DMG & MM: Players Stay Out?

[Fenes]

Well perish the thought the thought that something bad should ever happen to the PCs! :\

Example: There's a difference between getting into trouble for stealing from the lord of the village, and getting into trouble for wearing green on midsummer night because that's considered blasphemy in your character's own church, something you did not know, but your character should have known, being a cleric of said church.

 

[shilsen]

It's the notion of going back to the idea that players need to be ignorant to have fun that is absolutely antithetical to how I approach gaming, both while playing and running the game.

Player surprise is great. But it is the DM's job to surprise the players, not the player's job to remain ignorant.

Q.F.T.

 

[GreatLemur]

But the whole idea of keeping players ignorant won't work long term anywaya - every monster they fight they know about afterwards, so sooner or later, you are either switching to home-brew monsters, change the monster stats, or deal with players knowing what a hydra can do.

There's one more option that's a hell of a lot easier: Take an existing monster and change everything but the stats. Same crunch, new fluff, effectively a whole new monster. I think the hydra's stats would work pretty well on a horrific, protoplasmic mass that sprouts multiple semi-humanoid torsos instead of heads.

 

[Counterspin]

Reynard : I'd say that's just bad framing on your part. There's a significant difference between real world "Pack your things you're going to heaven" lava and D&D "If you're tough enough you can take it" lava. People in the real world are less likely than adventurers to have actually encountered lava, yet we know this, so it doesn't strike me as unreasonable that characters would know that.

Like I said, I'm not so much interested in the metagame issue as I am interested in giving the players the information to make good decisions that will further the plot or their characterization.

 

[Cmarco]

I actually had a lot of trouble with this when I was starting out as a DM. Every one of my players owns a DMG and a MM, and whenever I'd be describing a monster or item, they'd already be flipping through the books, trying to get the jump on me and attempting to metagame to the extreme. Well, I finally put a clamp down on it, and things have vastly improved. It keeps the menace of the monsters a little more real, and definitely makes the in-game world more mysterious, interesting, and fun.

 

[Counterspin]

Just to clarify, I'm not talking about players thumbing through the MM at the table to look up the monster, though since I reskin anything, it wouldn't be effective in my group. That's just lame.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

Just to clarify, I'm not talking about players thumbing through the MM at the table to look up the monster, though since I reskin anything, it wouldn't be effective in my group. That's just lame.

Yah.

Heck, I've cracked open a MM in a fight. I never looked at the thing we were fighting, unless the DM asked (I'm much better at finding things quickly than he is). I'm either helping figure out something for a summonable critter that someone didn't bother to write down beforehand or have a momentary idea I want to check while waiting for my turn.

Telling me I am unworthy to gaze upon the DMG and MM because I'm not a fully accredited DM is incredibly lame.

Brad

 

[EricNoah]

Would it be nice if the players only knew what they needed to know to run their character but nothing else? Sure. Is it practical? No. Even with just the PHB, you have spells, races and classes at your disposal -- which means you would be able to read up on your enemy NPCs with ease. Honor system works pretty well here.

Back to the original post, would it be nice if everything the player needed was in the PHB? Yes. However ... I would exclude magic items. But I would include summoned monster stats.

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

A nice thought, but not practical. As others have stated, many both play and DM, so the line blurs there. And even if I'm running a group where none of the players run games, what's to stop them from looking at these restricted books on their own time? I don't want or need to babysit my players. The information is out there, for them to peruse or not at their own leisure. It's not WOTC's job to keep my players guessing; it's mine.

It's probably been mentioned in this thread, but the whole "wolf in sheep's clothing" monster creation method is a favorite of mine.

1. Take a monster statblock
2. Change one or two abilities so that the function identically (or virtually identically), but look different.
3. Change the cosmetics of the monster.

Boom, new monster. And it's nowhere to be found in the books.

 

[mmu1]

Well perish the thought the thought that something bad should ever happen to the PCs! :\

That's right. Bad things happening to PCs because the DM didn't give them all the information - or intentionally witheld information - that they should have had is unacceptable. If the DM sees that the players are making a mistake because they don't understand how the rules or the game world work (and their PCs would) then he ought to make an immediate effort to clarify.

Which is not to say that the DM should always do the players' thinking for them or be a babysitter - if someone persists in acting erroneously, that's their problem.

Finally, bad things happening because the players failed to gather information that was available but not immediately obvious, because they made poor use of the information they had, or because their actions, while sound, failed because of some random factor, is another issue entirely - $#@! happens.