The fault of a bad DM.

[korjik]

And if the problem pops up for enough people, I think it is indeed a cop out to expect just the DM to take care of it.

Let's take for example something more concrete: Scry/buff/teleport.

Used individually they're ok. They fill certain necessities. But used together, they are breaking that style of play. And if enough groups put 2 and 2 together, then you have a lot of groups breaking play style.

Should the DM be expected to put his foot down, or should something be expected to be done with the rules?

The impression I get around here is that the DM is expected to address the problem, generally by going through a long, lengthy process of countermeasures to counter the PCs tactics, so that every single threat is hidden behind layer after layer of protections just so the players can't break the game. And if the DM doesn't do this, or does this and is frustrated by it, well then he's just a bad DM.

And scry/buff/teleport is not only bad DMing, it is even worse DMing.

This one is really simple:
'Hey guys, this is a really simple plan you have, but it will short out my entire adventure and mean the hours of work I put into this will be gone and I will have to ad-lib the entire night. I do not find that to be fun. I will let you guys do it this time, but after this, intelligent bad guys will know about this and have a counter.'

Too many people here look at it as black and white. Either it must be banned always or it will always break the game. Guess what, you can have grey. Dont want the players skipping your chasm dungeon? Make it a choice of fight the dragons and get no treasure, or you can climb the chasm and find my adventure. Players want to teleport into the throne room of the high priest/avatar/god-king of the circle of archmages? Wow, you just teleported into their anti-magic dungeons stark naked (after you warned them). Players want to teleport into the throne room of the baron of podunk-ville? One satisfying session of players putting the 'why are you hitting yourself' on said baron.

Another thing that seems to be missing is that in a game with 5 PCs, there are SIX people playing D&D. The DM isnt an observer, he is the guy with the most vested in the game. The DM is there to have fun too. He may have fun differently, and have different role to play in making the game go, but he is still there to have fun. When the players, wether deliberately or accidentally blow that out of the water, the DM can ask that something be changed, just like the players can too.

There is no perfect rules set. All games can be broken, and (nearly) all can be alot of fun. Depends on the players. One of the great strengths of RPGs instead of computer games is the ability to change the rules on the fly to take gaps in the rules system into account, or to change the game to taste. Do it. Dont be an analog console.

There is no such thing as a DM/player arms race. The DM always wins. May not be fun, but the DM can always kill the players, if for no other reason than he controls the game. 4 minions every 2 minutes will eventually kill the players. It is only a matter of rolling enough 20s. This dosent mean that the DM should or shouldnt kill the players, just a look at how RPGs are set up. On the other hand, DMs need to remember that they only have one brain, and the players usually have more. They will eventually be able to outhink anything you do, if for no other reason that they have gotten used to your tricks. They will eventually find the holes in the rules that you missed, if for no other reason than they have more eyes to read with. So when they come up with something nasty, steal it and use it against them. If they really hate it, let them come up with a counter, then steal that too. Then point out that the guys who are using their ideas against them are, in fact, just as smart and skilled as they are, if not more so.

So, to address the OP: Calling bad DMing can be a cop-out, but it isnt always a cop-out. When there is a trivial solution to a problem, yet a DM will not use it, and that causes players to not have fun, then the DM is not performing well.

 

[korjik]

Any good DM could just houserule flight back in.

I could create the whole game from scratch too. Dosent mean I want to. I prefer to use money I get for doing ion energy analysis of the thrust plume of the VASIMR to buy games from someone who prefers to design fantasy role playing games. If the role-playing game is not worth the money due to all the changes, then I wont spend the money.

This should be obvious.

By the way, I did.

 

[Rechan]

I could...

I think he was joking.

 

[Rechan]

Too many people here look at it as black and white. Either it must be banned always or it will always break the game.

Um, what? I wasn't saying that Scrying, buffing or teleporting should be banned.

My point is that it's using a few relatively innocent elements to craft a really effective and harsh tactic and then abusing it because the system lets you, at the cost of the story. And that somehow the DM's fault alone if it's a problem. Not the players for finding and exploiting the system loophole, and not the fact the loophole was there in the first place.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

Me as a player on the other hand, I have never felt the need to argue with a DM about anything. I can go with whatever flow he needs me to go with as long as I feel he's trying to be fair at the same time. So if a DM felt I was abusing a spell or something, and he asked me to deal with it because it's making his job as DM too hard, I have no problem at all changing my ways. I definitely wouldn't argue with him and say he's a bad DM.

This kind of behavior is unacceptable and will not be tolerated. Please turn in your Gamer license immediately.

