Examples of bad DM practices that everyone thinks are good

>>54070535
>Worst case scenario: a player actually knows where your picture comes from.
>not doing that on purpose
>not taking advantage of their opinions and attitudes towards various characters and works in order to subtly trick them into making unconscious assumptions that are incorrect, but reasonable for their characters to have

>>54070670
Sure, but the odds of someone being good enough at DMing to take advantage of that? Close to zero.

Probably better if you just don't use art, or only use art from one specific work that matches what you're trying to do.

>>54070535
I think you might be autistic, anon. Not in the meme way, but you might actually have a condition.

>>54070535
>Using music at all
Basically the same thing OP said, plus it's generally shitty and obnoxious.

>>54070670
That's trolling, hopefully you're there to entertain, not to troll.

>>54070535
>I don't need to prepare, I'll just slap it together because I'm a MASTER IMPROVISER

Good improvisation is like fitting together missing pieces of a puzzle; almost impossible if you're just doing it on the fly and often a result of preparing a world or at least a subset of it beforehand so you have a good idea of what fits.

You might be "lucky" enough to have bad players who don't notice, but if you have a crew that actually pays attention and likes consistent worlds, they will notice and they will be disappointed.

>>54070718
The problem with music is that a lot of people have strong tastes. For instance, I want to gag when I hear your typical folkie minstrel kind of music, which is exactly the kind that most DM's use.

>>54070766
Improvisation is fine for one shot games that tell a short and simple story with no side quests.

>>54070718
I think music should be used to set the mood in specific situations. Which means using it sparingly.

That being said, my current GM has a song ready for every tavern and an a portrait for every minor NPC douche we meet. Which diminishes the potential and just makes both the music and the artwork just annoying. One of the worst things for immersion is the GM just saying "you encounter this" and showing a picture.

>>54070670
I've done stuff like that a few times to get characters to overlook certain aspects of NPC's. I'll describe them fully and then stick to the first meme they blurt out keeping in mind what they actually are all the while my players get to live in their meme dream.

>>54070535

>"The more options you have the better the game is, so an infinite sandbox is a perfect game."

>>54070766
>if someone says one thing is bad, they MUST support the absolute opposite

I really hate this retarded attitude. Because no, nigger, not using pictures isn't the same as not preparing. Personally, I think it's lazy to use pictures. Unless you're working with a beamer, a huge-ass TV, or over the internet, you have to stop the flow of the game to show pictures. In fact, even with those tools you probably will stop the flow of the game.

And it's all for something that doesn't really add anything to what you're doing. My narrative experience doesn't get better when instead of describing the character you show me a picture. In fact, use of language can be crucial in setting a scene. I could show you a picture of an Elven girl with red hair, or I could describe her, tell you what she's doing. And with that description she might be a tavern wench or the princess of the kingdom. Or I might, in fact, drop a hint that she's the princess pretending to be a tavern wench. If I stop the flow of the game to show you a picture, and then pick back up again, that momentum is lost.

I'd use pictures more as a background thing. And I'd much rather roll out a good map than a picture of some NPC.

Rolling out in the open.

There's a reason why most games either have a screen or recommend that you keep rolls hidden, not only does it help to stifle metagaming (oh, the DM rolled a 7 but the Fighter's AC is 16, that means it has a +9 to its attack roll) but it also helps you to dial back on the encounter if you notice that things are becoming either too hard or too easy for your party to deal with.

Nothing takes the wind out of the party's sails than gearing up for an epic adventure of swords and sorcery, only to get shat on during the first encounter of the first session just because nobody rolled high enough while the monsters couldn't roll anything lower than a 15 at most.

>inb4 fucking casual scrub plz go and stay go!
If you want to roll craps for four hours, go to a casino where there's at least a chance for you to earn dosh in the process, not in a tabletop game where the game-feel is just as important as the game-play.

>>54075344
What the fuck are you talking about? I never said anything about using pictures or not. I'm bringing up my own notion of " Examples of bad DM practices that everyone thinks are good" ; and I'm talking about the no prep, no notes, no nothing sort of "improv masters" that inevitably make the same bland generic crap game.

>>54075403
This.

Besides, it can be a good tool to mess with your players heads. If they're getting a little too chatty or distracted just start rolling a few dice behind the screen and everyone shuts up, thinking they're about to get smacked by something.

>>54070535
Ignoring/Adding/Altering the rules in any capacity

Yeah, yeah, muh Rule 0, but the reality is that even if you CAN change the rules of the game, it's not the same as you SHOULD change the rules of the game. Even if the rules are some of the worst shit imaginable, they're still rules that were written, edited, and playtested by individuals who are game designers by trade and (should) know how the game works way more than you do, especially if you're someone who doesn't even read the books that you're using.

Anything that you do in the process of altering the rules has a butterfly effect on how the rest of the game works. Sometimes it's negligible enough to where you can get away with it but most times, you'll inadvertently fuck up the balance because the game was designed with certain things in mind and now certain options weaker/stronger due to how the changes interact with other aspects of the game.

If you must alter the rules, at least playtest it a few weeks prior.

>>54075403
>fudging rolls
>ever

lol enjoy your cuck game

>>54076355

This. Players who don't prepare a quick emergency exit strategy in advance in case things go bad deserve to have their characters die.

>b-b-b-b-but muh fun

I happen to find games without coddling and pandering to be more fun than playing something from the "lol looks like u win agen guys XDDD" school of GMing.

>>54075711
This has to be b8.

>>54070535
I pretty much only use pictures for scenery. But this is pretty dumb. Might as well say:
>Using miniatures from other games in your adventure.
>It was created with a different purpose in mind, so you'll end up with a bunch of extremely incohesive pictures that kill the immersion.

>>54076513

Some people are genuinely this stupid though.

>>54076513
I see his point even if I don't fully agree. 95% of homerules are shittier than any system could ever hope to be. The other 5% are community fixes introduced by common sense.

>>54076554
>Using miniatures from other games in your adventure.
>It was created with a different purpose in mind, so you'll end up with a bunch of extremely incohesive pictures that kill the immersion.
But this is true though. Leave miniatures to wargames.

>>54076355
>>54076441
Going on about "muh hardcore strats" in a tabletop game is like bragging about your high score in a single-player console game with no online leaderboard.

It literally doesn't matter, especially when that's not the focus on the game in most cases.

>>54076710
>Leave miniatures to wargames
No pls.

I want to play a game. If you want to use abstracted freeform role play with "zones" be my guest.

>>54076513
>>54076591
There's a reason why 3.PF still gets played in spite of its flaws while most houserules are made to the detriment to the table as a whole.

One is a set of rules made by professionals with years of experience under their belt while the other is usually a hodgepodge of random rules that may or may not even work as intended, usually to the detriment of the table as a whole.

If you think I'm stupid for trusting game designers over mark amateurs with more courage than restraint, I don't know what to tell you but I hope you never have to deal with a DM who thinks it's their duty to treat the rules as a suggestion rather than a guideline.

>>54076896
Most game designers are mark amateurs with more courage than restraint. Even grognards like Gygax are notorious for their shitty game design.

The fact of the matter is very few game systems have anything like a concept of balance. And since they're not meant to be competitive no more than an handful get actual system breaking game testing.

>but I hope you never have to deal with a DM who thinks it's their duty to treat the rules as a suggestion rather than a guideline.
Pretty much perma GM. As long as the houserules were laid out ahead of time, I don't see a real problem.

>>54075403
>There's a reason why most games either have a screen
So you can read notes that your players can't read.

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>>54075711
>I can't into systems analysis and neither should you

>>54076872
Miniatures are functional, but they sometimes give you a too perfect overview of the situation, that a character wouldn't have if he was there looking in first person, so just describing can have a benefit there.
Figures behind a dm screen to keep track of things could work tho

>>54076872
If you're using a heavily armoured knight with a sword to represent a fighter in leather armour with a mace, you might as well use an acorn. There's a reason why wargamers fap to WYSIWYG.

>>54071600
I improv mostly when i give my players some open exploration sessions and i have no idea what they want to do. Like they just got i to a new city. How am i supposed to guess that one of the players wants to steal a peice of steak?

>>54077134
If you ended up in this situation it means that you fucked up

>>54077041
>So you can read notes that your players can't read.
and to prevent the players from gaining meta-info based off of what the DM rolled vs. a target number. That and even Gygax realized that making a game fundamentally dependent on RNG was not the way to go when the focus was more on looting dungeons without dying.

You think it's a coincidence that once 3.PF made the game more numbers heavy, the focus shifted towards squeezing out as many modifiers as you could rather than on the narrative that's happening in front of you?

>>54077054
Quite the contrary, I understand how game design works but I also understand that any work that I put towards house rules would be better spent on designing my own game, rather than trying to piggyback off of an established system that already has rules that work for its purposes.

>>54077154
I fucked up? I dont like railroaded games. Is that wrong? Probably, but ill have you know im a terrible DM.

>>54076896
>it's popular so it must be good
No, fuck no. Stop this shit. It's not true for anything.
3.PF does not still gets played because of good game design.

>>54077175
>and
no

>>54076981
The thing is, those game designers were also paid to produce a product and usually have QA/QC on the helm, as well as months/years of playtesting, to make sure that shit doesn't get too shitty as far as spelling/grammer/balance is concerned.

With random no-name fa/tg/uy with more courage than restraint, he can shit out a poorly written houserule that breaks five rules in the process of "fixing" one and there's nothing from stopping him from using that in his campaigns so long as he has no competition and nobody in the party thinks to leave.

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>>54070535
This just seems like a broader complaint in the realm of 'my character pretty much looks like this.'

>>54077236
For people who want to fiddle around with the rules and bang out an optimized character, I'd argue that it's the best in the market, even if you'd need system mastery to figure out which options are good and which ones are garbage.

Hell, most of the issues with 3.PF come about because most of the people at the table aren't on the same page, not necessarily because the system itself. Of course, this doesn't make the system flawless but I don't see why 3.PF is necessarily a bad game just because most of the fanbase doesn't actually understand how the game is supposed to be played.

>>54071890
My DM made some good use of music in the last campaign we ran.

It was a detective noir style game in a cyberpunk setting. We had a Laserhawk album playing in the background for the game. High enough where it was audible, but kept low enough where it wouldn't be anything more than background noise to help the mood.

Ended up being a pretty great game regardless.

>>54077242
yes

>>54077317
>For people who want to fiddle around with the rules and bang out an optimized character, I'd argue that it's the best in the market
Yes, the rules bloat is very high, so you can fiddle a lot with the rules. It doesn't mean it's a good thing. You can fiddle with the rules and try to build a character with other games too, and I often have more fun with them than I did with 3.PF, because I'm not very limited in my options because most of the thing are good. Or, if you don't have levels, if you take some thing just for the fluff it's not a big deal, you will catch up at one point.

