DMs: what have you learned from PLAYING that has made you a better DM?

[Bullgrit]

I also know that a 3-point system works better than an 8-point system for off-the-cuff adjudication.

A 3-point system is right in there:
Very Easy = DC 0
Easy = DC 5
Average = DC 10
Tough = DC 15
Challenging = DC 20
Formidable = DC 25
Heroic = DC 30
Nearly Impossible = DC 40

[I'm making an assumption that D&D4 uses 5, 15, 25 numbers for its "easy, average, hard."]

Maybe it's 0, 10, 20 at levels 1-10, 5, 15, 25 at levels 11-20, and 10, 20, 30 at levels 21-30?

5, 15, 25 / 15, 25, 35 / 25, 35, 45 ?

How difficult is it to make a 10th level character who can hit DC 40 fairly reliably?

Maybe our definitions differ, but I would think "fairly reliably" would be able to make the check on a Take 10. That would mean a +30 to a skill.

Certainly by 20th level, you're doing ten impossible things before breakfast.

Are D&D4 PCs not capable of doing stuff in the "nearly impossible" range?

I'm not saying either edition does it better -- I'm saying that they both pretty much are doing the same thing. Maybe D&D4 elaborated on it, or even explained it better, but it looks to me that they both are doing nearly the exact same thing.

Bullgrit

[SilvercatMoonpaw2]

Originally Posted by Nai_Calus

*shrug* YMMV. Me, I don't like random senseless non-reality and I refuse to accept its pointless unexplained use.

So do you expect answers to everything you don't understand? But isn't it more realistic to have something happen that you don't understand at first and only later, or possibly never, do you find out why it was that way?

Originally Posted by Nai_Calus

*shrug* YMMV........Non-reality that actually has a purpose? Bring it.

I guess Millage Does Vary, because drama is a purpose to me. A very necessary one.

Originally Posted by Nai_Calus

Have something corrupting the world, send me to the planes, make the world flat, or a cube, or whatever you like. Just don't have random pointless reasonless stuff that does nothing but pull me out of the game. Keep the fantastic sparse so it keeps its wonder. I've never seen unrealistic lava used to any purpose other than 'Wow, wouldn't it be dramatic if...'. Which, no. There's other ways to create drama that don't just make you sigh.

And this is precise what pulls me out of the game: acting like the world being presented is real. It's confusing. I guess this is where I actually invoke the need for consistency: things should act as they are. Therefore a non-real thing should not act real, should not pretend and insist that it is real. My suspension of disbelief gets broken that way.

The problem is that realistic or logical elements like what you've suggested feel jarring to me because they point out that everything in their world isn't real.

[Ourph]

Originally Posted by Bullgrit

Don’t you and Mike Mearls know that this exists in D&D3, too. In fact, it’s simpler because it doesn’t scale by level – you don’t have to check to see if a 25 beats a hard DC at that level.
>snip<
See, this is one of those “Look what neat shiny D&D4 has” moments that makes me say, “Yeah, that is a neat and shiny that D&D3 has too.”

You know, just because someone says they like something about 4e, it doesn't mean they're saying it didn't exist in 3e or that every other version of D&D before 4e somehow sucked. Is it really necessary to take this nice, positive thread and turn it into an edition war?

[Bullgrit]

You know, just because someone says they like something about 4e, it doesn't mean they're saying it didn't exist in 3e or that every other version of D&D before 4e somehow sucked.

Well, the post did suggest (I think it outright said) that the previous skill system lacked easy, average, hard descriptors and set numbers. Basically: It used to work (fail) that way, now it works (succeeds) this way.

I wasn't assuming the poster or Mearls was insulting a previous edition, I took it that they either never noticed or forgot that the system worked basically the same in the previous edition.

Is it really necessary to take this nice, positive thread and turn it into an edition war?

I wasn't the one to bring edition into the topic. And as I was saying the two editions worked very similarly (successfully), I was hardly turning anything into an edition war.

