Five Rules for Being a Good Dungeon Master
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Nah, that's what happen when you make a GOOD call.
And I would put as probably the most important rule: You are the Narrator but it is their story. Trying to herd players is like trying to herd cats. No wait, strike that. Herding cats is easier. So don't even try. The role of the DM is to determine events and progression that is out of the players hands. Everything from the enemy attacks to large scale political conflicts are the DM's turf, but if the players are involved, then they are the ones guiding the story. It's not the DM's responsibility to control the story, simply the outcome of their choices for good or ill.
These seem like well-considered rules. I would make a small personal addendum to number two, though: before you run a game, read the core rulebooks once, cover-to-cover. Some of it may be boring, and as the author states, you don't want to get to rules-lawyer level of specificity, but you should know if rules for a particular situation exist, even if it's only in a "oh, right, I remember seeing that" sort of way. You don't want to discover there are existing rules for a skill roll against Guns while researching Medieval Siege Weaponry or man-sized creatures grappling a giant octopus after you've fudged out something of your own, especially if it's going to come up more than once. If you do decide to come up with something of your own for dealing with that situation rather than use what's in the book, that's fine- but you should know ahead of time, and so should the players, if only so the player who spent her skill points in Medieval Siege Weaponry Research doesn't get put out when it should be her time to shine.
I don't disagree with rule three, but I feel that rolling the dice behind the screen is a good thing.
It lets you fudge the numbers... and cheat.
Which doesn't have to be in your favor. The players aren't going to have fun dying all the time, sometimes that save vs death spell that hit your players will amp the excitement when they "passed".
It's about knowing what's good for the game.
It lets you fudge the numbers... and cheat.
Which doesn't have to be in your favor. The players aren't going to have fun dying all the time, sometimes that save vs death spell that hit your players will amp the excitement when they "passed".
It's about knowing what's good for the game.
I support a screen because otherwise players might metagame in fights if they see the results. Did you roll a 27 because you rolled high and got lucky, or because it's a badass creature and you actually rolled really low? A player will alter their decisions depending on what they see. The Rogue getting in position for a flank might make suddenly back out if he works out you have +17 to hit or whatever. I know well because I have done things like that. The desire to play straight and make in-game choices clashes with me not wanting to make a bad decision that puts my character in way more risk than i am comfortable with. It's hard NOT to act on the info. So yeah, I am okay with a screen for things like that, as long as I trust the DM. I am not as comfortable with it if a DM feels too rail roady or too killer.
Agreed. Screens are also great for hiding what you prepared for a session as well as the tables that are usually on them. It's a great too, not just for hiding die rolls.Draconalis said:
I tried screenless once, and players acted differently to how they would normally act in combat, actions were more specific and effective because they knew the deal what the details of what they were fighting were.
Perfect example of what I am talking aboutComic Sans said:
Rule Number Three: Play Fair
Hahahahaha, no.
See, here's the thing about most RPGs, particularly D&D: one series of bad rolls can wipe a party. Who wants that? No one. I don't, my players don't, it just isn't any fun. So when that trap goes off and gets, somehow, 10 sixes on a 10D6 roll, nobody makes their DC 13 save (come on, guys!) and suddenly even the barbarian is dead, you want deniability. You want to be able to say, "43 damage, guys", knowing that it will knock out everyone except the barbarian and rogue (improved evasion), and they can drag the rest the party to a cleric.
And nothing is worse than reversing a roll they've seen to save their asses.
Beyond that, the whole "play fair" style assumes a competition between players and DM, and good DMs aren't in competition with their players (that's what Descent: Journeys in the Dark is for). A good DM is a facilitator, and sometimes the rules and probability get in the way of facilitating a good campaign, which is why every RPG I've ever seen has, as one of its core rules, "the GM gets to fudge whatever s/he wants."
Hahahahaha, no.
See, here's the thing about most RPGs, particularly D&D: one series of bad rolls can wipe a party. Who wants that? No one. I don't, my players don't, it just isn't any fun. So when that trap goes off and gets, somehow, 10 sixes on a 10D6 roll, nobody makes their DC 13 save (come on, guys!) and suddenly even the barbarian is dead, you want deniability. You want to be able to say, "43 damage, guys", knowing that it will knock out everyone except the barbarian and rogue (improved evasion), and they can drag the rest the party to a cleric.
And nothing is worse than reversing a roll they've seen to save their asses.
Beyond that, the whole "play fair" style assumes a competition between players and DM, and good DMs aren't in competition with their players (that's what Descent: Journeys in the Dark is for). A good DM is a facilitator, and sometimes the rules and probability get in the way of facilitating a good campaign, which is why every RPG I've ever seen has, as one of its core rules, "the GM gets to fudge whatever s/he wants."
