GMs: Guiding Morals in GMing

[Professor Murder]

So something in another threat got me thinking.
So many GM style arguments come down to clashes of what can be called "Guiding Morals." What I mean is, having a few key principles of how a game should be run, priorities of play, that you are willing to bend other considerations to serve.
So these could include such things as "Challenge my players" or "Everyone has fun" or perhaps "Safety First."

What sorts of guiding moral principles govern how you run your games?

 

[aco175]

Good question, interested to see where this goes.

Show up, or at least call/text if you cannot make it. If you take on the commitment, live up to coming.

Be honest (mostly as a player). Live with your rolls and even point out things not favorable to your team like if a monster has advantage to attack or if there is an ongoing spell since the DM cannot remember everything. It should not be a gotcha game.

Being honest as the DM. Apply the rules and judgments honestly and admit if you are wrong or need to change an item or something. You also need to be honest in giving the players and yourself a good game. If you need to change something, you should be able to. I know this one will have objections from other threads with fudging dice and such.

Know your PC. The DM should not know all your abilities better than you. Maybe if you are a new player and need the help, but you should invest in your PC.

 

[Yora]

As GM, I have to be disinterested in whether the players succeed or fail at what they attempt to do. If I make adjustments to what they face based on my preference whether they succeed or fail, because I think it'd be more dramatic or for whatever reason, then all the decisions and plans that the players make become meaningless and all that dice rolling is only a waste of time.
And what's the point for the players to play and make plans and hard choices if they have no impact on the outcomes of their actions? It makes their victories empty and their defeats my fault.

I also don't deliberately deceive the players. As GM, I am the entire perception of the PCs and provide most of the context for all information the players get. It is trivial to make them believe about the world and what's going on whatever I want. There is nothing clever about that.
If NPCs have reason to set up a deception in advance, they will employ them. But I will not give the players deliberately false or deceptive information on what their characters perceive or assume. And given how greatly players are inherently restricted in their perception of the game world and how dependent they are on information from the GM, I give plenty of clues of severe dangers ahead. Players need to know they are in danger and have opportunity to address the danger before they suffer the effects. When players suffer defeat or characters die, they really should understand that it was the consequences of their actions and that there were different choices they could have made that would have lead to a different outcome.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

What sorts of guiding moral principles govern how you run your games?

Everyone dies without understanding anything. Thats the way the world works, after all.

 

[GrahamWills]

For me, the biggest distinguisher of GM styles (as opposed simply to quality) is to ask what they do when an encounter scene starts becoming not fun to play. Is your guiding moral:

• Keep playing; you as a GM have set the scene up and must see it to its logical conclusion
• Change a few numbers here and there or have some NPCs react in ways that get us to move on to the next scene
• Add a story element that finishes or radically changes the scene.

 

[overgeeked]

The only thing the players get to control is their characters. Undermining that control with railroading or illusionism is the single biggest sin. Never, ever do that.

Verisimilitude is more important than rules. When the rules produce nonsense results, ignore them.

Play the dice as they lay. If the outcome of an action isn’t obvious from the fiction, roll for it. Whatever the result, use it. The point of the dice is to produce random results, so let them.

The world exists independently of the PCs. There’s no such thing as “level-appropriate content”. Prep the world and let the PCs bounce around it as they please.

Never prep stories or plots. Whatever story an RPG has should be emergent through play. It should never be planned by the GM and never forced on the players.

Always enforce consequences. Action-reaction. Cause-effect. NPCs always react to the PCs’ actions, good or bad. The PCs can do as they please, but the world will respond accordingly.

Skip the boring stuff. Most travel is boring. Most NPC interactions are boring. Filler combat is boring. If there are no stakes, it’s boring.

 

[the Jester]

I would say that the modern sensibility is the game should be player-first, but I am very much a setting-first DM. That means that I don't, for instance, insert a new race/lineage into an existing detailed area just because someone wants to play a member of that race/lineage.

 

[Committed Hero]

Be a fan of the PCs.

 

[JAMUMU]

Only GM for players you physically outmatch and can intimidate through body language.

Give the players what they want, but only after sufficiently disrupting their plans.

Make sure everyone has fun!

No NPC is untouchable and no situation inevitable, if the PCs decide to get involved.

 

[Umbran]

So many GM style arguments come down to clashes of what can be called "Guiding Morals."

They could be called that, but "morals" has some pretty hefty connotations that are apt to intrude into the discussion.

I'd think "guiding precepts" or "concepts" might help keep that intrusion at bay somewhat.

What sorts of guiding moral principles govern how you run your games?

I don't run just one type of game, so I don't have a single set of precepts to inform play.