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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jackelope King" data-source="post: 2577874" data-attributes="member: 31454">Much obliged, RC.More or less. I prefer to tell my players that if they want to use a certain character option, all they need to do is talk to me about it. Nothing is allowed outside the core rules without my okay, but I stress that I am definitely open to outside suppliments if they want to make use of them. All I ask is that they work with me to find an appropriate way to work the option into the game.A fair enough reply. However, seriously, how many people will do something like take levels in a prestige class from a splatbook without at least asking first whether or not you'd aprove taking levels in that class? And on a related note, RC, I'm curious: how would you describe your general reaction to requests from players to make use of options from suppliments? Would you say you generally disallow more requests than you allow, or do you allow most of the few requests you get?If I knew then what I do now, had access to the resources I have now, I'd agree with you. But back then, the people I played with went about as if there was some cult of DMs or something. If you hadn't read the DMG, then you weren't "in the club", so to speak, and I know we've all at least heard of stories from the old days of DMs getting angry at players for trying to sneak a peek at the DMG. During a break I did thumb through someone's 2E DMG, and I was immediately told that I couldn't do that, and that now my character was going to be punished for it.Sure enough he chopped my ranger's hand off "for touching forbidden lore". Being thirteen at the time, I assumed that one of the rules of the game was that players couldn't read the DMG, because there was special information in there only for the DM (like there was in adventures). When I finally got my hands on an old 1E DMG, I saw that he really was being an unreasonable jerk. Had I been older and wiser at the time, I would've tried to just take over an existing group when it was imploding, or form my own group. When I finally did, I saw that this was what I should've done all along.In all seriousness, I wish someone had come along and told me eight years ago what you're saying now, Screwhead, because it would've spared me a whole lot of garbage.And I'd call that a great DM. To me, "strong DM" is often a codeword for "DM who rules via fiat". I'll admit it to be nothing more than a quibble over terminology.And if you'll speak to people I've gamed with (since the early rocky days, anyways), I am a pretty cooperative player. For example, in a PBP game on another board that just started, my character is a scout/barbarian using the whirling frenzy variant from Unearthed Arcana. As the rule was written, my character was getting two skirmish attacks each round. However, my DM thought that this was too powerful, and sent me an email expressing this concern. I clarified that this is what the rule stated, but agreed that it seemed to be much more potent than I'd thought. The DM suggested ruling it to work like flury of blows, and I told him I'd have no problem with such a ruling.However, away from the gaming table, I recognize that a large number of the problems I had early on could be at least partially attributed to the approach to the ruleset we took (though in large part I'd say that my DMs were suffering from jerkitus). I think that because the ruleset assumed the liberal use of judgement calls, it allowed for (and possibly even encouraged) a style of DMing that I had terrible experiences with. Now my point of view is that the ideal gaming system removes such a stumbling block and minimizes the disjunction between the world the players picture and the one the DM describes. The problem, as I see it, is one of perspective. If a ruleset can encourage a more similar perspective shared by all members of the group on the game being played, then the disjunction between players and DMs can be minimized. Most folks seem to agree that this is something worth aspiring to (if the methods for achieving it are different, obviously). Obviously a ruleset can't make a bad DM into a good one, but if it can encourage behavior that we recognize to be good DMing, then it can minimize experiences like mine.</blockquote>

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