It would be like someone saying, "Before, character classes stopped at level 10, but D&D3 has classes up to level 20!" And someone else pointing out, "Well, AD&D had classes that went up to 20, too."

Bullgrit

[Lonely Tylenol]

Originally Posted by Bullgrit

A 3-point system is right in there:
Very Easy = DC 0
Easy = DC 5
Average = DC 10
Tough = DC 15
Challenging = DC 20
Formidable = DC 25
Heroic = DC 30
Nearly Impossible = DC 40

[I'm making an assumption that D&D4 uses 5, 15, 25 numbers for its "easy, average, hard."]

Maybe it's 0, 10, 20 at levels 1-10, 5, 15, 25 at levels 11-20, and 10, 20, 30 at levels 21-30?

5, 15, 25 / 15, 25, 35 / 25, 35, 45 ?

I don't need to worry about doing this in 4e. It's done already, on a level-by-level basis, and it's (putatively) balanced against the expected character skill levels. As well, my point about the decrease in range of skill bonus between trained and untrained characters still stands.

If I want a finer grain, I can just throw on some modifiers.

Are D&D4 PCs not capable of doing stuff in the "nearly impossible" range?

Oh certainly, but they generally need to be epic to do it.

I'm not saying either edition does it better -- I'm saying that they both pretty much are doing the same thing. Maybe D&D4 elaborated on it, or even explained it better, but it looks to me that they both are doing nearly the exact same thing.

Bullgrit

Well, they are both affixing task resolution to a modified d20 roll, and one is derived from the other, so it's not surprising that they look differently. The question is, is one more functional than the other? And I think that yes, 4E has improved on 3E's skill system, which I used to really love, coming off the NWP system of 2E, back in the day (and before that, the "no, you can't really do anything but hit things" system of 1E).

It just makes things quick and easy for me as a DM. It's simple to say "yes" to my players because there are few complications that will make me regret saying yes, and because I can allow checks that fall outside the skill system while still maintaining a reasonable chance of success. As I've said above, my biggest bit of DMing advice I learned from being a player is that it's fun to win. Making it easy for me to give my players lots of chances to win in little ways is a good thing.

[Lonely Tylenol]

Originally Posted by Bullgrit

Well, the post did suggest (I think it outright said) that the previous skill system lacked easy, average, hard descriptors and set numbers. Basically: It used to work (fail) that way, now it works (succeeds) this way.

I wasn't assuming the poster or Mearls was insulting a previous edition, I took it that they either never noticed or forgot that the system worked basically the same in the previous edition.

Well, it didn't actually. The numbers in the previous edition were fixed, and the numbers in this edition scale. That makes a big difference. As I said, most checks are normal DCs, which means that it's only special cases that aren't following the standard, normal DC progression.

This is not to say that the 3E system isn't good. It is. The changes for 4E could have been stuck into Unearthed Arcana, or some similar supplement, as a way to streamline the 3E system, without significantly disturbing the game, because the two systems are so similar. Obviously, the 4E system is just the 3E system with a few things altered. I don't see this as an edition war issue. It's just that I am pleased with the scaling DCs making things easy for me as a DM and helping me as a player to trust my DM not to make arbitrary rulings on my checks.

[Cadfan]

I dunno, I never found the 3e system remotely useful. I don't know the difference between "tough" and "formidable." And to make matters worse, I can't discern that from the overall skill system since the variance between skill levels is so high and magic items that boost skills as so common and highly powered.

I much prefer a system where choices are relatively simply because they don't need to be any more complex, and where the background math ("Ok, maybe this is a formidable challenge? But really that's easy for my players because of their level, and I think this should be hard, so that's really impossible, I think...") is done for me.

[underthumb]

Originally Posted by SilvercatMoonpaw2

So do you expect answers to everything you don't understand? But isn't it more realistic to have something happen that you don't understand at first and only later, or possibly never, do you find out why it was that way?

In a manner of speaking, he already knows the reason it happened that way. It happened that way because the GM didn't think carefully about his trap and was forced to generate counter-intuitive properties of the world to cover for his mistakes.

