# Bad DMs/GMs



## Summer-Knight925 (Sep 19, 2011)

I believe there is a 74% chance of you knowing what I mean by a bad DM/GM...so what makes them bad? what makes it so you simply do not want to go back to game with them?

Vent now.


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## Stormonu (Sep 19, 2011)

Lack of choice - The main reason I'm playing D&D and not watching some movie is because _I_ want to make the big decisions.  If the DM's doing that for me, why don't I just stay home and watch a movie I like?

Killer DM - Like PCs with limited resources stand a chance against a DM whose playing everything else in the world.


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## Jon_Dahl (Sep 19, 2011)

GMs and DMs that don't keep the game moving.
Railroad or sandbox, bad adventures or good adventures, what really kills me is that 2-3 hours have passed and almost nothing has happened. Sessions go by and basically game is just stalling.

"A centipede swarm attacks! This was a part of a published adventure that I'm running and I was fully aware that you guys would face a centipede swarm but... how do these things work? Swarm I mean... Let's see... Immune to weapon damage? Did you know this guys?"
...and x amount of time passes...
Also DMs/GMs that love shopping way too much are real killers.


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## GreyLord (Sep 19, 2011)

Boring DM's.

If a DM can get dramatic or act and is a good storyteller, it's great.

If the DM talks in a Monotone, gives one word descriptions of entire rooms, and has no imagination...that pretty much makes the game rather boring.

Just for me at least.


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## Hand of Evil (Sep 19, 2011)

Organization - Call it flow or knowing the rules but a DM that is not organized can have big problems. 

Not Knowing your players - This mostly is what they want in the game, be it combat, adventure, exploration, romance, etc...   Not providing that and you have unhappy players. 

Control - You are the DM, be the DM!  You run the game, don't lose control to rule lawyers or forceful players.  

Inactive Game - You have to make the players feel that have an investment in the game.  This can be hard but see the DM Advice thread for ideas but feedback and homework is helpful.  Feedback helps the DM know what the players want and the direction of the game.  Homework is just a way for players to feel they are contributing something to the game.


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## The Shaman (Sep 19, 2011)

Summer-Knight925 said:


> I believe there is a 74% chance of you knowing what I mean by a bad DM/GM...



Well, lessee . . . yes, apparently I do know what you mean.


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## S'mon (Sep 19, 2011)

A 3-hour battle against 5 rust monsters.  At 1st level.  In 3rd edition D&D.


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## S'mon (Sep 19, 2011)

Jon_Dahl said:


> GMs and DMs that don't keep the game moving.




Me, I hate_ players_ who don't keep the game moving.  

"Stop Turtling and make a decision, damnit!"


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## Pentius (Sep 19, 2011)

In addition to many of the things mentioned, I once had a DM whose descriptions drove me up the wall.  He once spent almost 5 minutes describing a room in loving detail, from the color and pattern of the carpet, to the figures on he mantlepiece.  Then, at the end, almost as an afterthought, "Oh yeah, there's also a large black dragon sitting in the middle of the room."


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## Sutekh (Sep 19, 2011)

1) Particular DM's game. He made players roll for everything. From getting a drink from a pool (or you might fall in!) to yes.. picking up a blade of grass. This was very late in 2e, I last 3 sessions in that game

2) Super NPC. A particuarl dm's game I play in now has super npcs. These are npcs that delivery a lot of monologue , do some actions then always escape before they can be killed etc. They can also do anything from sail a ship to romance a party member.  Its not a bad game, I enjoy it mostly. Just some of the npcs we meet. Not so much


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## delericho (Sep 19, 2011)

IMO, there's a difference between a _bad_ DM and one who is merely inexperienced. Most of the 'bad DM' behaviours I've seen are excusible in a DM who is still learning the ropes.

So, while I consider "killer DM", a "railroad DM", a "boring DM" or a "cheat DM" to be 'bad DM' behaviours, I'll only consider the DM _himself_ bad if he is unwilling to listen to constructive criticism, and/or unwilling (or unable) to learn from his mistakes.


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## S'mon (Sep 19, 2011)

Sutekh said:


> 2) Super NPC. A particuarl dm's game I play in now has super npcs. These are npcs that delivery a lot of monologue , do some actions then always escape before they can be killed etc. They can also do anything from sail a ship to romance a party member.  Its not a bad game, I enjoy it mostly. Just some of the npcs we meet. Not so much




I can't stand Mary Sue GMPCs, yup.


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## Rechan (Sep 19, 2011)

Control freaks. Among the problems that we had with one DM, he wanted a say in everything involving your character. For instance he wanted to limit the base benefits your class received; one PC wanted to play a druid, and the DM wanted to _tell him_ what animal companion the first level druid got.

In highschool I had a DM who not only had the SuperNPCs, but also clearly was catering to some members of the group and neglecting others. I was the only player not playing a melee class - I was playing a wizard. So often I'd cast a spell and he'd ignore the rules of it and just say "Yeah it doesn't work". He also went out of his way to have the story suit the other players, but ignored me because they were bigger friends of his.


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## Fox Lee (Sep 19, 2011)

Novelists. The only GM I've had who I just couldn't stick with was of the "I really want to write this as a novel" type, with a side order of "please fawn over all my broken-baby-bird-female-NPCs". She wasn't a bad writer at all, but the gaming table is just NOT the place for your magnum opus novella.


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## ExploderWizard (Sep 19, 2011)

Pentius said:


> In addition to many of the things mentioned, I once had a DM whose descriptions drove me up the wall. He once spent almost 5 minutes describing a room in loving detail, from the color and pattern of the carpet, to the figures on he mantlepiece. Then, at the end, almost as an afterthought, "Oh yeah, there's also a large black dragon sitting in the middle of the room."





Some of this was actually written in boxed text this way. Detailed room descriptions followed by the obvious monster standing there almost as an afterthought. 

Yeah, a DM who simply read this verbatim was pretty bad.


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## Cor Azer (Sep 19, 2011)

The worst I've had are a few DMPC issues thankfully. Not to say all the DM's I've played with are great though; most just fall into the average camp.

My biggest peeve though is DMs that mess with the basics of my character, after we started playing. I don't mind restrictions on character generation, but after we've been gaming for a few sessions, don't say my elf is actually a drow who was polymorphed and needs to find a way to reverse the spell... No, he grew up as a gardener; he knows who he is.


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## MoxieFu (Sep 19, 2011)

GreyLord said:


> Boring DM's.
> 
> If a DM can get dramatic or act and is a good storyteller, it's great.
> 
> ...




Ben Stein

Somehow Greylord I don't think you would like hims as a DM, am I right?


"It's your turn to attack Beuller, Beuller, Beuller..."


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## Hussar (Sep 19, 2011)

Well, going by what I experienced:

1.  Favoring players.  There's nothing wrong with a bit of spotlight on different people at different times.  But, when it becomes blindingly obvious that your DM has frustrated homo-erotic fantasies about his room mate, it's time to move on.

2.  Railroading above and beyond the pale. 

3.  Campaigns that never go anywhere.  Ever.  I had one online campaign I played in where the players were posting pretty much every few days - decent pace.  It took us nearly six months just to get out of the freaking tavern.  

4.  DM's who love their campaigns more than their players.  I once accused a DM of considering his NPC's more important than the PC's.  His response?  "Of course they are."

5.  Totally unprepared.  I've got no problems with a DM who can wing it.  So long as "winging it" doesn't mean that I'm staring off into space for half an hour while the DM flails around trying to get things going.


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## Bedrockgames (Sep 19, 2011)

I have to say I think the bad GM thing is way over-blown, and it is usually more of a style clash than anything when someone says they had a bad GM. However there are some things I think make for poor GMing:

1) Not understanding the rules system: I don't expect GMs to be masters of the system in use, but I do expect them to understand the core system enough to run it (obviously if it is the first run of a new game, there is a learning curve). 

2) Being unfair: No GM is perfect, no one can be 100% objective on every single rules call, but the GM should at least try to be a balanced judge of the game. Things like singling a player out for bad treatment, favoring characters because they are the focus of the adventure...these can disturb my enjoyment of the game.

3) The DMNPC: I love good solid NPCs. But I don't care for the DMNPC. Especially when it is a fellow who is maxed out, get's special treatment, and is virtually unkillable.


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## GreyLord (Sep 19, 2011)

MoxieFu said:


> Ben Stein
> 
> Somehow Greylord I don't think you would like hims as a DM, am I right?
> 
> ...




His voice tone may drive me crazy.

He shows some imagination and is descriptive, so he could go either way.  I'm thinking he probably would be a fine DM if he knew how to play.  Take away his imagination in doing things (which could very well just be his script writers) and his descriptive ability (once again, could be scriptwriters) and yes, he'd be terrible.


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## Bedrockgames (Sep 19, 2011)

MoxieFu said:


> Ben Stein
> 
> Somehow Greylord I don't think you would like hims as a DM, am I right?
> 
> ...




I think Ben Stein would make an awesome GM. He would definitely be part of my gaming dream team: Ben Stein, Steven Colbert, Joel McHale, Kevin James and Tom Hanks (he must make penance for M&M).


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## DragonLancer (Sep 19, 2011)

ExploderWizard said:


> Some of this was actually written in boxed text this way. Detailed room descriptions followed by the obvious monster standing there almost as an afterthought.




The problem here is where do you put the reference to the monster. If you put it first or in the middle of the description, the players ignore the rest of the description. Seems to me that putting the monster reveal last makes more sense.


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## Gronin (Sep 19, 2011)

Pentius said:


> In addition to many of the things mentioned, I once had a DM whose descriptions drove me up the wall.  He once spent almost 5 minutes describing a room in loving detail, from the color and pattern of the carpet, to the figures on he mantlepiece.  Then, at the end, almost as an afterthought, "Oh yeah, there's also a large black dragon sitting in the middle of the room."




While I would imagine 5 minutes was a bit much -- there is probably a pretty good chance that if the first part of the description had been "There's a large black dragon sitting in the middle of the room."  The rest of the description might as well have been "blah, blah, blah" as panic ensued.  

Although if such a thing were to actually happen I suppose that might reflect a very real reaction.  I'm pretty sure if I saw any kind of dragon at all I'm not checking out how well the draped co-ordinate with the carpet. 

Still I feel for your DM as all too often carefully crafted flavour text is reduced to "there was a dragon"


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## MoxieFu (Sep 19, 2011)

GreyLord said:


> His voice tone may drive me crazy.
> 
> He shows some imagination and is descriptive, so he could go either way.  I'm thinking he probably would be a fine DM if he knew how to play.  Take away his imagination in doing things (which could very well just be his script writers) and his descriptive ability (once again, could be scriptwriters) and yes, he'd be terrible.




I goofed. I meant the character he played in FBDO. I have to agree, Ben himself would be amazing, especially if a couple of the players were goofballs.


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## was (Sep 19, 2011)

railroading, bad guys who are killed numerous time but keep instant healing to max health, dm's who allow their fav buddy/munchkin/rules-lawyer to dominate the group and practically run the campaign as a tribute to his pc's 'awesomeness'


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## Oryan77 (Sep 19, 2011)

ExploderWizard said:


> Some of this was actually written in boxed text this way. Detailed room descriptions followed by the obvious monster standing there almost as an afterthought.




At the same time, you also have the players that won't let you finish describing the scene if you mention the monster to soon.

DM: "You enter a well lit room. Standing in the center is a Black Drag...."

Everyone else:

"I cast Fireball!"

"I do a called shot to the eyes with my crossbow and then hide!"

"I charge it and attack with my greatsword!"

"I play my banjo and yell out that we come in peace."

DM: "Wait, let me finish describing the scene."

Everyone else:

"NOOOOOOOOO, we need to hurry and attack while it is surprised!"


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## Oryan77 (Sep 19, 2011)

Gronin said:


> The rest of the description might as well have been "blah, blah, blah" as panic ensued.




I agree. One thing that stuck in my mind and still irks me thinking about it was the time one of my previous players interrupted an NPC monologue by saying, "Blah blah blah, yeah yeah, let's fight." There was a lack of roleplaying going on in the game for quite some time, so I was trying to spice up the encounter with some dialogue. The lack of roleplaying made me feel like I was doing nothing but running an elaborate chess game, and his comment didn't help.



Bedrockgames said:


> I have to say I think the bad GM thing is way over-blown, and it is usually more of a style clash than anything when someone says they had a bad GM.




This is what I think also. I'm sure there are plenty of bad DMs, but I'm also sure that most players that complain don't realize that it is more them being problem players or that it is simply a clash of playstyles and they want to blame the DM.


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## Umbran (Sep 19, 2011)

Bedrockgames said:


> I have to say I think the bad GM thing is way over-blown, and it is usually more of a style clash than anything when someone says they had a bad GM.




Agreed.  

I also think people are too quick to slap the label on.  As if Good GMs apparently *never* make mistakes, have bad days, or areas of weakness?

"I once had a GM, who in a session did X..."

"Yeah, that's clearly a Bad GM."

As if one incident, in one session, brands the GM and all his other potential work - he's Bad, period, end of story.  We apparently don't need to know about his other work to call him Bad, in general.


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## Pentius (Sep 19, 2011)

Gronin said:


> While I would imagine 5 minutes was a bit much -- there is probably a pretty good chance that if the first part of the description had been "There's a large black dragon sitting in the middle of the room."  The rest of the description might as well have been "blah, blah, blah" as panic ensued.



I didn't have a timer out or anything, but the entire group was bored until the dragon was mentioned(at which point shock took over).  There's a point at which description simply becomes pointless and boring, and this DM tended to cross the line and then just keep going.




> Still I feel for your DM as all too often carefully crafted flavour text is reduced to "there was a dragon"




I know that sting too, but with this approach it just gets reduced to "There was a dragon, and DAMMIT JAKE* I HATE YOU."

*Not DM's actual name.


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## Elf Witch (Sep 20, 2011)

I have several peeves that I consider to be bad DMing  I don't necessarily think the DM doing this is a bad DM all around just where these things are concerned. 

1 Being to rigid to the point that you lose opportunities for awesomeness. 

 The example that comes to mind I was playing a ranger with favored enemy elves and I had a special magical bow against elves. We played for six levels almost six months and we didn't see any elves. Finally after a rough dungeon crawl with one freaking arrow left we come across some drow cultist. I fire the bow and roll a crit and then roll max damage it was a thing of beauty. I think I did something like 68 points of damage. Then the DM say you see the arrow bounce off. He had a magic item to protect him from range attacks. 

The DM even showed me where it was written on his sheet. I don't care this was the time to let a player shine. I was a little bitter over this and changed characters next session because the DM told me that we not likely see many elves in the game. 


2 Making one person the star and the game about them.   This has happened twice and both times I really ended up resenting it. 

3 Asking for back stories and never using anything from it. 

4 Railroading to the point that you take away all freedom from my character. The worse was a DM who decided that my character was going to get involved with her NPC and when I dragged my feet brought a god into it and said I had to because of a prophecy.

5 Super duber NPCs who not only do everything but hold back information so that we can't solve issues on our own.


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## Fox Lee (Sep 20, 2011)

Umbran said:


> As if one incident, in one session, brands the GM and all his other potential work - he's Bad, period, end of story.  We apparently don't need to know about his other work to call him Bad, in general.



Sure, but it's every bit as incorrect to say that _none_ of these examples are legitimate. Chances are that plenty of us are providing one example of a broader behaviour pattern.

My friend the novelist didn't just have that problem over the course of the entire campaign (eventually it ended because she was the only one attached to her giant plot), but over all three games we played with her. She didn't think she was doing anything wrong; what she wanted out of a game was to have her story happen, and the PCs were there to be an audience. In my opinion, that is the mindset of a bad GM (a perfectly acceptable writer, but a bad GM).

In the spirit of equal criticism, _I_ as a GM have some pretty annoying flaws. For example, I'm awkward when put on the spot - I'm unwilling to give definitive answers about something I haven't considered, for fear I shall paint myself into a corner later down the line. I take ages to draw battlemaps, I angst over how to play marked targets, and I often forget about environmental features/special abilities once combat starts. But none of these flaws has been overwhelming to the game at large. I am a flawed GM (as you say, who isn't?), but not a bad one.


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## Pentius (Sep 20, 2011)

I'm sure that I have my DMing flaws as well, theory is always cleaner than execution, but to put things in perspective, maybe 80-90% of the Bad DM stories I tell here are all the same DM.  We played with him for nearly 5 years, because no one else was willing to try(except occasionally me).  We didn't really understand how bad he was, because we were all fairly new to gaming.


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## Hussar (Sep 20, 2011)

Bedrockgames said:


> I think Ben Stein would make an awesome GM. He would definitely be part of my gaming dream team: Ben Stein, Steven Colbert, Joel McHale, Kevin James and Tom Hanks (he must make penance for M&M).






Umbran said:


> Agreed.
> 
> I also think people are too quick to slap the label on.  As if Good GMs apparently *never* make mistakes, have bad days, or areas of weakness?
> 
> ...




There is the other side of this though too.  I've seen many times, on these boards, where any and all criticisms of DM's are summarily dismissed because the DM is *always right*.  Heck, I've had people directly accuse me of being the problem and not the DM, despite any example I've given.

Yes, there is a fair bit of truth to what you're saying.  Problems with playstyle are not a good/bad DM thing.  That's totally fair.  But, there is also a very strong tendency to give the benefit of the doubt to DM's rather than accept that people are capable of recognizing a bad DM when they've played with one.

The three worst DM's I've played with all had player revolts.  One I led, and two I didn't.  That's about the biggest signal you can give a DM when the entire table stands up and walks out.


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## Ahnehnois (Sep 20, 2011)

Good leaders are those who can get other people to willingly do things that they don't have to do.

A DM is a leader. In my experience, the biggest problem a DM can have is not listening to the players. The next biggest is a lack of confidence or assertiveness. Inconsistency (in style, or in how the rules are interpreted) is also a problem. Occasionally, bad DMing involves making the game personal (either through grudges against one player or favoritism towards another).

In short, my description of bad DMing is my description of a person who couldn't convince me to do anything.

Personally, I'm mostly a DM so I hope I don't have much experience with bad DMing. I know I've had some as a player, but frankly I think the bad ones get removed pretty fast most of the time. Who's going to make a weekly appointment, cover session logistics (space, food, transit, etc.) and do prep work for a bad DM?


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## Oryan77 (Sep 20, 2011)

Hussar said:


> That's about the biggest signal you can give a DM when the entire table stands up and walks out.




My friend wanted to know; what about when only 1 player stops showing up, but it has happened with multiple players at different times?

I should state...I mean, my friend stated that it was always the newest player to the group. Never an existing player that had previously seen a player leave.

But still, does that make me, I mean him, a bad DM?


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## Pentius (Sep 20, 2011)

Hussar said:


> The three worst DM's I've played with all had player revolts.  One I led, and two I didn't.  That's about the biggest signal you can give a DM when the entire table stands up and walks out.



I led one, too, but it was more of a dethroning.  The group stayed together, we just crowned a new DM.  It was a whole table of people standing up(for dramatic effect, probably) and saying, "No, Jake*, you do not get to DM anymore!"

*name change, again.


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## Gilladian (Sep 20, 2011)

The worst DMing experience I ever had was one where the DM managed to end the campaign in one session. We were all traveling together (having just met) to meet a mysterious person who was offering us some sort of job. On the way, we stopped at an Inn. We ate a meal, ingested some sort of poison, and as we all frantically tried to figure out how to a) treat ourselves, b) find anyone in the town who could cure us or c) discover WHO poisoned us, we all slowly failed our saves, collapsed, and died. ALL of us. Without EVER finding ONE single clue to ANY solution...

This doesn't mean he was a BAD DM. It does mean he never tried to run a game for me/us again...


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## Umbran (Sep 20, 2011)

Hussar said:


> Yes, there is a fair bit of truth to what you're saying.  Problems with playstyle are not a good/bad DM thing.  That's totally fair.  But, there is also a very strong tendency to give the benefit of the doubt to DM's rather than accept that people are capable of recognizing a bad DM when they've played with one.




Well, there's two things:

1) We generally hear one side of the story.  And it is usually the side of a person who feel they were wronged, shafted, or who are otherwise unhappy.  That's not a great way to get an unbiased report.

2) Having a bad experience with a GM does not indicate the GM is, overall, bad.  That's my big point.  There's on person who GMs frequently at local gamedays here.  I've not really enjoyed any of their games I've played.  But still, I don't pass a judgment on their overall skill as a GM.  

And, actually, a third thing...  I almost hate to mention this one...

I think folks around here are a little too picky.  

Yeah, yeah, I know I'm going to get jumped on for that one.  I understand play what you like, and all that.  But I respond with how one shouldn't make perfect the enemy of good.  And I'll just leave it at that.


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## Hussar (Sep 20, 2011)

Oryan77 said:


> My friend wanted to know; what about when only 1 player stops showing up, but it has happened with multiple players at different times?
> 
> I should state...I mean, my friend stated that it was always the newest player to the group. Never an existing player that had previously seen a player leave.
> 
> But still, does that make me, I mean him, a bad DM?




LOL

Probably not.  If it were, I'd be the worst DM in the world.  

But, when one player comes, plays a couple of times and then leaves, then it's likely simply a playstyle issue.  That's groovy.


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## Summer-Knight925 (Sep 20, 2011)

well..when the DM is just more about HIS OWN CHARACTERS and cares nothing for the players characters, or when the entire campaign is based around what he wants his characters to do, and not like one shot npcs, but the kind that adventure with you npcs, that steal your gear and your xp


or when he throws monsters (and groups of monsters) at the party that they shouldn't be fighting (Yeth Hounds at a 1st level party without silvered weapons? ARE YOU KIDDING!!!)

I think a bad DM/GM is the one that focuses more on their own fun than the fun of the players. 

