Burning Questions: What's the Worst Thing a DM Can Do?

In this column, we take common D & D questions posed on Quora and attempt to answer them in a friendly, practical and informative way. Today's question: “As a D & D player, what is the worst thing your DM could do to take the fun out of playing?”

View attachment 101478
Pictured sourced from Pixabay
​

I regularly DM my games—I can count on one hand the number of times I've played as PC—but the one thing that always brought me out of a game was a boring DM or a DM who was so focused on the rules, they didn't make it very fun for the players. In this case, “boring” can mean a number of different things:

1. A major emphasis or strict adherence to specific rules. I love the mechanics of D & D as much as the next guy, but an over emphasis on rules can render an otherwise fun adventure tedious.
2. The DM insists upon railroading the players and not accounting for their ingenuity. Yeah, it sucks that on occasion, the players will completely bypass that insane dragon encounter you spent all afternoon building, but you have the ability as a DM to improvise right along with them and figure out a way to work that encounter back into a new path. As a DM, always has a contingency plan for unexpected player action. It doesn’t always work, but at least we have fun.
3. A lack of energy in the game. Simply reading the box text of an adventure, without emotion or flair, puts me to sleep. The DM’s job is to engage the players. Without engagement, the game is boring and easily
4. The DM gives special treatment to another player. This has ruined far too many games in my own experience. The party is a team with each member possessing their own strengths and flaws and I’ve always had more fun when the party functions as a team, rather than individual units.

While this probably isn’t unique to my own experience, it does seem to be a common concern around my FLGS. This is a bit of an experiment and we’d love to know what our readers think about this topic in the comments. We’ll be back with another RPG Quora Question soon.

This article was contributed by David J. Buck (Nostalgia Ward) as part of ENWorld's User-Generated Content (UGC) program. When he isn’t learning to play or writing about RPGs, he can be found on Patreon or Twitter. We are always on the lookout for freelance columnists! If you have a pitch, please contact us!

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

The DM has the following jobs:
1. Telling the players what their PCs perceive.
2. Making sure everyone abides by the rules.
3. Use educational skills that help everyone getting along and having fun.

Agree with those.

It's definitely not the DMs job to make up or change the rules (at least not if you play by a ruleset which was not created by the DM).

As an analogy, the DM is like the referee in a soccer game. He can decide if something was offside or not if it wasn't clear, but he cannot decide that the offside rule does no longer exist.

Ah, that's totally not how I play. I often tinker with rules because I want to achieve something, and partly because I find tinkering fun for its own sake. I try very hard not to be arbitrary or capricious about it, but frequently the RAW don't get what I want and thus I change them. That depends on the group, as some groups are more tolerant of house rules than others. At the moment, I'm reasonably close to RAW with 5E, although there are some aspects I think the designers messed up, most notably the mid- to high-level math for saving throws and skills, which tend to violate bounded accuracy in a way attacks don't. So most likely I'll change those next time I start a campaign, assuming I run 5E.

(I only join official adventure path games, meaning most of the DMG does not apply).

Interesting... again, totally not me. I've played in games that drew on their releases and am currently playing Ravenloft, but I almost never run modules (though I'll steal from them). I've never played in anything "official" in the sense of organized play and seriously doubt I ever will.

Like with any game: How the creator of the ruleset intended it. Meaning if something is unclear, ask Jeremy Crawford.

He's quite possibly the last person I listen to... I find him really condescending specifically and basically don't care what the official rulings on things are anyway. Once I buy the game, it's mine.

In the end it's interesting to note the differences. Neither person is right but I suspect we'd not get along at the same table.

 

[iserith]

No they're not, but if a group would like a "save vs ambush" type mechanic - which is not an uncommon thing in RPGs, including various versions of D&D - and the game doesn't offer a literal saving throw of that type, it's not a shock that they improvise with the nearest mechanic available.

There's passive Perception in D&D 5e, but only if the character is Keeping Watch while traveling (which ranges in feet per minute to miles per day). Since a player has the choice to do that or some other task which might reasonably distract from Keeping Watch (in which case passive Perception does not apply to determining surprise), it's a simple matter of asking, "What are you doing in general when you are exploring the dungeon?" rather than just assuming.

That makes sense. But I think their presence as an element of 5e - so that the resolution of "You duck down to avoid the dragon's breath" (probably a DEX save) is mechanically distinguished from "As I cross the corridor of doom, I duck low to avoid the scything blades" (probably a DEX check, assuming the GM takes the view that ducking is feasible but not automatically successful - cf a crawl) - does put a little bit of pressure on your claim about what is the canonical way to play 5e.

I think saving throws are at odds with the design of the game, but figure they made it that way for nostalgia. I'd rather it be more like how Dungeon World handles it. The player describe what he or she does to avoid the effect and the appropriate check is made. Or how D&D 4e does it with attacks versus defenses. But the rules are what they are and I follow them.

 

[Maxperson]

There are two things that bother me:

DM Fudging or Obviously Pulling Punches. You rob me of the importance of my decisions as a player when you do this. I made some decisions, hopefully reasonably informed ones, and because you called for a roll and didn't like the result or because things are not headed toward an outcome you need to happen, you start ignoring or lying about dice results or having the monsters pull back. That will tick me right off. I'd rather my character die horribly, as long as I had a chance to avoid that fate at some point.