 

[Pbartender]

Cause when the 'just dont have flight' turns into 'just dont put flight into the next rules set', it causes a problem.

Namely, people will inevitably show up on message boards complaining that rules for flight weren't included in the game, and (all joking from Doug aside) spend weeks or months arguing about the best way to house rule it back in.

I sometimes feel sorry for the game designers... They're damned if they do, and they're damned if they don't.

 

[smerwin29]

Sure a bad DM can ruin great stuff. Sure a good DM can make the terrible great. But, in such discussions, let's hold off on blaming the DM and maintain discussion on the real issue.

I guess it all depends on the conversation, eh? Here is the situation I often find myself in: as an administrator for several organized play campaigns and freelancers, I have been responsible (as a designer, developer, editor, producers, and playtester) for literally hundreds of adventures played by tens of thousands of players since 2001. I really, really tried to take that responsibility seriously, and part of that responsibility is studying feedback and distilling good practices, culling out writers that were lacking, promoting the work of the talented ones, offering advice, looking at how format and other restrictions affect adventure play, etc.

So I would receive feedback from players and DMs on a regular basis. If I had to put a percentage on it, I would say that 60% of the complaints about aspects of different adventures were at least partially, if not totally, the responsibility of the DM. Now most of that was along the lines of "This adventure/encounter was too easy/too difficult." As anyone who has played/DMed for more than a few sessions knows, encounter difficulty is so much dependent on so many factors, including dumb luck, player choices, DM tactics, ad infinitum.

Removing those complaints, an unsettling number of complaints are like this: "I think it was so lame that the PCs had to fight both a dragon and a demon in the final combat with all the fiery terrain." To which I would naturally reply: "I completely understand your frustration with the situation. If there had been a dragon, a demon, or fiery terrain in that encounter, you can be sure I would have done something about it." After dealing with countless situations like that, you are naturally going to learn to think about DMs in the process while making these judgments.

Of course, discussion of adventures and discussion of rules are two different animals. The adventure is projected through the filter of the DM, whereas the rules are transparent for everyone to see.

Good discussion!

 

[Desdichado]

Now, while a fantastic DM can just about rewrite any game, change rules, and make water into wine, I contend that a flawed tool is a flawed tool, regardless of how well a skilled artisan can make do with it.

It's reflexive defensiveness. Part of the problem is that folks are way too quick to jump on a tool as being flawed when what they really mean is that it's not to their taste. If you're going to jump in there accusing stuff of being "flawed" when really you just don't like it, it seems only natural that some other folks will jump in to tell you that you're just not using it right.

 

[steenan]

It's obvious that some problems are caused by players and GMs and may only be solved by a honest discussion out of game. But there are also real system problems. A problematic part of a system does not have to break and crash a game - it is bad enough if it forces the GM (one of the "good ones") to waste his time on working around it.

I don't require any system to be fully universal. I don't believe that any good universal system may exist. I require a system to support the genre and style of my game. I expect it to have rules for things that are important in this genre, rules that make it fun to play. I expect the rules to encourage in genre behavior and discourage out of genre one. I expect the rules not to get in the way of fun - I don't want to need to ignore or change them on the fly.

I know not every game is for me. If it's honest about what it does and what it does not, it's great - I just won't buy it. The problem is when the text of the book tells me one thing, and the rules do something else. Such incoherence is the main source of issues.

Nobody reasonable rants about D&D being a bad horror or CoC being a bad superhero game. The problem arises when a game describes itself as a horror, but its rules create superheroes, or when it is presented as a heroic fantasy, but works as modern military.

It's a GMs fault if he uses a screwdriver to drive in nails. It is a game's fault if it sells him a screwdriver with "hammer" on the box. Or when it sells a hammer that's hard to use because it's to heavy, to light or incorrectly balanced.

 

[Glyfair]

Now, while a fantastic DM can just about rewrite any game, change rules, and make water into wine, I contend that a flawed tool is a flawed tool, regardless of how well a skilled artisan can make do with it.



It's to the point (for me) that this approaches "godwin-ing"* a thread. Sure a bad DM can ruin great stuff. Sure a good DM can make the terrible great. But, in such discussions, let's hold off on blaming the DM and maintain discussion on the real issue.

I agree a great DM can run anything and a bad DM can ruin anything. What you have to consider is how the average (even better the slightly below average DM). There are far more of them then great and bad DMs together.

You need a real world test. If a "great tool" doesn't work in the hands of your most common skill level of DM, then it is not a great tool.