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To be fussy, they want the DM to be a fan of the characters. I agree it's not neutral, but then they seen to define "fan" differently than I (and maybe lots of others) would. And-or exciting.

Player: "I spend 75 g.p. reloading my basic gear and equipment to the original amounts and conditions on my character sheet - full quivers, full rations, replace a few bits showing wear and tear, that sort of thing." DM: "OK. Chalk off the 75. If you're looking for anything more pricey, check...

This example is all good, and could work in any game I think. I could easily see any of those (except maybe the last one) playing out in my game were I to run a situation like that. The bolded is the key element, though: the fundamental action still fails. It's when the rolled failure of the...

This thread's now at 801 pages. How many pages is War and Peace, and - far more important - can we beat it? :)

So, you're looking for the Desert Bus of RPGs? :)

Some are, to a point, but more ruled by their emotions than their passions. I avoid angsty introspection like the plague, however; I hate that crap in any form. This is orthagonal to the other things below; I've had emotional pragmatists and emotional gonzo types. The best character I've ever...

I agree that being true to character is the best option. If I'm playing an unwise character (which I do fairly often, just for kicks) I'll often have it do something in a very "sub-optimal" manner, and not always to its own or anyone else's benefit. But if I'm playing a wise character, the...

You're the one making an absolute out of it, not me. "Some answer which seems adequately reasonable and logical" still strongly suggests not standing straight into adversity when there's ways around it, and instead looking for those ways and putting them to use in order to achieve the same ends.

If the character I'm playing has half-decent or better Int and Wis scores (or equivalent) then in theory the character would - if given a choice - often try to find the most logical-pragmatic-safe route. A couple of my own long-serving characters are like this. One is a Fighter, engineer* by...

Occasionally, I do; to the point that were I a better novelist (as in, were I one at all) I could write books telling the stories around certain NPCs and how they got to be what-where they are by the time the campaign (potentially) interacts with them.

Quite intentionally so, as in theory character interests and player interests are largely aligned - unless the player is intentionally playing a gonzo character. Part of "advocating for your character" is, in my view anyway, doing what has to be done (and whatever the game lets you do) to keep...

Maybe a better turn of phrase right from the start would have been "make the characters' lives exciting" instead of "make the characters' lives not boring".

When one takes these two passages and combines them: As a player, part of your job is to advocate for your character. But being their advocate doesn’t mean it’s your job to keep them safe. It’s not. It’s your job to make their life not boring. It’s about figuring out who they are, what they...

What degree of tech and-or bandwidth does all this require? The fog-of-war on Roll20, for example, chokes on either my machine or my bandwidth (probably machine, but my bandwidth isn't great either). We use (free) Discord for audio and it has ranged from vaguely passable some nights to...

The fiction is affected. Sometimes maybe just not as much as you'd like it to be. If there's people there to startle, sure. But if it's previously undetermined or not noted whether there's people there or not then it really does seem like the failed break-in attempt is causing those people to...

Maybe, though if the backstory (or its major elements) are a) generated randomly as part of char-gen and-or b) supplied by the DM or some other external source then subsequent immersion will be as before: you take what you've got and make what you can of it. Indeed. Or - and this has in fact...

Using only slightly different terms, this seems to be exactly what I already do: the characters (PC and NPC alike) can yell at each other all they want and the dice stay in the bag, but if-when such a dispute gets beyond words and into action such as spells, shoving, weapons, etc. then out come...

That's just it - the cook should not be in any way related to the lock picking! Two unrelated binary options giving four possible outcomes: Pick succeeds, cook present Pick fails, cook present Pick succeeds, cook absent Pick fails, cook absent You're the one who keeps trying to tie these two...

Seems to me the player's just taking what the game allows him to take. Nothing "arse" about it. If you don't want the player to take what the game gives, tweak the game so the game doesn't give it (simply asking the players not to take advantage is exactly the same tweak only soft-coded, might...

To begin with, all you've got is your own head-canon to measure against; and nobody else has anything. No problem there. After the character's been played even for just a few sessions, however, everyone else at the table has the patterns, personality, maybe alignment, etc. you've established...