>Hell, most of the issues with 3.PF come about because most of the people at the table aren't on the same page
I heavily disagree. The tier system isn't a game design feature. It's a failure of game design.

I'll stop now, because this argument is way too old, and most of the people who argue good thing about 3.PF won't change their minds anyway.

>>54077388
I've never claimed that 3.PF wasn't a flawed game, I'm just saying that a lot of nuances that makes it playable by a sizable portion of the community tend to get ignored because they don't understand how the game is meant to be played.

Like your statement here
>The tier system isn't a game design feature. It's a failure of game design.
3.PF was designed in a way where experienced players knew which options were good and which options were bad. It's no different than having to look up frame data for a fighting game or looking up errata for a specific card in something like MtG.

3.PF was built with this notion in mind and in the current age where all the guesswork is removed, there's really no reason why 3.PF isn't an enjoyable game to those who enjoy building optimized characters.

I understand if you don't want to continue this discussion though, because it's clear that you're unwilling to even consider an opposed view point as being even partially correct.

Shame too.

>>54070535
ITT bad player practices
How about develop an imagination? Maybe you should stick to /v/

>>54077473
>because it's clear that you're unwilling to even consider an opposed view point as being even partially correct.
Stop your bullshit. It will be the same old shit like every fucking time it's brought up. Every argument you will make have been made, and I read them already. The games have been out for years.

And like clockwork, I already read your shit about the game being designed for system mastery and errata.
And it doesn't change a thing. The tier system is still bad, the book doesn't say it exist, it fucks with new players, and it fucks with old one too, because you are very limited in your options, even with an enormous amount of books.

And even if it was true, saying that it was "designed for it" doesn't means it's good game design.

>>54077570
>The tier system is still bad, the book doesn't say it exist, it fucks with new players, and it fucks with old one too, because you are very limited in your options, even with an enormous amount of books.
Okay, not every option is designed to be useful and even in games where optimization isn't the main focus, certain options will always be better than others.

This wraps around to what I said about everyone not being on the same page, because in a party where optimization doesn't matter, there's nothing wrong with playing a trip fighter or a grapple monk.

1/2

>>54077680
>not every option is designed to be useful and even in games where optimization isn't the main focus, certain options will always be better than others.
An option you offer should always be good in a certain context.
A grapple option shouldn't be that good when you fight a big slime, but should be useful when you want to grapple. If using that option is strictly worse than attacking in any case, or is worse than a ton of option, it's badly designed.

This is not about optimization, it's about balance. It's not the same thing at all. Even in a party where no one care about optimization, if the fighter guy is worse at fighting than everyone else, it's badly designed. The game say something, but doesn't deliver.

And in a party where the only thing that matters is roleplay, then 3.PF is simply not the game for that. You can do it well, but you can do it well with ANY game as long as you have good roleplayers.

And as I said, the SAME OLD SHIT. It's nothing new under the sun, it doesn't bring mind blowing argument to the table that will change everyone's mind, and anything I say won't change yours too. It's already boring.

>>54077570
2/2
>And even if it was true, saying that it was "designed for it" doesn't means it's good game design.
I don't think you understand how game design is supposed to work.

Let's look at Castlevania on the NES for example, a lot of the challenge comes from the fact that there's a delay in your whip and you're committed to a jump arc since you're supposed to use sub-items like the ax or the cross to hit certain enemies over your whip since it was so clunky to use against difficult enemies.

When you take these aspects away, you end up with Castlevania 4, where now, there's no reason to ever grab a sub-item because your whip IS the best weapon in the game.

So getting back to 3.PF again, the game was designed to be a game that focused on optimization. Just because you don't enjoy this aspect of the game doesn't necessarily mean it's bad, just that it's not to your personal tastes, which is fine, just don't shit on people who do find these aspects enjoyable.

>>54075711

I don't mind when people change the rules as long as they're up front about it. What I do mind is when they change the rules, stuff goes to shit, and they try to claim that it's the system's fault.

>>54077748
>Even in a party where no one care about optimization, if the fighter guy is worse at fighting than everyone else, it's badly designed.
From my understanding, the Fighter is only bad when compared against classes like the Wizard, Druid, or Cleric. In a party where nobody is optimized, I don't see what necessarily holds them back in comparison to other non-mage classes, especially in a group where everyone else in the party are around the same tier.

Also, I'm confused by something in your post, you say...
>And in a party where the only thing that matters is roleplay, then 3.PF is simply not the game for that.
but then you follow it up with...
>You can do it well, but you can do it well with ANY game as long as you have good roleplayers.
so what point where you trying to make here?

>>54077762
>I don't think you understand how game design is supposed to work.
Oh fucking please.

And again, "it's designed for optimization, I swear!"
It's badly designed. The imbalance are all over the place, you have option made for a specific situation that are just bad in comparison of others. A fighter can feel completely irrelevant because every spellcaster in the party does a better job at fighting than he does.
"He can always role play, it's not a big deal!" Yeah, like in every fucking rpg in history. It's kinda the point of rpg.

I don't enjoy this aspect of the game because it's BADLY DESIGNED. Not because "it's not my personal tastes", I like optimization a lot, in game where it won't make the entire party irrelevant.

>>54077847
>From my understanding, the Fighter is only bad when compared against classes like the Wizard, Druid, or Cleric
You're joking? He's a tier 4 at best. That means he's worse than at least 30 CLASSES. Yes, 30.

If by "a party where nobody is optimized" you means "a party where everyone pick a classes in the same tier" then you're already playing around the system. The tier list was made by players. It doesn't exist in the books, and nobody tell you it exist.

Saying that the community "fixed it" because of E6 or anything like that is not a credit to your competence in game design, not at all. That's like saying that modders made your game good, so it was good from the very beginning.

>so what point where you trying to make here?
You cannot say "well, even if the fighter is irrelevant, optimization doesn't matter, so nobody cares and he can always roleplay!" because it's true for any game.

>>54077934
>A fighter can feel completely irrelevant because every spellcaster in the party does a better job at fighting than he does.
And that problem stems from not everyone in the party being on the same page. In the current year, there's plenty of literature available to make it so you know that a Fighter and Wizard are clearly not meant to be within the same party.
>Not because "it's not my personal tastes", I like optimization a lot, in game where it won't make the entire party irrelevant.
If the party is such that most of them are irrelavant, that's more the fault of the DM than the system, much like how playing a human in a party of Vampires in WoD is a bad idea in several ways, yet for some reason it's the system's fault because the GM didn't put his foot down and keep everyone on the same amount of leash?

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>>54070718
tfw you give your npcs theme songs to help establish their character, and now you're worried the party will just think it's dumb and turn it off.
why must I do this to myself.

>>54070535
>Not having a board full of poorly photoshopped, ridiculous, but accurate illustrations for characters

>>54077934
>The tier list was made by players. It doesn't exist in the books, and nobody tell you it exist.
Okay, there are plenty of games where relevant details are hidden from the player, it doesn't mean that, say, fighting games are bad because frame data isn't always something that's available for the players to see or how a lot of traps in the Souls games are designed to fuck you over the first time you play the game.

Also, there are plenty of communities available to tell you about things like the tier list or E6, hell, I found out about both of those things just by lurking in 3.PF hate threads and seeing them being referenced throughout the thread.
>You cannot say "well, even if the fighter is irrelevant, optimization doesn't matter, so nobody cares and he can always roleplay!" because it's true for any game.
That wasn't what I was saying though, so obviously you're mistaken.

>>54078015
>And that problem stems from not everyone in the party being on the same page
That problems sterns from bad game design. For fuck sake, they use levels! The game even show you that level is a quantifier of power by saying that if you play X monstrous races then you start at Y level because you have extra features.

And then it doesn't respect that at all. Two classes with the same level can be in another league entirely. That's not good game design. They could have used another system than level, but they did not.

Yes, in the current year, players have find way to work around the flaw of the game. Congrats players. That doesn't mean the game designers did a good job.

>If the party is such that most of them are irrelavant, that's more the fault of the DM than the system
No. If the GM has to fix the game and to warn new players or old players that X is bad or that they shouldn't do that, the game is the problem.
If this was on purpose, then it should be specified in the game book. You should have a paragraph with "Beware, this option doesn't work with this other option! Beware, this class represent a mortal, and this class represent a demigod!"

It's not the case.

>Okay, there are plenty of games where relevant details are hidden from the player
And it doesn't mean that it's good to do it in roleplay game. Hidden data in videogame that use it are put in the game because it's supposed to enhance the experience.

It does not enhance the experience in roleplay game. Quite the opposite. I saw a lot of newbies wanting to quit the game after they learned the hard way that the game needed a lot of game mastery.

>That wasn't what I was saying though, so obviously you're mistaken.
I was getting ahead of you, because it's as I said, the same old argument.

>Also, there are plenty of communities available to tell you about things like the tier list or E6
Having a great community does not mean you are a great game designer.

>>54078124
> I saw a lot of newbies wanting to quit the game after they learned the hard way that the game needed a lot of game mastery.
And I'm gonna get ahead of you there too.
Hidden data does not enhance the experience in roleplay game, at all. It does in videogames, even if newbies quit because of it. It's a different situation, and you can't use principles of videogame design in tabletop game design.

>>54078032
Don't worry about it Anon; either they click on it, like it, and enjoy themselves or they don't and just click away. No harm done and you might have shown someone a song they thought was cool.

>>54070724
>He thinks there is a difference

>>54078124
>Yes, in the current year, players have find way to work around the flaw of the game. Congrats players. That doesn't mean the game designers did a good job.
If the rules were as horrible as you claim, something like a tier list or E6 wouldn't work as well as it does.
>If the GM has to fix the game and to warn new players or old players that X is bad or that they shouldn't do that, the game is the problem.
What is GURPS?
>Quite the opposite. I saw a lot of newbies wanting to quit the game after they learned the hard way that the game needed a lot of game mastery.
And that's no different than any other game where enjoyment is achieved through effort.
>Having a great community does not mean you are a great game designer.
If I wasn't a great game designer then I wouldn't have a community.

>>54078224
>If the rules were as horrible as you claim
I never claimed they were the most horrible thing to have come to life. I merely said they were badly designed and the game wasn't popular because of it's rules.

>What is GURPS?
A good game with occasional flaws, but where my newbies can make a functional character without me worrying. Bad example.
>And that's no different than any other game where enjoyment is achieved through effort.
And I knew you will go with that. It is, because it's a roleplaying game. It's not a strategy game, or a wargame, or a videogame. You can like that you made a shitty character at first and you have to make a new one because you learn the system, but the game design shouldn't be based around it. It's not a videogame. You can't use the same mindest.
>If I wasn't a great game designer then I wouldn't have a community.
Oh yes, and McDonalds make great good, Marvel movies are stellar, and Rihanna make the greatest music of all.
Popularity doesn't mean quality.

