just by looking at them? Is it really a goblin or a shape changed dragon? The NPC adventurers you encountered, do they have any spell effects boosting their abilities, are their weapons envenomed, are they hasted or not, do they have regeneration powers or a lingering wish spell that if they are slain, that they be instantly restored to life and in perfect health to fight on?

When the DM says it, take it as gospel.

Last edited by Lord Morbius; Aug 19th, 2020 at 09:39 PM.
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