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12. You are a player. Your group has been told that there's a haunted, abandoned house with a fabulous treasure in the town the characters are located. Your party goes to the house and starts poking around. Nobody wants to take the front door since it might be a trap, so they check out the back...

Yes and no. The idea that the GM is "out to get the PCs" is silly. The GM can just auto win, so what is the point? Even if you add 10,000 rules to de power the GM.....they can still do a lot. Now I would say I'm a GM that is NOT on the players or characters side, or their fan or anything...

It is just the way of things. Only if.... Well, if you have a fairly tight group that has no new members or you don't play with new people, I can see this happening. There are all sorts of bad people out there.... Hummmm..... Well, guess it depends. If you have a group of mature good...

This is sadly true of nearly any social activity. Someone, often the host, has to be the adult. A lot of people are hostile, or worse. It is just how people are in social situations. I find players in all the ways: pen a paper posts on peg boards, online posts and the ever popular someone...

So many DMs don't do this, they just sit there and do nothing, and then feel forced to Railroad. Having a very powerful DM works wonders here. Amazingly even the worst person can sit down an play a game, with the right incentive. All true. True again. Very True. This Is the Way! As the...

It's a common way to do a game after all. I've run games for experienced players, players that "think" they are experienced, players that played a couple times and think they are experts, new players, people who have only played a couple times and people who have never played a RPG ever. I've...

So putting aside the bad players just disrupting the game and the 'hidden' free from role players... ... Even with just four players you can quickly run into the trap that each player wants some spotlight time to do "fun stuff in town". Even just 15 minutes each, is a whole hour of game time...

In some games hostile players try to trip up the DM when they are imrpovising. If the DM says the Black Swamp is clear of monsters at 7pm, but then at 9pm the DM gets confused and says there is a black dragon n that swamp, the player(s) can leap up and say "Nut Uh", you said the swamp was...

They might need a Takhisis's Horde of Dragons book.....

The random sandbox non-adventure is popular enough. And plenty of players love the near free form as they can use it against the DM Though the vast majority of gamers like to have the adventure structure.

Maybe someday WotC will put out a Draconomicon: The Book of Dragons for 5.5E.........................

I agree. A great way to do this is outside the game. If the game starts at 6pm, have everyone come over at 5pm to do the introduction. Or the lunch can work great: have everyone come over for lunch at noon and do the introduction. Then everyone can go home and come back for the game at 6pm...

Odd I did not type that.... Is this even a question? Is not all game design intentional? Agreed. The vast majority of modern games come directly from some players having a very bad time playing, almost always D&D, back in the day. Then they grip a d20 tight and say "I can make a better...

I lot of what you see in 5E: *Everyone of all classes and races having flashy cool magic abilities every couple of levels that they can do often, if not all the time. *Endless easy resting, with reset buttons *Easy, almost automatic checks and saves, where the DC is low and the PC gets a lot...

This has been done..... Back in 2E Ed Greenwood had a bunch of articles, Wyrms of the North, each one was a very unique dragon. And they were featured in some other FR books. Each had unique powers, abilities and other things. 5E went back to "dragons are monsters for you to kill"

The best way would be to just jump right it. Ideally even more so if you could get the players to never look at the 'harsh rules' and just let things happen in the game. The huge parts of Dark Sun are survival, harsh conditions, isolation, brutality, savageness, and evil. And this is backed...

I think this is a good point. Everyone comes over to play the game, quite often an action/adventure game. The idea that the players just want to sit around and do the random sandbox free form role play just does not fit. I've had players complain they want to do random sandbox free form...

I more against doing the free role play before the adventure. As I said, it is too easy for a passive DM to let the players just free role play for hours, sometimes a whole game session. I put free role play more in the middle of the adventure, and often with a ticking clock. Like with most...

My comment was for the more general "start the story/game with laid back fun is a safe place. Like LotR starts with the Hobbits. This might be D&D's "Ur one" I think it is much better to role play during the quest adventure.

I agree. As it is common in modern fiction, people see it and focus on it. The Lord of the Rings is the Ur Classic here.... It has also been the TV Formula for action, adventure and drama shows for nearly 100 years: show your main characters relaxing and having fun. Then do a sharp 'Hook'...