>>54078272
>A good game with occasional flaws, but where my newbies can make a functional character without me worrying. Bad example.
Without a GM there to tell the party what's available to use, you can end up in the same situation that you're using as a mark against 3.PF. Yet somehow, GURPS gets a pass because you personally enjoy it?
>Popularity doesn't mean quality.
At the same time, the thing wouldn't be popular at all if it didn't have an audience who didn't enjoy it. It doesn't mean that they're flawless but it also doesn't mean that they're incredibly flawed either.

It just sounds like you don't enjoy that aspect of 3.PF and rather than understanding why it's designed the way that it is, you'd rather claim that it's badly designed and feigning acceptance when someone gives you a dissenting opinion.

>>54078408
>Without a GM there to tell the party what's available to use
What? It's a wildly different issue. GURPS is a generic system. Of course you need to tell the group what book to use. D&D is NOT a generic system. It doesn't get a pass because nobody in the books even hint that you have to use tiers or special rules that the community made to play it "correctly".

>At the same time, the thing wouldn't be popular at all if it didn't have an audience who didn't enjoy it.
Yeah, that's why I never said that people didn't enjoy it. I said it wasn't popular because it was a good game.

It just sounds like you want to twist what I say to paint me like a big hater of 3.PF that shit all over the playerbase when I never said something even approaching it.
I rather claim it's badly designed because it's what I see, and you have made no compelling argument for it. I can too claim you don't want to listen and hear that the game is badly designed.

So, in the end, same old argument. A big waste of time. You end by saying that "it's popular so it's good" that "I don't get it" and "I don't want to get it"

I surely wasted a fucking hour discussing about this shit because "I don't want to understand" or some shit.

You didn't care at all about what I said, and you won't remember it the next day. What a great and constructive discussion. You even accused me of not understanding game design, saying the game is horrible, and that I was unwilling to even hear your arguments!

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>>54077309
> Tfw taki is one of your strongest characters but she's always wearing dumb leotards and shit.

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>>54079112
No, THIS feel!

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>>54070535
>Examples of bad DM practices that everyone thinks are good

Here's one that /tg/ actively encourages:

Total and complete player agency is ALWAYS a good thing. A good DM ALWAYS allows a player the complete freedom to act however their character would, and explore the results of their actions in the gaming world universe.

So yeah, the player's character wants to literally fuck a dog in public? Totally worth the DM and other player's time to explain in detail the complete results of that character's actions. But do remember to allow the player the freedom to describe to everyone exactly HOW he's fucking the dog - it's very important to the player. And always allow the player to react to his ill-fated choices - which means we will now spend the next several hours of that player actively fighting off the consequences of his dog-fuckery.

If you ever tell the player "No, your character doesn't do that. It doesn't happen at all. Do something else or leave my table, dumb ass," then you have failed as a DM

I have a habit of testing players with stupidly dumb questions. I love it, because it helps me root out casuals, but I've gotten a lot of flak for it at my local store. Here's the primary example:

>Pitch a new campaign, five people are interested
>have a session zero, go over setting specifics and campaign expectations
>work with people to understand the rules we'll be using, and general character premises they want
>at the end of session zero, send everyone home with a three page packet (4 if you count the cover page I made) about the setting, ask them to at least skim over the packet
>after the cover page in large, bright red text is the following:
>"Next session, at the beginning I will ask you to write down on a slip of paper the name of the city the campaign starts in. The answer is Accipiter. You can come with a pre-written slip, if you wish. If you are unable to do this, you will not be able to play in my campaign."
>next week, the 1st session starts
>Ask group "What is the name of the campaign the city starts in? Write down your answer on a slip of paper, and hand it to me."
>Two guys hands me a slip already written, another tears off a sheet from his notebook and writes down the answer real quick
>The last two are staring at me like idiots
>How are we supposed to know that anon
>tell them that it was in the packet I gave them
>We read that thing front to back anon we didn't spot that at all
>you said we could just skim it and we'd be fine
>pull out packet, flip cover sheet, point to bright red text
>They suddenly have excuses out the ass like "it was a busy week" or but I have two jobs anon"
>Tell them that they're out

Boy, the flak from that was ridiculous. It turned out to be a good game though, with the three I had. What do you think, /tg/?

>>54079817
What you did was rather harsh...

...but fine for the long term health of a game.

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>>54079817
How Machiavellian of you, but effective. I do not have the stones to execute something like that.

>>54078516
>It doesn't get a pass because nobody in the books even hint that you have to use tiers or special rules that the community made to play it "correctly".
Okay, there are plenty of games out there that require meta knowledge that isn't necessarily covered in the base rules of the game, look at Chess or Poker. I just don't see why going outside of the PHB is suddenly bad just because it's in regards to a system you don't like.
>What a great and constructive discussion.
It probably would've actually been a great and constructive discussion if you didn't act so defensive throughout the argument.

>>54075403
>not only does it help to stifle metagaming (oh, the DM rolled a 7 but the Fighter's AC is 16, that means it has a +9 to its attack roll)

I believe this is actually good. Numbers are great descriptors and if you make this extrapolation, you know "Aha, this thing is obviously pretty dangerous!"

>>54075403
If there is dice result noone will like - do not roll. Or play something, where results are acceptable.

>>54079660
I think you're misinterpreting that advice. DM should make (possibly with collaboration with players) and guard the tone of the game. If player's character decides to fuck dog in public in heroic fantasy, you tell him to "No". If he do so in setting, where such thing is appropriate (can't think of any, but let us presume there is one, for purposes of this discussion), it is alright.

>>54079817
I wouldn't feel comfortable with such arrangement, though i can see where that comes from.

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>>54070766
I agree, but...
>improvise the first session
>prep small hooks for the next sessions based on the improv and player-input

Prep-all is equally retarded as improv-all.
Just read this.

>>54075711
A bit this.
Altering the rules isn't bad, but for the love of god know what you are altering. Many a time have I seen a hotshot GM throwing some part of the rules overboard without actually considering what that rule meant for the entire game.
their logic is often that it 'doesn't make sense to them' by which they mean that it doesn't resemble the D&D-progression they know from the funny podcasts.

>>54082498
There are certain systems where first-session improvisation is possible, like D&D, and there are other systems where it is not possible at all, like GURPS, which takes large amount of up-front prep work from the GM.

In general, though, the first session should be the least improvised of them all and the amount of improvisation should increase with time as both the GM and the players become comfortable with the game and the world.

>>54079817
Boy this is some hardline shit I would never do... But it's quite smart actually, so congrats.

>>54082661
>In general, though, the first session should be the least improvised
Not really, but I can see where your coming from. I had a discussion about this with three friends and it comes down to your style of world-building: do you create an entire world before the game starts where you drop the characters in, or do you create a world as the campaign progresses based on the characters?

Both are viable options with ups and downs. A lot of improv during the first session might mean discomfort for the players when you have a setting planned, but it might also mean a larger player-involvement and a stronger tie between the characters and the campaign.

>>54075403
Preach it brother

>>54076441
>>54076355
You two can continue to enjoy playing your dumb games.

>>54070535
It's not a bad practice you idiot. Using art is fine, the players know it's just a visual representation.

>>54079817
This is bullshit but I believe it anyway

I can already imagine how all the 'flak' is just sad defense mechanisms as people try to prove they aren't lazy shitheads

I had a GM who ran a investigation campaing. Pretty generic murder mystery, but it was quite fun. After the end, he told us smuggly that he improvised everything and that he had not writen anything down, and I just felt cheated.
Don't you think that at least writing down how the murder went down wouldn't be fair to the players? You know, so they can figure it out of pre-existing clues instead of you deciding that their reasoning makes sense or no on a whim?
I hate this fucking improvisation meme, it's ruing RPGs as we know it.

>>54083430
>I hate this fucking improvisation meme, it's ruing RPGs as we know it.
I understand your sentiment and it's entirely justified in your example, but not every campaign is a mystery.
Improvisation is not a meme, it's a valid play-style that has been around since the dawn of RPG's.

>making everything you need to roll for have fail cases that matters and can kill you
>consider d20 rolls under 5 or 10 to be fails even when things are actually really really fucking easy

we lost 2 hours to a player rolling under 10 two times in a row when crossing an underground "sewer river". it was a 3 meters gap but hey! why not having you roll acrobatics to balance on the 3 meters long plank we had spent 25 minutes in real time assembling?
You know what a small branch of the city sewer system need? to go at 3 m/s, be 2 meters deep and run 1 meter down the border without any obstacle so that it's next to impossible to stop or have your friends help you. let's have you drown within 6 rounds too if you fail the athletic checks too.
After chasing the poor drowning guy for hundred of meters and several turns ( the sewer divided itself into different branches and our heavy armored cleric could not follow us as he coulnd't jump on the other side) We ended up underground on the other side of the city, with the unlucky dude at 1 hp having lost all his items and of course some tentacle sewer monsters showing up.

I am not saying that it wasn't well done or wasn't cool. it kind of was.But a 3 meters jump could have just covered in feces and forced to lose of some items, instead of almost killing, one of us.It was unnecesarily over-dangerous and long.Reaching the first room of the first of the 4 dungeons of our second mission wouldn't have been a bad thing to do either, so i think that whole contraption of lethal skill checks just isn't worth including in your campaign.

>Natural 20 -> epic fail
>Natural 1 -> crit fail

It's just dumb.

>>54070766
I generally agree, but will add that the point of having a really well thought out setting is to make improvisation easy, and that some games absolutely depend on improvisation.

Shadowrun is a good example of a game where you need to understand the world because players will throw shit at you that you could never prepare for.

>>54070535
Well, I can't draw for shit, and a well placed picture can carry the environment and atmosphere in a way yet more descriptive rambling from me just won't. Don't overdo it, but sometimes a picture sums up what you would say beautifully and quickly.

Plus, on average, 2 of your players are using art from another source for their character illustration, so who's really the one out of touch with the atmosphere, eh?

>>54070718
Kind of this. I very rarely use music because you either have to use shitty "medieval" music, which nobody likes, or anachronistic music, or even worse, vidya music that is going to fuck with immersion, give you one more thing to fiddle with, and not match the original tone of the music well.

I do occasionally let each player pick their character's theme and doom music if they like, and play it if I think one of the two will come up, so long as it isn't overly obnoxious.
I've had mixed results with that.

>>54079817
That is actually ballsy and great. I love it!

>>54083430
>You know, so they can figure it out of pre-existing clues
Haha... HahahaHahaHA- HAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Oh wow Anon, you slay me.

>>54079660
A lot of examples that come up in these situations seem so far fetched to me, but maybe I just never gm'ed for truly terrible people.

I encourage player agency, I hate running campaigns where I feel like I have to railroad or the plot stops moving, but the players and I work together to ensure that pc's act in character. The more room to move the players get the more they'll get a feel for who their characters are and come up with creative solutions to problems.

