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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Trudy" data-source="post: 7313755" data-attributes="member: 6902545">Hi there!I'm going to be running my first D&D game in a few weeks, and there's a couple of problems I've noticed while playing with some of the players as a player myself that I've got some Serious Concerns about when I start DMing. I'd really appreciate your advice / suggestions when dealing with these particular issues, because I've noticed them as a player, and I'm concerned they're going to continue to be an issue when I DM.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Relying heavily on NPCs for answers, instead of trying to find these answers themselves.</li> </ul>A good example of this was in a game that we all played in last night; we captured a bearded devil, and those party members most interested in interrogating them began their interrogation. They went through a litany of questions: who are you, what are you doing here, where can we find X person, when did you last see X person, what is your name, how do we know you're telling us the truth about your name, etc. They were a half-second away from asking the man his entire life story.It was clear to me in the first minute or two that we were getting nowhere with this, and that the DM wasn't going to give us the information we needed; this DM is not a master of subtlety, either, especially when she realizes she's not getting through to the players (though she's a damn good DM!).However, these players are persistent. They won't stop. And while it encourages their DMs to forge fully-fledged and 3 dimensional NPCs because this group demands it, it also means that a good chunk of the game is spent roleplaying 'I'm not going to tell you anything' with them ad nauseam, or them asking a million questions of someone who really doesn't know the answers to the questions they're asking (or already supplied the few answers they knew). Logically, I know that if this is what they want to do, as DM I should simply roll with it -- but this is time I'd rather them spend productively roleplaying with one another rather than an NPC, or actually trying to find the answers themselves.Has anyone dealt with something like this before? How did you handle this?<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Poor spell management.</li> </ul>Some spellcasters are not very good at spell conservation; they use their spells very liberally, and without consideration for what they may encounter next. Routinely, I've seen these players expend a 4th-level spell slot on 1- or 2-hit group encounters, and then as soon as they've depleted spell slots, demand a long rest at the expense of the players who were trying their best to use spells intelligently and save the big guns for more lethal / more challenging encounters. This doesn't seem fair to those players who are careful about using their spells, and I'm not sure what to do about it; one person suggested making it impossible for them to take a long rest before certain encounters (but this isn't always possible). Another said that I should be better enforce the one long rest per 24 hours rule (which I'm not sure has been as rigorously enforced as it could be).Does anyone have any suggestions as to what to do here? Should this be an out-of-game conversation, and if so, should it happen before I start running, or after we run into this problem the first time in-game?<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Making poor life decisions because they don't fear reprecussions.</li> </ul>My characters have made poor life decisions before, and they've dealt with repercussions; however, some DMs that have run for us before (particularly fledgling DMs) have struggled with this. A few weeks ago, for instance, another character decided to pickpocket a thief the Town Guard were dragging away, as the Town Guard dragged him away. He rolled poorly, and the Guard noticed. They were Not Happy, but let them off with a warning. This is likely to never come up again.I would have run this encounter differently, but I know that improvising can be difficult, and this is a difficult line to walk to begin with. You don't want to ruin the players' fun, but at the same time, I feel that there needs to be a balance. If you make good life choices / make risky decisions and succeed and are rewarded, you should be penalized for making poor life choices / make risky decisions and fail. Am I overthinking this? I don't want to ruin anyone's fun, but if players who make risky decisions are continually rewarded when they succeed, but face no penalty when they fail, they have no reason to carefully consider a litany of plans presented by other characters.--Thanks again for any advice that you can provide! I'm sure that I'm overthinking things, but I'm the sort of person who likes to be overprepared for every scenario, and this is definitely one of those situations where I want to know how to handle the problems I'm likely to encounter as a DM that I already see as a player.</blockquote>

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