When the only reason you survived a battle is because of something HE PUT IN THE ADVENTURE you know it's a railroad, and I do not like working on the rail road ALL THE LIVE LONG DAY

---The Summer Knight


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## Psimancer (Sep 20, 2011)

Ego GM/DMs: Those who, when they are genuinely outsmarted by their players, perceive it as a personal affront to their intelligence and take petty revenge on the characters; cursing, maiming, killing, etc - Been there, done that, no thanks...


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## The Monster (Sep 20, 2011)

Most all GMs have some bad moments, or even bad habits. I certainly do! 

Stuff I've run into as really bad GMing; fortunately, my home group has very little of this kind of nonsense...
--GMs who don't know the rules - or, at a convention, run the event using a different set of rules than was announced in the schedule (not because the schedule was wrong; they changed their mind a couple days befoer the con!). 
--GMs who, when running a game based on published canon (e.g., Star Wars, Star Trek, LotR, etc.), but have very flawed knowledge of the material - and then take offense when these major errors are pointed out (especially when the whole adventure hinges on the erroneous info). 
--Close cousin to those are the GMs who create adventures where knowledge of some minute detail of the canon is necessary to succeed, and provide no in-game way to obtain that factoid. 
--GMs who don't even let you try things that they don't like, regardless of whether it makes sense, or you're willing to deal with a high chance of failure, or it would fit the setting and character. I've seen GMs who wouldn't even allow an action to be described differently even when no effect on game mechanics was intended or desired. 
--GMs who are willing to allow the players to waste an entire game session (at a convention!) stymied because they can't find the exact way the GM wants them to solve the introductory problem (which was a social situation!).


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## S'mon (Sep 20, 2011)

Hussar said:


> There is the other side of this though too.  I've seen many times, on these boards, where any and all criticisms of DM's are summarily dismissed because the DM is *always right*.  Heck, I've had people directly accuse me of being the problem and not the DM, despite any example I've given.




Sometimes the DM is the problem.  Other times it's Kzach... I mean Hussar.  

Seriously, we can only go by what you tell us. If we get a "This DM is clearly a dick" story, we'll nod and sympathise.  But sometimes the poster comes across as more sinner than sinned against, even in their own story.  Maybe we can be over-critical, too ready to look for flaws in the poster's story.  But this isn't one of those mother & baby "Positive Comments Only, Please!" boards my wife used to read; and criticism can be constructive - if not for the poster, at least for other people reading the thread.


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## S'mon (Sep 20, 2011)

Elf Witch said:


> 3 Asking for back stories and never using anything from it.




I worry about this as DM - I typically ask for PC backgrounds as an aid to my visualising the character and to help the player give personality to their PC.  Sometimes there is inspirational stuff in a PC background that I can use in game, but often the background story is interesting but doesn't get used at-table.  Players may resent that.  The opposite problem is that whenever I prep a whole bunch of stuff off 1 PC's backstory, inevitably the player doesn't show up - in fact they typically drop the campaign! - and the work is wasted.


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## S'mon (Sep 20, 2011)

Oryan77 said:


> My friend wanted to know; what about when only 1 player stops showing up, but it has happened with multiple players at different times?
> 
> I should state...I mean, my friend stated that it was always the newest player to the group. Never an existing player that had previously seen a player leave.
> 
> But still, does that make me, I mean him, a bad DM?




No, that happens to everyone if you get a lot of new players.  Not all GM styles suit all players, that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the GM.

One time I ran what I thought was pretty well my Best Session Ever, a 1st level 3e adventure I wrote myself called _The Wicked Ruins of Cursed Castle Kaladrac_.  After a final desperate battle, the PCs triumphed, defeated the barbaric Trosk and the acolytes of Bafomet, saved the shepherd boy Gen from being sacrificed in the Necromantic ritual to reanimate the sorceror-king Kaladrac as a Death Knight, and captured Maeve the evil Witch Queen, Kaladrac's daughter.  

Three of the players were wildly enthusiastic and desperate for more.  The fourth told me by email he'd hated it and wasn't coming back.


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## S'mon (Sep 20, 2011)

The Monster said:


> --GMs who, when running a game based on published canon (e.g., Star Wars, Star Trek, LotR, etc.), but have very flawed knowledge of the material - and then take offense when these major errors are pointed out (especially when the whole adventure hinges on the erroneous info).
> --Close cousin to those are the GMs who create adventures where knowledge of some minute detail of the canon is necessary to succeed, and provide no in-game way to obtain that factoid.




Again, I hate canon-monkey players, who expect the DM to stick to the (probably inconsistent) canon of some fictional universe.  I'll say "This is a non canon game", but really I shouldn't have to.  It becomes a non-canon universe simply by the fact of the PCs' existence in it.

Your second complaint is an example of pixel-bitching, and I agree that that is bad DMing, yes.


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## Bedrockgames (Sep 20, 2011)

Hussar said:


> There is the other side of this though too. I've seen many times, on these boards, where any and all criticisms of DM's are summarily dismissed because the DM is *always right*. Heck, I've had people directly accuse me of being the problem and not the DM, despite any example I've given.
> 
> Yes, there is a fair bit of truth to what you're saying. Problems with playstyle are not a good/bad DM thing. That's totally fair. But, there is also a very strong tendency to give the benefit of the doubt to DM's rather than accept that people are capable of recognizing a bad DM when they've played with one.




I believe there are GMs like the kind you describe out there. But I think the reason why these claims are treated with skepticism isn't a "GM is always right mentality" but just from peoples' own experience. I have to admit in my own gaming when I've run into players who complain about the worst GM ever, it usually becomes clear that the problem wasn't the GM but the player (and most commonly it is just a case of being a poor loser). This is just my own experience mind you, but it has been pretty consistent with some minor variations. So when I hear someone make a case for the worst GM in the world, my first mental image is of a whiny player who can't handle the occassional questionable call (sort of like the sports fan who complains about the ref). 

That said in my own groups the few bad GMs we've had don't usually last that long as GMs because it is clear to everyone (including them) that people aren't enjoying themselves. So I haven't had to suffer say an entire campaign under someone with quesitonable GMing skills. 



> The three worst DM's I've played with all had player revolts. One I led, and two I didn't. That's about the biggest signal you can give a DM when the entire table stands up and walks out.




Can I ask what these GMs did, and how they responded when people first voiced their criticisms?


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## ExploderWizard (Sep 20, 2011)

DragonLancer said:


> The problem here is where do you put the reference to the monster. If you put it first or in the middle of the description, the players ignore the rest of the description. Seems to me that putting the monster reveal last makes more sense.




You mention the most obvious things first. If there is an obvious monster in the room then deal with that situation first. Once the ZOMG MONSTER!! portion of the area is dealt with then you can describe finer details. 

I see little use in describing a paragraph of detail and ending it announcing the presence of a monster that will likely cause the players to forget all about the details and then you have to repeat them. I'd rather do a basic desciption once rather than twice.


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## Gronin (Sep 20, 2011)

Bedrockgames said:


> I have to say I think the bad GM thing is way over-blown, and it is usually more of a style clash than anything when someone says they had a bad GM. However there are some things I think make for poor GMing:
> 
> 1) Not understanding the rules system: I don't expect GMs to be masters of the system in use, but I do expect them to understand the core system enough to run it (obviously if it is the first run of a new game, there is a learning curve).
> 
> ...




I completely agree with the fact that it is often a clash of styles.  In fact very often if you have played in one group for a long time and switch to another it takes some time to get used to the way things are done in the new group.

I would also agree that the DMNPC can be a issue, but to me it is just part of a bigger issue.  Sometimes the party completely screws up your plans (not necessarily a bad thing) and the hardest thing for a DM to (at least for me) is take a deep breath and take it on the chin and then find a way to roll wth it.  Sometime this requires you to tell the group you need half an hour to rework some stuff  --- sometimes it means it becomes a board game night.


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## Nagol (Sep 20, 2011)

S'mon said:


> Again, I hate canon-monkey players, who expect the DM to stick to the (probably inconsistent) canon of some fictional universe.  I'll say "This is a non canon game", but really I shouldn't have to.  It becomes a non-canon universe simply by the fact of the PCs' existence in it.
> 
> Your second complaint is an example of pixel-bitching, and I agree that that is bad DMing, yes.




Heh.  The worst case of this occurs when the DM has a sketchy understanding of how the universe works and makes a ruling that fundamentally contradicts our understanding of the universe when that change is unexpected by the players.

I remember one case in _Traveler_ where the GM honestly didn't believe radio transmitted at light speed...


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## Bedrockgames (Sep 20, 2011)

Gronin said:


> I would also agree that the DMNPC can be a issue, but to me it is just part of a bigger issue. Sometimes the party completely screws up your plans (not necessarily a bad thing) and the hardest thing for a DM to (at least for me) is take a deep breath and take it on the chin and then find a way to roll wth it. Sometime this requires you to tell the group you need half an hour to rework some stuff --- sometimes it means it becomes a board game night.




One of my big realizations as a GM was that it is perfectly fine for players to beat an adventure in ten minutes if they figure out a way to do so, and battles with the big bad guy don't have to last dramatically long (one of our best final battles invovled the PCs teleporting into the villain's court, killing him in one hit and leaving).


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## jasper (Sep 20, 2011)

y'all miss one. 
1.The DM who house rules outweight all the source books. And quote,"I know more about gaming that Gynax!". I lasted maybe 3 hours with that one.
2. Flavor of the month club. NPC game stype changes with each new Dragon mag or new spalt book.


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## Hussar (Sep 20, 2011)

Bedrockgames said:


> /snip
> 
> Can I ask what these GMs did, and how they responded when people first voiced their criticisms?




It's been a few years, so, bear with my memory.

As I recall, pretty much nothing.  Issues were brought forward, usually a number of times, and, in all three cases, the group basically had just had enough and all it took was one person saying, "Y'know what?  This blows, I'm out of here." and the groups up and left.

Like you said, it's down to experience.  I've had more than my share of really bad DM's.  I have.  I have had good DM's with clashing playstyles, and that's a totally different thing.  When that happens, I simply excuse myself and that's that.

But, again, like you said, far too many people see "oh, bad DM" posts as being from "whiney sore losers".  That sort of thing just blows my mind.  We KNOW, beyond a shadow of any doubt, that there are some really craptastic DM's out there.  There have to be.  It's Sturgeon's Law at work.  When I polled En Worlders a while back on their experiences, a third of people said that the majority of their DM's were bad and almost two thirds of the total reported having multiple bad DM's over the years.

The white knighting of DM's just bugs me I guess.


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## Elf Witch (Sep 20, 2011)

S'mon said:


> I worry about this as DM - I typically ask for PC backgrounds as an aid to my visualising the character and to help the player give personality to their PC.  Sometimes there is inspirational stuff in a PC background that I can use in game, but often the background story is interesting but doesn't get used at-table.  Players may resent that.  The opposite problem is that whenever I prep a whole bunch of stuff off 1 PC's backstory, inevitably the player doesn't show up - in fact they typically drop the campaign! - and the work is wasted.




I think PC backgrounds are a good thing to get an idea of the character and does help the DM visualize the character.

I guess I should rephrase what bugs me. It is when a DM ask for background with hooks and you oblige and over the course of a campaign other players get their backgrounds used but yours never gets used.

If the DM does not like the hooks or does not think they can use them then how about talking to the player and working with them to come up with some that will fit the campaign.

To not do so can make the player start feeling that their character is not as important to the game as the rest.


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## Bedrockgames (Sep 20, 2011)

Hussar said:


> But, again, like you said, far too many people see "oh, bad DM" posts as being from "whiney sore losers". That sort of thing just blows my mind. We KNOW, beyond a shadow of any doubt, that there are some really craptastic DM's out there. There have to be. It's Sturgeon's Law at work. When I polled En Worlders a while back on their experiences, a third of people said that the majority of their DM's were bad and almost two thirds of the total reported having multiple bad DM's over the years.
> 
> The white knighting of DM's just bugs me I guess.




I am not doubting your experience, but just from my own the reason why I conclude "poor losers" is because that is what I've seen. When I have seen someone complain about GMs in real life (especially when they've had multiple bad GMs) they usually turn out to be one of a few types: someone who can't take losing, someone who is just too picky about GMs or someone who takes the game way too seriously. Most of my gaming friends are pretty laid back. I haven't really had any problems with other GMs or players. There are some GMs I prefer over others, but it isn't the end of the world for me if the GM is less than stellar (as I said usually guys who are truly terrible only end up GMing one or two sessions).


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## S'mon (Sep 20, 2011)

Elf Witch said:


> I think PC backgrounds are a good thing to get an idea of the character and does help the DM visualize the character.
> 
> I guess I should rephrase what bugs me. It is when a DM ask for background with hooks and you oblige and over the course of a campaign other players get their backgrounds used but yours never gets used.
> 
> ...




I agree, I think it's a real problem, which I worry about.  I do try to tell players if I can't see the useable hooks in their background, or I just draw a blank on applying them.  However they often just say things like "It's there to be used"... (thanks, Neonchameleon!) 
The typical result, and I see other GMs doing it too, is that a few PCs who seem to fit the central themes of the campaign become the central focus while others are peripheral.  That's fine with some players - the 'Watchers' - but others need more time to shine.


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## Lord Ipplepop (Sep 20, 2011)

Bad DM's fall into a few realms for me:
1) No imagination- even if you are using pre-printed modules, the players _WILL_ do something, usually more than one thing, to screw you up. A good DM needs to handle it and find a way to allow the characters to do their insanity and get them back on track. 
A DM who is writing his/her own adventures and can't get beyond the, "you meet in a bar and the bad guys attack." needs to work on their imagination. (my recommendation is go back to the 1ed missions)

2) No flexibility- Again, regardless of how many clues you give them as the the fact that they need to talk to the person in front of them, or go down the left hallway, or kill the Green Power Ranger, or whatever, they _WILL_ do everything except what you have spent the last 3 hours of game time hinting to them about. A good DM will deal with it and continue on.

3) Not knowing the rules- If the DM doesn't know the rules (mostly), then the above are magnified. Also, if a DM is required to continue to dig through the books to find out what it is he needs to know in the middle of this particular mass melee, then the game slows down, and eventually stops.

4) Not being able to de-stress on the fly- We always build in cigarette breaks, or soda/beer runs, snack runs, whatever... usually after an intense battle, or every hour or so. That way, the DM gets a chance to look ahead and get ready for the next portion, and to take a breather. It also gives the players a chance to breathe. Built up pressure makes all of the above worse.

5) God Complex (the worst)- "I am in charge, what I say goes, I have control over your characters, I decide who lives or dies.


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## Elf Witch (Sep 21, 2011)

S'mon said:


> I agree, I think it's a real problem, which I worry about.  I do try to tell players if I can't see the useable hooks in their background, or I just draw a blank on applying them.  However they often just say things like "It's there to be used"... (thanks, Neonchameleon!)
> The typical result, and I see other GMs doing it too, is that a few PCs who seem to fit the central themes of the campaign become the central focus while others are peripheral.  That's fine with some players - the 'Watchers' - but others need more time to shine.




I tend to get very involved in a game. I am interested in the world and its people. I try and tailor my character to fit in the world. I will admit I also start to get pissy when I don't get any spotlight. I don't mind sharing and waiting my turn but I do want a turn. 

I have seen this happen in games I DM where a player may not fit as well as the rest. So I try and bring in something for that player. I have had the experience of being on the peripheral of the game and it was not fun.

in the game I mention earlier with my bow was an example of this. We were playing in Eberon and I made a ranger from Cyer who was going for the prestige class cyrean avenger. I had talked with the DM about this and he was yeah sounds good.

The game progresses and the DM never brings anything about the cyrean refugee issue into the game. Even though we were in the region where most of them had settled. We spent the bulk of the game dealing with one players big secret and the other player belonging to a group going around closing gates and we were his team even though we had never been told this or asked if we wanted to be part of it.  

As characters we didn't even know there was a group that did this.  

So I finally spoke to the DM and he said sorry just not interested in your background or dealing with the cyrean refugees. It would have been nice if spoke up months ago so I could adjust my character. When I asked if I could bring in one that would fit better he allowed but I had to come in two levels lower than everyone else and with no magic items. 

I ended up quitting the game a few weeks later over this.


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## Dice4Hire (Sep 21, 2011)

A few things that always tick me off.

Rules-bound: A GM who, for whatever reason, must go 100% by the rules, no matter how long it takes. Wing it, for heaven's sake. I know the most I started winging things in my 3.x campaigns, the more players liked it. 

Start as Newbie: Yes, I know I died, but being 1st level in a 6th level group is not fun at all. 

Problem player Zen: The problem player is ruining the game and everyone knows it, but the player sticks around and around and around. If someone is disrupting your game (even if it is me) boot him. The DM is the law around here and sometimes he or she needs to put their foot down.


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## Dice4Hire (Sep 21, 2011)

I find backgrounds problematic as a DM. On one hand, I want to have the player write one, so I can get a feel for the character, and have a good idea of how the player views his or her character. 

But using it is hard. Sometimes the area is just too far away, or the background just has enough differences from the CS that it is hard to play with. 

A player of mine recently joined my game in Greyhawk and decided to bring in a dwarven battlerager Warhammer style. Personal doom and all.

The problem is, I do not real warhammer at all, and know nothing about the setting. Plus, last I checked Greyhawk dwarves did not do this stuff. SO I decided to make it a subset of dwarves, considered more or less insane by most dwarves. 

Neither I nor the player is really satisfied.


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## Summer-Knight925 (Sep 21, 2011)

jasper said:


> y'all miss one.
> 1.The DM who house rules outweight all the source books. And quote,"I know more about gaming that Gynax!". I lasted maybe 3 hours with that one.
> 2. Flavor of the month club. NPC game stype changes with each new Dragon mag or new spalt book.




What if it is a group that meets monthly to play and each session is based on that month?

September= 9/11 remembrance (usually the PCs are fighting some terrorist cult bent on destruction)
October= Horror oriented adventure
November=heavy roleplay and exploration session (Pilgrims anyone?)
December=winter wonderland and lots of cool treasures
January= new characters (thus a 1st level)
February = somehow related to Valentines
March= March madness (endless hordes? sweeeeet)
April=April fools (comic adventure for 'teh lulz')
May=Mother's day special (fighting against some 'motherly' monster [hags usually, very fairytale-esc])
June=Epics (not epic level characters, but epic adventures)


teh club meets once a month and is school based, so all pre-january sessions are played with one group of characters but they tend to be either pre-gens or previous characters...the idea is to get new players started and use to the rules before january so they understand enough to make good characters


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## The Monster (Sep 21, 2011)

A couple more gripes...
--GMs who interrupt their own game to tell 'totally awesome' stories of their own characters - or even their other campaigns - completely breaking any immersion or continuity of thought. I admit to doing this occasionally to some extent (and probably most of us do), but there are those folks who don't know how to rein themselves in, even when they're GMing. 
--GMs who impose strict railroading in-game and out-of-game. I recall one instance where the GM had our PCs kidnapped, strapped into stations on the bridge, and bombs rigged to go off if we interfered with the bad guys' plan. He was appalled when every one of us stated that our charactaers would rather blow up the ship with them on it than allow the bad guys to work their plot (trigger a galactic war). Perhaps the only full-fledged player revolt I've ever been in on (either side). 
--GMs whose *first* resort in any discussion is the 'GM is always right,' who cannot see any question or objection as anything but a personal affront and threat to their authority.
--GMs (or anyone at the table) who won't shut up about how much they dislike the rules system being played. While I sometimes have similar thoughts when I'm playing, I keep them to myself at least while playing the game at hand (and usually don't even bring it up to the group in general). 
--GMs who get pissed off when the players can't figure out their clues. Never mind that puzzles and riddles are always "bleedin' obvious" when you already know the answer, or that it's late on a Friday night and even basic math can be challenging. (Personally, I really dislike 'puzzle' adventures for this and other reasons but that's another tangent.)


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## innerdude (Sep 21, 2011)

Most bad GMs (and bad players for that matter) typically happen for one primary reason: they put their needs above the needs of the group. 

Whether it's a GM's need to feel important, or "be in control of the story," or exercise their power non-judiciously, ultimately it's all about _them_. 

The biggest turning point for me as a GM was realizing that "what I wanted out of the campaign" was way less important than helping the players get what _they_ wanted out of the campaign. 

Does this mean I totally hand over the story, and let players run roughshod? Not at all, it just means that a spirit of open collaboration should prevail. 

And if the GM (or players) aren't about that, then inevitably problems are going to arise.


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## Hussar (Sep 21, 2011)

Bedrockgames said:


> I am not doubting your experience, but just from my own the reason why I conclude "poor losers" is because that is what I've seen. When I have seen someone complain about GMs in real life (especially when they've had multiple bad GMs) they usually turn out to be one of a few types: someone who can't take losing, someone who is just too picky about GMs or someone who takes the game way too seriously. Most of my gaming friends are pretty laid back. I haven't really had any problems with other GMs or players. There are some GMs I prefer over others, but it isn't the end of the world for me if the GM is less than stellar (as I said usually guys who are truly terrible only end up GMing one or two sessions).




Whereas I'm far, far more inclined to give the person the benefit of the doubt.  When someone, particularly someone who has some experience gaming, says that X DM is a bad DM, and backs it up with a couple of examples, that's pretty much good enough for me.

Like I said, I've seen WAY too many bad DM's and suffered through far too many crappy games to automatically presume that the issue is the player.  It might very well be, but, that's never going to be my default position.


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## Kerranin (Sep 21, 2011)

S'mon said:


> Three of the players were wildly enthusiastic and desperate for more.  The fourth told me by email he'd hated it and wasn't coming back.




Wise man say: _"You can please all of the people some of the time, or some of the people all of the time, but never all of the people all of the time."_


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## Kerranin (Sep 21, 2011)

innerdude said:


> Most bad GMs (and bad players for that matter) typically happen for one primary reason: they put their needs above the needs of the group.
> 
> Whether it's a GM's need to feel important, or "be in control of the story," or exercise their power non-judiciously, ultimately it's all about _them_.
> 
> ...



