D&D General A glimpse at WoTC's current view of Rule 0

[Snarf Zagyg]

It sounds like a lot of people have been hurt by their DM.

 

[Mort]

It sounds like a lot of people have been hurt by their DM.

Personally, I've never been any definition of hurt. I've been various degrees of disappointed.

But even those are positives - decent amount of examples of what NOT to do.

 

[KYRON45]

Personally, I've never been any definition of hurt. I've been various degrees of disappointed.

But even those are positives - decent amount of examples of what NOT to do.

The one good things that comes out of bad or disappointing DMs is that they spawn new DMs.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

The one good things that comes out of bad or disappointing DMs is that they spawn new DMs.

Well, that and ENDLESS THREADS!

Thinking...

Not sure if that's good? But people do seem to like them!

 

[KYRON45]

Well, that and ENDLESS THREADS!

Thinking...

Not sure if that's good? But people do seem to like them!

I do love an endless debate.

 

[Mort]

Yep. I've mentioned this anecdote recently, but I had a player who wanted to play a half-orc/half-leonin. Certainly not a hybrid I had considered before, but we bashed some mechanics together and she really enjoyed the character.

Let's not forget that even in the OG Greyhawk campaign, Gary had a player who liked cowboys - they worked something out and ran with it.

 

[Oofta]

It sounds like a lot of people have been hurt by their DM.

I've been playing a long time and I've had a couple of bad DMs. I've had other DMs that were perfectly fine - for someone else. I've also known people that think all DMs are bad if they don't run the game exactly the way the person wants them run.

Some people seem to have a very different definition of what makes a bad DM than I do. That, for example as far as I can tell, if a DM doesn't change their campaign world to allow for your loxodon or that if they do allow it that people show prejudice because what the **** is an anthropomorphic elephant man doing here, that the DM is "bad". To me there's a huge difference between a bad DM and one that runs a game I just don't particularly want to play in.

 

[Mort]

I've been playing a long time and I've had a couple of bad DMs. I've had other DMs that were perfectly fine - for someone else. I've also known people that think all DMs are bad if they don't run the game exactly the way the person wants them run.

Some people seem to have a very different definition of what makes a bad DM than I do. That, for example as far as I can tell, if a DM doesn't change their campaign world to allow for your loxodon or that if they do allow it that people show prejudice because what the **** is an anthropomorphic elephant man doing here, that the DM is "bad". To me there's a huge difference between a bad DM and one that runs a game I just don't particularly want to play in.

Not every player is a fit for every DM and not every DM is a fit for every player. same for groups.

I've had players leave because my group was too casual for them AND I've had players leave because my group wasn't casual enough!

 

[Thomas Shey]

It sounds like a lot of people have been hurt by their DM.

In some cases. In other cases some of us have been doing this long enough we've watched certain things damage or outright ruin what would have been otherwise decent GMs.

 

[Lanefan]

As I've been given to understand from your previous posts that your game is a long running game with a multitude of characters for the players (similar to mine), when you mean campaign - is it defined as a story arc with a specific set of characters or the entire game?
If the latter is that not an extra long wait?

It's the latter, and yes it can be a very long wait.

Some minor changes - particularly for things the PCs haven't encountered yet or elements that haven't come into play yet - I can slide in at any time. For example, as yet nobody in my game can hard-cast 6th or higher level spells, so unless they've been hit by one from an opponent I'm still free to tweak the effects and-or mechanics of those spells e.g. range, duration, etc.

But to me, precedent and consistency are king. If something worked a certain way once in the campaign and wasn't specifically a one-off effect then ideally it works that way every time.

For example: as it stands now in our games the Druid-equivalents are the best healers. That class is otherwise a bit too powerful, while regular Clerics could use a boost; and so I want to switch their healing capabilities such that normal Clerics become the best healers. That's the sort of change I can't really make on the fly, though, as I'd be overturning 15+ years of established precedent on how things work.

I increased the number of feats and modified/balanced them for the better for the PCs - I would not wait till the end of a campaign (given how long ours are) to enact tinkering which I thought was required to better the game. It would diminish my fun at the table.

Before anyone got near the required levels I added in a subsystem of high-level feat-like things, which are coming online now as PCs reach those levels.