Again, if your player actually wants to fuck dogs, then I suggest your problem is with having a weirdo in your gaming group rather than your style of dm'ing

>>54070724
It's entertaining when you stop players from using their irl knowledge on game without them knowing. It's better than saying "but your character doesn't know that" every now and then.

>>54071890
>Which means using it sparingly.
Yeah, a simple example would be Dark Souls, with a soundtrack so loved out there, but 90% of the time you're only listening to sound effects, so when the music hits, it actually hits.

>>54083858
Yeah but Dark Souls actually has sound effects with really good sound design. The clank of the armour the weapons smacking against stone, the wisp of fire all that cool shit. D&D doesn't have that unless you've got a very widely sourced ambient soundboard.

>>54083760
The problem with player agency is that it's fine and dandy when everyone plays along, but even good players can start acting like asses when they feel like it.

I've had two players I normally consider good roleplayers, who were playing good, religious characters (this was PF, and they were a Cleric and a Paladin) just torture some random guy because they lost their direction for a bit.

And as I'm sitting there, rolling rolls for how they "question" this random bar patron by forcefeeding him a barrel of ale, I'm wondering "why am I allowing this?" I mean, I made them Fall as a result of that, and I think I'm well within my right for doing so. I gave them feverish dreams sent by the Gods directly to punish them for their faggotry, but in the end I think I knew more about their character backgrounds than they did.

In short, I should have just spoken up and saved us all a load of time and effort.

>>54075403
If your game of choice is so shitty you need to cheat and lie to your players to make it fun, find another fucking game to play.

The art of description is.lost nowadays and the blame lies on the fact children are brought up with visual, not written media.

>>54084144
Dude you're complaining but that sounds like it's fertile grounds for some great character moments. The exact mechanics of paladins falling is shite, but his choice to do something morally suspect for a bit of convenience is golden, imo.

>>54070535
I Will never understand why some people insist on using images in their games at all.

>>54079817
>I'm too fucking autistic to spend a second reminding players of a piece of information
>I'm an entitled.little cunt who demands you read my shitty novel and gives out pop quizzes like it's fucking grade school before you can play
>I only want to associate with jobless no lifers who have no responsibilities beyond elf games and screaming for tendies

I'm a forever GM who games with a group of people with jobs and families and lives beyond D&D. I don't give a shit if I have to remind them of stuff because that takes no fucking time at all and helps keep the game moving.

Try growing the fuck up you worthless millennial shitstain.

>>54083146
Trust me if a fat slug of a nerd called me a "lazy shitstain" for putting "needing to keep a roof over my head and pay bills" over a fucking game of pretend I'd wonder why I ever wanted to associate with him.

It's a fucking game, it's something people do to have fun and relax for a couple of hours a week. If you think that's more important than actual life responsibilities then get a fucking job you lazy millenial cunt.

>>54084235
I know the situation better than you do, so trust me when I say it was completely random. It wasn't as if this guy knew something, and they knew he knew. He was literally just some random guy in a random bar.

In fact, the party has just been sent into the future by a faulty portal. That was the crux of the problem, because it left them without a goal. It *could* have been a good character moment, if the players would have had any thought behind the action. They didn't. And engaging them with the Falling, and the dreams and shit didn't do anything, either.

But that's the entire point here, isn't it? We can argue all day about how I or another hypothetical DM should just solve this shit through 100% gameplay, but it takes two to tango. And my players simply weren't down to dance. Sometimes, that happens. And it's OK. Because it's all just a game. But in those cases it's just easier to say "guys, that shit isn't really OK, it's not getting us anywhere, just get back on track". Because despite me enjoying writing those dreams, the entire thing was an exercise in futility.

>>54079817

i wouldnt read a 4 page document from a spastic like you either

>>54084319
Okay, rather than fun that sounds miserable and confusing and you probably should have nipped it in the bud. And yeah, "it takes two to tango" is something I've really come to realize as a GM recently. I still think that the agency of the players is important, but mostly in service to narrative goals. A lot of my favorite games have player enumerate their principles or beliefs because it keeps the players grounded in their character.

I used to be a GM who would give out huge autistic setting guides, expect players to read them, put in RP "fuck yous" to punish them for not doing so.

Then I realised nobody actually liked that, most of my worldbuilding was shit and I was assuming characters born in the setting didn't know how it worked.

So now I just explain in a few lines "this is what your character would know here based on their backstory", the game keeps moving, everyone has fun and I'm not setting homework and pop quizzes.

Funnily enough I also run my games around my players' work and family commitments and generally try not to be a micromanaging ass demanding.MY GAME NIGHT be the most important thing in.their lives.

Because we're all adults possessed of interpersonal skills and a mental age beyond highschool, they don't abuse my goodwill and again.we all have fun.

>>54084266

>implying

I've GM'd for a full group of adults, all of whom have full time jobs in a high-pressure, potentially 24/7 area of government. Me and one of my players have kids, and I was looking after my wife who'd had surgery. All of us can still find 10 minutes to read three pages of notes.

If you think his requirements are unrealistic, learn to manage your time better.

>>54084368

yeah. some people just want to show up and have a good time and dont feel like learning every damn aspect of a setting, its incredible that people in this thread are jumping up and down in celebration of a socially retarded moron because he totally showed those lazy players who... cared enough to show up to the game and play it? why the fuck would you demand more than that unless its a system like ars or pendragon where downtime book-keeping is actually vital to the system?

>>54070535
N.1 rule of a DM should be not forcing your shit down everyone's throat. The only point of playing is having fun. If you notice that people get bored, change stuff. For example diplomacy-heavy campaigns with little fighting and more exploring/interacting can be fun, but if you notice people yawning or looking at their phones, you're doing something wrong. Don't blame your party, either let them have more fun or find another playgroup that matches your autism.

>>54084407
>>54084368
Some people are fine with a shallow "show up and kill some monsters" experience. Other people want to get involved and take the game seriously. Neither approach is inherently wrong.

What is wrong is trying to force people who enjoy one way of playing to do the other way.

What that guy did was actually excellent in the sense that he saved himself and those two guys the trouble of finding out that their preferred game styles weren't compatible the hard way. More people should properly explain the kind of game they're going to run and provide a test or example to make sure everyone is on the same page as far a expectations go.

Going around acting lolrandom because "just a game bro, lighten up" in a group that's trying to be serious about roleplaying is just as bad as trying to force your worldbuilding bullshit on players who just want to kill some skeletons every weekend.

>>54084360
Yeah, exactly. At some point later in the same campaign those same characters did something I never expected: They took opposite sides in an ideological conflict and split the party.

But it was great, and I just ran with it. Had to pull something out of my ass to get them back together, which was a little contrived, but I loved how they engaged their different viewpoints to come to different conclusions. And I covered my contrivance by wasting no time in moving on, so it was all good.

That's what I took away from it: Parties and characters function very poorly in a vacuum. I've experienced it as a player as well, and it was pretty gruelling. A bit of a rollplaying DM, who would ask us after the fact "why didn't you research the bad guy's capabilities?" Because we never even knew the name of the city we were supposed to save, dude. We are operating in a total narrative vacuum, and that leads to a sort of learned helplesness.

>>54084461

well, what he did was good in the sense that he's a terrible GM and he spared 2 people who wanted to hang out and have fun from putting up with his powertrip.

>>54084491
Just because he's the kind of GM you don't enjoy doesn't mean he's a terrible GM.

You could just as well say that he spared his group from a couple of shit players who were just looking to have fun at everybody else's expense.

>>54070766
Agreed. I have known a lot of GMs who ran games, sometimes whole campaigns, entirely improv, with no notes or prep. Sometimes just a map and a rough idea of a world, other times nothing but a monster manual. They always bragged about how awesome they were at improv and how they could run a game just as good as anyone with no effort put in. One of them actually would look down on people who wasted their time planning out games.

They were all garbage. Improvisation is like salt. It makes everything better. But if you just eat a bowl full of it for a meal, you end up vomiting.

>>54084507

look dude, there are people who just want to show up, and join in, nad have fun. they dont want to drive the story, they dont want to read huge lore texts, this doesnt make them idiot dudebros who want to roll a d20 then go WOOOOOO, it makes them people who play this hobby to relax and have a good time. treating people like shit because they dont meet your standards for how much investment is needed to count as a Real Player is not a good thing. i can guarantee you that this man's amazing setting paper was not good enough to demand them reading it: in fact, he even acknowledged this, by not writing one and just leaving a huge note as a 'test'. if you have so little basic respect for the people around you that you need to pull tricks on them just to prove how lazy and stupid they are for not respecting your GM authority, your game is going to suck anyway.

>>54084255
some DMs sucks at explaining how a monster or room is shaped and everyone is better off looking at a picture for referece.
i honestly wouldn't care if, when playing a fantasy game, the DM pulled off the picture a sci-fi alien and said " the gnoll looks like that, just with a crossbow and without warpgun...and well, no space suit".

>>54084601
I don't get what's your point. You're saying he should have let the players stick around and have an overall worse campaign for everyone?

Are you saying people who want to put in the effort to have a serious game they get immersed into as opposed to just showing up and "having fun" are idiots?

You have to face the fact that not everyone has fun in the same way, and not every player will fit in with every GM. Another fact you have to face is that he, as a GM, has all the right in the world to not play with people he doesn't want to play with. There's always more players to be found and he can keep changing them until he finds his perfect group, one he just clicks with. This is the best outcome for everyone involved.

It's like with BDSM, some people just want to get fucked in handcuffs while other people want to get strapped into a heavy metal harness and be beaten raw. Thus everyone has to find a find a partner that's on their same level. Trying to mix and match different levels of intensity ends up in a shitshow for everyone.

i guess it's better to reduce the problem to a matter of comunication.
if you want to be an autistical nerd which writes down 10 pages of worldbuilding notes and expect everyone to remember them and pretends everyone talks in character and spends 45 minutes talking with the innkeeper to purchase accomodation for the night.... then all you have to do is advertise your campaign as such. I guess session 0 is not a bad time to ask people not to play your game, but it would be even better to reveal your power level before they spend hours reading rulebooks and creating a character sheet or they'll be pissed off at you.

don't be surprised when only 2 poeple out of 10 wants to play with you.that's not necessarily a negative as long as you can get 4 willing player and have fun together.

I am friend with people that outright said they want shorter roleplay, permission to speak in 3rd person, more monster killing, faster advancement in the story, not being too serious about everything because " it's just a game we play to relax after working all week", as well as people who rent a castle for 3 days for LARP. I don't think any of them in is in the wrong, but they can't have fun together without setting up big compromises.

>>54084294
At the same time though, if you're so busy that you can't dedicate some time towards reading a three page primer, especially one that basically says "listen asshole, just say this word and you'll be fine" on the first page, maybe you shouldn't be joining any campaigns until your schedule clears up.

>>54084869
Incidentally, in this particular case the other players also didn't feel the need to inform the two guys of the contents of that page, so it can be assumed that they approved of the measure.

>>54084182
The only GM's who roll out in the open from my experience are either new or incompetent.