Have to agree, best games are ones where the GM and players cooperate in moving the game/story forward.

_Shouldn't be about 'I' but about 'we'. _


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## Bedrockgames (Sep 21, 2011)

Hussar said:


> Whereas I'm far, far more inclined to give the person the benefit of the doubt. When someone, particularly someone who has some experience gaming, says that X DM is a bad DM, and backs it up with a couple of examples, that's pretty much good enough for me.




I just tend to be skeptical on this because it is a song I've heard so many times, and almost invariably the person complaining is the real source of the problem. Keep in mind this swings both ways, if I hear a GM complaining about a player I am equally skeptical because it is a song I've heard over and over as well. For example when a GM complains about players not getting it, or too many players trying to power game, I assume the real issue is stylistic and that maybe the GM is a bit too rigid in that respect. Part of it too is, I just don't care much for complaining. 



> Like I said, I've seen WAY too many bad DM's and suffered through far too many crappy games to automatically presume that the issue is the player. It might very well be, but, that's never going to be my default position.




Like I said my experience has been very different. I've certainly encountered bad GMs (and like I said they rarely last more than 1-2 sessions). But been gaming since 1986 or so and I've just not really run into the kinds of situations people complain about. I've had GMs whose styles are different than mine, who have shortcomings, but I don't expect perfection from the GM, and a lot of times it feels like these complaints stem from expectations that are too high  and too much investment in the game. For example, I don't let a questionable rules call ruin my night or lead to an hour long argument. And just in my own experience the kind of people I meet who have the bucket of bad GM stories are also the ones who slow down the game and whine over rules calls all the time.


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## Kerranin (Sep 21, 2011)

Lets just all agree that there are bad DMs and bad players, and lets hope they find each other.


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## jasper (Sep 21, 2011)

Summer-Knight925 said:


> What if it is a group that meets monthly to play and each session is based on that month?
> 
> September= 9/11 remembrance (usually the PCs are fighting some terrorist cult bent on destruction)
> October= Horror oriented adventure
> ...




That is not flavor of month. That is MONTHLY THEME. in big letters and deep movie voice.
No flavor of the month is.
Cool! Dragon did a write up on Drizzit and Ecology of the Drow. Suddenly good drow are helping old widows across every street. And beating you up for not helping.
.
Splat book Characters from Planet X dropped on the first. Summer Knight do you want to play Duck Rogers in 23rd and half century transport back in time to Greyhawk. Or have DMPC appear as Duck Rogers.
.
Hey Avatar was blockbuster. DM inserts halfbake version of the monsters, and game session kind of follows the movie plot.


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## howandwhy99 (Sep 21, 2011)

Good GMs are all alike; every bad GM is bad in his or her own way.


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## S'mon (Sep 21, 2011)

Dice4Hire said:


> Problem player Zen: The problem player is ruining the game and everyone knows it, but the player sticks around and around and around. If someone is disrupting your game (even if it is me) boot him. The DM is the law around here and sometimes he or she needs to put their foot down.




The other night I had a guy I had booted from one game turn up at my other game asking to play, because his regular game that night was cancelled (he hadn't bothered to check email/Internet before setting out, as usual), and if I didn't let him play he'd wasted a 5 hour round trip.  He wouldn't take no for an answer and kept begging until I let him in.  He was only a mild fun-drain during the game that night, but it was overall not a good experience for me.  I'm not really sure what to do in cases like that.  If someone is being nasty to me (last happened nearly 3 years ago) I can kick them out no trouble, but this was just an un-fun player with a very thick skin.  With my 'work' hat on I've no trouble being stern with people, but with my 'social' hat on I can find it hard to be assertive (which may be news to my players who read this board, but if you'd been at that Monday game you'd know what I mean) or to hurt someone's feelings.


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## Zhaleskra (Sep 22, 2011)

S'mon, and calling the cops didn't cross your mind? This guy was demanding you let him play, because poor him, he drove 5 hours to someone who had already kicked him out. Don't game with dicks.


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## Bedrockgames (Sep 22, 2011)

S'mon said:


> The other night I had a guy I had booted from one game turn up at my other game asking to play, because his regular game that night was cancelled (he hadn't bothered to check email/Internet before setting out, as usual), and if I didn't let him play he'd wasted a 5 hour round trip. He wouldn't take no for an answer and kept begging until I let him in.  He was only a mild fun-drain during the game that night, but it was overall not a good experience for me. I'm not really sure what to do in cases like that. If someone is being nasty to me (last happened nearly 3 years ago) I can kick them out no trouble, but this was just an un-fun player with a very thick skin. With my 'work' hat on I've no trouble being stern with people, but with my 'social' hat on I can find it hard to be assertive (which may be news to my players who read this board, but if you'd been at that Monday game you'd know what I mean) or to hurt someone's feelings.




His behavior sounds very unusual. When you first tried to say no what was his reaction. If we break it down a bit may be easier for us to give you solid advice on how to approach the issue.


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## KiloGex (Sep 22, 2011)

S'mon said:


> Me, I hate_ players_ who don't keep the game moving.
> 
> "Stop Turtling and make a decision, damnit!"





Well, at that point it's the GMs job to make something happen.  For instance, I had a party that sat in the local bar after a delivery job and talked for almost forty-five minutes.  Real time.  While being on the verge of fun, it was neither improving the story or their characters, so I had a bar fight break out.  After all, the players can't make things happen, but you can.


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## The Shaman (Sep 22, 2011)

KiloGex said:


> After all, the players can't make things happen, but you can.





*_slowly bangs head on table_*


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## S'mon (Sep 22, 2011)

KiloGex said:


> Well, at that point it's the GMs job to make something happen.  For instance, I had a party that sat in the local bar after a delivery job and talked for almost forty-five minutes.  Real time.  While being on the verge of fun, it was neither improving the story or their characters, so I had a bar fight break out.  After all, the players can't make things happen, but you can.




I'm not sure you've experienced serious Turtles.  High level 3e PCs would hole up in some magically protected lair surrounded by allies and engage in endless planning debates led by the Arch-Turtle.  The PCs didn't even have any serious enemies at that time and AFAICS there was no credible way to 'have something happen' within the few hours' span of the discussion.


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## S'mon (Sep 22, 2011)

Zhaleskra said:


> S'mon, and calling the cops didn't cross your mind? This guy was demanding you let him play, because poor him, he drove 5 hours to someone who had already kicked him out. Don't game with dicks.




No, he wasn't violent or threatening, it wasn't a cop situation - he was wheedling.  Besides it was in a function room in a pub, any trouble and we would have *all* been thrown out, including my entirely  innocent players!


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## S'mon (Sep 22, 2011)

Bedrockgames said:


> His behavior sounds very unusual. When you first tried to say no what was his reaction. If we break it down a bit may be easier for us to give you solid advice on how to approach the issue.




I think he explained further how he didn't know his scheduled game had been cancelled, the wasted journey etc.  He wasn't nasty, he just refused to leave and stood there until I let him in.  I didn't want to be nasty to him.   

Part of the issue is it's a public Meetup and there's some expectation of accommodating people if there's space.  But I have turned away players before.  

I think a big element is the absence of aggression - if someone is yelling at me or being rude I have no trouble standing up to them, but if they just wheedle and beg it's much harder.  At work I have set standards for whether I let students onto my course, but it's much trickier with a social activity like RPGs.


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## Zelda Themelin (Sep 22, 2011)

Ok to be honest sometimes I have been really bad GM. Once I sucked because group was way too big for my ability to handle. Sometimes I lack inspiration, or pull themes that players don't like at all. Sometimes I end up hating some character and without even noticing make that one's life hard.

I have been bad player too. Not interested really about game. Being totally passive agressive about and half-slept through sessions.

Most of the time I am ok with both.

However I'd had questionable pleasure to play with people who are most of the time jerks in and out of game. Selfish, whiny, greedy, griefers, sometimes all that plus bonus behavior like arguing with dm about rules and story. They were even worse when being dm:s. But at least 2 of them had ability to act nice like 2 sessions of being dm, and max 4 as player. So they sometimes worked fine with one-shots.,

Then there was major roleplayers. Yawn. DM who allowed and expected players to play out all the shopping and bargaining. And there were whole sessions of that. Additionally some of players constantly played characters that didn't want to go to adventures or do other dangerous stuff. Additionally some favored pc:s always had their secret projects, not shared with pc:s. When it was not shopping, there was 4 people playing solo with dm about their character stuff, each just game in different room taking 20min-over hour. And whole session was like that 4 people playing solo and 6 other people mostly waiting.


One of them was horrible spot-light hugging drama queen, who liked to talk with all evil things, especially if her boyfriend was gm. When she was gm she expected everyone's characters to fall charmed by her (awful) npc:s. Mind you, without actual charm-spells, she was relaying on her own flirty charms. She was found of games like Amber, Earthdawn and Forgotten Realms when it was D&D.  Her unbeatable DMPC:s including known ones like the Seven Sisters, Mystra and other gods, elder amberites, which she played really bitchy even men. Her plots were very pre-written and she didn't like pc:s to get out of line. And she had favorite players. Then again whole group had that issue. Games weren't always that bad, there were moments of fun.

I had GM I really liked otherwise. But he had that flavor of the week thing. Always when he read new book, or comic or saw a movie with something cool, he almost directly ripped it to appear in games.  Plus he had certain number of really obnoxious npc:s. Most of them really powerful, evil, bitchy, ubersexy spellcasters. But he had great imagination, sessions were almost always fun and you could kill his horrible npc:s. He wasn't very protective of them.

Back to teen-gaming years, there was 3 occasions of misplaced falling in love. That was annoying and ruined gaming group 2/3 case.

My current group bad dm issues are basicly two. He tries to force group to avoid danger when he is DM, bit like he tries to play his characters, when he plays. This lead to boring run-away from encounters sessions or waiting for enemiies to assault our home village -- 4 sessions of waiting. Then we quit the game. He doesnt do that always, he is actually quite good when he is running a module, but he can't handle his own adventures. And you can't die in his games, and he changes his monster's hp:s and other abiilties on fly.

Another typical issue with that group is that certain player and dm himself intrupt the game to tell about other games, because some other people in that other game years past did something so COOL. Hate it hate it hate it.

Yet I am still playing with this group, they are nice people and some sessions are good. 

Then there are some dm:s that are usually good, but sometimes started really bad game/session.

I had quite thick skin for sucky gaming. Only during few last years I've come to conclusion that nothing special to do, is actually superior to bad gaming. Especially after worst rpg experience of my life. Nowdays I only have 3 groups, 2 of them share people. I don't get to game that often. But that's ok. If I dicount jerks, I did get to meet all kinda interesting people. Even if rpg preferances didn't mesh well, or expectations of gaming weren't met, socially I still feel I gained something good.


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## Zelda Themelin (Sep 22, 2011)

double post


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## Zhaleskra (Sep 22, 2011)

Something that's always bugged me, especially when groups "fire" their GM: How do you expect bad GM X to even have a chance to become a better GM when you "fire" him/her?

If they dismiss suggestions out of hand, that's one thing, but I'm thinking more like players not liking something the GM is doing, not telling him/her (or telling him/her in the "you're stupid" way), and declaring that that person is not allowed to GM anymore/mass unexplained walkout.


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## Bedrockgames (Sep 22, 2011)

S'mon said:


> I think he explained further how he didn't know his scheduled game had been cancelled, the wasted journey etc. He wasn't nasty, he just refused to leave and stood there until I let him in. I didn't want to be nasty to him.
> 
> Part of the issue is it's a public Meetup and there's some expectation of accommodating people if there's space. But I have turned away players before.
> 
> I think a big element is the absence of aggression - if someone is yelling at me or being rude I have no trouble standing up to them, but if they just wheedle and beg it's much harder. At work I have set standards for whether I let students onto my course, but it's much trickier with a social activity like RPGs.




I guess if it was a public meetup that does make it a little different, but it still sounds odd. Did he continue to show-up at games or was this a one-time thing? If it was a one-time thing I suppose the worst is over.


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## S'mon (Sep 22, 2011)

Bedrockgames said:


> I guess if it was a public meetup that does make it a little different, but it still sounds odd. Did he continue to show-up at games or was this a one-time thing? If it was a one-time thing I suppose the worst is over.




It happened at the last session I ran of that campaign, the next session is not for several weeks.


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## S'mon (Sep 22, 2011)

Zhaleskra said:


> Something that's always bugged me, especially when groups "fire" their GM: How do you expect bad GM X to even have a chance to become a better GM when you "fire" him/her?
> 
> If they dismiss suggestions out of hand, that's one thing, but I'm thinking more like players not liking something the GM is doing, not telling him/her (or telling him/her in the "you're stupid" way), and declaring that that person is not allowed to GM anymore/mass unexplained walkout.





Have you seen a bad GM become a good GM in response to criticism?  Because frankly I have not.


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## Zelda Themelin (Sep 22, 2011)

S'mon said:


> Have you seen a bad GM become a good GM in response to criticism?  Because frankly I have not.




I have. But in this case he was very new to dm:ing and really wanted to listen to those complains/advice. Oh, and found his style.

I've seen people get better, and less teeny (which helped in many cases) when time has passed, but that's natural change.

In all other cases though, criticism has only made matters worse.

I've also seen dm who was really horrible in fantasy games, but did modern games really well. But his fantasy, shee it was bad. Still, I must say, some people really liked that too. Matter of taste, maybe.

So unless issue is jerky personality I still believe that bad gm might some day make good gm/be good gm to some other people. I would quit the game thought. I don't have energy for sucky gaming anymore. I have done my time.


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## Oryan77 (Sep 22, 2011)

S'mon said:


> Have you seen a bad GM become a good GM in response to criticism?  Because frankly I have not.




I'd like to think I turned out to be a good DM because of criticism. My first few DMing sessions back in 2e were horrible. I guess I was so bad that a friend of mine wouldn't even play. He said he didn't like the setting, but I know he didn't like my DMing. It sucked too cause he was a good player and he only played in the very first session. He didn't even give me a chance.

I just wasn't confident as DM at the time, I didn't know the rules well enough to run things smoothly, and I may have railroaded a bit. I just didn't really know what I was doing and I threw myself into the DM chair (pressured by the players to hurry and DM). It didn't help that I had only played D&D a year as a player and I was learning the Planescape setting for the first time (which totally confused me).

This players refusal to play with me made me try harder to be a good DM. Other players also complained when I made mistakes and I just kept trying to improve. Even to this day, if a player criticizes my DMing, I take the criticism into consideration and think about it. I may not always agree with it, but I do continue to try and improve.

Now if we are talking about a bad DM that is not exactly new to DMing, then yeah, I don't think he'll ever change.


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## d2OKC (Sep 22, 2011)

I've been gaming with the same core group for about 12 years or so now (we've had some changes to the group, but there have been two or three constants the whole time, and everyone who plays in our group is very familiar, if not very friendly, with each other). We've had a few cases of bad DMing (myself included, unfortunately):

- One DM had a very cool scenario developed where he wanted us to fight a dracolich. Our group was pretty terrified of this, so our wizard used a "control undead" scroll which, by the rules, would have let him control the dracolich and send it away. The DM didn't want that to happen and just ruled that the scroll didn't work and we had to fight it anyway. It did make us pretty mad at the time, but he's still one of our best friends (and a very, very good player), and he's since apologized for it, which is cool with me.

- We had a DM who had his own world. It was a very detailed world that he has spent years tinkering with in various forms. One of the biggest problems was the dreaded DMPC, which followed us around for literally the entire campaign, and it was hard for our PCs to really feel cool around him. However, I think he started to realize it was a bad idea, and the character ended up dying close to the end of the campaign, and it is still one of the most fun, fulfilling campaigns our group had played, and we still talk about certain scenes from it to this day, many years later.

- I'm very bad at roleplaying as a DM. I know this weakness of mine, and my game, which has been running over two years now, has been tailored to suit my strengths as a DM. There have been many sessions where I've tried to do more RP for my players, and it always ends with them half-asleep from boredom. Bad DMing, not recognizing what works and what doesn't.

Basically, we've had our problems, but we've been pretty good at diagnosing them and treating them, and we have a very good group. Fortunately, we've never really broken up over any of these issues.


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## S'mon (Sep 22, 2011)

Oryan77 said:


> I'd like to think I turned out to be a good DM because of criticism. My first few DMing sessions back in 2e were horrible. I guess I was so bad that a friend of mine wouldn't even play. He said he didn't like the setting, but I know he didn't like my DMing. It sucked too cause he was a good player and he only played in the very first session. He didn't even give me a chance.
> 
> I just wasn't confident as DM at the time, I didn't know the rules well enough to run things smoothly, and I may have railroaded a bit. I just didn't really know what I was doing and I threw myself into the DM chair (pressured by the players to hurry and DM). It didn't help that I had only played D&D a year as a player and I was learning the Planescape setting for the first time (which totally confused me).
> 
> ...




I've had phases of being a bad DM (notably in 1994-5, after several years away, and using Dungeon adventures of the era - I railroaded, I ran crap adventures, I was crap.  I also ran_ Traveller: the New Era_, badly*.).  Mostly though I'm a flawed DM, not a bad DM I think, so constructive criticism helps me improve.  But I've never seen an actually-bad GM take criticism onboard & improve.

*Jeez, in hindsight the '90s *really* sucked for RPGs!!!


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## Pentius (Sep 22, 2011)

Zhaleskra said:


> Something that's always bugged me, especially when groups "fire" their GM: How do you expect bad GM X to even have a chance to become a better GM when you "fire" him/her?
> 
> If they dismiss suggestions out of hand, that's one thing, but I'm thinking more like players not liking something the GM is doing, not telling him/her (or telling him/her in the "you're stupid" way), and declaring that that person is not allowed to GM anymore/mass unexplained walkout.




I've only been part of firing one bad DM, and honestly, I wasn't thinking about helping him be a better DM.  During the five years of playing with him regularly, during which time myself and other members of the group gave our honest criticisms and feedbacks, I was trying to help him be a better DM.  We fired him when we realized that it had been five years, and he wasn't any better a DM than at the start(and he was new at the start of those five years, too).


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## Hussar (Sep 23, 2011)

Zhaleskra said:


> Something that's always bugged me, especially when groups "fire" their GM: How do you expect bad GM X to even have a chance to become a better GM when you "fire" him/her?
> 
> If they dismiss suggestions out of hand, that's one thing, but I'm thinking more like players not liking something the GM is doing, not telling him/her (or telling him/her in the "you're stupid" way), and declaring that that person is not allowed to GM anymore/mass unexplained walkout.




As S'mon said.  You can make an innexperienced DM a better DM through criticism.  But a truly bad DM?  Nope, not going to happen.

IME, player revolts are never a spur of the moment thing.  They take time.  Most players are perfectly willing to put up with mediocre games - heck, they stay in mine.    But, by the time the group, en masse, decides that enough is enough, there's just nothing else that will get through to the DM.


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## ExploderWizard (Sep 23, 2011)

S'mon said:


> *Jeez, in hindsight the '90s *really* sucked for RPGs!!!




Hey!! We had some of our best GURPS campaigns ever in the 90's.


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## Fox Lee (Sep 25, 2011)

S'mon said:


> Have you seen a bad GM become a good GM in response to criticism?  Because frankly I have not.



Most assuredly, I have not. The truly bad GM I have dealt with didn't think she had a problem, even after each game eventually ended in three-to-four-hour discussion of why things weren't working out (I understand she is now running with a smaller group including her husband, which is probably a good idea).

BUT, it's nice that it has worked for other people  Probably it's just that other GMs I've met who had some problems have gotten better, thus not qualifying for the "bad" label.


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## Hussar (Sep 26, 2011)

Fox Lee said:


> Most assuredly, I have not. The truly bad GM I have dealt with didn't think she had a problem, even after each game eventually ended in three-to-four-hour discussion of why things weren't working out (I understand she is now running with a smaller group including her husband, which is probably a good idea).
> 
> BUT, it's nice that it has worked for other people  Probably it's just that other GMs I've met who had some problems have gotten better, thus not qualifying for the "bad" label.




Yeah, I think that's hitting the nail squarely on the head.  The truly bad DM's I've had have all been convinced that they were "doing it right" and everyone else "just doesn't get it".

The DM's who are bad, for whatever reason, inexperience, learning bad habits from another bad DM, whatever, but are willing to learn by and large, IMO, make great DM's eventually.

I guess that's why, whenever I see posters talking about how "the DM is always right" and "If you disagree with the DM, there's the door" I generally react so negatively.  These are precisely the attitudes I saw from the worst DM's.  The best DM's (again, this is only my opinion) are the ones who are willing to compromise and work with the group to make sure everyone is as happy as they can be.


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## Elf Witch (Sep 26, 2011)

Hussar said:


> Yeah, I think that's hitting the nail squarely on the head.  The truly bad DM's I've had have all been convinced that they were "doing it right" and everyone else "just doesn't get it".
> 
> The DM's who are bad, for whatever reason, inexperience, learning bad habits from another bad DM, whatever, but are willing to learn by and large, IMO, make great DM's eventually.
> 
> I guess that's why, whenever I see posters talking about how "the DM is always right" and "If you disagree with the DM, there's the door" I generally react so negatively.  These are precisely the attitudes I saw from the worst DM's.  The best DM's (again, this is only my opinion) are the ones who are willing to compromise and work with the group to make sure everyone is as happy as they can be.





The idea that the DM is always right also kind of bugs me. It goes hand in hand with the player is always wrong.

DMs are not gods they are human and make mistakes also even the best DMs are not perfect and there is always room for improvement. 

Sometimes it is not a matter of a bad DM or a bad player but conflicting game styles sometimes that can be fixed by talking about it sometimes it can't and it is better for everyone to part ways as far as the game is concerned.

