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D&D 5E How has your personal experience/expertise affected rulings?
- Thread starter Sacrosanct
- Start date
MNblockhead
A Title Much Cooler Than Anything on the Old Site
Great thread!
In high school I spent two summers with the Student Conservation Association, living in the wilderness, helping maintain fire breaks and backwoods trails, etc.
It made me a rather insufferable DM.
Realism in a game can make the fantasy more fantastic. Resource management can be an important pillar of the game that creates compelling challenges. But both can be quite annoying in the hands of smug high-school DM who is assured that he knows better.
I hand-wave a lot as a DM, but I still like to inject some realism.
I research horse and ship travel times and will calculate travel times and require the party to raise the resources needed....some times. When it adds to the game. For example, my current campaign setting is very large and the style is sandboxy. Forcing the party to think about the time and effort involved in travel helped to create a sense of the amount of distance and increases the sense of exploration and discovery. But more often, I hand wave it, assuming they make and spend money on the way, especially when they were at levels where they had their own ship and crew. Now they can fly and teleport. It's a different game now because of that, but there is still a sense of the size of the world, and an appreciation of the magic (which is very rare in my campaign world) because of the early tier one play.
Despite my experience backpacking in the wilderness and several of my players' military experience, we generally hand wave encumbrance. I'll occasionally eye ball their sheets for reality checks, but we are not calculating the weight of every item. But, again, early in my campaign, I calculated coin weight and calculated the weight of chests and had some challenges where they had to make difficult decisions on what treasure to grab, having to leave most behind. Now we kinda all roll-play it out without doing the math.
I am a bit of a curmudgeon about torches, however. Get a lantern. The torch is going to smoke you out of must dungeons before you have a chance to pray for dark vision.
In high school I spent two summers with the Student Conservation Association, living in the wilderness, helping maintain fire breaks and backwoods trails, etc.
It made me a rather insufferable DM.
Realism in a game can make the fantasy more fantastic. Resource management can be an important pillar of the game that creates compelling challenges. But both can be quite annoying in the hands of smug high-school DM who is assured that he knows better.
I hand-wave a lot as a DM, but I still like to inject some realism.
I research horse and ship travel times and will calculate travel times and require the party to raise the resources needed....some times. When it adds to the game. For example, my current campaign setting is very large and the style is sandboxy. Forcing the party to think about the time and effort involved in travel helped to create a sense of the amount of distance and increases the sense of exploration and discovery. But more often, I hand wave it, assuming they make and spend money on the way, especially when they were at levels where they had their own ship and crew. Now they can fly and teleport. It's a different game now because of that, but there is still a sense of the size of the world, and an appreciation of the magic (which is very rare in my campaign world) because of the early tier one play.
Despite my experience backpacking in the wilderness and several of my players' military experience, we generally hand wave encumbrance. I'll occasionally eye ball their sheets for reality checks, but we are not calculating the weight of every item. But, again, early in my campaign, I calculated coin weight and calculated the weight of chests and had some challenges where they had to make difficult decisions on what treasure to grab, having to leave most behind. Now we kinda all roll-play it out without doing the math.
I am a bit of a curmudgeon about torches, however. Get a lantern. The torch is going to smoke you out of must dungeons before you have a chance to pray for dark vision.
Imaculata
Hero
I usually ask my players what heavy items they are currently carrying, and inform them if I feel they are carrying a too heavy load for a particular jump or climb. I eyeball it a bit as well, but I don't crunch the numbers. The players can then choose to perhaps leave something behind before attempting a particular skillcheck.
mflayermonk
First Post
Was it the thread about swimming in plate armor?
pming
Legend
Hiya!
Yeah, I think so. Experience does help with DM'ing. Lack of experience helps the DM read up on these things to get at least some knowledge about it. DM's that just refuse to learn even a little bit about something they don't know just pisses me off to no end!
Same with players that refuse to learn stuff that they should (usually pertaining to a skill, ability or spell that their PC has).
Anyway...I usually up a DC by 2 and, based on their roll, I figure out how long it takes. So with building a fire after it raining for three days I'd normally put a DC of, oh, 10 for being in a forest. Up it by 2, to 12, because of the rain. If the Player rolls...13, then "It takes you a good 20 minutes to find something that will burn, another 10 or so to really get it going. After about a half hour or so you have a fire". However, if he rolls a 23..."You've been in this kind of woodlands before so it takes only a minute or two to get what you need, another couple minutes to get it going. In 10 to 15 minutes total, you have a nice, roaring campfire".
