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General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Should a GM be allowed to arbitrarily make things up as they go along?
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<blockquote data-quote="Blackbrrd" data-source="post: 6234746" data-attributes="member: 63962"><p>For me there is an optimum point of the GM making up things as they go. Too little and it feels like a video game. Too much and don't feel like I can actually make a difference. It's also important that if the GM makes up a lot of things as he goes, the players can do the same.</p><p></p><p>I just DM-ed my first DnD session in about two years on saturday, and I kinda winged about half the session, fiddled a lot with the mechanics when it comes to to-hit/defenses, but also let my players use out-of-the-box actions to resolve fights or encounters. </p><p></p><p>I basically didn't say "no" if a player said his character was doing something. If for any reason it could be plausible, I let the player roll the dice. After seing the roll, I kinda calculated backwards from that what actually happened. I had some general DC's thought out in advance. 10 for easy, 15 for hard. In addition, I would adjust this with up to +-10 according to what the player was trying to do, and why he (or I) thought it would be possible.</p><p></p><p>I know that the ad-hoc adjustments I made here was something that just wouldn't fly with many players (including myself in some situations), but this was a small group, just 4 players and me as a DM and I think everybody was into to: "everything flies" mindset.</p><p></p><p>For a good role playing session, relying mostly on the dice to decide the outcome of a diplomacy/intimidate/bluff check is something I find quite detrimental to the game. I just loved how one of my players made his character name-drop at precisely the right moment to bluff his way out of problems. It's not something I would forgo just because he rolled badly on that bluff check. (Now, I wouldn't have let him off the hook either, instead, I would have expanded on the difficulty of getting out without a fight).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Blackbrrd, post: 6234746, member: 63962"] For me there is an optimum point of the GM making up things as they go. Too little and it feels like a video game. Too much and don't feel like I can actually make a difference. It's also important that if the GM makes up a lot of things as he goes, the players can do the same. I just DM-ed my first DnD session in about two years on saturday, and I kinda winged about half the session, fiddled a lot with the mechanics when it comes to to-hit/defenses, but also let my players use out-of-the-box actions to resolve fights or encounters. I basically didn't say "no" if a player said his character was doing something. If for any reason it could be plausible, I let the player roll the dice. After seing the roll, I kinda calculated backwards from that what actually happened. I had some general DC's thought out in advance. 10 for easy, 15 for hard. In addition, I would adjust this with up to +-10 according to what the player was trying to do, and why he (or I) thought it would be possible. I know that the ad-hoc adjustments I made here was something that just wouldn't fly with many players (including myself in some situations), but this was a small group, just 4 players and me as a DM and I think everybody was into to: "everything flies" mindset. For a good role playing session, relying mostly on the dice to decide the outcome of a diplomacy/intimidate/bluff check is something I find quite detrimental to the game. I just loved how one of my players made his character name-drop at precisely the right moment to bluff his way out of problems. It's not something I would forgo just because he rolled badly on that bluff check. (Now, I wouldn't have let him off the hook either, instead, I would have expanded on the difficulty of getting out without a fight). [/QUOTE]
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Should a GM be allowed to arbitrarily make things up as they go along?
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