But there are bad DMs who either don't think they are and get pissy when confronted about it, or who afre bad because they don't realize it. If no one says anything how are they supposed to know they are not being the best DM they can be.


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## S'mon (Sep 26, 2011)

Hussar said:


> I guess that's why, whenever I see posters talking about how "the DM is always right" and "If you disagree with the DM, there's the door" I generally react so negatively.  These are precisely the attitudes I saw from the worst DM's.




"I just want my players to be happy!" DMs can be just as bad though - relentless fudging and illusionism to keep PCs alive, on-track and successful.  Nothing is at stake in their games, failure is not an option, and IME the more they try to please players the more boring and lacklustre their games become.  And if you tell them you want more challenge they'll nod and agree - then go on exactly as before.


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## S'mon (Sep 26, 2011)

Elf Witch said:


> Sometimes it is not a matter of a bad DM or a bad player but conflicting game styles sometimes that can be fixed by talking about it sometimes it can't and it is better for everyone to part ways as far as the game is concerned.




Completely agree.


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## Hussar (Sep 26, 2011)

S'mon said:


> "I just want my players to be happy!" DMs can be just as bad though - relentless fudging and illusionism to keep PCs alive, on-track and successful.  Nothing is at stake in their games, failure is not an option, and IME the more they try to please players the more boring and lacklustre their games become.  And if you tell them you want more challenge they'll nod and agree - then go on exactly as before.




But, is that actually keeping the players happy though?  It's keeping the DM happy because it keeps his story and plot alive and he doesn't have to deal with any sort of surprises.  Fudging and illusionism is far more about the DM than the players.

Most players are perfectly fine with failing and even having their character die on occasion.  It's all part of playing the game.  The DM might be justifying his actions based on what he perceives as what the players want, but, I imagine if you actually polled the players and got their honest responses, you'd find that he's not actually making his players happy.

Note, I didn't actually say, "I want my players to be happy".  I was very careful in my language there.  My exact words were, "make sure everyone is as happy as they can be" which isn't the same thing at all.  Everyone, for one thing, includes the DM.  And, "as can be" presumes that not everyone is going to get everything they want 100% of the time.  There have to be compromises on both sides of the screen.


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## Bedrockgames (Sep 26, 2011)

Hussar said:


> But, is that actually keeping the players happy though? It's keeping the DM happy because it keeps his story and plot alive and he doesn't have to deal with any sort of surprises. Fudging and illusionism is far more about the DM than the players.
> 
> Most players are perfectly fine with failing and even having their character die on occasion. It's all part of playing the game. The DM might be justifying his actions based on what he perceives as what the players want, but, I imagine if you actually polled the players and got their honest responses, you'd find that he's not actually making his players happy.
> 
> Note, I didn't actually say, "I want my players to be happy". I was very careful in my language there. My exact words were, "make sure everyone is as happy as they can be" which isn't the same thing at all. Everyone, for one thing, includes the DM. And, "as can be" presumes that not everyone is going to get everything they want 100% of the time. There have to be compromises on both sides of the screen.




I think you are right. I think most players want the stakes to matter. If the GM fudges rolls all the time to protect PCs, it really eats into player enjoyment of the game. I mean RPGs are inspired by movies and books, but they aren't movies or books. They are games and part of the fun of a game is not knowing what will happen (whereas with most books, if you are on page 150 of 375, there is a good chance the protagonist won't die in the next ten pages)---the outcomes of games are not certain or pre-ordained. When a GM fudges it makes it less exciting for me. 

However I do think many GMs fail to realize this because the players most likely to complain are the ones who have just been killed. You can have 8 players and if two take character death hard, it is easy for the GM to assume they reflect the mood of the room. Also, some people do overeact when their character dies, and I can see how some GMs just don't want to deal with the fallout. 

But you hit it on the head in your last paragraph, it isn't about making everyone happy all the time. There has to be some dissapointment in the game for it to be fun. Otherwise it is like playing a videogame with the cheats on.


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## Hussar (Sep 26, 2011)

I haven't really fudged anything in years.  I play online, so 100% of my die rolls are in the open.  About the only thing I might fudge is I might make some tactical blunders on the part of the baddies and put them in bad positions to soften the encounter a bit.

Not sure if that even counts as fudging really.  I've seen lots of players with the tactical sense of a concussed badger on a three day bender, so, it's not beyond the realm of believablility that the ogre just happens to move here instead of there.


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## Zhaleskra (Sep 26, 2011)

I've actually had at least two whole group walk outs. One was in high school, where I wrongly tried to keep things going after I no longer had a plot. At least my friends told me as they left.

The second was in a college gaming club. Unfortunately, there was some unwritten rule where you had to warn players their characters at risk. Ignoring the fact that I consider that the default assumption of most games except Toon, there was also the problem with a change in the meaning of terms between editions.

Anyway, I forget the name of the PS adventure trilogy I was running, but at the end of the 2nd module, the Gate Town of Ribcage is prepared for ascension. In Planescape, this means the Gate Town is going to become part of the plane it connects to. Apparently, in older editions, this meant that your characters are going to become gods and be removed from play.

I had no reason to know this, having come to D&D in AD&D2e, though I did have a chance to buy the Rules Cyclopedia really early in my interest in gaming. Anyway, I found out after trying to set up the third part of the adventure that I had lost my group because of their perception of the term. No amount of saying "it doesn't mean that anymore" convinced them to come back.


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## Janx (Sep 26, 2011)

Zhaleskra said:


> The second was in a college gaming club. Unfortunately, there was some unwritten rule where you had to warn players their characters at risk. Ignoring the fact that I consider that the default assumption of most games except Toon, there was also the problem with a change in the meaning of terms between editions.
> 
> Anyway, I forget the name of the PS adventure trilogy I was running, but at the end of the 2nd module, the Gate Town of Ribcage is prepared for ascension. In Planescape, this means the Gate Town is going to become part of the plane it connects to. Apparently, in older editions, this meant that your characters are going to become gods and be removed from play.
> 
> I had no reason to know this, having come to D&D in AD&D2e, though I did have a chance to buy the Rules Cyclopedia really early in my interest in gaming. Anyway, I found out after trying to set up the third part of the adventure that I had lost my group because of their perception of the term. No amount of saying "it doesn't mean that anymore" convinced them to come back.




this sounds non-sensical.  Planescape was a later 2E product.  There was no prior art, so the concept of Gate Town and ascending in terms of Planescape was unique unto itself.

AD&D 1e or 2e had no "ascension" concept in the rules.  D&D (as maintained by Rules Cyclopedia) had a concept the PC became a god at level 36.  But that's a seperate game that a minority were still playing.

Walking out on a campaign with PCs that would "ascend" and end the game, still ends those PCs as the # of GMs willing to take on "external" PCs in the post 1E era of casual gaming was small.  Basically, those PCs had more chance of game play WITH you, than walking out.

as such, there may have been another undisclosed reason.


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## Zhaleskra (Sep 26, 2011)

Janx said:


> this sounds non-sensical.  Planescape was a later 2E product.  There was no prior art, so the concept of Gate Town and ascending in terms of Planescape was unique unto itself.




True, once again supporting my idea that D&D may not be the best engine for Planescape. I seem to remember the exact term being "Glorious Ascension".



> AD&D 1e or 2e had no "ascension" concept in the rules.  D&D (as maintained by Rules Cyclopedia) had a concept the PC became a god at level 36.  But that's a seperate game that a minority were still playing.




No particular edition was specified, and as I recall the PCs were in single digit levels.



> as such, there may have been another undisclosed reason.




Perhaps for some people, but one of the GMs I played under told me afterward that what I previously stated was the exact reason.


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## Janx (Sep 26, 2011)

Zhaleskra said:


> Perhaps for some people, but one of the GMs I played under told me afterward that what I previously stated was the exact reason.




taken at face value, players who will crater their own campaign based on their own misunderstanding and refuse to communicate, take in new information, or give you some credit aren't worth keeping.

it sounds like somebody read an online spoiler that says "at the end of the adventure, the Mimir bends you all over and takes you to brown town. The End."

And then they assumed such ridiculousness was gospel.


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## Zhaleskra (Sep 26, 2011)

Janx said:


> taken at face value, players who will crater their own campaign based on their own misunderstanding and refuse to communicate, take in new information, or give you some credit aren't worth keeping.




I quite agree, with the most common scene that comes up as intolerable being "taken prisoner". At the same time, it reveals the value of saying "same characters next session".

Perhaps what we need as a no-nonsense comment on adventuring: "Adventuring is an inherently dangerous activity, most adventurers die. In most civilized areas, it's considered an extremely bizarre way of committing suicide. Your average commoner would tell you, 'if you're going to kill yourself, just use a rope, it's a lot faster and people will know where your body is.'"


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## ValhallaGH (Sep 27, 2011)

Elf Witch said:


> The idea that the DM is always right also kind of bugs me. It goes hand in hand with the player is always wrong.



No it doesn't.  It goes hand in hand with "The DM is always right *at the table*.  Get through the session and then settle the matter like adults."

The players are not "always wrong" (and I've never heard anyone except the most socially horrific people claim otherwise; so, not a common attitude in my experience).  When the game is in play and players are arguing with the table-ruling, the players are in the wrong.  The GM is always right the same way the referee or umpire of a sporting event is always right - he might have made a bad call, but once it is over it is over and everyone has to deal with it.  (Hopefully the GM is corrected after the fact and learns from his mistake, but that's not always the case.  Hence, this thread.)



Elf Witch said:


> DMs are not gods they are human and make mistakes also even the best DMs are not perfect and there is always room for improvement.




Absolutely true.  But the middle of the freaking session is not the time for criticism, no matter how much a player may want to give it.  I've lost count of the number of times a player has tried to correct me about some rule, and been flat wrong because things were not what the player thought they were.  Conversely, I've lost count of the number of mistakes I've made, though I can count the ones I've _repeated_ (currently 31 - mostly minor rules flubs; not bad for 8 years of GMing).


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## Hussar (Sep 27, 2011)

ValhallaGH said:


> No it doesn't.  It goes hand in hand with "The DM is always right *at the table*.  Get through the session and then settle the matter like adults."
> 
> The players are not "always wrong" (and I've never heard anyone except the most socially horrific people claim otherwise; so, not a common attitude in my experience).  When the game is in play and players are arguing with the table-ruling, the players are in the wrong.  The GM is always right the same way the referee or umpire of a sporting event is always right - he might have made a bad call, but once it is over it is over and everyone has to deal with it.  (Hopefully the GM is corrected after the fact and learns from his mistake, but that's not always the case.  Hence, this thread.)/snip




You don't watch a lot of sports do you?  The idea that you don't argue with the referee during the game is pretty far from what actually happens.  People argue with the referee all the time.  Heck, NFL builds challenges right into the rules specifically because of this.

And, sometimes letting it go means that events occur that can't really be taken back.  If the DM's ruling results in a PC death, for example, letting it slide to the end of the session means that the character is still dead.  If the DM's ruling was mistaken, then what do you do?  Shrug and keep on going, despite the fact that you just flushed six months of play down the toilet because you weren't willing to look up a rule?

I'm wrong about the rules all the time.  I know that I am.  I have rules gurus at the table specifically because I know they know the rules better than I do.  Fantastic.  I have no problems being wrong.

The problem comes when people start letting their ego's get in the way.


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## Bedrockgames (Sep 27, 2011)

The gm can be wrong but i think things go smootger if he still has final say. If people challenge a call it should be heard but some of us do want things to keep moving. As a player i get annoyed when a player has to fight every call or keeps arguing when things just need to go forward.


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## DnD_Dad (Sep 27, 2011)

I really get peeved about DMs that read verbatim out of adventures, don't play any part of traveling(just say something like, "it took a week to travel through the thunder peaks to Suzail...", and do no more preparation towards game day, even pre-read the adventure that they are running.  
  It takes a lot of off time to make a successful game day; being prepared is the most important thing of being a good DM.  You better make your players feel like it is a living world they are playing in and that is is full of characters both great and small.  
  Write some random encounters, make some NPCs, draw up a dungeon or 3 on some grid paper, make notes all over everything, at least know your player's character names!!!


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## Hussar (Sep 27, 2011)

Bedrockgames said:


> The gm can be wrong but i think things go smootger if he still has final say. If people challenge a call it should be heard but some of us do want things to keep moving. As a player i get annoyed when a player has to fight every call or keeps arguing when things just need to go forward.




Like all things, there's a happy medium here.  A player who challenges every single ruling the DM makes is every bit as much of a problem as a DM who gets hacked off every time he's challenged on a ruling.

So long as everyone is reasonable, everyone stays pretty happy.  Only challenge when it matters and don't get too fussed when the player challenges something that matters to them.


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## TarionzCousin (Sep 27, 2011)

I believe we all were bad DM's at one point. It's what you do after that which matters to me.



So to pass on, and no longer be an apprentice, answer me this question: What is the sound of one hand DM'ing?


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## prosfilaes (Sep 27, 2011)

ValhallaGH said:


> I've lost count of the number of times a player has tried to correct me about some rule, and been flat wrong because things were not what the player thought they were.




Good; that means the player is paying attention to what's going on and is using their knowledge of their world to discover that things aren't as they seem to be. I hate when I assume that something was an error on the part of the DM or author, and then discover that it was actually a subtle clue.


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## S'mon (Sep 27, 2011)

ValhallaGH said:


> Absolutely true.  But the middle of the freaking session is not the time for criticism, no matter how much a player may want to give it.  I've lost count of the number of times a player has tried to correct me about some rule, and been flat wrong because things were not what the player thought they were.




Hm, I'm normally happy to take correction during a session; I might have got a rule wrong or misremembered. However if I make a final judgement call (or state a house rule), then the players need to accept that & play proceeds.

There's a difference between:

DM: "I think the rule is..." (correction ok)

DM: "My final decision is..." (correction not ok)

As a player I have a bit of trouble with DMs who claim the RAW is something it's not, especially when that screws over the players.  Either you should accept correction, or make clear that you're making a decision which may not correspond with RAW.

In the Savage Worlds game I played in recently, the GM kept applying the -2 "Darkness" penalty on to-hit rolls (-2 is very harsh since to-hits are based on a d6, on average; equivalent to about -6 in d20 games) whenever the lighting wasn't good.  From what I can tell from the rule book, the appropriate penalty  would have been -1 for "dim light".  This really hurt the PCs since we were already taking -4 to headshot the zombies; -6 on a d6 roll is horrible even with SW's wild die & exploding dice. When we faced a fast baby zombie in a candlelit church with a -6 to hit its head we had a net -8, practically impossible. It bugged me that the GM insisted on the -2 for 'darkness' after I pointed out there was a -1 for 'dim' light which he didn't appear to know about.

But then I'm a terrible player.


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## S'mon (Sep 27, 2011)

DnD_Dad said:


> I really get peeved about DMs that read verbatim out of adventures, don't play any part of traveling(just say something like, "it took a week to travel through the thunder peaks to Suzail...", and do no more preparation towards game day, even pre-read the adventure that they are running.
> It takes a lot of off time to make a successful game day; being prepared is the most important thing of being a good DM.  You better make your players feel like it is a living world they are playing in and that is is full of characters both great and small.
> Write some random encounters, make some NPCs, draw up a dungeon or 3 on some grid paper, make notes all over everything, at least know your player's character names!!!




Wow, you'd really hate me.  

Do you really flip if a DM summarises a week of routine travel, rather than play through every minute/hour/day?  I think that's pretty unusual.  I think most players want to get to where the action is, and don't expect to be having lots of random encounters when travelling through settled lands.  Even in (most) wilderness, it would be odd to meet monsters every day.  For 'living world' you mean travelogue stuff like descriptions of terrain, wildlife, passers-by?


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## S'mon (Sep 27, 2011)

TarionzCousin said:


> I believe we all were bad DM's at one point. It's what you do after that which matters to me.




I'm sceptical - just as I don't think societies inevitably progress, I don't think DMs routinely start bad and get better.  My own experience is that it's more like a sine wave, with peaks and troughs.  You can GM great your first time and then   suck terribly 10 years later.  I GM'd way better at age 12 than at age 22, from what I can recall.  More recently I've run great seasons (at ca 6 games per season) and mediocre ones.


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## ValhallaGH (Sep 27, 2011)

Hussar said:


> You don't watch a lot of sports do you?  The idea that you don't argue with the referee during the game is pretty far from what actually happens.  People argue with the referee all the time.  Heck, NFL builds challenges right into the rules specifically because of this.



Yes, calls get questioned.  And then the ref makes a final ruling and that's the end of it.  No matter how pissed a team, fan, or coach may be over the final ruling, that's the end of it and it stands for all time.

Can those final rulings be bad?  Heck yes.  Does guidance come down between games  to prevent an identical final ruling?  Sometimes.  Does that mean that the players need to screw up play by trying to fight them after an appropriate discussion period?  No.


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## Kerranin (Sep 27, 2011)

While I agree that there are some situations where a incorrect ruling can cause an unnecessary PC death, most of the time it is far less severe and can be retroactively corrected. (if the GM is willing)


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## Bedrockgames (Sep 27, 2011)

Hussar said:


> Like all things, there's a happy medium here. A player who challenges every single ruling the DM makes is every bit as much of a problem as a DM who gets hacked off every time he's challenged on a ruling.
> 
> So long as everyone is reasonable, everyone stays pretty happy. Only challenge when it matters and don't get too fussed when the player challenges something that matters to them.




I agree everyone should be reasonable and there is always a happy medium. But at the end of the day, in my experience, things go smoother if the GM has final say on these matters. That doesn't mean he should be a dictator, just a good ref. At a certain point someone in the group needs to be able to hear what everyone has to say and make a decision.


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## Zhaleskra (Sep 27, 2011)

I believe few people start as excellent GMs. Most of them, I think, start as mediocre or even bad GMs.

That aside, when I was in a d20 Modern game, the GM placed a rule in later sessions that when a player had a character that was going to be out, whether dead or just unconscious, they got to play an NPC until their character was brought back or they made a new one. The point of this rule was to keep the player in the game.


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## khantroll (Sep 27, 2011)

I'm usually pretty forgiving of DM's, but there are three things that really get my goat:

1.) Ramrodding. Ramrodding is different the railroading. To me, railroading is when an adventure or scenario forces to a specific choice, thereby turning the game into a rail shooter. Not my preferred setup, but I can roll with that. Ramrodding is the extremely heavy-handed version of this, where you get eaten by a grue for stepping off the path at all. 

2.) House ruling "because I said so". Let me give you an example. My brother and I once played with this on DM that had a very slow delivery. I was cool with it, but it got on my brothers nerves that things took so long. So, he started getting absent minded; not adding modifiers, not keeping trap of HPs, etc. This infuriated that DM, so the next time we gamed, he instituted a new health system for all six players that went like this:

DM: The bugbear got nasty swing off with his, uh, mace. You feel bad.
DM: He got another hit in. You feel woozy.
DM: He got a hit on you head. You are dead.

Just an example. Instituting new rules once play has begun just because something annoyed you irritates me, though.

3.) Taking in game gripes into the real world. Not good for players, really bad IMHO for DMs.


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## Hussar (Sep 28, 2011)

S'mon said:


> I'm sceptical - just as I don't think societies inevitably progress, I don't think DMs routinely start bad and get better.  My own experience is that it's more like a sine wave, with peaks and troughs.  You can GM great your first time and then   suck terribly 10 years later.  I GM'd way better at age 12 than at age 22, from what I can recall.  More recently I've run great seasons (at ca 6 games per season) and mediocre ones.




Heh.

I think the problem with this idea is that it implies that good DMing isn't a learned skill.  That some people just start good and some don't.  I disagree.  Good DMing is very much a skill, just like anything else.  Yes, natural talent will take you a long way, but, even with natural talent, there are still all sorts of things you can learn that will make you better.

I'd like to think that I'm a better DM now than I was when I was 12.  Not that we didn't have fun back then, we certainly did.  Then again, volume accounts for a lot of that as well.  We played a HELL of a lot of hours back then.  At least some of it had to be good.

On an hour by hour comparison now, I'd say the games I run are qualitatively better than they were then.


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## Bedrockgames (Sep 28, 2011)

I. Don't think s'mon is saying it boils down to natural talent. Or that gms cant learn to be better. Sounds like he is saying a gms performance has peaks and valleys over time, and some even decline. I've found this to be true in my own case. I've had some good streaks and i've had ruts. I think sometimes there is a clear reason, sometimes not. Presently my gming is going well.


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## Hussar (Sep 28, 2011)

Bedrockgames said:


> I. Don't think s'mon is saying it boils down to natural talent. Or that gms cant learn to be better. Sounds like he is saying a gms performance has peaks and valleys over time, and some even decline. I've found this to be true in my own case. I've had some good streaks and i've had ruts. I think sometimes there is a clear reason, sometimes not. Presently my gming is going well.




Oh sure.  That's true.  We all have our moments, both good and bad.  But, I'd say that overall, anyone who takes the time to honestly learn how to make their game better - reading things like En World or various magazines, learning from other DM's, soliciting and actually listening to criticism of their games - will continuously trend upwards.

I find the worst DM's are the ones who think they actually are great DM's.


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## S'mon (Sep 28, 2011)

Hussar said:


> Heh.
> 
> I think the problem with this idea is that it implies that good DMing isn't a learned skill.  That some people just start good and some don't.  I disagree.  Good DMing is very much a skill, just like anything else.




I think there are good DMing techniques which can be learned (or forgotten), but mostly it's about attitude - in particular whether you are open to the players (good), or if you are a controller (bad).  

It's possible that good DMing advice & better published* adventures would have alleviated my 'bad DM' period in the '90s when I saw nothing wrong with linear, railroady adventures and heavy-handed intervention.  AIR the bad stuff I ran was as often homebrew as published.  Yet in the '80s when I first GM'd I had intuitively run open, player-centric campaigns.  I definitely did not 'start bad' IMO.

