There is no wrong way to play, but...

[Agamon]

…because you italicised "might"?

Well, "never", too.

While I agree with the idea behind the OP, I'd add the following line:

If you're having fun the way you play, rock on. If you think you might want to try to improve the game, you might want to start with the above.

 

[Sunseeker]

There are great fun ways to play that cease being D&D in any meaningful sense, tho'.*

*in your opinion.

I think you left that part out.

What makes D&D to different people is different. There's nothing wrong with that. I don't care if you use D&D to play high-fantasy pseudo-steampunk victorian cyber-apocalypse games of if you like to grind through the mud in low-fantasy, low-tech, primitive settings.

Either D&D is something specific, which I doubt anyone could ever agree on what that is, or it is something general. How general that may be is up to the people playing, but hey if they're having fun playing that thing that doesn't even remotely resemble D&D to you, well who care really?

 

[TrippyHippy]

There is no wrong way to play, but...

...if you end up in a casualty ward, have become financially bankrupt, with a pending court case... and your wife wants a divorce...

you might want to re-think how you are playing.

 

[Lanefan]

Often enough, the published adventure is BETTER than what a newbie DM can improvise. I would suggest new, or recently reactivated, DMs run published adventures by the book until they have a strong understanding of the edition they're running.

It's not always down to the DM, though. If the module goes exactly according to script all the way through it could be that the DM was forcing things to go that way, but it could just as easily be the players not thinking outside the box (or, very much less likely, that their outside-the-box thinking lined up exactly with what the module expected).

Lan-"though a decent player will, if playing under a newbie DM, make things easier by at least vaguely sticking to the script"-efan

 

[DEFCON 1]

This'll be fun!


There is no wrong way to play, but...

...if you read every die roll as a '1' regardless of the number that actually came up, you might want to re-think how you are playing.


There is no wrong way to play, but...

...if your copy of Dungeons & Dragons has 'Bunnies & Burrows' on the cover, you might want to re-think how you are playing.


There is no wrong way to play, but...

...if you go to the family reunion to meet women, you might be a redne-- oh... wait... hold on...

 

[aramis erak]

*in your opinion.

I think you left that part out.

What makes D&D to different people is different. There's nothing wrong with that. I don't care if you use D&D to play high-fantasy pseudo-steampunk victorian cyber-apocalypse games of if you like to grind through the mud in low-fantasy, low-tech, primitive settings.

Either D&D is something specific, which I doubt anyone could ever agree on what that is, or it is something general. How general that may be is up to the people playing, but hey if they're having fun playing that thing that doesn't even remotely resemble D&D to you, well who care really?

When you stop using the D&D rules, it ceases to be D&D and becomes something else. Otherwise, Traveller used for fantasy is D&D.

 

[jrowland]

Well, "never", too.

While I agree with the idea behind the OP, I'd add the following line:

If you're having fun the way you play, rock on. If you think you might want to try to improve the game, you might want to start with the above.

Ding Ding! We have a winner! Someone who actually comprehends the post!

Listen people, the key word is "never". Games never (see what I did there) go exactly as written in a published adventure. And IF they do, you might want to re-think your approach. Not because its wrong, but because you care about the game and recognize there is always room for improvement, so you don't just assume every game is perfect, you look to see how things might improve. And running a published adventure flawlessly might be an area you can improve...get it?

But I am glad you all took the bait, good discussion, thanks.

Mod Note: Posting with intent to draw people into discussion so you can reveal how foolish they have been to be drawn in is, for one thing, kind of cheesey. For another thing - it is trolling, folks. Don't do it. ~Umbran

 

[Sunseeker]

When you stop using the D&D rules, it ceases to be D&D and becomes something else. Otherwise, Traveller used for fantasy is D&D.

The rules don't mandate anything. Oh, maybe they emphasize some level of fantasy, but beyond that D&D, unlike many other systems, is pretty open-ended about what exactly you use those rules to achieve.

I can run low-magic victorian gothic steampunk within the rules of D&D just as easily as I can run high-magic inter-planar adventures. D&D as a system is pretty generous with what I can create with it's rules.

Reskin the races and re-name some spells and you could probably translate D&D rules of almost every edition into basically anything. It's still D&D rules, even if your races are giant robots and your spells are tech-abilities.

 

[Sadras]

This'll be fun!

There is no wrong way to play, but...

...if you read every die roll as a '1' regardless of the number that actually came up, you might want to re-think how you are playing.

There is no wrong way to play, but...

...if your copy of Dungeons & Dragons has 'Bunnies & Burrows' on the cover, you might want to re-think how you are playing.

There is no wrong way to play, but...

...if you go to the family reunion to meet women, you might be a redne-- oh... wait... hold on...

It was fun!

 

[prosfilaes]

The rules don't mandate anything. Oh, maybe they emphasize some level of fantasy, but beyond that D&D, unlike many other systems, is pretty open-ended about what exactly you use those rules to achieve.

I can run low-magic victorian gothic steampunk within the rules of D&D just as easily as I can run high-magic inter-planar adventures. D&D as a system is pretty generous with what I can create with it's rules.

When TSR did Masque of the Red Death and Planescape, the high-magic interplanar adventures was pretty straight. The Masque of the Red Death had 60 pages reimplementing stuff found in the PHB, with the 3E version doing even more. The later points out that many monsters simply aren't usable in a low magic setting, as a party without magical weapons couldn't hurt them. (IIRC, 3.0 was worse then 3.5 in this.) You can stretch D&D to do a lot of things, but it's not exactly a generic system.