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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Asmor" data-source="post: 3862132" data-attributes="member: 1154">I had an epiphany today... I'm the president of my school's game club, which is specifically dedicated to board and card games. For quite a while, we've had several people that wanted to play D&D, but no one willing to run (I wouldn't run for the twin reasons of wanting to play board games during our meetings, and because I already had too much on my plate RPG wise anyways).So this year we've had a bumper crop of freshman recruits, and actually had a couple offer to run games.This has lead to me being in the position of observing games being run by people with varying levels of experience, and varying ideas of what's good and what's not.By and large, I always find myself biting my tongue. I don't consider myself a very good DM (actually, I consider myself a pretty poor DM but always trying to improve), but I read a lot about DMing online, on sites like this and Roleplaying Tips. I also am pretty well-versed with the rules of D&D and the theory behind various decisions...As one extremely common (and perhaps controversial) example of the point I'm trying to make (and really, spectacularly failing at making), take the common "natural 1 is a fumble/critical miss/etc." I personally dislike the rule, because it inordinately punishes people who are good at attacking... The more attacks you can make, the more likely you are to screw up. I'm also the only person I know who says "A natural 1 is a miss." and that's that. More common is the DM calling for you to roll a d20 after rolling a natural 1 and then adjudicating based on how well you roll there... Roll low, you might attack an ally, roll high, you may just lose all the rest of your attacks or your next action, depending on the DM's whims.Other examples of such pet peeves include DMPCs, splitting the party, actively encouraging PC-on-PC combat, not tailoring your adventures to the characters so that everyone has a chance to shine...Anyways, like I said, I have a point. At least... I thought I did. I seem to have lost it. Oh, right, there it is. My point is, I've been an elitist snob. For all that I've read about how people could improve their games and make it more fun for themselves and for their players, I've completely forgotten the most important thing:The game is supposed to be fun. As long as the players and DM are enjoying themselves, they're doing absolutely nothing wrong. It might irk me when they play fast and loose with the rules, but I'm the aberration here.I had the chance to play in a game tonight, because it so happened that only one other person wasn't going to be playing D&D, and as I sat through the combats (which frankly bored me), all I could think was how the DM was doing everything wrong. But the other people were having fun. And you know what, when I just turned off my brain and went with the flow, I started having fun too.Plus, y'know, I got to cut open an ogre's... "coin purse" and get a solid gold ogre... "coin." (I leave it to you to figure out what I'm not so subtly hinting at). And as ridiculous as that is, how can you not love it?</blockquote>

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