I prefer Call of Cthulhu, myself. Then I get to turn them insane first.Azuaron said:
OT: I agree with most of this, though learning exactly what your group is looking for is incredibly difficult. Some players are perfectly happy to follow railroad tracks, and will feel lost without them. Others, you want to put more on a road trip; set a few stops and let them figure out the roadmap. Some of the worst ones will force you to design your games like the Roman highway system, constantly revising your plans to incorporate the bizarre and contradictory choice they make to make sure that they end up in the dungeon you designed eventually, since that's where all the content is.
As for don't hide your rolls, it's a matter of opinion. Some groups won't respect a DM who's hiding their rolls, but tbh, I find that groups that have that mentality are also thinking of the game in terms of them vs the DM, so it's usually a sign that you're being too antagonistic. I prefer to hide my rolls very specifically because I don't know how well or poorly my group is optimized, and throwing a level 4 party consisting of a Healer, sword-and-board Fighter, Rogue, and utility-specced Sorceror into a fight with a beholder is a completely different battle than throwing a level 4 party consisting of a Transmuter-specced Wizard, a Divine Metamagic cleric, a conjurer archivist, and an artificer who's had months to prepare up against it.
I have to agree with the article when it comes to never cheating the dice or fudging the rolls. In the moment it's obviously tempting, one character dying, or even a full wipe from an unlucky roll can severely derail a session. But the flipside is you've completely defanged your game, the players realise they are never in any danger and thus nothing you do can ever generate tension. You might as well remove every combat and trap from your gameworld after this point.
This leads to another rule of mine. Never roll dice if you aren't prepared for any result that could come up. Way too often I see gms give players an easy roll, and then immediately backtrack when they fail it. I'm quite fond of the apocalypse world system when it comes to this because it constantly prepares you to set the stakes for failure as well as success. That something players and gms should always be doing in my opinion.
This leads to another rule of mine. Never roll dice if you aren't prepared for any result that could come up. Way too often I see gms give players an easy roll, and then immediately backtrack when they fail it. I'm quite fond of the apocalypse world system when it comes to this because it constantly prepares you to set the stakes for failure as well as success. That something players and gms should always be doing in my opinion.
Your players only know that if you tell them you change results. So it's the GM's fault if that happens and his/her players take advantage of that.Rack said:
I think you might be underestimating players there. First up if you're rolling behind a screen players are naturally going to expect shenanigans, you have to convince them you aren't fixing dice rolls rather than expose that you are. Secondly it's pretty easy to spot surges of luck while you're in a desperate situation. Lastly it's really hard to cover up that you're fudging dice. There will normally be a beat as you decide what the outcome of that bad roll will be, whether you need to fudge it, if it's worth fudging it, how much you need to fudge it by and how much to actually fudge it. Even if it only takes you a tenth of a second a player reduced to low hit points by a big attack is going to spot that a mile off.chozo_hybrid said:
you really do have to know your players,not just what sort of games they expect interest wise, but also the level of rules.
you dont have to follow the rules 100%, if something gets in the way of a good story dump it, make house rules and its good to change things up and give them something unexpected. ive had a group that loved combat and they were so stunned when the adventure ended and there wasnt a single fight
you dont have to follow the rules 100%, if something gets in the way of a good story dump it, make house rules and its good to change things up and give them something unexpected. ive had a group that loved combat and they were so stunned when the adventure ended and there wasnt a single fight
When it comes to fudging things, I prefer Bennies, Action Points, Fate Points, etc. It's something that breaks the system, but does so in a consistent and expected way. The most important thing a GM has to do is to get the players to trust that they are going to be fair with them, that they aren't going to arbitrarily screw them over. On the other hand, they also have to keep faith with the system your group is playing with; if you fudge things to let players survive one time but do not do so another, they won't learn anything about the system or the capabilities of their characters. If the campaign you want to run can't stand characters dying, or even a TPK, then it's up to you as a GM to find a less lethal system, rather than lying to the players about what's happening.Azuaron said:
If the party gets 60 points of damage when they would only be able to take 43, then they should have some sort of cushion to shield themselves from the uncaring dice. If they've spent that cushion already, then they know that and chose to face the danger anyways, rather than saying, "Yeah, I think Jim's in a good mood tonight, so he'll put in a way for our characters to survive even if we shouldn't." If the GM fudges whenever they want, then it's at their discretion what happens, and you might as well play freeform because you're saying to yourself (and your players, when they inevitably catch on) that the rules don't matter if you decide you'd rather see something else happen.
On a related note, I disagree with #2 (knowing the rules). As the GM, you're likely the only person who has read the rulebook cover to cover. While fudging things can work (and is often the easiest thing to do in the middle of the game), you should write down when you fudged something and go back later to see if there are rules that actually cover that situation. With any luck, the game will have been designed and playtested, and the official rules are probably sturdier and more complete than anything you come up with on the fly. For instance, if a PC wants to start a merchant company, you should look to see if there's anything more detailed than just saying, "Roll Diplomacy to negotiate prices," as other economic rules will give more depth and options to the player.