So I don't really "up the DC" based on what I know or not. I know the PC "knows more" than I do...so any success is "you did it", but I just guestimate the time up or down to make a good story. Honestly...worrying about "is this right?", "is this even possible?", and "is that a DC 18, 20, 21 or 25?". That's not the important part of RPG'ing. The important part about RPG'ing is creating a collective story...and the DM is there to "fill in the gaps" between Player interaction and choice.
^_^
Paul L. Ming
Yeah, I think so. Experience does help with DM'ing. Lack of experience helps the DM read up on these things to get at least some knowledge about it. DM's that just refuse to learn even a little bit about something they don't know just pisses me off to no end!
Same with players that refuse to learn stuff that they should (usually pertaining to a skill, ability or spell that their PC has).Anyway...I usually up a DC by 2 and, based on their roll, I figure out how long it takes. So with building a fire after it raining for three days I'd normally put a DC of, oh, 10 for being in a forest. Up it by 2, to 12, because of the rain. If the Player rolls...13, then "It takes you a good 20 minutes to find something that will burn, another 10 or so to really get it going. After about a half hour or so you have a fire". However, if he rolls a 23..."You've been in this kind of woodlands before so it takes only a minute or two to get what you need, another couple minutes to get it going. In 10 to 15 minutes total, you have a nice, roaring campfire".
So I don't really "up the DC" based on what I know or not. I know the PC "knows more" than I do...so any success is "you did it", but I just guestimate the time up or down to make a good story. Honestly...worrying about "is this right?", "is this even possible?", and "is that a DC 18, 20, 21 or 25?". That's not the important part of RPG'ing. The important part about RPG'ing is creating a collective story...and the DM is there to "fill in the gaps" between Player interaction and choice.
^_^
Paul L. Ming
iserith
Magic Wordsmith
I use the Variant: Encumbrance rules in dungeon one-shots because part of the goal is to leave with as much treasure as you can. Having that be a trade-off against carrying useful equipment and the like leads to some fun, meaningful choices in my experience. So it's not a rules change I make due to concerns of realism, but to create trade-offs which is an easy way to increase the number of meaningful decisions the players make. I use Roll20 so tracking stuff is pretty easy. I even set up the tokens so that a little bar across the top shows the relative encumbrance the character has.
An interesting thing I've noticed is that in the one-shots with the variant rules in place, there are more Strength-based characters. In my regular campaigns (the ones that aren't dungeon-based), almost all the characters are Dex-based to the point of it being a running joke that nobody can jump very far or perform Strength checks with any reliability. So the variant encumbrance rule might actually be a decent way to even out the power of Dexterity if that's a concern for some. For me, it's only something I would use in a dungeon-based campaign for the reasons stated.
Sacrosanct
Legend
That's pretty much how we do it too. There's a line where focusing on realism too much can hinder the game. And that line is admittedly different for most people. It's more of a "feel" type of thing. And since we're there to have fun, I typically fall under the line of allowing things rather than disallow if it's not pretty clear.
Sacrosanct
Legend
Nope. The thread about someone with no woodsman experience telling others with woodsman experience what they can't do in the woods, and it got me thinking about how DMs (not just him of course) may make rulings based on what they know, vs. what they think they know. And how self reflection of our own limitations is probably a good thing, because if I have no idea how to make a basket underwater, I shouldn't let my assumptions limit a PC who has underwater basketweaving skill when they could in fact do it based on something I'm completely ignorant on.
Mercule
Adventurer
I was a science nerd, in high school, and even spent a couple years studying engineering in college, before deciding I didn't want to do it for the rest of my life. I feel a bit of pity for the players I've had who watch a lot of anime and want those weapons and armor. Just a bit.
I actually ended up with a degree in political science (and ended up in IT -- which isn't that different than engineering). Occasionally, I find things that just don't make sense in terms of how nations function. I'm the only one in the group who even remotely cares, though, so I roll with it... usually.
On the other hand, the majority of the folks have been IT professionals for a couple decades. When we opt to handwave computers, there's nothing subtle about it. "Yeah, your character does something improbable and you crack the bank's security. We're going to skip any details."
I actually ended up with a degree in political science (and ended up in IT -- which isn't that different than engineering). Occasionally, I find things that just don't make sense in terms of how nations function. I'm the only one in the group who even remotely cares, though, so I roll with it... usually.
On the other hand, the majority of the folks have been IT professionals for a couple decades. When we opt to handwave computers, there's nothing subtle about it. "Yeah, your character does something improbable and you crack the bank's security. We're going to skip any details."
Mishihari Lord
First Post
It also showed up in the Holmes basic book under an example of play. A PC lit natural spiderwebs on fire and burned up a bunch of enemy spiders.
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