As a DM, what is your default answer to player requests?

[jasper]

That's likely to just cause the power gamer to feel cheated, and game more powerfully! (badly rephrased phrase!)

as I said PROBLEM power gamer. As he was the source of 90% of rules conflicts/challenges/whining; I booted him from gaming when I dm. But not from the house. Then 2 weeks later he picks a fight with his wife at my house under a different dm. I told them they need to take outside. They did. And never came back for any get together at my house.

 

[aj3ai]

as I said PROBLEM power gamer. As he was the source of 90% of rules conflicts/challenges/whining; I booted him from gaming when I dm. But not from the house. Then 2 weeks later he picks a fight with his wife at my house under a different dm. I told them they need to take outside. They did. And never came back for any get together at my house.

Sounds like a problem person, let alone gamer.

 

[Tayne]

Forty-two.

 

[malcolypse]

I tend towards "why".

Their intent is often more important than anything else in determining my final answer.

Power-gamey intent almost universally gets a "No, and here's why."

"I wanna see how the system handles X." is sometimes interesting enough to earn a yes.

Roleplay fluff that isn't necessarily a crunch advantage, but is deeply tied to their character concept and background almost always gets a "Yes, and what do you think of y, and perhaps even z?"

 

[Ulrick]

"Hrm... ha... hahaha...hahaHA...AHA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA... oh that's great... HA HA HA HA HA... oh HO HO HO... heh heh heh... hee hee hee... AHA HA HA HA HA HA... oh man, I can't breathe... eh heh... eh heh... ha... heeew...

No."

 

[WizarDru]

I find this to be erroneous. I have found in my gaming (and that which I have observed) since the early Seventies that games with less depth of roleplaying, when games have more of a tendancy toward combat, that they can seem to be adversarial but that even then this can be a mistaken impression.

Well, I'm talking in the sense that many people believed that to be the case and many novice DMs took it to heart. I played with plenty of DMs in the early 1980s who figured that translated into: 'I'll try to kill you with this module'. It was also one of those shared myths that everyone knew about but few people actually ever experienced. Thank the Dragon Forum article for that one, I think.

 

[Mark CMG]

Well, I'm talking in the sense that many people believed that to be the case and many novice DMs took it to heart. I played with plenty of DMs in the early 1980s who figured that translated into: 'I'll try to kill you with this module'. It was also one of those shared myths that everyone knew about but few people actually ever experienced. Thank the Dragon Forum article for that one, I think.

Your previous post seemed to say that as DMs got older, they became more adversarial yet this post seems to suggest that back when you started gaming the DMs at that time were the adversarial ones? (And I am merely speculating that they were younger DMs then that seemed to take to the idea of killing PCs?) Of course, I am not suggesting this was universal, just that I am gathering from your posts that this was your own experience?

 

[Thunderfoot]

My default answer is "Why?, How?, What?"

All too often players want to do stuff for the sake of player power not character consideration. I'm pretty broad with my allowances, but you have to be able to tell me -Why you want it, How it fits into the campaign and What do you think the eventual outcome of this request will be?

For example, I ran a 3.X campaign that disallowed all PrCs that were pre-made in a book except the Dwarven Warpriest (because it was just so non-specific). The original point of PrCs (as I understood it) was to add flavor to the campaign, not make you uber power gamer. So as players leveled up and got an idea of what they wanted their characters to become, I had the player's design their own PrCs based on character idea, not book stats. From there, they kind of wrote themselves. Never had a problem with power creep and everyone was happy, including me. BTW just re-naming an existing PrC was a no-no. If you wanted it, you had to work for it.

 

[DnD_Dad]

Yes, with everything that comes with it.

 

[El Mahdi]

I also use the occasional "Yeah, you can do that...if you're really sure you want to...I wouldn't recommend it, but you can do it if you want..."