D&D General 5 types of DM styles

[DinoInDisguise]

Too often. The Safe "Nerf" game is very common. Mix in TV/Movies with video games and you have a huge player base that thinks "characters never die and always win", and they bring this idea to the game.

And so many players want to tell a personal story...their own personal novel....and that has no room for their character death.


There are a few Crazy Killer DMs left out there in the wild....

My sample might be bias as I screen my random players pretty heavily. Probably one of the reason I have so few of the issues many around here have had. If that is the case, I will take this example of that as a compliment as it means my 1100 word session 0 outline actually works. What a great thing to learn!

I wonder if this classification is a matter of perspective. Does the same person rate differently on the scale depending on the person doing the rating? How wildly would those rating vary?

I can use myself as an example. In games, both that I play in and DM, it is expected that player death is the fault of the player's decisions being poor. We do not find it "cool" to put players in situations that are impossible or near impossible to survive. Any forced encounter is "reasonably winnable," or should be, in our minds. But in our last 100 sessions we've had 3 PC deaths.

Could someone who is, by my account, a number 5, view me as a number 2? It would make sense that the answer is yes. In fact, there might be someone in this thread who disagrees about my placement being a 4. An argument could be made that making bad decisions counts as the player "wanting" to die and therefore I am a number 3.

This would be bad though, because it means my session 0 is actually a 3 hour waste of time, and that I only like nerf games which some view as blasphemy. But nerf guns are fun, so maybe nerf D&D is too and I'm just confused.

 

[OB1]

I def go for an 80's action movie style for my DMing. That said, PCs can die if the dice dictate it or they make stupid decisions.

Just last week though, my 4th level PCs playing in Infinite Staircase, ignored the warnings that the under layer of the Ziggurat was too much for them and pressed on anyway. At least until they ran into the cultist with the Mindflayer statblock. Gave them an out with Nafas providing a door back to staircase and they disengaged and ran for the door. Great moment!

 

[bloodtide]

I wonder if this classification is a matter of perspective. Does the same person rate differently on the scale depending on the person doing the rating? How wildly would those rating vary?

Some perspective, until you get to the objective things. 1 and 2 are no character death ever. And sure, most of these game will just have "a couple goblins attack" as the DM just "watches the players win the fight". And it gets really obvious for bigger fights, where it's like "wow, it only too five rounds to slay all those dragons". But it's glaring obvious after it's like 100+ fights all like that.

And 3 is really obvious as they only have like one character death every long while, and it's almost always a big hero moment like slaying a lich lord.

Sure 4 can get a bit of perspective......but, like the above it can be obvious.

 

[Minigiant]

I think there is another style that is missing.

A more WOD/MMO style where monsters, NPCs, and items are justs as powerful or weak as they are and PCs have freedom and knowledge to do as they please. The world runs on its own but doesn't actively target the PCs unless they involve themselves.

The dragon and the vampire are beefing. Everyone knows. No one is forcing you to enact a death wish at level 3.

 

[Lanefan]

I also support number 4. The world is not designed for the PCs benefit, but I'm going out of my way to murder them either.

I suspect there's supposed to be a "not" in there somewhere...

 

[Micah Sweet]

I suspect there's supposed to be a "not" in there somewhere...

Yes, indeed.

 

[Shiroiken]

There are a few Crazy Killer DMs left out there in the wild....

I'm probably a 4.5, since while I don't go out of my way to kill characters anymore, I do enjoy tallying my kills over the course of a campaign. My challenges are tough, and I don't hold back during combat, even though I let the dice do the talking.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

If I had to pick five and only five styles....

1. Gritty heist-and-logistics, "did you ask the one-armed man"
2. GM as author of a story/setting the players get to experience
3. "Rules as physics", GM as tinkerer
4. Collaborative story, GM leads but isn't the only "author"
5. "Are you bad enough to rescue the Prez", GM as obstacle-builder

Trying for low-judgment terms on these. None of them is necessarily mutually exclusive with the others, though 4 and 2 come closest, because it's kinda hard to have "the GM is the one author, we are here to experience their work" and "nobody is the one author, the GM has a leading role but everyone is part of the process" at the same time....but you could argue they're two extremes of a common "game as story-experience" spectrum depending on how much emphasis is on the GM alone vs how much is on the players collectively, where the extreme-est end of 4 is a GM-less game like Fiasco and slightly less extreme gets you things like Ironsworn which are GM-optional but not totally GM-less.

Generally I favor a core focus on 4 (in the more "moderate" versions) with a healthy (but not overwhelming) dash of 5. The best kinds of 2 resemble 4 but often still feel too confining; I appreciate DM vision, but. 3 isn't bad, but I find it gets really obsessive about details that just don't matter to me. 1 is far and away my least favorite approach.

I find most "Old School" GMs are avowedly a mix of 1 and 5, with the occasional dip into 2. Many GMs that are consciously not "old school" but still feel some sympathy for those interests tend to be 2 with varying amounts of 1, 3, and/or 5 thrown in. 3e D&D went all in for 3, and that means fans who love that ADORE the system.

 

[Mercurius]

Meaning, a spectrum.

My personal approach as DM has been 3.9: let the dice rule, but I as the DM will fudge things a bit on very rare occasions, if it serves the greater enjoyment of the table - but never letting the players know.

This is usually pretty minor, like: Big bad monster has 47 HP left, PC makes an epic critical hit, does 45 HP...as players don't know the monster's HP, I narrate this as a kill-shot.

 

[aco175]

I can see some elements of action movie in my DMing. You are running from the wolves and happen to find a cave/tomb with an ancient king who happens to have a cool sword. You are on the skyscraper at Christmas and the bomb is about to go off and you happen to find a sprinkler hose to tie to yourself. You find a secret message in your droid you just bought and wonder if OB-1 Kenobi might be Old-Ben Kenobi.