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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kzach" data-source="post: 4690316" data-attributes="member: 56189">I had an argument with a friend last night about DM'ing. He'd just come back from a game he'd run and was telling me about how the players did something he thought was a waste of time and just silly.I disagreed.We then argued at length about what he should and shouldn't have done and since then, I've decided that I think DM'ing is really a skill rather than an artform. By that I mean that, sure, everyone has their own way of doing things, but at the end of the day, there are some pretty fundamentally key aspects to it that should be shared across the board.He disagreed.In my opinion, everyone at the table is relying on everyone else to not be a douche and to contribute to the fun rather than detract from it. I believe this is an unwritten social contract people make when agreeing to get together for a game.He was of the opinion that, as a DM, if he sets something in front of the players, then it is what it is, no matter what. If he's decided it's a dead-end, then it's a dead-end and he won't alter that for anyone or anything.So what do you think?For the sake of completeness, I'll relate the issue that sparked the discussion. Basically, there was a water tube coming out the side of a mountain that led into a dwarven citadel (I think this is the scales of war path so this could possibly be a spoiler). The citadel was occupied by orcs or something. The tube was originally for getting rid of waste from mining and forging. Every so often they'd open the valves and dump a load.So anyway, the PC's split the party. One half thinking it'd be a great idea to climb up the tube to get into the citadel, the other half thinking that's just dumb. The half that went up the tube spent quite some time clawing their way to the end of it, only to discover it was locked and there was no way through.My argument came from the stance that he should've made the tunnel climb interesting and had some sort of reward at the end of it. What that reward was could've been anything and not necessarily the achievement of the PC's goal of getting into the citadel, but then again that's an option as well. I said I would've made it a skill challenge to get up and probably would've had a trap or two in there and water hazards, possibly an ooze or something.In other words, it would've been a fun adventure in itself getting to the end, and getting to the end would've resulted in further adventure.He was of the opinion that the tube was just a damned tube and that was that. No adventure. Player's wasted their time going up it in the first place and he wasn't about to change the situation to cater to the players whims. And on the matter of traps and whatnot, he was of the opinion that any sort of trap would be insta-kill so he couldn't put them in there. I argued that there should really not be such a thing as an insta-kill trap as it defeats the purpose of the game. Damage is abstract for a reason.I'm sure he'll chime in at some point to correct me of my bias against his stance, but until then feel free to bag him <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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