Really, if you want to defend your point, you should pick a different fight, because the example given is excruciating in its awkwardness, and (to my mind) indefensible.

[Imaro]

@Bullgrit : Heh, I see exactly what you're saying... Some interesting points I'm finding are...

D&D 4e only has 3 gradations in DC difficulty if in fact all DC's are set by the PC's level, otherwise it has 30 gradations (level categories X difficulty), and I've seen it argued either way depending on what exactly the point the poster is trying to make is.

Second I keep hearing people talk about how the gap in skills has been corrected... but IMO, it hasn't.

As an example, a 2nd level Halfling Rogue can have a skill total in Acrobatics equal to +4(Dex bonus) +2(Racial Bonus) +5(Trained Bonus) +3(Skill Focus Bonus) +2(Criminal Background Bonus) +1(Level Bonus)= +17 at 2nd level. This means he can effectively without rolling attain any difficulty in the range of 1st through 6th level... And can actually routinely (needs less than a 10) do the hardest tasks in Paragon tier. With a roll of 12 he can do hard lower-epic tier level feats... and this is at 2nd level, and all he really sacrificed was a single feat for skill focus. So I gotta disagree that 4e's system in anyway limits a low level PC achieving the nigh-impossible.

Finally there's the whole disparity in challenge levels between specialized and non-specialized characters. Anything that can be challenging but not impossible to a non-focused character who picked acrobatics up (say you're average 2nd level fighter with no Dex bonus but trained in Acrobatics + Level Bonus (+6)) on the side... is going to be laughably easy for the maxed character, if a challenge at all.


Perhaps we should fork this if people really want to discuss it...

[Piratecat]

Folks, this is a cool thread! Please don't sidetrack it.

[Woas]

What I've learned from playing that made me a better Game Master is that you don't need necessarily know everything that's going on. You just need to make the players think you do.

And that following the rules is for squares.

[pogre]

Originally Posted by Ycore Rixle

Pacing is the biggest thing I have learned from sitting on the player's side of the table. Always, always, keep things moving.

Bingo - I rarely play, but when I do pacing is the thing I always carry back to my side of the screen.

Be prepared, DMs stumbling through boxed texts and losing track of what they are doing make for a very dull game.

[Noumenon]

I can't say I learned anything because I had never DMed until after being a player and I've never played since, but two things I did away with right off the bat after playing were copper pieces and low magic. I could never take the world seriously when they acted like charging two copper for a toll should actually matter to you and I could never take the authorities seriously when they tried to imprison fourth-level clerics in plain stone jails.

[Rechan]

I've learned only a few things, really. That's partly because I get so rare an opportunity to play.

1) The power of Player-created Goals, direction, and a DM with a "World-Reactive" attitude. I had a great GM for a game of Exalted. He encouraged us to do stuff out of game - write stories, come up with plans. He also expected each of our PCs to have goals, what we wanted, and then pursue those goals. Half the plots in the entire game were the group working to accomplsih their own goals.

It was very, very satisfying, compared to "Here is the plot I have prepped, you follow it, with the occasional detour based on your whim."

Although I've realized that it's very hard to get players OUT of the "Follow the DM" mindset, into a pro-active "Follow the player's goals" mindset.

2) Look at what your player is trying to do with his character's abilities, and work with that. I created a rogue, whose schtick was moving and bouncing and maneuvering around. What was the first encounter? "You're on a small raft in the middle of the water, and you're attacked by gators." All of the fights, except the very last, were in tight confines, or areas where you just couldn't maneuver around at all.

3) Don't badmouth and/or say "What you will do". This I learned vicariously; I allowed a player to DM. That player would say things like "I don't like all this combat, and little out-of-combat stuff" and "My encounters will be lively and full of Objectives". What does he do, when in the DM seat? Uninteresting dungeon crawl. The only objective "Smoosh these eggs before minions hatch out of them" which was far more tedious than fun.