What about other reasons for fudging? I won't fudge to invalidate decisions, bad or good. However, sometimes the bad luck gods strike and 3 orcs threaten to kill the party because I start rolling multiple crits and the players suddenly can't roll over a 5. I will fudge a little bit to give them a fighting chance. They might still die, but at least it won't be entirely due to bad luck.

 

[Ath-kethin]

The DM has the following jobs etc.

Huh. It's amazing how we can both read the same rulebooks and understand them so differently. Does Jeremy Crawford know that his Twitter feed is absolute law? I get the impression that the answer is no, but then, see above re: reading the same stuff and understanding it very differently.

Thankfully, there's room in the game for all of us.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

The absolute worst thing a DM can do is interfere with player decisions wrt his character. Saying "Your character doesn't do that" or even "You feel X" better have a strong in-game reason that becomes apparent to the players. The player gets exactly one chararacter (subject ot the game type), the DM has innumerable. The player gets to decide how the chatacter feels and acts.

The word "feel" has multiple meanings. "You feel cold right now" is different than "You feel like she's the love of your life." But in general, you're right, PC autonomy should be respected, absent a charm. Even those need to be used sparingly.

 

[CrimsonCarcharodon]

The first thing I thought of was taking control of players' characters. For example, if I declared an action for my character and a DM said "nope, your character does X instead." Unless there was a magical compulsion, for which I should definitely be made aware of ahead of time, this is a huge no-no for me. Like, I'd leave the table in a heartbeat.

 

[iserith]

But that's just it. When I narrate that you're at one end of a familiar 40' hallway that has empty suits of armour every 10' along the walls (that you've already carefully examined on a previous visit here) and ask what you're doing, on which you tell me you're walking to the other end of the hallway, am I allowed to assume that you're looking where you're going so you don't crash into a suit of armour?

Or, using the same example, how do I and-or you mechanically determine whether or not you randomly and-or unintentionally happen to notice that something subtle has changed about one of the suits of armour - for some reason the gauntlets have been removed from the third suit on the left - since you were last here? Do I assume you're ignoring the armour completely unless told otherwise? Do I assume you're checking the armour carefully every time you pass it? Or do I ask whether you're examining it this time (as opposed to all the other times you've walked this hall except the first time) thus alerting you-as-player to the metagame realization that this time there might be something worth checking?

Lanefan

So, the basic conversation of the game as laid out in D&D 5e is a loop. The DM describes the environment. The player describes what he or she wants to do. The DM narrates the results of the adventurers' actions. Then it starts again. If you're the DM, how you describe the environment is up to you. How you narrate the results of my actions are up to you. But you don't get to describe my actions for me either directly or indirectly by calling for a check for actions I haven't taken. It's really very simple: Your call for a check follows me describing what I'd like to do. It does not precede it.

 

[Connorsrpg]

As a player, railroading is my biggest issue.

So that is a problem with these all-encompassing long-term adventure paths. As a DM I can't stick to them either.

I still buy them for ideas. I tried to run one, but had a lot of difficulty sticking to the main path. I prefer to go on tangents and let the players follow their whims. (I usually have a lot of hooks to tug at them). Justifying the next part of those long adventures is hard, especially ones where there are hundreds of miles b/w adventures.

Anyway... railroading.

(I understand it in game shop play, tournament, AL, etc. Just not at home campaign. ).

 

[iserith]

What about other reasons for fudging? I won't fudge to invalidate decisions, bad or good. However, sometimes the bad luck gods strike and 3 orcs threaten to kill the party because I start rolling multiple crits and the players suddenly can't roll over a 5. I will fudge a little bit to give them a fighting chance. They might still die, but at least it won't be entirely due to bad luck.

I'd rather the characters die. We chose to fight and/or chose to continue fighting when things looked dire. That's how it goes sometimes.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

First, @Rya.Reisender, I literally LOL'ed when you said: "Like with any game: How the creator of the ruleset intended it. Meaning if something is unclear, ask Jeremy Crawford".

Second, as my stance on the OP: The worst thing a DM can do is... Specifically do/decide that a PC or NPC lives.

To me, when a DM rolls that d20, gets a 20 and knows that the 8th level MU is down to only 4hp vs the very last Giant Rat, then rolls his damage and it's well over 4 points...and then says "It misses" or "It hits, for 1 point of damage". THAT is the worst thing a DM can do. When a DM starts to "save" PC's because it was "just some bad luck" or because the player "forgot an important clue he didn't write down", it's the same as the DM deciding the PC's decisions. Even worse than that. When a I discover a DM is doing this, it sucks ALL the excitement out of the game. I feel like my decisions will matter...but only up to a point. My decisions will matter right up until the point when my PC would/should die...and then the DM steps in to "save the story/campaign". Absolutely HATE that!

In short, death of a PC in an RPG like D&D is THE deciding factor when absolutely everything else is done away with. The Life/Death of a PC is the final and ultimate determination of how well a Player played as well as how the campaign unfolds.

My runners-up: (1) A DM who thinks the Storyline and NPC's are more important than the Players choices. (2) A DM who says "yes" to everything a Player wants or tries to do. (3) A DM who swears/cusses a lot and/or gets drunk/high at the table.

^_^

Paul L. Ming