It's self-evident once you've been in a game with transparency, only to end up in a no-win scenario because the GM was too lucky or the party was too unlucky or both to deal with the encounter that they should've otherwise been capable of dealing with.

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>>54070535

>Quantum Ogres.

It's not hard to create a few unique options for the players to investigate and roll with the punches even if those don't come up. Your super precious encounter TM probably isn't interesting enough to warrant lying to your players.

>Dice fudging

Dice decide probability. You don't. If an action was a foregone conclusion in your mind one way or another you don't need to roll for it. If you do roll for it you need to respect the result of you want to respect your players and the integrity of the game.

>Ignoring game mechanics

I always find arguments that GMs shouldn't look up rules at the table and should ignore rules nonsensical. The integrity of the game depends upon adhering to the rules and mechanics as close as possible. While I'm all against a rules argument taking a few seconds to look something up that will apply through the whole session seems worth it to me. And likewise ignoring the rules just makes the game devolve into 'mother may I' crap and gives the players no framework as to their actions.

Likewise the idea that less rules =more options is nonsense. Rules provide a bssework for characters to enact actions within the game world via logical mechanics. Without these they don't have a basis to understand the cause and effect of their actions and therefore CANNOT roleplay as they can't make in character decisions with no information on how their decisions could play out.

Even well written 'rules lite' games like Apocalypse World understand this as on a mechanical level the game is actually very strict about cause and effect and outright spells it out.

I don't see any issues with OP's post however. A GM can't really be expected to hand draw all of his own art if that's not his talent, or if he doesn't have time for it in-between designing the actual adventure. And likewise not having art entirely as a result of that would be a deep shame. You're likewise intelligent enough to pick them appropriate images.

>>54085106
>Dice decide probability. You don't.
We're called Game Masters for a reason, and that's because WE decide what goes down in our campaign for the mutual enjoyment of the group, not some funky dice that don't give a fuck one way or the other about whether or not the party as a whole is enjoying the campaign.

>>54085106
>If an action was a foregone conclusion in your mind one way or another you don't need to roll for it.
I still roll dice for things that are a foregone conclusion. Keeps the players on edge.

Sometimes I roll dice without any reason.

Other times I look up some dice I pre-rolled before the game in order to get a random outcome without actually rolling.

Point is, there's a lot more ways you can roll your dice.

>>54084913
Really it comes down to the game.

If you're playing high fantasy epic adventure, you should probably fudge rolls on occasion to keep the heroic feel, while still having the dice matter. I.e., "a goblin ambush all roll crits on their bows, whilst the party all roll sub 10 for their perception to expect the ambush", this game does not need a TPK from ninja goblins, and as such should be modified, but kept dangerous.

On the other hand, if you're playing a G R R Martin tier "tax reform is more important than dragons", then you should have the party critted to shit and just tell them that occasionally people die to these ambushes, this is why.


If you think fudging is ALWAYS appropriate, or NEVER appropriate, you're a fucking retard, basically.

>>54083505
Fully armed/armored and the first to cross the plank? Yeah roll for it. Had he left his gear and walked across, unladen, I would've given some hefty bonuses. Once the first guy is across, he can stabilize the plank and the rest of the party can cross without issue (barring overly heavy PCs or multiples at once).

>But a 3 meters jump could have just covered in feces and forced to lose of some items, instead of almost killing, one of us
Agreed for the most part. You could've stripped down, jumped one guy across, then everyone toss their gear over and jump afterwards. The more PCs on the other side, the easier it is to land the jump... Helping hands, and all that.

>>54085337
Read again, frienderino.
If you already have something on your mind, why roll the dice in the first place?

>>54085432
Even in a GRRM campaign where high lethality is the expectation, getting critted to shit before anyone in the party is able to do anything is still a pretty shitty thing to do, especially if character creation took a long ass time and they were really looking forward to seeing how their character progresses.

In games where PC's have the life expectancy of a cockroach, players will end up either losing interest in the campaign as a whole or treat their characters as disposable avatars who get tossed into the meat grinder over and over again.

So, in cases where player death is a common occurrence, you need to make sure that a) the player understands what they did wrong and b) give them enough mercy to learn from those mistakes without PC death. Nobody wants to start off the game dead because of things beyond their control and even games that bill themselves off of player death make sure to let the GM know when it is or is not appropriate to off characters.

>>54085461
>If you already have something on your mind, why roll the dice in the first place?
Maybe I roll the die to see if the Fighter falls for a pit trap, maybe I just roll for the hell of it while making a show about asking the Fighter for his AC for no reason.

Just because I know what might happen, doesn't mean the players will, and that layer of obfuscation is what entices players towards your campaign, because the players want to see what happens to their characters and to see how their decisions direct the flow of game, even if you know that they're subtly on the railroad that you've set up beforehand.

>>54085106
>>Dice fudging

>Dice decide probability. You don't. If an action was a foregone conclusion in your mind one way or another you don't need to roll for it. If you do roll for it you need to respect the result of you want to respect your players and the integrity of the game.

we had this discussion countless times and there are plenty of "professional DM books" that give this advice too.
it just fits many kind of tables to have that cheating option. i don't like it either, but it's not too bad.you don't have to do it all the times either, but sometimes dices are too mean to one side to accept it going that way.

>Ignoring game mechanics and rules

i half agree with you on that one.
It's already hard enough to roleplay and immerse yourself in another world, if you can't rely on some rules to know what the outcome of your action will likely be, it's hard to even make a step.
I think however that it's not striclty necessary to follow the book, as long as the DM and player will quickly agree on a ruling that makes sense and no one is cheated in or out of a power he tought his character had i think it's fine.
For example once we were chasing a bandit and the bandit decided to climb over a ladder, a wooden wall and jump on the other side of the wall.The game was enjoyably fast so instead of looking up how climbing speeds and rolls worked, he made a simple ruling on the spot and one of our party memebers even menaged to chase him.
If the situation required we could have looked that up, but since it was working well we didn't.
Game rules rarely are perfectly balanced and full of sense and you don't always make a decision that is relying on the correct rule, so there are times when it's ok to change them on the spot.

>>54085512
Instead of cheating without saying anything like a coward and a cheat, choose a game where crits don't randomly kill your PC.

>>54082001
Purely by metric of it's mechanics, the game as it is is unenjoyable without the "meta knowledge" and, more importantly, adding more rules upon existing ones.

>The player cannot be bothered to interpret the will of the game designer as far as which moves are “fair” and which moves are not, or which moves were intended and which moves weren’t. It’s irrelevant anyway. The player knows only moves that lead to winning and moves that don’t.

>Mysteriously, some games do expect the player to divine the will of the designer, and expect him to adhere to a set of behavioral rules on top of the actual rules of the game. This is the fundamentally flawed concept embraced by most massively-multiplayer online games. Consider World of Warcraft as an example. In a town, you can go on rooftops and you can fight against other players, but you can’t fight other players while on rooftops, or you’ll receive a warning. (Actually, this was totally legal before 3/11/2005 at 9:44 PM PST, but not legal after.) You can kill the same monster all day every day to “farm” in-game money for yourself (in fact you practically have to), but you can’t farm “too much” or you’re labeled as a gold-farmer and banned. If you break your line of sight with a monster, he often has trouble getting to you, which allows your friends to kill him much more easily. Smart play or grounds for suspension? Answer: grounds for suspension. If a monster is chasing you, you can go into a lake where he can’t follow and wait for him to give up. Smart play or grounds for suspension? Answer: that one’s smart play. The complex web of made-up rules is not unlike the shackling self-imposed rulebook of the scrub.

>>54085821
You didn't listen to a word I said did you?

>>54085900
Saying that players might die if you don't is not an argument for fudging the dice, when there are games where players don't randomly die on a crit.

>>54085882
Here's the thing though, being banned from WoW means that you cannot play the game until the ban is lifted but there's nothing stopping you from either searching for another group or even running your own game if the group you're currently in isn't a good fit for you.

At this point, when 3.PF's infamy is renowned throughout the tabletop gaming community, there's really no reason for anybody who isn't new to not know how to either build a good character or look up literature on how to build a good character using a guide. Even on the SRD, you can find user created content for how to make the best Fighter or how to make the best Druid or whatever and if you go in without this knowledge, that's your fault, not the system.

>>54085922
In any situation where a character can live or die based on RNG, my point is valid. Doesn't matter if you're using a single die, a dice pool, games with crits or exploding dice, or anything in between, if the die's value can determine who lives and who dies, the GM is within his right to fudge whenever they feel it's appropriate.

>>54071600
>Improvisation is fine for one shot games that tell a short and simple story with no side quests.
Improv is fine for every game and if you as a DM cannot react to shit you weren't expecting either out of the party or out of the dice you're railroading or attempting to railroad your party.

>>54086015
If a die's value can determine who lives and who dies, and you don't like that fact, then don't roll. Better than lying to your friends.

>>54086072
Railroading isn't bad, so long as the rails follow the whims of the party rather than the other way around. Even then, most players would rather be told, "go here and do X" than be dropped in a random spot on the map with no directions on where to go.

It's why published adventures are still be used to this day across many different systems while sandbox games tend to disintegrate within three sessions or less if nobody in the party has enough will to drive the plot along. It's why civilizations that broke free from an oppressive regime ended up disintegrating once they attained their freedom.

People want to be told what to do without actually being told what to do and generally don't actually know what they want to do otherwise.

>>54086157
I think there's a middle ground between PERFECT SANDBOX and PERFECT RAILROAD that gets lost here. I'm fond of starting players off with strong direction and then gradually letting their personal cares and worries take over the game, evolving from a straight shot to a more open kind of game once everyone's comfortable with their characters and the setting.

>>54086151
I think you're confused anon, GM's are supposed to lie by nature.

>>54086207
There's no lie. You aren't the wizard of Oz behind a curtain, and the best, most dramatic games rely on the narrative interplay between the player and the GM, both of them working together to make the best story they can. It's much, much easier to get that if you're open and honest about why you're playing and how.

If you tell your players that you'll fudge, or at the very least, it's clear from the social contract that the GM is expected to fudge for better drama, then great, it works for you. But it's not a necessary condition for a good, coherent story, and if you can make one without lying, you should.

>>54085992
Groups only matter if you assume that each of them alter or add to the >professionally written and professionally tested game.

If you use a product that needs fixing right after you aquired it, how can you argue it's well manufactured?
Fighting games do not punish you for not knowing frame counts and combos; chess does not punish you for not knowing it's theory; poker does not punish you for not knowing psychology and acting. You don't give up queen for picking black color, you don't play with less cards if your tells are obvious, your character doesn't lack a core mechanic because it's low tier. In 3.PF you are punished at the set-up, and this punishment is insidiously delayed while the book misguides you - notice how most other RPGs tell you straight about intended power disparity?