*It's definitely possible that early influences such as Isle of Dread & Keep on the Borderlands inculcated 'good GMing' while the linear, railroady adventures of ten years later inculcated 'bad GMing'.  I don't think my experience was universal, though.


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## S'mon (Sep 28, 2011)

Hussar said:


> Oh sure.  That's true.  We all have our moments, both good and bad.  But, I'd say that overall, anyone who takes the time to honestly learn how to make their game better - reading things like En World or various magazines, learning from other DM's, soliciting and actually listening to criticism of their games - will continuously trend upwards.




I think if the advice is good, it can contribute to running a good game.  If the advice is bad it can contribute to running a bad game.  Overall I think you are correct - if you read lots & lots of advice (or adventures) it becomes easier to disttinguish the good from the bad.  Likewise if you are GMing a lot you will have more experience with what works - everyone has fun - and what doesn't.  Conversely of course a GM can suffer burn out, and may return to GMing much better after a break to refresh/recharge.


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## S'mon (Sep 28, 2011)

S'mon said:


> Overall I think you are correct - if you read lots & lots of advice (or adventures) it becomes easier to disttinguish the good from the bad.




I think the current situation with vast amounts of GMing advice available on blogs, bulletin boards et al is highly beneficial for the person who wants to be a good GM.  It no longer matters much if deleterious fads and fashions sweep the 'industry elite'; a private blog has as big a potential reach as eg Dragon magazine.  And I think the Internet has helped improve & diversify published games as well as helping individual GMs.


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## Bedrockgames (Sep 28, 2011)

Hussar said:


> Oh sure. That's true. We all have our moments, both good and bad. But, I'd say that overall, anyone who takes the time to honestly learn how to make their game better - reading things like En World or various magazines, learning from other DM's, soliciting and actually listening to criticism of their games - will continuously trend upwards.
> 
> I find the worst DM's are the ones who think they actually are great DM's.




I agree strongly with the last sentence. But I think that applies to lots of things in life (people who believe they are great often had trouble recognizing their own weaknesses and handling criticism). 

And I think the internet is a great source for inspiration and gming techniques. But I've also seen GMs go downhill fast taking too much of what they encounter on the net to heart, and not really understanding it. 

So I think the net is a double edged sword. On the one hand you can get great feedback and advice from skilled GMs, on the other you can adopt trendy methods that just don't work with your personal style (or your group's) and produce a trainwreck.


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## S'mon (Sep 28, 2011)

Bedrockgames said:


> So I think the net is a double edged sword. On the one hand you can get great feedback and advice from skilled GMs, on the other you can adopt trendy methods that just don't work with your personal style (or your group's) and produce a trainwreck.




'GNS' theory certainly helped wreck the group I then had, back in 2004!


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## Bedrockgames (Sep 28, 2011)

S'mon said:


> 'GNS' theory certainly helped wreck the group I then had, back in 2004!




I've definitely seen some trainwrecks stemming from it as well. If someone discovers GNS and it clicks for them or works for their group that is great. Personally it just doesn't click for me and I've seen too many GMs either try to force it on a group or force it on themselves (when it is obvious it isn't clicking for them).


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## Swedish Chef (Sep 29, 2011)

Bedrockgames said:


> I've definitely seen some trainwrecks stemming from it as well. If someone discovers GNS and it clicks for them or works for their group that is great. Personally it just doesn't click for me and I've seen too many GMs either try to force it on a group or force it on themselves (when it is obvious it isn't clicking for them).




Although this hasn't caused a train wreck with my group, it has been my downfall. 

I used to be very free flowing with my games. Give me a module, or a dungeon adventure, or even just a premise, and I could sandbox a game with ease. The group loved it. I was the DM for 10 years. We took a break between 2e and 3e for about 2 years (everyone was tired of trying to schedule time to game).

When we resumed, I started reading my old Dragon magazines for the DM columns. I started reading and posting here. And I loved many of the ideas and suggestions.

Sadly, many don't work with my group. They like some story, but for the most part they just want to roll dice and gain XP and levels. And there's nothing wrong with that. But I tried to change my game and it just didn't work. It has made me a "bad" DM. And that's why I've taken a break and left it to someone else to run the game. And I think we're better for it.

I hope to get my mojo back. Once the current campaign ends, if I go back to DMing, I'm going to make a serious effort to go back to my style of the 90s. I think it would be best for everyone.


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## KiloGex (Oct 13, 2011)

The Shaman said:


> *_slowly bangs head on table_*




Not sure what prompted this one, but I think it's a little lack of understanding of the full explanation.  Yes, the players can do whatever they like and could theoretically "make" a barfight happen; however, it's only the DM who can literally create a fight inside a bar when he wants one to happen.


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## The Shaman (Oct 13, 2011)

KiloGex said:


> Yes, the players can do whatever they like and could theoretically "make" a barfight happen . . .



"Theoretically?"







KiloGex said:


> . . . however, it's only the DM who can literally create a fight inside a bar when he wants one to happen.



"I punch the big guy standing at the end of the bar." "And I toss my drink in his bigger friend's face."

Mission accomplished. By player agency.


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## Neonchameleon (Oct 13, 2011)

I've played with two people I consider genuinely bad DMs.  I don't think either are going to change any time soon.  But have absolutely no idea because I'm not playing in their games any more.  One I'd go so far as to describe as legendarily bad (one DMPC per PC in the party - and only the DMPCs solved anything, plus re-writing sections of my PCs background in ways that were inconsistent with the PC's character and made for assinine world building as well as arbitrarily making my PC the bad guy - I could go on.)

Criticism wouldn't have helped the first and was ignored by the just bad DM.


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## billd91 (Oct 13, 2011)

The Shaman said:


> "Theoretically?"
> 
> 
> "I punch the big guy standing at the end of the bar." "And I toss my drink in his bigger friend's face."
> ...




Considering the PCs have a limited perspective compared to the GM, the theoretically is a realistic caveat. Suppose the PC who threw the punch and tossed the drink picked a couple of guys who *won't* rise to the bait? Maybe they belong to a sect of pacifists. Maybe they're deliberately keeping a low profile because they can't afford to draw official attention. Mission failed.

Theoretically doesn't deny player agency. It's just a recognition that not everything they try may succeed in the stated goal - in this case of starting a bar fight.


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## Pilgrim (Oct 13, 2011)

DMs or GMs who have a preconceived story to tell. Railroading.
Fudging dice rolls to avoid severe damage, negative consequences, or character death. _(Usually tied to the preconceived story)_
Asking for predetermined and detailed character backgrounds.
In D&D, handing out magic items like candy.


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## Bullgrit (Oct 13, 2011)

I have what I think is an interesting anecdote about learning and getting better over time as a DM.

I recently ran a one-shot adventure for my son and his friends.
Boys Delve into the Dungeon  Total Bullgrit

In running this session, I cheated, faked, hand-waved, made up stuff, and even re-mapped the dungeon on the fly. This goes completely against everything I have ever held sacred about running a game of D&D.

Although I rolled a lot of dice for everything, I ignored the results and went with what I thought would be most dramatic and fun for the boys at that moment. Every monster encounter, (wandering or in a room), I placed in the moment. Every treasure, I placed in the moment. I let them find secret doors and treasure if they simply looked.

The only "honest" die rolls were in combat, where everyone rolled on the table out in front of everyone else. But I even adjusted monster hit points for drama and excitement.

Essentially, I broke every rule I have ever played by as a DM. I ran the game, behind the scenes, in a way that I would HATE as a Player.

But the boys, (and dads), being completely ignorant of my tricks, had an absolutely wonderful and fun game session. They all LOVED the game. It was the best gaming experience I have presided over in at least a decade. It was among the best gaming experiences I have probably ever had. No one was unhappy or disappointed at the end or even for a second throughout the session. The excitement in the room was intoxicating.

But as a DM, I felt dirty. I cheated, faked, and was completely dishonest in how I ran the game. Imagine having the best "romantic" performance of your life, but you got there by convincing your partner that you were a wealthy freelance brain surgeon with the CIA.

How can this be explained? I did everything "inappropriately," (according to all my experience), but the result was a fantastic game session. I've had many game sessions where I stuck to my core beliefs of a status quo style -- what I feel as a DM and a Player, through many years of gaming, is the best style -- that just completely bombed. But as soon as I do one game session where I break all my personal style rules, I get a great session.

Bullgrit


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## billd91 (Oct 13, 2011)

Bullgrit said:


> How can this be explained? I did everything "inappropriately," (according to all my experience), but the result was a fantastic game session. I've had many game sessions where I stuck to my core beliefs of a status quo style -- what I feel as a DM and a Player, through many years of gaming, is the best style -- that just completely bombed. But as soon as I do one game session where I break all my personal style rules, I get a great session.
> 
> Bullgrit




How can it be explained? You picked the right style of play for the players at the table. And they responded to it.


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## korjik (Oct 13, 2011)

Bullgrit said:


> I have what I think is an interesting anecdote about learning and getting better over time as a DM.
> 
> I recently ran a one-shot adventure for my son and his friends.
> Boys Delve into the Dungeon  Total Bullgrit
> ...




It can be explained in that your analogy is incorrect. The DM cannot cheat, cannot fake and cannot be dishonest on how they run the game. They can only run a fun game or a not fun game. IF the DM says they find the secret door instead of making a roll, he isnt being dishonest, he is simply running the game. If when the party comes into the room, you think the fun thing is to fight a bunch of goblin mooks and the party enjoys the fight, you DMed well. If when the party comes into the room the book/your notes say that they should fight a bunch of hobgoblins, and the players hate the fight, you DMed poorly.

This goes back to _the point of the game is to have fun_. If what the DM does causes fun, it is good no matter what the rules say. If what the DM does dosent cause fun, it is wrong, no matter what the rules say.

If the DM changes something before the players see it, or if he just decides an effect, that isnt wrong. Especially when that makes it more fun. It is really only a problem when things get changed after the players see it. Filling a room by picking half a dozen minis out of a pail is no better or worse than carefully planning out an encounter, _as long as fun is had by all._ 

So, congratulations, looks like you have some skill at ad-libbing a game. If you decide to try to make a campaign out of it, keep good notes on what you decide during a game. Otherwise someone will eventually point out something that completely destroys an adventure two minutes into a session. That is really annoying. It is also why most people try to plan out stuff. You are less likely to miss something important.

By the way, the analogy is incorrect in that if the DM says you are a 'wealthy freelance brain surgeon with the CIA' you _are_ a 'wealthy freelance brain surgeon with the CIA' not some sleazy guy. You are also the NPC, not the PC in that case.


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## Umbran (Oct 13, 2011)

Bullgrit said:


> In running this session, I cheated, faked, hand-waved, made up stuff, and even re-mapped the dungeon on the fly. This goes completely against everything I have ever held sacred about running a game of D&D.




Well, there's your problem right there.  There is nothing sacred about running a game of D&D.

There's a lot of folks who will spout one dogma or another, about how you absolutely cannot do X, or your players will revile your name, burn you in effigy, strap you into a chair and force you to watch Ishtar, and all that.  But dogmas are hogwash, in my humble opinion.  There are guidelines, but guidelines not checked against reality are hindrances, rather than aids.


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## The Shaman (Oct 13, 2011)

billd91 said:


> Suppose the PC who threw the punch and tossed the drink picked a couple of guys who *won't* rise to the bait? Maybe they belong to a sect of pacifists. Maybe they're deliberately keeping a low profile because they can't afford to draw official attention.



If the adventurers are giving these guys a beating, then a bar fight is underway; the failure to fight back doesn't enter into it.


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## The Shaman (Oct 13, 2011)

Bullgrit said:


> How can this be explained?



You were telling a story, not playing a game.

Not really all that complicated.


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## Umbran (Oct 13, 2011)

The Shaman said:


> You were telling a story, not playing a game.
> 
> Not really all that complicated.




Given how many times these boards have seen debates over what qualifies as a "game", I think your final conclusion there is not nearly so simple as you make it sound.

Maybe he wasn't playing a game.  Maybe he was playing a game,  but the important rules weren't the ones written in the books!


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## Bullgrit (Oct 13, 2011)

The Shaman said:
			
		

> You were telling a story, not playing a game.
> 
> Not really all that complicated.



But I was still being a DM. Yes?

And by my experience/style, I was being a bad DM. I would not want to play under a DM like I was being. (I can't stand a DM who heavily fudges everything.)

But by the results, I was being a good DM. I would love to have that much Player-side fun every time. (I would have to remain ignorant of what the DM was really doing.)

Basically, what you [general use, "you"] consider a Bad DM can be considered an Awesome DM to other Players. And vice versa. Some Players take railroading and fudging all in stride, and are happy with it. Some Players are rubbed raw by railroading and fudging, and would leave the game in frustration.

Bullgrit


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## Janx (Oct 13, 2011)

Umbran said:


> Given how many times these boards have seen debates over what qualifies as a "game", I think your final conclusion there is not nearly so simple as you make it sound.
> 
> Maybe he wasn't playing a game.  Maybe he was playing a game,  but the important rules weren't the ones written in the books!




If the demarcation is the DM decided what encounter was in the room before the adventure, vs the moment the PCs enter the room, I think that's an artificial constraint.

Basically, meh.  The DM is still deciding stuff.  Presumably in both instances by what makes sense and what would be fun, and maybe some randomness to mix it up.

But then, I also don't really differentiate between self defense at the crime scene, chasing the crook down and whacking him, or hunting him for 10 years.  If you had the legal right to kill a criminal, you should retain that right regardless of time elapsed.  because time elapsed is relative.  Who decides how much time is "too much" (actually the courts do...).

back to D&D.  Same difference, except there is no court.  How much time must elapse between player discovery and game data creation is an artificial constraint.  Meaning, it does not have to be there, it simply limits some people's way of doing things.


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## billd91 (Oct 13, 2011)

The Shaman said:


> If the adventurers are giving these guys a beating, then a bar fight is underway; the failure to fight back doesn't enter into it.




Where I come from, delivering a beat down to someone who won't fight back isn't considered a fight.


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## The Shaman (Oct 13, 2011)

billd91 said:


> Where I come from, delivering a beat down to someone who won't fight back isn't considered a fight.



No, but surely where you come from two guys delivering a beat-down to two guys who aren't fighting back doesn't go on without someone getting involved - other bar patrons, the local authorities, -_et cetera_?

There's gonna be a fight one way or another, at least in any game I'm running.


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## The Shaman (Oct 13, 2011)

Bullgrit said:


> But I was still being a DM. Yes?



What difference does the label make?

Illusionists are more concerned about telling a great story than playing a great game. That's why they cheat and fake out their players.


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## billd91 (Oct 13, 2011)

Bullgrit said:


> And by my experience/style, I was being a bad DM. I would not want to play under a DM like I was being. (I can't stand a DM who heavily fudges everything.)
> 
> But by the results, I was being a good DM. I would love to have that much Player-side fun every time. (I would have to remain ignorant of what the DM was really doing.)




Your players were having a good time, you were being a good DM for your players. The rest is relatively unimportant detail.


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## Janx (Oct 13, 2011)

Bullgrit said:


> But I was still being a DM. Yes?
> 
> And by my experience/style, I was being a bad DM. I would not want to play under a DM like I was being. (I can't stand a DM who heavily fudges everything.)
> 
> ...




OR, you could look at it as a learning experience that what you percieved as bad was mistaken.

it's like a person raised with some racist beliefs who gets out in the real world and actually meets people he was taught to distrust and hate, and learns that they are really good people.  His beliefs were wrong.

You thought method X was bad.  You ran a game by method X and it worked great.  Why cling to thinking that method X is bad?

It's certainly fair to retain some reservations, like "this might still be bad with the wrong GM."  But I think you just proved that it is not bad in and of itself.

In a way, this is why I insist so strongly that the GM is making it all up anyway.  Once you accept that it is all illusionism, you discard it as a game breaking concern and get to the point of determining if the session you are playing in is fun, not whether you approve of the GM's method in generating game content.


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## S'mon (Oct 14, 2011)

I am an extremely anti-fudging, anti-illusionist GM.

Re Bullgrit's game - you can run a game diceless, you can run a game determined entirely by GM judgement ('fiat'), and IMO that is an entirely legitimate style of free kriegspiel.  You can also create content ad hoc, whether randomly or by GM fiat, again I think that is completely fine.  Content may be created with a Simulationist approach - this is what is likely there - or Dramatic - this is what would make the most engaging adventure.

Illusionism comes in if the GM has already decided the outcome and ensures that all roads lead there.  This negates player choice.  From what Bullgrit says, he didn't do that.

Fudging comes in if the GM *appears* to be using the rules, but ignores the results of dice rolls - such as changing misses to hits, and *secretly changes* already-encountered reality on the fly, such as arbitrarily lowering or raising hp totals of monsters.  That's the stuff that players will object to if they find out (it can be a 'no Santa Claus' moment when they discover their trusted GM is a fudging fudger), and why Bullgrit rightly feels 'dirty' despite a good game overall.

I play with my 4.5 year old son, when he's not taking over the game, I run it free kriegspiel - when we roll dice it is meaningful, I pre-announce "on a 2-6 you kill the monster" or "on a 6 the dragon kills you" - so the dice represent a genuine element of risk rather than the illusion of risk.  There is no dishonesty, no cheating the player, no pretending to use rules when really I'm not.

Edit: If previous game sessions have failed, it may be that Bullgrit was running too harsh a game for his player group - I've seen a lot of GMs do that.  With brand new players you generally want a game very heavily slanted in favour of the players; the risk of failure can be almost arbitrarily small, but it needs to be there for the victory to be genuine.  They will enjoy destroying a 1st level adventure with their 4th level PCs just as much as they'll enjoy beating a 4th level adventure where the GM cheats to let them win - and the GM won't be cheating either them or himself.  So if running eg 4e, you treat the effective party level as 2 or 3 under their actual level, but you still play up the enemy as major threats - a lot of it is the presentation.  For 1st level 4e PCs the 1st level goblin warrior becomes a mighty goblin champion, leading the horde of mook goblin minion-1s - and you build an encounter on 300 XP rather than the standard 500.


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## pemerton (Oct 14, 2011)

The Shaman said:


> "Theoretically?""I punch the big guy standing at the end of the bar." "And I toss my drink in his bigger friend's face."
> 
> Mission accomplished. By player agency.





billd91 said:


> Considering the PCs have a limited perspective compared to the GM, the theoretically is a realistic caveat. Suppose the PC who threw the punch and tossed the drink picked a couple of guys who *won't* rise to the bait? Maybe they belong to a sect of pacifists. Maybe they're deliberately keeping a low profile because they can't afford to draw official attention. Mission failed.
> 
> Theoretically doesn't deny player agency. It's just a recognition that not everything they try may succeed in the stated goal - in this case of starting a bar fight.



In addition to The Shaman's reply that _the fight is already on_, I wanted to add this thought: it is possible to have a game in which the players states the goal for his/her PC's action, the GM sets the difficulty, and then the dice are rolled - and if they come up the player's way, the player gets what s/he wants.

Burning Wheel is this sort of game. In my view, 4e is best played in this style also (it's what skill challenges are for). And in that sort of game, not only can the players have their PCs start throwing punches, they can make an Intimidate check, or a Streetwise check, or whatever the appropriate mechanic is, _to make the NPCs fight back_.

For an actual play example of 4e played in this way (rather than a bar fight, it was provoking a wizard NPC to attack them during a formal dinner), see my post here.



Bullgrit said:


> In running this session, I cheated, faked, hand-waved, made up stuff, and even re-mapped the dungeon on the fly.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I've had many game sessions where I stuck to my core beliefs of a status quo style -- what I feel as a DM and a Player, through many years of gaming, is the best style -- that just completely bombed. But as soon as I do one game session where I break all my personal style rules, I get a great session.





The Shaman said:


> You were telling a story, not playing a game.
> 
> Not really all that complicated.



And just to prove that I don't agree with The Shaman on everything - unless I missed something, you ([MENTION=31216]Bullgrit[/MENTION]) didn't cheat - as in, you didn't actually disregard any dice actually rolled as part of action resolution. It just sounds like you framed every situation spontaneously and in response to what had come before, rather than preparing it in advance. And that you made liberal use of "say yes" - as in, only got the action resolution mechanics into play when there was an actual conflict to be resolved.

This isn't "telling a story and not playing a game". This is just GMing "indie style" rather than classical style. (What you describe sounds like it was pretty close to No Myth.)

EDIT:



S'mon said:


> Illusionism comes in if the GM has already decided the outcome and ensures that all roads lead there.  This negates player choice.  From what Bullgrit says, he didn't do that.
> 
> Fudging comes in if the GM *appears* to be using the rules, but ignores the results of dice rolls - such as changing misses to hits, and *secretly changes* already-encountered reality on the fly, such as arbitrarily lowering or raising hp totals of monsters.  That's the stuff that players will object to if they find out (it can be a 'no Santa Claus' moment when they discover their trusted GM is a fudging fudger), and why Bullgrit rightly feels 'dirty' despite a good game overall.



I picked up the absence of illusionism. I missed the hit point fudging, but am not 100% sure whether it's objectionable or not. Bullgrit could easily have decided instead that the monsters surrender, and this would produce an outcome similar to the hit point fudging. But not identical - the players would now have the surrendered foes to negotiate with - and maybe that's enough to show that the hit point fudging _is_ objectionable.


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## pemerton (Oct 14, 2011)

Janx said:


> Once you accept that it is all illusionism



Why would I accept that?


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## S'mon (Oct 14, 2011)

pemerton said:


> I picked up the absence of illusionism. I missed the hit point fudging, but am not 100% sure whether it's objectionable or not. Bullgrit could easily have decided instead that the monsters surrender, and this would produce an outcome similar to the hit point fudging. But not identical - the players would now have the surrendered foes to negotiate with - and maybe that's enough to show that the hit point fudging _is_ objectionable.




A losing monster may - usually should, IMO - flee or surrender, at GM's judgement.  A winning monster should not; that is bad fudging, akin to lowering hp totals.