What does a player learn when you roll 3 20's in a row? That Insta-kills are possible? Geeze, lesson learned. Thanks DM for wasting my time!Thunderous Cacophony said:
If the party takes 60pts of damage when they should be able to take 43, than that means it is the GM who has screwed up balancing the encounter. The screen is designed to hide the GMs fuckups as much as anything else.
Rule #1 is "Have fun." If crummy strings of dice rolls mess that up, then the players aren't having fun. I've tried both ways, and have over 15 years of GM experience now. If the players aren't trusting you just because you have a screen up, than maybe, just maybe, there is something ELSE going on at the table that has little to do with the screen.
All that said, yes, be fair. Be fair in how you DO rule things, by being consistent. If you allow a PC to make a save to avoid falling off a cliff, you damn well better be ready to allow another PC the same thing in a similar situation. Players get FAR more upset about unfair rulings than they have EVER because the GM fudged a dice roll that they never saw.
In one campaign, at the penultimate boss, (a pitfiend), with a GM who rolled openly. The pitfiend couldn't roll higher than a 4. It was hilarious in all the wrong ways, trivialized the encounter and everything the party prepared for. They joked about it for years, in a "oh man remember this awful stupid that happened." The players NEED to be challenged.
In the epic level handbook it pretty much admits the mechanical problems of DnD, it breaks down at higher levels because of the amount of randomness in die rolling, where the difference between one result and other is life and death. YOU may want a more random system, but my parties have almost universally prefered Roleplaying instead of Rollplaying.
I've tried both ways as well, as both player and GM, and I can agree that whether or not the screen is up doesn't matter. I trust the people I play with to be fair and even-handed with the rules regardless of where they roll, and a big part of that is abiding by the rules that everyone agrees to at the start of the game, the system that governs what happens. And a big part of most systems is that there is a level of randomness in them; in a well-balanced game, everything tends towards the mean where individual character stats are the most important determining factor, but it does leave open the possibility that things might not match up mathematically. You might learn, for example, that death can still be a sudden event even at high levels if you don't make your saves; important information for the players, though in-game characters likely don't think they've passed some arbitrary line and become immortal. People might roll high, or low, and it might push the situation in a new direction.Yozozo said:
Which means that yes, some unusual results might come from it. You might find that the fighter is off their game and slips down the pit onto the spikes, or that the boss monster gets diced like ham. As the DM, it's your job to explain WHY something happened and let the rules say WHAT happened. OOC, you might know that it's because the dice gods are unhappy, but in character the fighter's old Blood Bowl injury acted up at just the right time, or the pitfiend had exhausted himself earlier that day fighting in the Blood War. It doesn't matter if you fucked up in encounter design, your players are in the situation NOW, and someone with your experience likely knows that it is far better to play things how they land and try to salvage something rather than saying, "Tonight's a wash because I fucked up on the math."[footnote]That said, if you are a GM who really did screw the pooch, it might be better to call the session early and try a quick board game or something if you have absolutely no idea what you did wrong mechanically or storywise that has apparently fucked your players over to no end. I've done so trying a new mechanics-heavy system that I didn't understand properly, though never for story reasons.[/footnote] You don't lie to the players about what is going on mechanically, because literally everything else is in your hands as the GM, and fucking with their only reliable way of dealing with the game world is an excellent way of making sure they don't know how to reliably deal with the game world.
If you and your group can't roleplay and have fun when results are determined semi-randomly, then systems with random elements are not for you and your group. I recommend Amber Diceless, Nobilis, or the Marvel Universe Roleplaying Game for enjoyable games where random factors aren't involved in task resolution.
I've never had a situation where I've had to convince my players of that, I've had PC's die and had no complaints about rolls etc. I've only ever fudged three rolls as far as I can recall, each were to do with the fact that I screwed up the balance of the encounter. Plus die rolls are random, there are runs of good luck and runs of bad, how is it any less believable when it happens to a GM, that just seems a bit silly.Rack said:
If players are always going to be suspicious of the GM running their game, maybe they should find another game. There should be a mutual respect between GM and players, and I feel I have that with my group.
I can already tell we're probably going to have to agree to disagree, but every role playing group is different, so that's no surprise
I disagree with points 2 and 3. #2 because its wording implies that anyone who actually likes attention to detail and rules lawyering is inherently the person in the wrong; at one point I had a group of people who had as much fun debating the rules minutiae as playing the actual game. Yes there are times its better to break the rules, but you have to know if your players will actually feel that makes the game better or not.
As for #3 I'd argue if your group doesn't trust you to be fair you have far deeper problems than the scope of this article covers. Rolling badly or greatly once in a while to make something fantastic and memorable happen is OK, but if someone in your group fails 5 tests in a row its gonna kill their investment real fast, and sometimes you need to help the game along a bit. or a lot.
As for #3 I'd argue if your group doesn't trust you to be fair you have far deeper problems than the scope of this article covers. Rolling badly or greatly once in a while to make something fantastic and memorable happen is OK, but if someone in your group fails 5 tests in a row its gonna kill their investment real fast, and sometimes you need to help the game along a bit. or a lot.