>>54086193
That's why I said
>Railroading isn't bad, so long as the rails follow the whims of the party rather than the other way around.
Which is what you just described.

>>54086281
yep, I'm not necessarily posing a disagreement. Just adding to what you said.

>>54086157
I contest that doing that isn't railroading. Railroading is specifically for making the party where you want to go and follow the story you want them to follow. If you're better off writing a book you're railroading. I believe you should always lead the party along with some hints or an NPC that's constantly throwing crap in their face.

>>54086246
>It's much, much easier to get that if you're open and honest about why you're playing and how.
If that were true then players would be allowed to meta-game without impunity in regards to the plot.

People get enthralled into narratives when they have no idea what's going to happen next, it's why cliches tend to come off as boring while something that breaks genre conventions tend to become popular in the long run.

Truth and Honesty are all well and good but in the context of entertainment, lying is always the best policy. The audience WANTS to be lied to, they NEED to feel as though they have no idea what's going to happen next, otherwise the narrative loses its edge and the audience loses interest.

You're right though in that the best narratives interplay between the player and the GM but what you're not understanding is that the player is a fraction while the GM is the whole.

>>54084601
That's what he was saying you fucking moron, DIFFERENT PEOPLE LIKE DIFFERENT THINGS. I get what you are saying that the GM should have been more polite to the players that wanted a less serious game but then again they did lie
Like fr I respect your preferences about playstyle, but learn some fucking reading comprehension and give me the same courtesy.

>>54086292
Fair enough.
>>54086359
Railroading is guiding the party to a predetermined destination, it doesn't matter if it's a book where you read it from page 1 to 350 in a linear fashion or if it's a book where you can make decisions as far as which page you go to based on your choices, with your decisions determining whether or not you reach the end or get killed partway through.

It's like I said, players want to be told what to do without actually being told what to do, it has something to do with people in general wanting to feel as though they have control over everything around them but the reality is that the only thing they have control over is their own actions; no more, no less.

>>54086388
Not knowing what will happen next is why we have dice, it's why we roll in the first place. Dierolls break up cliches, they keep the suspense of what's happening next, and they generate unexpected results (or rather, they should. I won't contest that in a lot of the most popular games, they really, really don't do this).

It's because of the reasons that you outlined that I roll in the open, where players can see it, because I want them to know that what might happen next isn't always what they expect. Even if they think they know what my plans are and what I want (not hard, when you've been playing with somebody for years), they don't know what the dice want.

>>54086489
At the same time though, people also want a bit of consistency as far as where they think the narrative will go, because you can't very well surprise the audience if the audience has nothing to base their expectations upon.

If you make every relevant plot point decided by the die roll, you're not a DM anymore, you're Two-Face. There's a reason why most people don't use chance to decide important decisions and that's because humans have autonomy and can decide for themselves whether or not they'd wish to proceed down a specific path.

We roll dice for the same reason most people flip a coin, it's not to actually decide what to do, it's to give us an idea as far as what we actually want to do and/or to fuck with the players who don't know why you're actually rolling.

The dice can't decide anything, it's an object, so you should stop treating it like its input matters more than your own decision-making as a DM.

>>54086663
You're confusing making important decisions with actually succeding in them. You can have the first without a guarantee of the other, that's why we roll dice in the open. It doesn't affect player agency in any way.

>>54086938
That's why YOU roll dice in the open, don't speak for the entirety of the community when you're the one swimming against the tide.

Also, you're the DM, which means that everything that you do is more important than the player's by default. If you want to pretend that your players are equals then go ahead but realize that you can't be on equal footing while you hold all the cards.

>>54085581
>layer of obfuscation is what entices players towards your campaign

No it just confuses already totally confused players. It's hard to appreciate as a GM just how little information players have about what's going on since it all seems obvious to the person who designed the thing.

I happily try to give.my players as much information as possible. If they see a bridge and it looks unsteady I'll say they there's about a 50% chance for it to collapse under their weight unless they can think of a way around it and then they can make an informed choice.

>Risk it
>try to use one of their skills such as deftly skipping across it or just leaping the bridge to even the odds
>Remove their armour and heavy objects, tie ropes to themselves to prevent falling etc.

In a scenario where they just see a bridge and have no idea it's a crapshoot what they do as it may as well all be arbitrarily decided.

>>54070780
I know the feeling. I want to die whenever I hear shitty pop or rock music (including metal, since I know people are anal about there being a difference), so pretty much everywhere I go is music hell to me.

I generally enjoy old folk music, but it still does nothing for me in an RPG.

>>54087010
That doesn't address what I said at all, you're jus re-stating your preferences. Nowhere are important decisions made by die roll, regardless whether you roll in open or not, so I don't see why you're even trying to argue against that.

I really dislike theater of the mind bullshit because I'm constantly asking if I'm in range of anything.

>What direction are the arrows coming from relative to me?
>okay I move south towards the goblin shooting arrows at us
>Okay how far away is that?
>Do I have enough movement to get to bob so I can use my bonus action to heal him?

It's such a waste of time and I'd rather just tell the GM what I'm doing instead of playing 100 questions.

>>54086663
Plot points aren't decided by rolls, necessarily. I don't sit down and roll (EPIC BETRAYAL) and (FROM FRIEND), I decide that an old friend of one of the PCs is going to betray him by night. Will he be badly wounded? Will he fight off his friend and survive? Will he die? I don't know, and of course I can adjust the encounter to make one of these more or less likely.

Any of these results are interesting, for the most part, but death is (arguably) the least interesting. Instead of just changing the result of a roll to prevent a result of death, though, I just choose a system with built-in protection for these kinds of things, or suggest a houserule to the players where they can take a bad wound and some other narrative cost in exchange for death. In the case of such a houserule, the outcome is still uncertain to the player: they may get wounded, they may not, the friend may survive, the friend may not, but I needn't hide my rolls to create those interesting situations and unexpected outcomes.

File: IMG_20170625_211329.jpg (3MB, 4032x3024px) Image search: [Google]

3MB, 4032x3024px

>>54087311
I'm the same, from both sides. I don't want to spend twenty minutes describing the setting then doing it again in each player's turn, when a quick glance at the board can answer questions.

Also I really like terrain/props. To me it makes it easier to immerse myself. Pic related.

>>54087644
>Also I really like terrain/props
Agreed, I don't even care about the immersion. I like moving little toy soldiers around and slamming a big monster in front of them

>>54085356
>Sometimes I roll dice without any reason.
Fuck off with this shit. All my friends think this is somehow good. At best everyone makes a confused face and we waste a few seconds, at worse its a chance for the GM to act smug and mysterious when anyone with half a brain would know if it was something we actually need to know you would of told us by now.

Bad DMing is running a game that's different to what the players are playing.
Bad players are playing a game that's different to what the DM and other players are playing.
If you want to treat dice rolls as the law of nature, or play Etrian Odyssey on a tabletop with 200 hours of dungeon crawling and meticulously designed builds to survive the horrors of your dungeon then fine, but play it with people who want to do that.
Most of these shitty posts make it sound like you just meet a bunch of random people who want to play DnD, elect a DM and then turn up to the first session without pausing to discuss how the game is going to work even once.

>>54088349
I don't treat die rolls as a law of nature, it's just that, rather than lying about what I rolled if the result of a die would lead to an outcome I don't like, I either don't roll, roll openly and accept what I roll, or, if it's really dire, suggest openly that the outcome of the roll be changed.

>>54088395
That's cool, as long as your players know you aren't pulling punches with the dice rolls and your game is suited to being out in the open.
My players like surprises and the mind games I bring to the table, so for me to roll in the open would detract a lot from the game. They know what they're signing up for when I run a game and they already expect me to be somewhat fiendish, so there are gains from me randomly rolling when I want to build tension, for example.
I don't understand why so many people on /tg/ feel the need to be so autistic and pretend that the way they like to play is the only way to play.

>>54088504
I literally do not give a fuck what you do at your table as long as everyone is aware you're willing to fudge results. The only thing that bothers me about it would be lying about it or doing it without it being part of the contract, because I'm not fond of that kind of game and I'd like to know before I sit down.

>>54076710
> Original and most popular RPG evolved from miniatures games and uses them in every version since.
> Some versions don't function without maps and miniatures.

Look I'm more of a "theatre of the mind" kind of guy but to deny the place of miniatures and maps in RPGs is simple contrarianism.

>>54079660
what do you think a session 0 is for?
lay out the ground rules I had a silly campaign where a guy rolled a few nat 20s in a row to fuck a small dragon and now he has a dragon wife. just got to lay out the rules and make sure that everyone is comfortable with stuff like that.

>>54077199
Not him, but
>ree railroading is bad
Is a /tg/ meme. Railroading has a time and place, and isn't that bad as long as you're not being an obnoxious douche. That's why it leaves a bad taste in people's mouths because of that.

>>54079817
That's the most retarded thing I've read all day.
How well do you know the store owner, to not get thrown out over it?

>>54075403
How do you deal with that playing online?

>>54075092
This is the absolute worst one to me. I think it's birthed from the most gamist mindsets that want to "win" at roleplaying games. I want a plot, I'll follow the DMs hook, give me a railroad and make the sights worthwhile.

>>54070718
I have (mostly) instrumental themes for a few huge bosses. For example, I played Brain Power when the party fought the Golden Blade Dragon. They loved it.

>>54070535
>not making your players wear blindfolds the entire game so that they have an easier time imagining what is going on

>>54079112
thaaaats not taki.

>>54084678
>some DMs sucks at explaining how a monster or room is shaped
That's, like, the most fundamental of all DM skills. If you're bad at the very core of what you're doing, maybe you should do something else?

>>54087042
That's not what I'm talking about though.

What I'm talking about is withholding information that the (player) characters would have no way of knowing at that particular moment. Like any fool can tell if a bridge is steady or not but they wouldn't necessarily be able to predict if there's a hazard or encounter lying in wait as soon as they attempt to cross the bridge.

>>54087340
The problem with your system is that rather than adjusting the numbers from behind the screen where the players won't see it, you're instead introducing a meta-game currency that players can use as a get out of jail free card.

If you pretend that the enemy didn't roll a crit but deal above average damage, all the player is going to see is a) they got hit and b) they got hurt bad.

If you introduce a system where character death can be exchanged for a wound, now you're introducing a mechanic where the PLAYER has to consider the pros and cons of taking that wound, which ironically takes them out of the scene and slows the game down as they carefully consider their options.

>>54088529
Not him but you sound like you have control issues.

>>54091142
There are ways to roll dice in secret, or just using a dice roller app that isn't connected to the in-game dice roller for the platform (assuming it's roll20 or an equivalent.

>>54079817
Fucking glorious. Players deserved to be punished regularly for not knowing the fluff. Sets the tone of the game.

>>54091727
I'm saying that if a player would die from random bullshit RNG I would give them the opportunity to not die by taking a narrative hit, because it's more interesting than dying, but keeps the consequences of the dice. You know what takes me out of the game? Realizing, slowly, that the GM has been lying to me the entire time we've been playing and that none of these dice rolls matter.