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## JamesonCourage (Oct 14, 2011)

pemerton said:


> And just to prove that I don't agree with The Shaman on everything - unless I missed something, you ([MENTION=31216]Bullgrit[/MENTION]) didn't cheat - as in, you didn't actually disregard any dice actually rolled as part of action resolution.





			
				Bullgrit said:
			
		

> Although I rolled a lot of dice for everything, *I ignored the results and went with what I thought would be most dramatic and fun* for the boys at that moment.



It looks like he did indeed disregard dice rolled as part of action resolution. Either that, or there's no such thing as action resolution when he needs to roll dice, and the dice are for show. As of that point, I'm not sure if I think The Shaman is far off when he says that Bullgrit is telling a story. An interactive story, yes, but he's definitely not following rules based on the dice according to his story, as far as I can tell.


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## The Shaman (Oct 14, 2011)

pemerton said:


> And just to prove that I don't agree with The Shaman on everything - unless I missed something, you ([MENTION=31216]Bullgrit[/MENTION]) didn't cheat - as in, you didn't actually disregard any dice actually rolled as part of action resolution.



Just for the record, I was merely quoting [MENTION=31216]Bullgrit[/MENTION] there.







Bullgrit said:


> In running this session, I *cheated*, *faked*, hand-waved, made up stuff, and even re-mapped the dungeon on the fly. (Emphasis added - TS)



And while some games to provide mechanics for exactly the sort of narrative control you're describing, it's disingenuous and, in my opinion, more than a little dishonest, to introduce them _ad hoc_ into a game which doesn't explicitly include them, particularly without the players' knowledge upfront.

Put another way, I don't want to be playing _AD&D_ on our side of the screen while the referee is playing _Dogs in the Vineyard_ on his side.

That seems like basic social contract stuff to me.


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## Neonchameleon (Oct 15, 2011)

S'mon said:


> A losing monster may - usually should, IMO - flee or surrender, at GM's judgement.  A winning monster should not; that is bad fudging, akin to lowering hp totals.



I've had a monster who was winning flee.  Creature was hungry and the PCs bloodied it, so it decided to seek easier prey.  Silly PCs wanted to chase the kraken out to sea, some of them in heavy armour.


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## pemerton (Oct 15, 2011)

JamesonCourage said:


> It looks like he did indeed disregard dice rolled as part of action resolution.



I got the impression that the dice that were ignored were dungeon-building dice rather than action resolution dice. Maybe [MENTION=31216]Bullgrit[/MENTION] will clarify.


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## pemerton (Oct 15, 2011)

The Shaman said:


> Just for the record, I was merely quoting [MENTION=31216]Bullgrit[/MENTION] there.it's disingenuous and, in my opinion, more than a little dishonest, to introduce them _ad hoc_ into a game which doesn't explicitly include them, particularly without the players' knowledge upfront.
> 
> Put another way, I don't want to be playing _AD&D_ on our side of the screen while the referee is playing _Dogs in the Vineyard_ on his side.
> 
> That seems like basic social contract stuff to me.



But with new players, I'm not sure the social contract has such definite content that running the way Bullgrit described is contradicting any implicit or explicit understandings.


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## JamesonCourage (Oct 15, 2011)

pemerton said:


> I got the impression that the dice that were ignored were dungeon-building dice rather than action resolution dice. Maybe [MENTION=31216]Bullgrit[/MENTION] will clarify.



Well, Bullgrit said the following:


> The only "honest" die rolls were in combat, where everyone rolled on the table out in front of everyone else. But I even adjusted monster hit points for drama and excitement.



This makes me think that he only didn't ignore rolls if they were in combat, but he was still manipulating the fight to end up dramatically interesting (so rolls mattered much less). However, I did get the impression he was ignoring more rolls, and shaping the session by fudging behind the screen (effectively making rolls pointless). Perhaps he will clarify, though.


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## Kerranin (Oct 15, 2011)

Bullgrit said:


> But I was still being a DM. Yes?
> 
> And by my experience/style, I was being a bad DM. I would not want to play under a DM like I was being. (I can't stand a DM who heavily fudges everything.)
> 
> ...



You played to your audience, all the things you did were to make sure everyone had fun, that can never be a bad DM.

Well done!


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## Nagol (Oct 15, 2011)

pemerton said:


> But with new players, I'm not sure the social contract has such definite content that running the way Bullgrit described is contradicting any implicit or explicit understandings.




Regardless of how new the players are, if you agree to play game X and then don't use the rules for game X, you're breaking the contract.

New players may not have the experience necessary to tell that you're being fraudulent, but a contract break is not dependent on detection.


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## Hussar (Oct 15, 2011)

Nagol said:


> Regardless of how new the players are, if you agree to play game X and then don't use the rules for game X, you're breaking the contract.
> 
> New players may not have the experience necessary to tell that you're being fraudulent, but a contract break is not dependent on detection.




I think the question becomes, how important is that social contract?

We've been conditioned to think of the social contract as being very much a two way street, but, it wasn't always this way.  In earlier D&D, for example, the DM was very much empowered to change rules at will and the players were strongly advised to simply trust their DM and roll with it.

Now, I'm not sure I'd personally want to go back to that, but, then again, it would be hard for me to come into an RPG without bringing in all my history and baggage as well.  But, a new player simply doesn't have the background to be able to judge what is "good" or "bad" beyond whether or not the current play is fun.

If the players are having fun, and the DM is having fun, the social contract can go hang.


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## Nagol (Oct 15, 2011)

Hussar said:


> I think the question becomes, how important is that social contract?
> 
> We've been conditioned to think of the social contract as being very much a two way street, but, it wasn't always this way.  In earlier D&D, for example, the DM was very much empowered to change rules at will and the players were strongly advised to simply trust their DM and roll with it.
> 
> ...




Sure, sort of.  If the players and GM are having fun, that's great so long as one is not having fun at the expense of the other.

I've run games where I cheated -- with the full and complete understanding of the players that I was to cheat to make it more fun for the group.  Though usually for games like these, we'd pull out a more camp game like _Teenagers from Outer Space_ or _Tales from the Floating Vagabond_.

I've had DMs try to do the same without that understanding and it was fun for a session or two -- until I caught on and stopped playing with them entirely.

See, the social contract is there so everyone understands what is and is not acceptable in group context.  If someone acts against that contract he is signalling his preferences are more important than those of the group.  Otherwise, treat the people you're spending time with with a modicum of respect and tell them what you'd prefer, why, and make a suggestion for change.


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## Hussar (Oct 15, 2011)

Yeah, I'd buy most of that.  I'm just not sure if I was a completely new gamer, straight out of the box, if I'd want the DM hitting me with this whole "social contract" thing when I'm already pretty overwhelmed by all the stuff that goes into RPG gaming.

Yes, social contract is very, very important.  I totally get that and I do think it absolutely should be something that every group discusses openly.  I'm just not sure if the conversation could wait a bit until the players have kinda settled into things first and maybe they'd have a better background with which to understand what's being presented.

I mean, if you ask anyone, "Hey, do you mind if I cheat during this game?" the answer's pretty much going to always be no.    But, if you ask, "Hey, do you mind if, from time to time, I adjust rolls and whatnot to keep things moving along" it sounds a lot more reasonable, even if it is pretty much the same thing.  Without any gaming experience, it's pretty hard for someone to be able to discriminate between those two options.


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## Nagol (Oct 15, 2011)

Hussar said:


> Yeah, I'd buy most of that.  I'm just not sure if I was a completely new gamer, straight out of the box, if I'd want the DM hitting me with this whole "social contract" thing when I'm already pretty overwhelmed by all the stuff that goes into RPG gaming.
> 
> Yes, social contract is very, very important.  I totally get that and I do think it absolutely should be something that every group discusses openly.  I'm just not sure if the conversation could wait a bit until the players have kinda settled into things first and maybe they'd have a better background with which to understand what's being presented.
> 
> I mean, if you ask anyone, "Hey, do you mind if I cheat during this game?" the answer's pretty much going to always be no.    But, if you ask, "Hey, do you mind if, from time to time, I adjust rolls and whatnot to keep things moving along" it sounds a lot more reasonable, even if it is pretty much the same thing.  Without any gaming experience, it's pretty hard for someone to be able to discriminate between those two options.




LOL, I think the answer will almost always be "Yes" rather than "No"!

The way I'd present it to a group of newbies is "The game as presented can be a bit harsh at times like <audience-appropriate media reference>.  Do you want a more dramatic style play like <audience-appropriate media reference>?  I can adjust if you like."

At least this way the group gets an inkling of the sort of changes you'll be making and their purpose.


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## enrious (Oct 15, 2011)

Nagol said:


> Regardless of how new the players are, if you agree to play game X and then don't use the rules for game X, you're breaking the contract.
> 
> New players may not have the experience necessary to tell that you're being fraudulent, but a contract break is not dependent on detection.




I quite agree with you completely, that's why I support a 3.x DM doing anything they want to make the game fun.

(DMG:18)
"...The DM really _can't_ cheat.  You're the umpire, and what you say goes.  As such, it's certainly within your rights to sway things one way or another to keep people happy or to keep things running smoothly..."

Rules are rules, after all.


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## enrious (Oct 15, 2011)

Nagol said:


> LOL, I think the answer will almost always be "Yes" rather than "No"!
> 
> The way I'd present it to a group of newbies is "The game as presented can be a bit harsh at times like <audience-appropriate media reference>.  Do you want a more dramatic style play like <audience-appropriate media reference>?  I can adjust if you like."
> 
> At least this way the group gets an inkling of the sort of changes you'll be making and their purpose.




I tend to view alterations to the rules (such as house-rules) as something that should be discussed ahead of time and not sprung upon the players when an event happens.

On the otherhand, I'd probably not bother discussing GM style or the like with a new group - either they like the way I run things or they dont, and pigeonholing that style ahead of time does no one any good.


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## Hussar (Oct 15, 2011)

Nagol said:


> LOL, I think the answer will almost always be "Yes" rather than "No"!
> 
> The way I'd present it to a group of newbies is "The game as presented can be a bit harsh at times like <audience-appropriate media reference>.  Do you want a more dramatic style play like <audience-appropriate media reference>?  I can adjust if you like."
> 
> At least this way the group gets an inkling of the sort of changes you'll be making and their purpose.




Fair enough.  I think we're agreeing here.  A newbie group simply doesn't have a frame of reference to be able to make a reasonable judgement.


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## The Shaman (Oct 17, 2011)

pemerton said:


> But with new players, I'm not sure the social contract has such definite content that running the way Bullgrit described is contradicting any implicit or explicit understandings.



Let me make sure I understand this: since new players don't know the rules, it's okay to run the game they agreed to play by rules which are not part of that game and of which they know nothing in advance?

In any case, I think the relative experience of the players is irrelevant; either you're treating them as equal participants in the game, or you're not.


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## Elf Witch (Oct 17, 2011)

This entire social contract thing has me shaking my head. Some of you sound so rigid. 

I believe my role as a DM is to guide the game, provide fun challenges, and be  fair when I  adjudicate the rules.   

The rules are there to facilitate play not be a rigid force that can never be bent or changed. Rules should support the fun not get in the way.

Yes I gasp fudge. I do it when I see that the challenge I have made is to hard  and I can read the frustration on my players faces I will on the fly adjust it. I will sometimes do it the other way as well. Though that has happened maybe once or twice.  

And yes there are times I fudge the dice to save a PC. For example one of my players lost a PC in the middle of a dungeon crawl and since it took awhile to get her raised she played monsters. She was a good sport about it but I knew she was missing her PC. Well she got raised and in a random encounter shortly after she started rolling 1 and I was rolling crits. Anyone could see how unhappy she was and that she was not having fun. So I started "missing" her more often and when I hit I did "less" damage.


I have also fudged when the party has made a great plan and it goes bad because the dice start rolling bad for them  and fantastic for me. I will pull a few punches. 

I often make encounters up on the fly and just decide when the monster is dead or defeated. I change monster stats and abilities all the time  to keep things fresh and to surprise my players.  

As a player I don't want to play with a DM who rolls in the open and is so rigid they don't care that their players are miserable as long as they slavishly follow the rules.


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## Hussar (Oct 17, 2011)

Honestly, I roll in the open because I find that it generates better experiences.  I find that, for me at least, having the results be generated without my input makes the end result more interesting.  

OTOH, on the occasions where I do "fudge", I tend to do so by having the bad guys make mistakes or perhaps choose less than tactically smart options.  Maybe that one guy gets stuck in the mud for a couple of rounds instead of just going around in the first place.  That sort of thing.


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## Elf Witch (Oct 17, 2011)

Hussar said:


> Honestly, I roll in the open because I find that it generates better experiences.  I find that, for me at least, having the results be generated without my input makes the end result more interesting.
> 
> OTOH, on the occasions where I do "fudge", I tend to do so by having the bad guys make mistakes or perhaps choose less than tactically smart options.  Maybe that one guy gets stuck in the mud for a couple of rounds instead of just going around in the first place.  That sort of thing.




To each his own. 


The last time I played with a DM who rolled in the open a game that we were enjoying came to a crashing end and no one not even the DM had a good time and we all agreed that it would have been better if he had not been rolling in the open.


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## billd91 (Oct 17, 2011)

The Shaman said:


> Let me make sure I understand this: since new players don't know the rules, it's okay to run the game they agreed to play by rules which are not part of that game and of which they know nothing in advance?
> 
> In any case, I think the relative experience of the players is irrelevant; either you're treating them as equal participants in the game, or you're not.




It's OK even if they aren't new players. That doesn't mean they aren't fully participating in their respective roles within the game.


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## Hussar (Oct 17, 2011)

Elf Witch said:


> To each his own.
> 
> 
> The last time I played with a DM who rolled in the open a game that we were enjoying came to a crashing end and no one not even the DM had a good time and we all agreed that it would have been better if he had not been rolling in the open.




Fair enough and I totally get that.  OTOH, I LOVE that sort of thing.  The dice gods have decided that today is a good day to die?  Fantastic.  Now, let's figure out where to go from here.  

OTOH, I tend to use mechanics which mitigate random effects - Action Points, Bennies, whatever.  That sort of thing.


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## The Shaman (Oct 17, 2011)

Elf Witch said:


> The rules are there to facilitate play not be a rigid force that can never be bent or changed. Rules should support the fun not get in the way.



Whose fun? Do you understand that your idea of fun and my idea of fun may not be the same?

If part of _my_ fun comes from letting the dice fall where they may and you decide that your perogative to fudge the results trumps that, then do you think it's unreasonable of me to want to make an informed choice about whether I want to play in your game or not?


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## The Shaman (Oct 17, 2011)

billd91 said:


> It's OK even if they aren't new players. That doesn't mean they aren't fully participating in their respective roles within the game.



I think we may have to agree to disagree on that one.


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## Elf Witch (Oct 17, 2011)

The Shaman said:


> Whose fun? Do you understand that your idea of fun and my idea of fun may not be the same?
> 
> If part of _my_ fun comes from letting the dice fall where they may and you decide that your perogative to fudge the results trumps that, then do you think it's unreasonable of me to want to make an informed choice about whether I want to play in your game or not?




First of all I did not say my dming trumps what you want as a player.  But the other way is also true.

It comes down to style of play and if you don't like how I DM then you are free not to play at my table. I won't play at a table where the DM just lets the die fall where they may. 

My group likes long running campaigns and a lot of character development and a revolving door of PCs due to death is not our idea of a good time.  I have things in my game like fate points and other things that help keep the death count down.

If I have a player who tells me that he doesn't ever want me to fudge the dice on him then I don't. But I have players who don't want to die all the time for them death is not fun so yes sometimes I fudge for them. 

Since I roll behind a screen no one knows if they got lucky or I fudged. It comes down to trusting me and if you can't trust me as DM then I don't want to play with you.


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## Nagol (Oct 17, 2011)

Elf Witch said:


> This entire social contract thing has me shaking my head. Some of you sound so rigid.
> 
> <snip>






Elf Witch said:


> First of all I did not say my dming trumps what you want as a player.  But the other way is also true.
> 
> *It comes down to style of play and if you don't like how I DM then you are free not to play at my table. I won't play at a table where the DM just lets the die fall where they may. *
> 
> ...




See, that's the social contract you want and you sure sound rigid about it.


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## Elf Witch (Oct 17, 2011)

Nagol said:


> See, that's the social contract you want and you sure sound rigid about it.




That is just so much bull. If you can't trust your DM then why on earth would you play with them? How could that possibly be fun for either party involved. It is not being rigid at all. 

I am a very flexible DM I work with my players to make sure they have fun. As I said before I use the rules as guidelines not hard fast can never be broken you must play this way or else rules.

I had a player come up with this fantastic character the only issue was the rules would not allow it. he wanted to play a character whose mother had made a pact with a demon while pregnant and because of that he had the power of a warlock. To control the evil in him he followed the path of the monk. 


Basically he wanted to multiclass as a monk/warlock which is technically against the rules.  Warlocks have to be chaotic, monks lawful. We talked about it and I waived the rules for it and even allowed him to use his eldritch blast with his unarmed attack. 

As a DM you want your players to have fun so that is my goal that my players walk away from the table feeling like they had a good time.


As a player I am usually willing to try any system,  house rules are fine, have no issue if the DM wants to ban certain things from his game. My only rule is that I don't want to play with a DM who rolls in the open even if he does not fudge behind the screen. My reason for that is very simple. Sometimes DMs screw up and overpower an encounter to the point that it is almost impossible not get a TPK  or an almost TPK. I don't want my character to die because of a DM mistake. If he is rolling behind the screen he can fix by fudging and giving the party a chance.


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## Nagol (Oct 17, 2011)

Read the parts I bolded again.

you know what you want and won't play with anyone who wants something different.  It's a fine attitude -- it's the same attitude I have -- the one you called rigid; we just want different things.


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## Elf Witch (Oct 17, 2011)

Nagol said:


> Read the parts I bolded again.
> 
> you know what you want and won't play with anyone who wants something different.  It's a fine attitude -- it's the same attitude I have -- the one you called rigid; we just want different things.




That is not what I was calling rigid. Some of  what I was reading was coming across as this is the only way to play and if you don't use the rules you are breaking the social contract.


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## Nagol (Oct 17, 2011)

Elf Witch said:


> That is not what I was calling rigid. Some of  what I was reading was coming across as this is the only way to play and if you don't use the rules you are breaking the social contract.




When I use the term, it refers to what the group has agreed to do at the table and what the group expectations are with regard to each other's roles.  This covers everything from announcing a missed session, what other activities are expected at the table, how the players will behave towards each other, expectations of how the PCs will behave with each other and how each role (generally DM/player, but I've seen others) is expected to behave.

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] has a similar understanding, I believe.  Part of that social contract from Bullgrit's initial post was they were going to play D&D and he acted in a manner self-described as cheating.

If Bullgrit thinks he was cheating, he was probably breaking the implicit social contract (i.e. an expectation of fair play) at the table or at least the contract he insists on as a player as he points out in earlier posts.

My position is it is wrong to do it and hide the fact from the group.  It is not wrong to play that way so long as the group has agreed to accept that behaviour.


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## Elf Witch (Oct 17, 2011)

Nagol said:


> When I use the term, it refers to what the group has agreed to do at the table and what the group expectations are with regard to each other's roles.  This covers everything from announcing a missed session, what other activities are expected at the table, how the players will behave towards each other, expectations of how the PCs will behave with each other and how each role (generally DM/player, but I've seen others) is expected to behave.
> 
> [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] has a similar understanding, I believe.  Part of that social contract from Bullgrit's initial post was they were going to play D&D and he acted in a manner self-described as cheating.
> 
> ...





I really don't remember who said what that gave me that impression it was late when I read it. To be honest I don't really want to go back and read it again. 


I do remember Bullgrit and my thought was he was being hard on himself when he called it cheating. Just because you like it one way when you play does not mean you have to do it that way when you DM. You can tailor it to your players.

One thing that does get to me is when people use the word cheating to describe a DM fudging or changing things on the fly. The only time a DM is really is cheating in my opinion is when the fudge is to deliberately kill a PC. I am sure there may be other times but I can't think of one right now.


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## Nagol (Oct 17, 2011)

Elf Witch said:


> I really don't remember who said what that gave me that impression it was late when I read it. To be honest I don't really want to go back and read it again.
> 
> 
> I do remember Bullgrit and my thought was he was being hard on himself when he called it cheating. Just because you like it one way when you play does not mean you have to do it that way when you DM. You can tailor it to your players.
> ...




I use a simpler measure.  A group member is cheating when he uses a technique or resource the group did not agree was acceptable.

I would be cheating if I fudge because my group finds it unacceptable just as I would be cheating if I told them to prepare characters for a futuristic space opera campaign and immediately threw them through a one-way portal into a magical feudal society.

I am not cheating when use material from game resources outside the purview of the players nor when I present conversions of their characters from D&D to _CHAMPIONS_ or _Teenagers from Outer Space_ for a planar adventure.

Other tables will draw the lines in other places and that's the important bit for me.  The group can't make an informed decision on acceptability if the techniques used are kept secret or are denied when detected.


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## The Shaman (Oct 17, 2011)

Elf Witch said:


> It comes down to style of play and if you don't like how I DM then you are free not to play at my table. I won't play at a table where the DM just lets the die fall where they may.



In other words, these are the terms of your social contract, and they are not open to debate.

Which is perfectly fine and, in my opinion, how it should be.







Elf Witch said:


> Since I roll behind a screen no one knows if they got lucky or I fudged. It comes down to trusting me and if you can't trust me as DM then I don't want to play with you.



Trust doesn't enter into it; a player in a roll-in-the-open game still must trust the referee, just not for dice results.


