DMs not playing by the rules (Forked Thread: What are the no-goes for you?)

[S'mon]

My current '3.5' campaign my players use 3.5 D&D, while I use mostly Moldvay-Cook B/X D&D. Works great, IME.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

I've been seriously considering DMing 4e while my plyaers use 3.5

 

[Halivar]

So everyone had the same chance to do whatever was being done?

Seems like it. But, in the end, it's the player perception that matters. If the players feel the game has been fair, and they had fun playing, mission accomplished.

NOW, I have played in games like this, except the DM relied on dice rolls because he couldn't be bothered to prepare for his games (e.g. his DM screen had nothing behind it). THAT was endlessly frustrating. If he had so much as a printout of stereo instructions back there, and actually looked down at them from time to time, I probably would not have been the wiser.

I've been seriously considering DMing 4e while my plyaers use 3.5

It kind of sounds like you already were, at least with respect to static DC's.

 

[ggroy]

Seems like it. But, in the end, it's the player perception that matters. If the players feel the game has been fair, and they had fun playing, mission accomplished.

NOW, I have played in games like this, except the DM relied on dice rolls because he couldn't be bothered to prepare for his games (e.g. his DM screen had nothing behind it). THAT was endlessly frustrating. If he had so much as a printout of stereo instructions back there, and actually looked down at them from time to time, I probably would not have been the wiser.

The trick is maintaining a facade, so that the players don't catch on so easily to the DM playing with a different set of rules. At minimum, I would keep a lot of dice around and one of the core books turned to a semi-random page, behind the DM screen. (I would change the semi-random page or even the book, every so often).

In terms of dice rolling, I would always roll enough dice so that it "sounded" like I was rolling damage whenever a badguy was attacking a player character, even if the badguy's attack was a miss. Conversely, I would sometimes roll a d20 "defense roll" when a badguy was attacked, even if I was never going to be using the "defense roll" during my "experiment". I also would try to maintain a "poker face" whenever I rolled a natural 20 crit for a badguy attacking a player, and just tell them the high damage roll without any "excitement". The only hint that I rolled a crit was in my description of what the badguy did to the player.

 

[vazanar]

I've been seriously considering DMing 4e while my plyaers use 3.5

I found a lot of the 4e ideas/rules I had been using in 3.5 before it came out. After all a lot of the ideas were in modules/settings books.

As long as it doesn't lower players chosen abilities too much the rules don't need to be perfectly the same on both sides of the screen.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

Interesting experiment. You would not have gotten away with it at higher levels where the total number of modifiers gets difficult to manage though. While a roll of a 6 is probably a failure for most players, if that player has a high stat modifier, and some magic at work to buff the number, as well as feats optimized to the action, you could get caught.

Unless of course you are accounting for who is doing what when deciding the difficulty range for the character.

But relying on how well you know your PC's characters can backfire. I am generally hard pressed to recall the specifics of any of my players character sheets.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[ggroy]

Interesting experiment. You would not have gotten away with it at higher levels where the total number of modifiers gets difficult to manage though.

It probably would have been harder to maintain the facade after level 10 in 3.5E D&D, with all the bookkeeping and other stuff.

I suppose it could be easier to maintain such a facade in 1E AD&D, or possibly even 4E D&D. I haven't tried such an "experiment" on other games yet.

While a roll of a 6 is probably a failure for most players, if that player has a high stat modifier, and some magic at work to buff the number, as well as feats optimized to the action, you could get caught.

Unless of course you are accounting for who is doing what when deciding the difficulty range for the character.

I did take into account the particular player characters, especially if one had modifiers stacking up. If there was a munchkin overpowered character, I could have changed the d20 to-hit range from 5 to 20, instead of 10 to 20.

But relying on how well you know your PC's characters can backfire. I am generally hard pressed to recall the specifics of any of my players character sheets.

I asked the players to hand in their character sheets to me, after each game session was finished. I kept several notes on each character, as to how I could change the difficulty ranges.

 

[ggroy]

Unless of course you are accounting for who is doing what when deciding the difficulty range for the character.

I did adjust the difficulty ranges depending on the character, weapon of choice, the particular situation, etc ...

For the to-hit d20 roll depending on the weapon, player character, monster, etc ... some changes I remember making were:

- the sorcerer using a staff to hit many opponents, the to-hit range was changed to 15-20
- many kobolds died after being hit once or twice with a to-hit range of 10-20 for most characters
- penetrating magical resistance at lower levels required a roll of 5 or greater
- penetrating magical resistance at slightly higher levels (but lower than level 10), started to require a roll of 10 or greater

 

[outsider]

Would it be reasonable of me to secretly be playing a GURPS character in a D&D game without the knowledge of the rest of the group? Why is it reasonable when a DM does it? The DM should not put his own whims ahead of what the group wants to be playing.

 

[ggroy]

Would it be reasonable of me to secretly be playing a GURPS character in a D&D game without the knowledge of the rest of the group? Why is it reasonable when a DM does it? The DM should not put his own whims ahead of what the group wants to be playing.

It was an experiment done in secret. Apparently none of the players noticed at all what was going on until I told them about my "experiment", which was a year later after my "experiment" game was already finished.

I would imagine things would have turned out quite differently if I had told the players of my "experiment" at the very beginning of the game.

"Psychology" type experiments generally work better when the "guinea pigs" are not aware of what exactly the experimenters are measuring for.