And don't say that "if you don't do it right, they won't be able to tell." that's bullshit.

>>54092434
Id just let them die.

I really don't see the big deal in this.

They make another character and the game continues.

But muh backstory - you haven't written any liar
But my class - make another wizard then, though do at least rename it
But my levels - suck it up you'll catch up
But muh special snowflake - fuck off

>ywn be a writer, artist, and composer in one with the skills and time to directly and cohesively get across your characters, moods, and worldbuilding through perfect descriptions, art, and subdued leitmotifs

>even if you were it wouldn't matter because the PCs would go off in some entirely new direction that you have no preparation for

deliver me from this vale of tears

>>54092469
See, this just further supports my suspicion that people who feel the need to fudge do it because they're playing ultra-lethal nonsense like D&D. The fact that their go-to example of a situation where you need to fudge is getting crit and randomly dying makes me think so even more. Honestly, I'd probably be tempted to fudge too if players kept dying and dying to random bullshit RNG, but I'd still clear it up with my players that I'm doing so before we sit down.

>>54070724
>you're there to entertain
How about no? I am there to have fun, just like anyone else.

>>54092495

I still don't see what's wrong with characters dying from bad luck. All it means is that character happened to be the guy in the opening scenes who got killed hence it fits the fiction.

Not every character gets to be a hero. In fact some.need to die for the others to feel like there's any risk at all.

My most recent game started with a character death and since then the players have been so much more engaged because they know any swing could be their last in battle.

>>54092702
I don't have anything against characters dying when appropriate, really, but I feel like... well, from what it sounds like, my players get a lot more invested in their characters than yours do at the start, and while I like it when players fail -- lots of drama there -- I think it's the least interesting consequence for failure most of the time.

Don't get me wrong, I've had player characters die before, but I like it rare, once or twice per campaign. When it starts to happen too often, the game loses something if you're not going for a specific kind of vietnam-war any-move-could-be-your-last kind of mood, but that's not the tenor and mood of the kind of fiction I like and the media I consume.

>>54092434
>I'm saying that if a player would die from random bullshit RNG I would give them the opportunity to not die by taking a narrative hit, because it's more interesting than dying, but keeps the consequences of the dice.
It really isn't. Most people will jump at the chance to avoid death in exchange for a wound because death has consequences while a narrative wound...doesn't. You can say "muh narrative" all you want but if the mechanics of the game doesn't reflect the severity of the consequence then all you're doing is introducing fluff with no purpose while at the same time giving players a means to avoid death for practically no cost to their overall effectiveness.

Not to mention, it opens up issues down the line in cases where a player wants neither death nor a narrative wound because "muh special snowflake" when it'd be easier just to pretend the crit didn't happen rolling high damage to compensate.

I mean, it sounds like you have control issues if we're being honest.

>>54079817
A bit harsh approach, but I approve of the idea. Not everyone might, but that was a good choice for the health of the game if you are looking for more committed players.

>>54092880
When I say I roll in the open I do so as a GM. When I GM, by not fudging I actually cede control. I think, if we want to throw accusations around like that, that fudging dice without informing your players would be a sign of control issues, but what do I know. I don't know you.

>>54079817
Good for you, but the second a DM gives me homework like that, I'm out. I've come to play a game, not read the DM's fantasy novel via handout packets.

>>54092993
Rather than accepting that there are times when the dice should be ignored for the betterment of the campaign, you instead produce a false dichotomy where you must either listen to the dice or you're cheating in some form or another.

You don't trust yourself not to fudge dice responsibly, so you decide to go all or nothing and attempt to claim that it is others who have the issue even though plenty of DM's recognize and utilize fudging as a useful tool for when the RNG affects the campaign as a whole.

Which, by the way, is a sign of someone who has control issues.

>>54093077
If you're too lazy/busy to read three pages then you really shouldn't be participating in any campaigns until your schedule becomes lighter.

Hell, this thread in its entirety is probably somewhere around 10+ pages long based off of word count along, yet I bet you had no trouble reading through the thread in its entirety.

>>54093127
I'm not a liar, and I don't lie. If I want to change the result of a die, I tell my players. You and your players agreed to use a particular set of rules. By flouting that, you're lying to them. You can accept that you're a liar, and that you lie to your players, or you can shut the fuck up.

>>54093164
Not every lie is malevolent anon, and I'm sorry, truly sorry, that someone hurt you so much that you'd react this strongly to the concept of someone withholding information from you, even for something as mundane as entertainment between friends.

Please, seek help, talk to someone you trust, work through your issues, and for goodness sake stop coming on 4chan, because this place is a mess that'll honestly make your mental issues worse if you don't know how to deal with mental stress and shit.

This is me being genuine by the way, I'm not even kidding or trying to troll, assuming you aren't bullshitting, it's very worrying and I hope you find a way to work through it.

>>54084266
>>54084357
>>54091070
t. the type of people who would get kicked out

If you can't take the time to skim a couple pages or, in the story's case, notice bright red print, then you're probably not meant for the hobby.

>>54093270
Not every lie is malevolent, but that doesn't make you not a liar. I play with adults, and I trust them to be able to accept the elder knowledge of what number I rolled on a die. I respect the people I play with, and I don't lie to the people I play with, because they're an adult, and I'm an adult.

>>54093342
I take issue with wasting everyone's time with session zero character creation, then waiting for game day to be a cunt about the GM's primer.
If this happened in a store, he'd be encouraged to stop GMing there due to pissing off customers. If this happened at his house, he'd get a broken nose for dragging some grog across town, twice, just to boot him.

As a player, I write shit down so I don't have to remember every facet of the GM's world. There's no reason your players couldn't keep the pamphlet as a reference and refer back to it as need be.

This story is just the GM being a cunt, nothing more.

>>54093344
Who exactly are you trying so hard to impress anon? Do you think that rolling out in the open automatically makes you more respectful than DM's who have fudged rolls at some point in their careers?

Also, if you were truly an adult, why go through all the effort to try convincing me that you're an adult, playing with other adults, while doing adult things like pretending to be an elven wizard slinging magic missiles at a goblin or two?

Like, do you realize how ridiculous that sounds? It makes you sound emotionally stunted.

>>54093478
>This DM should stop playing because I'm too lazy to read three pages.
>Also, I'd totally sock him right in the gob, I swear on me mum.
I dunno man, someone as lazy and violent as you would probably do better on roll20 with the rest of the spastics.

>>54093500
I don't care if you fudge. I don't. If it's an implied part of your social contract, if you told everyone or everyone just *knows* you do it -- if it's accepted practice in your playgroup, that everyone does but nobody talks about, then I have no objection. It's deceiving everyone you play with, intentionally lying to them for petty reasons that's morally suspect. And it is morally suspect, the same as any other lie. You can do something morally suspect for good reason, but it does not make it less morally suspect.

>>54093155
kys. I'm tired of reading your posts

>>54093532
>This DM is pissing off my paying customers, so I'd like him to stop
>TTRPG nerds have never spazzed out and attacked someone for being a cunt

You're silly anon. I like you, but your silly.

>>54093565
Fudging dice is not morally suspect because at the end of the day, it's a game that's enjoyed recreation ally between friends. I mean, you sound like one of those crazy religious nutjobs who equates D&D with worshipping Satan.

Also, you've been "not caring" since this morning yet here you are, still replying in some vague attempt at defending a position that ultimately doesn't matter in the long run.

At this point, I'm not even sure who you're trying to convince.

>>54093569
K cool cya

>>54093691
Dude. A magic show is a lie, too, but it's a lie that people sign up to experience. Somebody attending a magic show knows that they're being lied to, and they pay for the privilege, it's fine. Not everyone likes magic shows, that doesn't mean they're mentally deficient or have some problem.

>>54093576
First off, he sent home two nerds who were "too busy" to read a three page primer, chances are they weren't all that keen on paying for anything anyways.

Second off, there isn't a fa/tg/uy on earth who would actually attack anyone for being a cunt because they know that the moment they do, all bets are off and they will end up hurting themselves in the long run.

Show me this magical fairy tail land where nerds actually have balls and are willing to stand up for themselves though, it'd honestly help clear up the bulk of issues at the table if people were more willing to actually explain what was bothering them for once.

>>54093743
You sound like the dude who would go to a magic show and try to figure out how the magician does each trick while becoming more and more irate as the magician refuses to tell you how they did it.

If you can accept that magicians have trade secrets that would ruin the show if people found out about it, why are you so vehemently against fudging dice when it basically covers the same purpose?

>>54093816
The key difference here is that the people attending the show know they're being lied to. They don't expect the magician to suddenly hex them or curse them, they're going in, expecting to be fooled and amazed by acts of prestidigitation, and maybe, on some level to believe it. They're still informed, but that doesn't ruin the magic.

The only point that I've stuck on here is that you need to make sure your players are aware of your practices, even through implication. Literally everything else you do as a GM is up to you.

>>54093875
The implication is having a screen and not rolling in the open.

>>54092495

What *I* love is that by the book, DnD is pretty damn far from "ultra lethal." I suspect that it's the same DMs that are always bitching about how they hated how "nerfed" death was in 5e that they had to make their own "gritty, realistic" houserule for it that are now claiming they have to roll in secret to have any kind of story because otherwise people would just die all the time for no reason.

>>54093902
It's not a very strong implication, but I've accepted that it could be an unspoken part of your social contract regardless -- a lot of play practices are. If you know that your players know, then it's fine, and you aren't a liar.

>>54093779
I've been doing this shit way too long. Fights in my home have been rare, but yeah, they have happened and I've had to lay charges against one coworker for threatening my kids after I booted his creepy ass from my 2e campaign years ago. Not gaming with randos is usually safe enough, but now my group rents out a hall downtown. Everyone paying a due keeps the bullshit down, since deposits are non-refundable.

Ttrpg players are also fucking cancer to any flgs. I opened one and currently co-own a second. Unless we're running Adventure League, intro games, or have our biweekly board game club nights, no ttrpgs because it's always the same bullshit, non-paying fatasses that hog a table for hours. I have had to boot GMs from league nights because they alienated customers with this kind of bullshit.

As I said, this particular GM just wasted peoples' time with a practice that he admits to have used in multiple occasions. He's a cunt.

>>54070670
Most DM's who try mindgames aren't as clever as they think and have to bullshit their way to screwing over the player.

>>54093875
>The key difference here is that the people attending the show know they're being lied to. They don't expect the magician to suddenly hex them or curse them, they're going in, expecting to be fooled and amazed by acts of prestidigitation, and maybe, on some level to believe it. They're still informed, but that doesn't ruin the magic.
And running a game follows the same principles, maintaining obfuscation in order to make things seem unplanned and improvised while in reality planning out all the major beats so that the consistency is being maintained.
>The only point that I've stuck on here is that you need to make sure your players are aware of your practices, even through implication.
This is literally why the DM screen exists beyond being a cheat sheet anon. If you don't see the rolls, the implication is that the DM doesn't want you to see them for one reason or another.