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## Elf Witch (Oct 17, 2011)

Nagol said:


> I use a simpler measure.  A group member is cheating when he uses a technique or resource the group did not agree was acceptable.
> 
> I would be cheating if I fudge because my group finds it unacceptable just as I would be cheating if I told them to prepare characters for a futuristic space opera campaign and immediately threw them through a one-way portal into a magical feudal society.
> 
> ...




I agree that first part is cheating. I don't think it is cheating if the DM fudges because they have screwed up the encounter and are now fixing it. You can usually see as the encounter goes on that you have messed up. I am not talking about the luck of the dice here. If your group is fine in letting bad luck cause a TPK that is one thing. But it is another thing all together when that TPK is going to happen because the DM's encounter is not in the ability of the party to handle. And no I am not talking about encounters that are meant for the party to run away from.

I had this happen in a game that I was a player in and it really sucked that everyone died because the DM screwed up the challenge he even admitted he had done it. But he was rolling out in the open that was the last time he rolled in the open. He did not believe in fudging dice to save PCs and rolling behind the screen did not stop that but it gave him the ability if he every messed up again  to fix it. 

Personally I would rather have a DM fix it behind the screen then stop the action and do a reset. 

It is not cheating to use bait and switch it is wrong but it is not cheating at least how I define cheating.

The thing is I believe in open communication between players and DMs and it is a two way street. It is wrong for the DM to hold things back about rules from the players. Just like I think it is wrong for a player to say yes I am fine with this style campaign and then not go along with the campaign.


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## Elf Witch (Oct 17, 2011)

The Shaman said:


> In other words, these are the terms of your social contract, and they are not open to debate.
> 
> Which is perfectly fine and, in my opinion, how it should be.Trust doesn't enter into it; a player in a roll-in-the-open game still must trust the referee, just not for dice results.




Actually I am always open to hearing ideas.

I have read here on EnWorld that one reason people want the DM to roll in the open is that they don't trust them not to fudge. I don't understand that if you can't trust your DM to honor what you have agreed to then why play with them.

It is a two way street I trust my players I don't have to see their rolls. I accept it when they say they rolled X amount for hit die or stats. And most of the time with my reading glasses on I can't see their dice anyway.


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## The Shaman (Oct 18, 2011)

Elf Witch said:


> Actually I am always open to hearing ideas.



But if that idea is roll in the open and let the results stand, you "won't play."

Or was that just hyperbole?







Elf Witch said:


> I have read here on EnWorld that one reason people want the DM to roll in the open is that they don't trust them not to fudge.



A referee can screw with the players six-ways-from-Sunday without ever hiding or changing a die roll. _Every_ campaign involves trust.


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## Hussar (Oct 18, 2011)

Elf Witch said:


> Actually I am always open to hearing ideas.
> 
> I have read here on EnWorld that one reason people want the DM to roll in the open is that they don't trust them not to fudge. I don't understand that if you can't trust your DM to honor what you have agreed to then why play with them.
> 
> It is a two way street I trust my players I don't have to see their rolls. I accept it when they say they rolled X amount for hit die or stats. And most of the time with my reading glasses on I can't see their dice anyway.




It's not so much of a trust issue really though.  It's that people don't want fudging in their game.  If everyone at the table agrees that dice must fall where they lie, and that no roll will ever be changed, then why not roll in the open?

It's simply a playstyle difference not really a trust issue.


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## pemerton (Oct 18, 2011)

Nagol said:


> Part of that social contract from Bullgrit's initial post was they were going to play D&D and he acted in a manner self-described as cheating.





Nagol said:


> Regardless of how new the players are, if you agree to play game X and then don't use the rules for game X, you're breaking the contract.
> 
> New players may not have the experience necessary to tell that you're being fraudulent, but a contract break is not dependent on detection.





Nagol said:


> A group member is cheating when he uses a technique or resource the group did not agree was acceptable.






The Shaman said:


> Let me make sure I understand this: since new players don't know the rules, it's okay to run the game they agreed to play by rules which are not part of that game and of which they know nothing in advance?
> 
> In any case, I think the relative experience of the players is irrelevant; either you're treating them as equal participants in the game, or you're not.



Maybe I missed something in Bullgrit's post, but where is the evidence he did something that the group did not agree was acceptable?

It's not enough to say that everyone agreed to play D&D, and hence any departure from the rules of D&D is a breach of the social contract. On the assumption that the new players don't actually _know_ what the rules of D&D are, then those rules don't form part of the social contract, and aren't something that they have agreed to. Nor are they something that they have dissented from. Presumably they have no view.

I would imagine that what new players do understand themselves to have agreed to is the the game will involve them playing protagonists in a fantasy world of violent conflict. And Bullgrit seems to have delivered this - subject to more clarification on the fudging (which seems to me to have involved scenario design elements rather than action resolution elements), I don't see any deprotagonisation.

I mean, what evidence is there that by making up details of encounters or dungeon layout on the fly - in effect, by creating the scenario ex tempore in response to the choices of the players - Bullgrit was doing something which the players did not regard as acceptable?


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## Nagol (Oct 18, 2011)

pemerton said:


> Maybe I missed something in Bullgrit's post, but where is the evidence he did something that the group did not agree was acceptable?
> 
> It's not enough to say that everyone agreed to play D&D, and hence any departure from the rules of D&D is a breach of the social contract. On the assumption that the new players don't actually _know_ what the rules of D&D are, then those rules don't form part of the social contract, and aren't something that they have agreed to. Nor are they something that they have dissented from. Presumably they have no view.
> 
> ...




It not a small variance from the game rules or arbitrary placement of risk and reward that would cause a break in the contract.  Really, the best person to determine of a contract was broken is Bullgrit -- after all he negotiated it.

I've highlighted the relevant material in his quote below.

1) Bullgrit offered to run a game of D&D.

2) He ran a game where he deliberately misused or ignored most the rules.  Even the "honest" section where the rules were used was manipulated by him.

3) The participants were completely ignorant of his tricks.

4) He felt like a fraud and a cheat.

It's hard for the group to offer an opinion on acceptability if the instigator keeps the tactics secret.  Since the group was not privy to the manipulation, we cannot take their enjoyment of the game as approval for the style.  Maybe the group would not care, but Bullgrit's self-confessed feelings certainly show he did.  At the very least he broke an implicit pact with himself.  Very likely he broke one with the group as well.  It may be behaviour the group does not care about or would overlook for the experience of an awesome game, but we cannot know and the group was never given the opportunity to share it's view.

I don't care he ran the game the way he did; I care he ran the game the way he did in an underhanded and secret manner that prevented the other participants from understanding what they were experiencing was not the game they would experience from fair rules-based play.  The secrecy around the manipulation and disregard for the rule set pretty much negates the group's ability to consent to the style of play. 




Bullgrit said:


> I have what I think is an interesting anecdote about learning and getting better over time as a DM.
> 
> I recently ran a one-shot adventure for my son and his friends.
> Boys Delve into the Dungeon  Total Bullgrit
> ...


----------



## pemerton (Oct 18, 2011)

I think you're taking hyperbole too seriously.

Bullgrit says that he "cheated, faked, hand-waved, made up stuff, and even re-mapped the dungeon on the fly" and was "completely dishonest". But I don't see any "dishonesty" other than the handwaving, making up of stuff and re-mapping. Combat dies rolls - the overwhelmingly salient means of action resolution in D&D - were rolled upfront.

As I read it, the "dishonesty" or "cheating" that Bullgrit is referring to is the adjustment of the scenario, on the fly, to suit the perceived dramatic needs of the game. In many RPGs, this isn't "cheating" but a standard part of the GM's repertoire. Given that there is no reason to think the participants had any expectations as to how D&D may or may not resemble those other RPGs, I don't see the breach of contract.

It would be different if everyone had agreed to play Gygaxian or Pulsiferian, exploration heavy, AD&D. But I don't see any evidence of that. And when a newbie signs up for a game of D&D, I don't believe that they are therefore, by default, signing up for a game in the Gygaxian or Puslierian style.


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## Nagol (Oct 18, 2011)

pemerton said:


> I think you're taking hyperbole too seriously.
> 
> Bullgrit says that he "cheated, faked, hand-waved, made up stuff, and even re-mapped the dungeon on the fly" and was "completely dishonest". But I don't see any "dishonesty" other than the handwaving, making up of stuff and re-mapping. Combat dies rolls - the overwhelmingly salient means of action resolution in D&D - were rolled upfront.
> 
> ...




The dice rolled in combat are of minimal importance if the underlying mechanics like hit points exist only at the whim of the referee.

All other action resolution systems, like detecting secrets, skill use, etc. were adjudicated by whim.

But all that is secondary.

The players may or may not have any expectations about how the game is played.  The play provided did not match the default play of the game as expressed by the rules.  If they did have any expectations -- say one read a book in advance or had a friend who played for example, those expectations were misled.  The DM did not make it known to the group that the skill selections were meaningless.  He did not make it known to the group that all actions were going to be resolved using a dramatic lens as opposed to the rules ostensibly in use.  In fact, Bullgrit took great pains to "roll a lot of dice for everything", but then ignored their input.  A fraud, pretty much by definition, doesn't have the acceptance of the victims.

If I offer you X and provide you with Y, you may like Y and may in fact prefer my substitution over the original offer.  It is fradulent of me to make the offer of X and then give you Y while telling you it's X.  

This behaviour hurts newbies more than those experienced as this becomes their point of reference for gaming experience.  And it is based on a lie.  Those dice I just rolled? Ignored.  The hit you just made on the monster?  Killed it because I thought it would be dramatically satisfying.  The ingenious plan you can up with?  Worked regardless of character talent.  That treasure you found? There because I thought you wanted it.

All of the above if fine in a game so long as the participants understand that is how the game works.  It is wrong in a game where the default understanding works differently without some agreement to the changes.  New players either have no understanding or have a basic understanding as presented in the rule set.  Further, without that understanding, individuals inside the group may respond with different levels of caution.  Natural risk-takers would have been rewarded and anyone who remained cautious in that party because they had different expectations lost out on the opportunity to cut loose.

Certainly, Bullgrit has expressed a level of guilt over his behaviour.  He thinks everyone had a great time, but he feels dirty as if he was entertaining them under false pretenses.

Again, it is possible that the group may have not cared, but Bullgrit never gave them a chance to have a say.

I'm not saying he should have exhaustively identified every variation he was going to use to a group without the background to understand the implications, either.  Saying something along the lines of "Since you're new to this and this is going to be only a single session, it's going to be a lot more dramatic and action-filled than typical.  OK?"  probably would be enough to alert them that what they are experiencing is somewhat abnormal and give them some say if they want something else from the experience or further clarification.


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## billd91 (Oct 18, 2011)

Nagol said:


> Certainly, Bullgrit has expressed a level of guilt over his behaviour.  He thinks everyone had a great time, but he feels dirty as if he was entertaining them under false pretenses.
> 
> Again, it is possible that the group may have not cared, but Bullgrit never gave them a chance to have a say.
> 
> I'm not saying he should have exhaustively identified every variation he was going to use to a group without the background to understand the implications, either.  Saying something along the lines of "Since you're new to this and this is going to be only a single session, it's going to be a lot more dramatic and action-filled than typical.  OK?"  probably would be enough to alert them that what they are experiencing is somewhat abnormal and give them some say if they want something else from the experience or further clarification.




I dunno. Bullgrit's posts sounded a little more exaggerated and tongue in cheek rather than really angsty and filled with guilt.

I don't think you've really got to include the caveat that there will be differences with the published rules unless the players are genuinely interested in the nitty-gritty of the rules. There are plenty of players out there who don't really care much about them. They just want to sit at the table and play - deciding what they want their PCs to do and content to be guided through any application of rules to implement their choices. For those sorts of players, informing them of changes or not informing them won't really matter. 
Some players may be more concerned, at which point you do delve into rules a bit more before play starts. But whichever approach you take, it's more a question of knowing your audience. For a bunch of new players that you want to impress with the excitement the game can elicit, I think less is more when it comes to rule information.


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## Elf Witch (Oct 18, 2011)

The Shaman said:


> But if that idea is roll in the open and let the results stand, you "won't play."
> 
> Or was that just hyperbole?A referee can screw with the players six-ways-from-Sunday without ever hiding or changing a die roll. _Every_ campaign involves trust.




I most likely would not because I don't enjoy a game where you die because the DM screwed up, or it is just a stupid random encounter and you are rolling badly and the DM is rolling great. It is so much fun to die on a meaningless encounter and now you get to sit for hours at the table because there is no way to get your character raised or bring in a new one. 

I don't play hack and slash I actually put a lot of thought in my character and  while there have been times I have chosen to sacrifice my character for the party or in a big encounter I have died, dying a lot is not fun for me. 

The other players put a lot of thought in their characters as well and want a lot of role playing so they just don't have the mind set hey you look trust worthy join us. So if a character dies and does not get resurrected then the DM works with everyone to bring in a new character. It is not something done on the fly.


Now I might consider playing in a roll in the open if there are things in place to help prevent death like action points or healing surges. Also I need to know that the DM is willing to fix it if he is the one who screwed up the encounter. 

We also use the screen to hide certain rolls like spot checks, find traps, sense motive. In our games the DM rolls these not the players. We have found it adds to the game not to know if the reason you didn't spot a trap was because there is not one or you only rolled a 1.


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## Elf Witch (Oct 18, 2011)

Hussar said:


> It's not so much of a trust issue really though.  It's that people don't want fudging in their game.  If everyone at the table agrees that dice must fall where they lie, and that no roll will ever be changed, then why not roll in the open?
> 
> It's simply a playstyle difference not really a trust issue.




When people say I don't want my DM to roll behind the screen because I don't want him to fudge that is a trust issue. Because you don't trust him not to fudge. 

There are lot of reasons a DM uses a screen besides fudging  he may use it for the info on it or to hide his notes or hide certain rolls that have nothing to do with combat. 

If your agreement is to let all rolls stand then it shouldn't matter where the DM rolls. 

Look each group has to decide for their own group and if the DM and players want to roll in the open that is fine. What I have taken from a lot of posts I have read on this over the years is the attitude that if you roll behind a screen it is because you are fudging. That is what bugs me that and the attitude that some how letting the dice fall as they will is the correct way to play DnD and if you don't you are not really playing DnD the way it was meant to be played.


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## Elf Witch (Oct 18, 2011)

Nagol said:


> This behaviour hurts newbies more than those experienced as this becomes their point of reference for gaming experience.  And it is based on a lie.  Those dice I just rolled? Ignored.  The hit you just made on the monster?  Killed it because I thought it would be dramatically satisfying.  The ingenious plan you can up with?  Worked regardless of character talent.  That treasure you found? There because I thought you wanted it.




I am going to call bull on this. With that kind of logic you should never have house rules in a game with newbies because then they might expected all games to be run like that. 

I have had newbies come to my table who tried the game before and hated it because it was not fun because their experience had been one of frustration. They couldn't accomplish anything because they didn't have the skills the the DM thought they needed. Five minutes into combat they died and then got to sit and watch others play. 

With newbies I think it is more important to make those first sessions fun for them.


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## ValhallaGH (Oct 18, 2011)

Elf Witch said:


> I most likely would not because I don't enjoy a game where you die because the DM screwed up,



So, you only play with the Perfect Dungeon Master, who flawlessly remembers all details, always gets the math correct, and tracks hit points for all of the player characters *and* all of the non-player characters with an eye towards character development.

... Does he have any openings at one of his tables?  I'd really enjoy _playing_ in a fantasy game at some point.


In my experience, all DMs screw up.  ALL OF THEM.  I've seen characters randomly killed while the DM was hiding behind a screen, and I've seen DMs cheat while rolling in the open (mysterious, undeclared circumstance bonuses that mean the monster actually hits! or misses!), and none of it matters as long as everyone is having fun.  
I've handed villains to my players, after their characters died, and watched them turn a couple dozen minions into a legendary killing machine that took down the party in the most celebrated and storied Party Wipe I've heard of - the Lord High Marshal Douchery VonDouchbag (Warrior 2) ensured that the glorious tale of his rise to power was spread far and wide.

In short, every DM ever does something that would "most likely" cause you to never game with them.  Yet dozens of others game with (most of) these DMs regularly, and you are a regular at someone's table.  This indicates that you may want to revisit your Game Master criteria and once again consider your positions.  
I hope you keep having fun.


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## billd91 (Oct 18, 2011)

ValhallaGH said:


> So, you only play with the Perfect Dungeon Master, who flawlessly remembers all details, always gets the math correct, and tracks hit points for all of the player characters *and* all of the non-player characters with an eye towards character development.




She isn't implying anything like having an actually perfect DM, so it's probably time people got off the impulse to dog pile with what appear to be deliberate and snarky misinterpretations. She made it clear that she wasn't interested in a style of play that inhibits a DM from correcting a TPK-leading mistake he may have made. She feels that rolling with a screen and freedom to fudge as necessary support that.


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## Elf Witch (Oct 18, 2011)

ValhallaGH said:


> So, you only play with the Perfect Dungeon Master, who flawlessly remembers all details, always gets the math correct, and tracks hit points for all of the player characters *and* all of the non-player characters with an eye towards character development.
> 
> ... Does he have any openings at one of his tables?  I'd really enjoy _playing_ in a fantasy game at some point.
> 
> ...




First of all where did I ever say that I expect DMs to be perfect.?

I said that my experience in playing where  the DM didn't roll behind he screen was a disaster. The DM overpowered the encounter and in less then four rounds most of the party was either dead or dying. He admitted he made a mistake. But the game was over most of didn't relish the idea of just doing a reset and since death was permanent in that game there was no way to bring the characters back to life. 

That DM now always rolls behind a screen and he is not one to fudge just to save a character in normal circumstances. He makes it clear that he does not give players plot immunity and that if the dice say you die you die unless it was his mistake. 

I have said that I as a DM have made mistakes and one of the reasons I use a screen is so I can fix them without doing something cheesy like have the bad guys retreat for no reason. I also have a variety of players and some don't really enjoy a game with a lot of death it is not fun for them so sometimes I pull my punches on them. I have had players who don't want me to pull my punches and let them die if the dice says so. So again I roll behind a screen to be able to do both.  

I find your entire post to be really insulting.

I play with a lot of DMs and if you read my earlier posts I have said that I don't think there are a lot of bad DMs that most of the time it is a conflict in play styles. 

Nor have I said here that anyone who chooses not to use a screen is a bad DM. I have said that I prefer not to play in those style games. I am sure they are fine DMs and if their players are happy that is all that matters.

In the over 40 years I have been playing I have played with a lot of DMs and I can count on one hand those I would consider to be bad DMs.


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## ValhallaGH (Oct 18, 2011)

Never mind.


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## Nagol (Oct 18, 2011)

Elf Witch said:


> I am going to call bull on this. With that kind of logic you should never have house rules in a game with newbies because then they might expected all games to be run like that.
> 
> I have had newbies come to my table who tried the game before and hated it because it was not fun because their experience had been one of frustration. They couldn't accomplish anything because they didn't have the skills the the DM thought they needed. Five minutes into combat they died and then got to sit and watch others play.
> 
> With newbies I think it is more important to make those first sessions fun for them.





Ahem.  I deliberately called out that there is no need to run through minutae in the same frakking post.




			
				myself said:
			
		

> I'm not saying he should have exhaustively identified every variation he was going to use to a group without the background to understand the implications, either. Saying something along the lines of "Since you're new to this and this is going to be only a single session, it's going to be a lot more dramatic and action-filled than typical. OK?" probably would be enough to alert them that what they are experiencing is somewhat abnormal and give them some say if they want something else from the experience or further clarification.





If large structural elements are being changed, the group should be informed that what they're playing is outside the normal course for the game so as to make an informed decision to play and so as to make an informed impression around what was played after the fact.  At a one-off game, a new player should be confronted with items that substantially and materially affect game play overall so he can be informed choices as to sensible alternatives in the game world.

At a continuing campaign, all players regardless of past experience should be presented with a list of house rules so they can understand where variances will occur.  Does this mean new players and experienced players will face exactly the same hurdles and level of difficulty in the game world?  That depends on the social contract at the table.


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## Elf Witch (Oct 18, 2011)

Nagol said:


> Ahem.  I deliberately called out that there is no need to run through minutae in the same frakking post.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Yes you should explain that with experienced players it is part of the communication between player and DM on what style of game is going to be run.

And yes newbies should know that this is a house rule as opposed to RAW rule.

But does a newbie really need to have explained to him that you on the fly behind the screen did not actually give your npc hit points you just judged when it would be cool for the pc to kill them or you really rolled max damage and killed their pc in one blow but said you only rolled X amount.


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## The Shaman (Oct 18, 2011)

Nagol said:


> The dice rolled in combat are of minimal importance if the underlying mechanics like hit points exist only at the whim of the referee.
> 
> All other action resolution systems, like detecting secrets, skill use, etc. were adjudicated by whim.
> 
> ...



Worth repeating.


----------



## Nagol (Oct 18, 2011)

Elf Witch said:


> Yes you should explain that with experienced players it is part of the communication between player and DM on what style of game is going to be run.
> 
> And yes newbies should know that this is a house rule as opposed to RAW rule.
> 
> But does a newbie really need to have explained to him that you on the fly behind the screen did not actually give your npc hit points you just judged when it would be cool for the pc to kill them or you really rolled max damage and killed their pc in one blow but said you only rolled X amount.




Yes, for a few reasons -- especially because of the out-of-combat rather than the in-combat changes.

1) If they have an AWESOME time and decide to join a different group, they will immediately find their first experience does not match the play of the second group.  Without an understanding of the parameters, they are as likely as not to conclude that the second DM sucks compared to the first.

2) There is a subset of players that like their in-game accomplishments came because they are just that awesome at playing.  Giving that group of players auto-win buttons undermines their enjoyment and they feel cheated if they figure it out.  (I'm one of these).

3) It builds common expectations around what is possible and what is likely inside the game.  In an dramatic game, the PC may be able to jump 25 feet to clear the chasm as the behir charges close behind him.  A player may not expect that such a feat is even possible and won't try the stunt.  In fact, if the player has any inkling about the default assumptions, he may play much more cautiously than his compatriots because he doesn't understand the normal failure chances have been waived.  _The cautious character is effectively being punished for the player having expectations._

3) If they talk to someone else who has played the game under the default expectations, there will be a disconnect.  Neither will nuderstand why their experiences are so different.


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## The Shaman (Oct 18, 2011)

Elf Witch said:


> I most likely would not because I don't enjoy a game where you die because the DM screwed up . . .



And I don't enjoy a game where my character dies because the referee decided it was 'dramatically appropriate' to the 'story.'



Elf Witch said:


> . . . or it is just a stupid random encounter . . .



I can't speak to anyone else's campaigns, but in my games there are no "stupid random encounters." Random encounters are the expression of the living setting, and should be treated as such by the players and their characters.







Elf Witch said:


> . . . and you are rolling badly and the DM is rolling great.



It's a game. Luck happens.







Elf Witch said:


> It is so much fun to die on a meaningless encounter and now you get to sit for hours at the table because there is no way to get your character raised or bring in a new one.



That's crappy game management by the referee.







Elf Witch said:


> I don't play hack and slash I actually put a lot of thought in my character . . .





Letting the dice fall where they may doesn't make a game "hack and slash," nor does it preclude putting thought into your character.







Elf Witch said:


> . . .  and  while there have been times I have chosen to sacrifice my character for the party or in a big encounter I have died, dying a lot is not fun for me.



The fact that characters in roll-in-the-open games don't necessarily die "a lot" suggests that this is a player problem, not a rules problem.

Players whose characters die "a lot" in games without fudging, in my experience, may be poor tactical and strategic thinkers, or they may have a poor grasp of the game-genre.







Elf Witch said:


> The other players put a lot of thought in their characters as well and want a lot of role playing . . .





I "want a lot of role playing," too, and I don't need my character protected from the dice to do it, or get it from the players in the games I run.

This whole, "But we're SERIOUS roleplayers!" thing is incredibly tiresome.







Elf Witch said:


> . . . so they just don't have the mind set hey you look trust worthy join us. So if a character dies and does not get resurrected then the DM works with everyone to bring in a new character. It is not something done on the fly.



Bringing in a character on the fly doesn't need to involve 'insta-trust.'







Elf Witch said:


> Now I might consider playing in a roll in the open if there are things in place to help prevent death like action points or healing surges.



I've got no problem with this.







Elf Witch said:


> Also I need to know that the DM is willing to fix it if he is the one who screwed up the encounter.



I tend to design encounters such that there is an advantage to capturing the adventurers rather than killing them - ransom and slavery tend to be big in my game-worlds - or, in the case of predators, killing one character leads to trying to drag away a meal rather than killing the rest of the party.

Then again, I couldn't really give a red piss if encounters are balanced or not; if the adventurers are in over their heads, then they need to run like death was nipping at their heels, 'cause it probably is.







Elf Witch said:


> We also use the screen to hide certain rolls like spot checks, find traps, sense motive. In our games the DM rolls these not the players. We have found it adds to the game not to know if the reason you didn't spot a trap was because there is not one or you only rolled a 1.



I can completely understand this, but there are also other ways to maintain the 'fog of war' so that rolling behind a screen isn't necessary.


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## The Shaman (Oct 18, 2011)

pemerton said:


> Maybe I missed something in Bullgrit's post, but where is the evidence he did something that the group did not agree was acceptable?



The group was never given the opportunity to agree or disagree - that's the issue.

Ignorance may be bliss, but playing on someone's ignorance is sketchy. I don't believe the ends justify the means.







pemerton said:


> It's not enough to say that everyone agreed to play D&D, and hence any departure from the rules of D&D is a breach of the social contract.



I think if the players wanted to play _D&D_, then they reasonably expected to play _D&D_, not whatever [MENTION=31216]Bullgrit[/MENTION] decided was appropriate in the moment.







pemerton said:


> On the assumption that the new players don't actually _know_ what the rules of D&D are, then those rules don't form part of the social contract, and aren't something that they have agreed to.



Wow, pem, I couldn't agree even a scintilla less with that.







pemerton said:


> Nor are they something that they have dissented from. Presumably they have no view.



They have no view because they were not told that the game they were playing was quite different from the game they thought they were playing, the game they were told they were playing.

We must simply agree to disagree on this one.


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## Nagol (Oct 18, 2011)

The Shaman said:


> <snip>
> 
> Players whose characters die "a lot" in games without fudging, in my experience, may be poor tactical and strategic thinkers, or they may have a poor grasp of the game-genre.




I've seen a couple of other reasons for common death in addition to the ones above.
Players that don't care if they die or not; they love the stories they get when they improbably win.
Players that have different expectations as to the DM's role ("The DM would never throw a lich at us at this level! It must be an illusion or trick!" or "The DM won't kill us here! We're so close to the final confrontation!")


With regard to non-fudging and character death, I just wrapped my 7 year D&D campaign that went from 1st to 19th level.

Of the six players:
1 player had a single character and did not die once.
1 player had a single character and suffered a single death.
1 player had 2 characters and suffered a single death.
1 player had 2.5 characters (first replacement didn't work out after the first session of its play and was promptly retired so I'm counting it as a half) and suffered 3 deaths.
1 player had 4 characters and suffered 3 deaths.
1 player had 6 characters and suffered 6 deaths.


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## Elf Witch (Oct 18, 2011)

The Shaman said:


> And I don't enjoy a game where my character dies because the referee decided it was 'dramatically appropriate' to the 'story.'
> 
> I can't speak to anyone else's campaigns, but in my games there are no "stupid random encounters." Random encounters are the expression of the living setting, and should be treated as such by the players and their characters.It's a game. Luck happens.That's crappy game management by the referee.
> 
> ...




First of all I never said that fudging to kill a character is right. I would never do that as a DM. Well here is a  clarification I once as part of the story killed the PCs in a massive earthquake that destroyed their city. But they woke up on their god's plane of existence and were recruited for a war between the god and his enemy. They didn't lose a level or XP or really suffer any penalty.

I don't save a PC for story reasons (unless it is to stop a TPK) or to railroad a plot. But as I have said before I have fudged when I made a mistake or when I can see that having their PC killed is not going to be fun for the player like the one who had just had it raised. My players have told me they don't want to play in a game where a TPK can happen. 

I have played in a lot of games with random encounters where the DM just rolls them on a table. I lost my first PC to a random encounter ten minutes after I started my first game.  The DM rolled on a table and the first level party got strafed by a red dragon. I still don't think that was a fun encounter and is why I would never use a table. 

If it is part of the plot then it is not a random encounter. 

I never said that letting the dice fall where they may is always a hack and slash campaign but I have mainly encountered it with games that are more beer and pretzels and less story. A TPK in my experience can end a story campaign very fast especially if there is no way to raise any of the party. So since I want a heavy story campaign I try and avoid TPKs. But I am sure there are people who play story games without screens and people who play hack  and slash with screens. One thing I never assume is that my way is the only way to play.

Some players make bad decisions and get there PCs killed but I have seen players make all the right decisions and still have their PCs die because of the dice. The player I mentioned who had her character die and then be raised to die again if I hadn't fudged didn't do anything strategically bad. The first time she got hit by a fireball and failed her save and took massive damage followed by being critted by a raging barbarian. And then no one could get to her to stabilize her and  she could not make the roll to stabilize herself. The second time she almost died was because of failing a save for  for being paralyzed by undead then being hit by spell. When I rolled the damage for the spell I realized it would kill her outright and I could see how unhappy she was so I did less damage and brought her to 1 hit point instead.

I am not sure what you are trying to say with the serious roleplayer line. Yes my group are what you would call serious role players I guess because we like story continuity and things to happen for a reason as part of a plot.  When a new PC comes in we want more than you look trustworthy join us.That does not mean we expect to have plot immunity and never die or have bad things happen to our characters.

I run an organic world and my players know that there are things that are to powerful for them. So they know that there are things that sometimes they need to run from. That is not the same things as an encounter that you build for them to actually fight and then find out that it is to much of a challenge for them. When I DM I use verbal clues to help them know this. I also answer questions on knowledge rolls  so they have some idea about what they are facing. I made huge mistake in a published encounter I ran once that had a lot of undead in it and the party didn't have a cleric. I should have adjusted it for that. And by the time I realized what was going on they couldn't run. So I fudged some things on the fly I brought down how many hit points the undead had and I saved the one PC.


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## pemerton (Oct 18, 2011)

Nagol said:


> The dice rolled in combat are of minimal importance if the underlying mechanics like hit points exist only at the whim of the referee.



But that's not what Bullgrit said.

There was some discussion of this upthread, including the relationship between tweaking hit points and deciding that an NPC flees or surrenders. These sorts of decisions _don't_ make the dice rolled of minimal importance.

Also, for all we know, by changing hit points for "drama and excitement" Bullgrit meant that, when the PCs were winning a combat and delivered a hit that left a monster standing with 1 hp, Bullgrit treated the hit as a kill instead. This is not an uncommon practice - although it's not one I used - and it doesn't render the dice rolled in combat "of minimal impotance".



Nagol said:


> If I offer you X and provide you with Y, you may like Y and may in fact prefer my substitution over the original offer. It is fradulent of me to make the offer of X and then give you Y while telling you it's X.



But an offer to GM a game of D&D is obviously _not_ equivalent to an offer to run a game of Gygaxian/Pulsiferian D&D.

I mean, the most common versions of D&D currently played, as far as I can tell, are Pathfinder and 4e. Many Pathfinder players play adventure paths, which is not Gygaxian/Pulsiferian play. I think that many 4e players also play the game in a non-Gygaxian fashion. Indeed, in light of the DMG and DMG 2 for 4e, I think the default style for 4e is, if anything, closer to how Bullgrit ran his game than to the Gygaxian/Pulsiferian version.

And "playing D&D" has _never_ meant, by default, playing Gygaxian/Pulsiferian D&D. The game has been played in myriad styles ever since its publication.



Nagol said:


> If they have an AWESOME time and decide to join a different group, they will immediately find their first experience does not match the play of the second group.  Without an understanding of the parameters, they are as likely as not to conclude that the second DM sucks compared to the first.



And what would be wrong with that?



Nagol said:


> There is a subset of players that like their in-game accomplishments came because they are just that awesome at playing.  Giving that group of players auto-win buttons undermines their enjoyment and they feel cheated if they figure it out.  (I'm one of these).



And equally there are players who have ZERO interest in Gygaxian/Pulsiferian play. I am one of those. Maybe Bullgrit's players were also among those.

Just because people agree to play D&D, _does not mean_ that they have agreed to play Gygaxian D&D.



Nagol said:


> In an dramatic game, the PC may be able to jump 25 feet to clear the chasm as the behir charges close behind him.  A player may not expect that such a feat is even possible and won't try the stunt.  In fact, if the player has any inkling about the default assumptions, he may play much more cautiously than his compatriots because he doesn't understand the normal failure chances have been waived.  _The cautious character is effectively being punished for the player having expectations._



And vice versa for the dramatic player in a Gygaxian game. In the absence of any actual evidence that any of Bullgrit's actual players were "punished" in this way, what excatly is the problem?



Nagol said:


> If they talk to someone else who has played the game under the default expectations, there will be a disconnect.  Neither will nuderstand why their experiences are so different.



Well, that happens every day on this messageboard. I've been told, for example, that because I run a game influenced by th GMing style of games like BW and HQ, and (in general approach if not particular tone) by Forge contributers like Vinent Baker and Paul Czege, that I'm not playing a "real" RPG, or that I'm storytelling rather than gaming, or that I'm running a railroad (which is a characerisation of my game that I regard as absurd).

I'm not obliged to run my game according to Gygaxian precepts just so that others, who aren't familiar with a broader range of RPG styles, can understand my experience, or my players' experiences. One of my players, who has only ever played in my game, has expressed surprise when I've told him that some posters on ENworld think it is inappropriat for players to have the narrative authority to specify features of the gameworld that pertain to their PCs. But he's never suggested that I've done him a disservice by giving him a play experience that differs from some hypothesised ENworld "default".

I think all of the above applies, mutatis mutandis, to Bullgrit and Bullgrit's players.


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## kitsune9 (Oct 19, 2011)

I know I've ranted this in other threads, so here's my list of "bad DM". Before I get into the list is that it's really more about personal taste than true attributes of what makes for a bad DM. There are many players who actually quite enjoy the play styles that would make me want to go to prison for capital murder.  Ultimately, if your players are having fun at your games, then whatever you're doing makes you a "good DM".

1. Lack of preparation. I don't like DM's who make up adventures from pulling them out of their butt. Too many situations of where the game gets bogged down to negotiating for customizing armor, exploring a dungeon with no monsters, DM doesn't want to run combats, and adventures have no plot and everything about the campaign is completely random or nonsensical. 

2. "Fast and loose". DM doesn't want to play the RAW game because he's wants to do things fast and loose which means he's been too lazy to sit down and read the rulebook to learn how to play the game. DM's like this make erratic judgment calls, every decision the player wants to make is not confidently judged by the mechanics because he has to run it by the DM first to see if the action is allowable at the moment before determining if a die will be needed for success. My example for this was at a con game where the admitted he skimmed the rules (i.e. he didn't read a word). When a combat broke out, he said the monsters were going first (there was no suprise, he just said they were). He called out segments (we were playing 3.0), and he didn't allow a player's sneak attack, flanking, no AoO's, and multiple attacks.

3. Kewl Homebrew Rulz. Every DM flirts with some form of homebrew rules. I like to create some very campaign specific ones myself to add to the tone and flavor of the game, but they are very very few and mostly minor. But I won't rewrite Pathfinder. I played in two different games where one DM essentially rewrote how combat works in D&D and claimed that these rules "should be in the next edition". He even called his ruleset "Rules That Don't Suck!" They did. Another DM was a lady who basically created her own fantasy rpg; however, the rules were a confusing mishmash of poorly written English and incomplete concepts. What was sad about that game was this lady was represented all three points here. Yuck.


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## Hussar (Oct 19, 2011)

Elf Witch said:


> When people say I don't want my DM to roll behind the screen because I don't want him to fudge that is a trust issue. Because you don't trust him not to fudge.
> 
> There are lot of reasons a DM uses a screen besides fudging  he may use it for the info on it or to hide his notes or hide certain rolls that have nothing to do with combat.
> 
> ...




Oh, I have no problem if you want to play behind the screen.  I just don't see the need for it personally.  If you're not going to fudge, then why roll behind the screen?  The only reason for the DM to hide rolls is to fudge rolls.

I don't enjoy games where the die rolls are fudged.  It's not a trust issue at all.  I KNOW that the DM is going to fudge hidden rolls.  That's the whole point of hiding rolls (other than maybe rolls where knowing the result ruins play - such as searching for traps).  

And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.  Not my preferred style of play, but, certainly one I've seen done and seen done well.  On purely practical level, I roll in the open because it's faster.  The players know automatically if something is a success or not, so, they can move on without the step of me telling them anything, by and large.  

It tends to keep the pace of the game a bit higher, again, IMO.  Which, again, IMO, is a good thing.


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## Elf Witch (Oct 19, 2011)

Hussar said:


> Oh, I have no problem if you want to play behind the screen.  I just don't see the need for it personally.  If you're not going to fudge, then why roll behind the screen?  The only reason for the DM to hide rolls is to fudge rolls.




That is what bugs me right there this comment. Because there are reasons to roll behind a screen other then fudging. But you see that is the lack of trust I am talking about. 

I keep a screen up to hide my notes and for quick reference of certain rules. For me to roll in the open means I have to stand up every time we are in combat. I broke my back in December and that is to painful for me. 

My roommate who does not fudge rolls behind the screen because she finds it more convenient  not to have to move her stuff to make room she also likes to keep certain rolls on skill checks secret from the players. So for her to roll combat rolls in the open would mean moving her stuff and she finds that to much work. 

Anyway I think we have gone around in circles on this topic. I don't have an issue with people who want to roll in the open if that is how the group wants to play, but it is the same for people who do want to roll behind the screen.


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## Summer-Knight925 (Oct 19, 2011)

Fudging dice is...for me...not really a problem, the few times I do it are not to hurt or aid the party but because i didn't like the random treasure we got or it made no sense for it to be there (Why is there a flying broom in the sunken temple?)

I do; however, do it out of combat, but more or less fudge the DC for the actual roll, like.....for a diplomacy check, if the guy is not quite friendly but not indifferent, i go inbetween, I don't consider it fudging. 
Or if the PCs need to find the map on a guy and they say "we search him" and don't make search checks (which is fine with me) then I say "you found a map!"

However, changing the dice is cheating. The DM may be all powerful, but cheating is still cheating. If you don't let the dice lie, why not just pick the number?


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## Hussar (Oct 19, 2011)

Elf Witch - ah, well, broken back is certainly a pretty decent reason.    Note, I didn't say anything about not playing with a DM's screen.  I got no problem with that.  

And, you're bringing up fairly corner case examples.  I don't know where your friend plays that she'd have to "move stuff" in order to roll in the open.  I mean, how hard is it to lay your DM's screen down?

Then again, at the tabletop, we usually played standing up a lot as well because we used minis.

Now, I would like to curse the heck out of the guy who thinks it's great to roll like he's shooting craps and play ten pin bowling with a d20 and my nicely painted figs at the same time.  GRRR.  That guy needs to be kicked in the dice bag.


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## The Shaman (Oct 19, 2011)

Summer-Knight925 said:


> Fudging dice is...for me...not really a problem, the few times I do it are not to hurt or aid the party but because i didn't like the random treasure we got or it made no sense for it to be there (Why is there a flying broom in the sunken temple?)



And that's exactly why I don't like fudging the dice: why IS there a flying broom in the sunken temple? What's its story? Who brought it there, and when, and why? Why was it left there?

This is a part of what makes roleplaying games a unique entertainment for me.


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## The Shaman (Oct 19, 2011)

Hussar said:


> That guy needs to be kicked in the dice bag.


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## pemerton (Oct 19, 2011)

The Shaman said:


> And that's exactly why I don't like fudging the dice: why IS there a flying broom in the sunken temple? What's its story? Who brought it there, and when, and why? Why was it left there?
> 
> This is a part of what makes roleplaying games a unique entertainment for me.



I find the way you play, and use the random rolls to drive story, "coincidences", etc, an interesting one. I'm sure I could enjoy it, too, although it's quite a way from my default approach.

But I don't think it's inherent in what it means to play D&D, nor part of the implicit social contract when someone says "play D&D". The last few times I played in an AD&D campaign the GMs were definitely not using the random rolls in the way that Gygaxian norms would dictate, but even when from time to time those games weren't all that good I wouldn't say there was any breach of social contract. D&D has always been a pretty big tent, and nothing that Bullgrit has described seems to me to be stepping out of it.


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## Elf Witch (Oct 19, 2011)

Summer-Knight925 said:


> However, changing the dice is cheating. The DM may be all powerful, but cheating is still cheating. If you don't let the dice lie, why not just pick the number?




Not to sound like a broken record but it is not cheating if the group agrees that it is okay for the DM to fudge if they feel it is necessary. 

It is kind of offensive to me to be basically labeled a cheater for running a game the way my players and I have agreed on.

Not even the DMGs say don't ever fudge. They advise that if you are going to do it do it sparingly and to get a consensus from your players.

Now if your players expect the dice roll to always stand no matter the circumstances then yes and a DM does not then that is cheating.


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## Elf Witch (Oct 19, 2011)

Hussar said:


> Elf Witch - ah, well, broken back is certainly a pretty decent reason.    Note, I didn't say anything about not playing with a DM's screen.  I got no problem with that.
> 
> And, you're bringing up fairly corner case examples.  I don't know where your friend plays that she'd have to "move stuff" in order to roll in the open.  I mean, how hard is it to lay your DM's screen down?
> 
> ...




Where she runs her game we don't have access to a table so we all use TV trays. We don't use minis either because we don't have the room. She has a map on graph paper and we pass it around it get an idea of the layout. It is kind of a pain but you got adapt to your situation. 

I am lucky my game is played where we do have a table and a battlemat. Though I can't draw on it because I can't bend so I have a DMs helper who draws on it from my sketch on graph paper.

And we have a player who uses these gigantic dice that have been known to take out everything in its path. It reminds one of the giant round stone in the first Indiana Jones movie. 


Before I hurt my back I would sometimes roll some things in the open  for dramatic effect.

I know my examples are not common but I just wanted to say that yes there are reasons besides fudging to roll behind a screen.


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## Summer-Knight925 (Oct 19, 2011)

The Shaman said:


> And that's exactly why I don't like fudging the dice: why IS there a flying broom in the sunken temple? What's its story? Who brought it there, and when, and why? Why was it left there?
> 
> This is a part of what makes roleplaying games a unique entertainment for me.




It was a bad example, and sure it adds flavor and all, but no one in the group would want a flying broom, I know my players, theyd just sell it.

Something else I tend to be against is the large magic market, makes finding things kind of unfun, at least IMO


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## RedTonic (Oct 21, 2011)

I, personally, hate inconsistency and a DM who either doesn't make an effort to make their expectations known/find out the players' expectations, or who smiles and nods when players communicate those expectations, but then makes no effort to meet those expectations halfway. 

I don't like rules to change on the fly; there are always cases where the extant ruleset don't quite fit, and that's totally fine--but halfway through the fifth level, don't decide that a nat 1 attack roll means someone has to roll against your critical fumbles table and end up sterilized or something equally ridiculous.

The type of DM who's the self-dubbed smartest guy in the room also makes me batty(-ier than usual), especially when they feel the need to assert their superiority by crushing the party. The DM holds all the cards. It's not a demonstration of prowess to kill your players' PCs in D&D, Pathfinder, and related systems. It's just annoying.

In short, jerks. Don't play with jerks...


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