>>54093967
I'm not understanding your position.

You voice dissatisfaction with lazy and violent nerds who didn't know what time it was and yet you admonish a DM for coming up with a system that quickly boots these undesirables from the vicinity as quickly as possible?

I mean, would you honestly rather keep around two morons who couldn't even be arsed to open up the primer past the title page over a DM who found a way to keep three decent players around for a solid campaign?

If so, explain why.

>>54082251
Even if the rolls are hidden, you can still do it. It just takes longer. It just stops them from figuring it out on the first rolls and taking the tension out of the fight

>>54093967
>He's a cunt.
I don't know man.
That might have been harsh for players but they were cunts as well and this was mechanism designed to kick out fuckers, and it worked.

If someone ask someone to do something in preparation and other person agrees then he is expected to fulfill the obligation, or present good reason for failure.
Lying and shitty excuses are not a good sign.

If I was making a barbecue and said:
"I'm getting grill and coal ready but everyone bring some food to share"
And someone would come empty handed I'd tell him to go to shop fast or go the fuck out of my party.

Also not spending 5 minutes to read something that was prepared for me, when asked, when I know that GM puts his time and effort for me is disrespectful for GM.

>>54075403
If you're going to fudge, there are other ways to fudge. Like changing the terms of the encounter or enemies fleeing/leaving players for dead.

Also, if your players know what hits and what doesn't, they can roll their damage/run through the rest of their turn more quickly, which means more time for role playing and shit.

>>54094348
You're so adorably naive it hurts.

>>54077275
They really don't. Especially if you're playing White Wolf/Onyx Path material; the bulk of the writers and testers are fans picked up off forums/Kickstarter backers with the QA and editing done by random freelancers and/or Canadian robots.

At this point, unless you're a "name" like Ken Hite, Greg Stolze, Cam Banks, et al; the only difference between you and them is they get paid.

>>54094427
(You) gonna post something of value or do you just wanna wag DM dicks?

>>54086246
>you aren't the wizard of oz behind a curtain

Uh. Yeah. you sort of are. In fact, thats a perfect DMing analogy. And then they are fucking let down as shit once they look behind the curtain.

>Don't say "no" always say "yes, but".
I hate this advice because the core of it is that players are mouth breathing retards who as soon as they hit a wall are left completely unable to function without the GM telling them what to do. I understand that the implication is that you shouldn't railroad a player by limiting their options, but the end result is that you railroad them more than you would have otherwise. As a player I'd much rather be told "No" for one of the many thousand choices I can make, then be told "Yes, but..." for all of them, because that's what ends up happening and the "but" always leads to the same place.

I get it that the core of this advice to stop railroading and to give players agency, and on the surface its good advice, but it just ends up giving the player the agency you want them to have, which ends up being the thin facade of agency and players quickly see through it. There are times and places were the GM should say "No that doesn't happen" or "No you can't do that". Knowing when and how to say "No" is a hallmark of good GMing in my opinion, and there are definitely times where saying "yes, but" is the right thing to do and a hallmark of good GMing also. But always saying "yes, but", the best you can hope for is mediocrity.

>>54077154
Are you a professional railroader?
>DM, I want to go buy a streak.
>Didn't prep for this, steaks don't exist in this city. There will be a perfectly detailed steak selling store in the next city, with side arcs and special quests.
How autistic are you?

>>54094625
I think the point of the "yes, but..." advice is to make that the answer to questions you didn't really think about before the player asked them.

Taking the usual magic guild example, if the players come to a town and ask about a magic guild and I honestly didn't think about it when designing the town, then I'm likely to say "Yes." On the other hand if I had already decided before hand that there's no magic guild in this town for whatever reason, or that magic guilds are not a thing in the setting, then it's perfectly alright to say "No."

"Yes, but" doesn't mean say "yes" to every question, it means don't say "no" without a reason.

>>54094573
Nah, dude. The game keeps on going. I reveal myself from behind the curtain and my game is one of the games my players are most excited to play. I have one player who talks about my game to me all the time, because instead of hiding my plans I work with him to make the best experience for him narratively. There's a middle ground between hiding everything and telling everything, and it doesn't ruin your game if you lean towards the latter. With the right kind of player it can improve the experience.

>>54093918
>DnD is pretty damn far from "ultra lethal."
Skimming this thread, I read that as urethral. I paused and reread it not because I thought "why the fuck is somebody clarifying how urethral D&D is?" but because I thought "wait a minute... why did he make urethral into two words?"

As far as D&D being pretty far from lethal: go to the /osr/ thread and say that to my face.

>>54082801
I like doing both:
Create the world, put goals and problems for the NPC and events in different areas of the map to use if necessary.
Then during session take note of the characters and their actions and interest, go back to the world and use or change accordingly.
Seems to work just fine.

>>54070535
Post your piss bottle collection you autistic idiot
>Worst case scenario: a player actually knows where your picture comes from
OH NO ANYTHING BUT THAT! THE HUGE MANATEE!
Wish I could come play in your cum-rag dungeon.

>>54096096
in a narrative sense? yes. Totally. I agree.

But from the angle of dice rolling, not so much. When rolls are out in the open, there's a sense of trust, but also a lack of tension comparatively to being behind a screen.

For example, say a GM rolls an attack, and the party has already been attacked once. When you roll the die in the open, the tension mounts and dissipates in a moment, as the answer is revealed instantly. Any player with the most basic math skills has figured out already what the monster's bonus is because if it rolled 7 and hit a 14, it has to have a +7 bonus at least.

Comparatively, rolling behind a screen mounts tension for several reasons. One, players don't know the roll, and thus can't math out whether they got hit or not before the GM tells them. Second, the GM can roll behind the screen for absolutely nothing, and still come off as "i just rolled for something important", even if the actual die number doesn't matter. Fudging rolls is a contested issue, but at the same time saying "ALL ROLLS MUST BE IN THE OPEN" take away narrative tools and tension builders from a good GM.

>>54098177
I've found the opposite to be true. When the players see the dice confirm that the creature has a huge attack bonus they shit themselves and reconsider their options.

In game terms this reflects them feeling the blow of the creature get past their guard and realising how adept/strong it is. Sure a GM can describe that but I think the players aren't going to often connect the narrative to the mechanics as the mechanics and narrative in D&D is already so disjointed with the abstract nature of HP and AC in the first place.

Granted tension could be released if a high number is rolled but the creature misses, confirming a low attack bonus but again players realising the relative strength of what they're fighting is a good thing as it gives them information.

I find so many GM's seem to get off on not giving the players information and I feel this only serves to provide an incoherent and confusing game where the players don't really know the effects of their in-game actions.

>>54098400
see, thats the thing. With how bonus' work, the players can figure these things out simply based on how hard they have been hit. If you take more than a certain amount of damage from a basic bitch melee or ranged attack, then you are in the wrong damn place.

There's also assuming it based on what creature it is, what kind of build it has. What abilities it exhibits. There's so much more tension in figuring it out than there is in it being confirmed right at the start of combat.

There is just as much to be gained from not rolling in the open as there is to rolling in the open. One gives players comfort, the other gives DM's more narrative tools. Its just a matter of if you trust your players to pick up on things.

>>54070693
For those of us who use roll20? There's no choice.

Nigga my group hasn't all gone to college together in a year and I've just graduated. There's art one way or another and my stick figures ain't much.

>>54097460

No disrespect meant to the OSR and the brave souls that inhabit it; I should have specified that I meant 5e specifically.

The span of all the editions of DnD span a large variety of playstyles, but if you're looking for "ultra-lethal" you're going to roll back a bit. 5e puts a much, much bigger emphasis on keepig characters viable as long as possible and pretty much turns 0HP into "downed" not dead. That's sure as hell not how it's always been.

>>54094089
>You voice dissatisfaction with lazy and violent nerds who didn't know what time it was and yet you admonish a DM for coming up with a system that quickly boots these undesirables from the vicinity as quickly as possible?

I don't advocate violence against a GM for in game shit. Yes it happens rarely. Yes it's happened to me, and if the average response in "That GM" threads is any indication, violence against a shit GM is a power fantasy /tg/ seems to share.
When I read the original post, I see a GM that brought people together for a session zero. They all spent time and/or rescheduled their lives (GM included) to be there. After this whole process was finished, they all went home. Then everyone reconvened (more time, rescheduling, etc) for first session, just for the GM to say, "Nah you didn't read my primer, fuck off." You simply don't know how someone will react when you waste two days of their time so you can "make a point" about players reading your setting's fiction.
While I've been where this GM has been emotionally, when it comes to players not following simple instructions, I would still consider the physical investment they've made so far. They spent session zero with you, then made a second trip to start playing with you. Letting them skim the primer anytime is reasonable, as I would expect them to refer back to it weeks/months later anyhow.

>>54094318
>If I was making a barbecue and said:
>"I'm getting grill and coal ready but everyone bring some food to share"
>And someone would come empty handed I'd tell him to go to shop fast or go the fuck out of my party.
They didn't show up empty handed. They showed up with hotdogs and burgers but forgot the ketchup.
The GM could have told the players, "The capitol's name is on page two. Let's start playing, since you're prepared with your characters anyways, and gave enough of a shit to actually show up."

>>54101729
The idea that just showing up is enough is cancer in and of itself. Effort has to come from both sides.

And no, building a character doesn't count.

>>54101729
>You simply don't know how someone will react when you waste two days of their time so you can "make a point" about players reading your setting's fiction.
Here's the thing though, all that time and effort means nothing if they're so lazy that they couldn't even be arsed to open up to the first page of a primer just to read "listen asshole, remember this word or you're not going to play, it's that easy."

Just as they've put time and effort into building characters, so too did the GM put time and effort into building the campaign. If I made a setting primer, the least you can do as a player is show me that you give enough of a fuck to read it.

If you can't do that then why should I waste both of our time running a session that you clearly aren't all that interested in, especially when other players were willing to open the primer in the 7 days between session 0 and session 1?

>>54101729
Also, as >>54101815 said, just showing up and building characters just isn't enough.

I once played with a dude who showed up to game, built characters alongside each of us, and yet spent most of the campaign sitting on his duff, playing or working on his laptop, only really looking up to focus on game when he was either referred to by name or once combat started.

He'd bitch and moan about how there was nothing to do but then he'd also go out of his way to avoid interacting with the setting because either he didn't know anything about the setting (in spite of playing in the same campaign for months) or went out of his way to be a huge asshole to NPC's who retaliated in kind, leaving him to sulk for the rest of game until we eventually had to call it quits because of the GM getting a new job.

Because of this, I don't count character creation as effort because nowadays, anyone can shit out a generic swordsman to play but few can actually make someone who feels genuine.