DMs do you trust your PCs?

[Mathew_Freeman]

A long time ago I played in a pretty dodgy campaign. It was Warhammer Fantasy Role Play, and I was Deathmaster Snihch (Rat Man Super Assasain). Say no more.

But the main problem with the campaign was not that I could kill almost anything very quickly, but that the other player had no idea about consequences ("I kill the old man! The Town Guard turn up? I kill them as well!") and the DM couldn't cope with the idea that his players weren't playing fair.

If he'd stopped the game and made it clear that the characters would be killed for their actions, or that the consequences of this was that they'd be Public Enemy No 1 <i>and followed through with it</i> then it wouldn't have been so much of a problem.

If players want to play dirty, simply let them bear the consequences of their actions. Let the City Watch turn up. All 150 of them. And their Wizard friends. And the local Paladin. On his Dragon, if that's what the situation requires.

After the ashes have been scattered, explain to the players that if they'd just been normal frickin' heroes, none of that would have happened.

 

[Renaissance Man]

If players want to play dirty, simply let them bear the consequences of their actions. Let the City Watch turn up. All 150 of them. And their Wizard friends. And the local Paladin. On his Dragon, if that's what the situation requires.

Unfortunately, that's when my group would start to grumble that I wasn't playing fair. I still get grief for spring a collapsing ceiling trap on them, which in all fairness, they had no means of detecting. (Not that they bothered to search.) Reflex save for half damage, please...

 

[Piratecat]

Wow a min/max munchkin for a DM. Who also lies through his teeth to his players multiple times every session.

How utterly exciting.

Please combine the following into a sentence:

Are still. Personal insults. Not allowed.

Yes, even when you totally disagree with someone's DMing style, that's still the case. Honest!

Thanks for keeping this in mind. Please keep the thread polite.

 

[Cerubus Dark]

Implicitly.

As a DM I trust my Players since they are all my friends, its just the PC gen that I don't trust. I recently converted most of their characters to eTools and found out that one of the M-Us was -42 skill points in the hole. It turns out she rasied her INT score and the program gave her a ton of extra skill points to use.

 

[Fictionaut]

Not a chance.

As a DM, I have watched my friends, who get along great in RL and do plenty together outside of gaming, do any cheap thing they can to outdo and straight-up kill one another. At least four out of the seven of them have proven unworthy of any kind of trust I could extend.

Using a monster race's CR as ECL until I catch them, for example, then feigning ignorance even though they know the rules at least as well as I do. There's one guy who always HAS to roll his stats, even though I use a very generous point-buy, and always comes in with multiple 18s. I have let him get away with this generally because he tends to do dumb stuff in game, but it still irks me. And once the game starts, an inter-party battle is inevitable, due to wildly conflicting character personalities.

This is tiresome as DM (and these are the people I introduced my girlfriend to gaming with, which adds incentive to have them play nice) But now I'm playing in someone's campaign who actually ENCOURAGES this kind of behavior, and I have seen what it must be like for the casual players in my group. Next campaign, I am cracking down. No evil PCs or ones with wierd codes of honor, no dice whatsoever in character creation (no offense to those who prefer dice-rolling, this is a situational thing), and I am going to see a finished character sheet before the first session.

That said, I don't think I will try and overly limit their options, just keep them balanced. I know what I would change or disallow from the splatbooks and anything else I own, and would simply review anything else on a case-by-case basis. It's just a fairness issue; min-maxing is OK if everyone gets along, and PC-on-PC violence is OK if everyone has reasonably balanced characters, but the combination of the two can (rightfully) hurt some feelings.

 

[Renaissance Man]

There's one guy who always HAS to roll his stats, even though I use a very generous point-buy, and always comes in with multiple 18s.

I think I game with his brother...

Good luck with your new campaign, BTW. I'm doing the exact same thing - solidarity, Reg!

 

[JacktheRabbit]

By his own words he lies to his players every session and by his own words he enjoys it since he bragged that they have yet to figure it out. That or he is insulting his players for being dumb and unable to figure he has been running this way for so long.

If it is insulting to state the obvious then I guess my post was an insult.

I will admit that Plot Nazi would be a better description of him though. He has arbitrarily decided what can happen and when and the rules be damned if they are going to interfere with his vision.

Please combine the following into a sentence:

Are still. Personal insults. Not allowed.

Yes, even when you totally disagree with someone's DMing style, that's still the case. Honest!

Thanks for keeping this in mind. Please keep the thread polite.

 

[Magius del Cotto]

Please combine the following into a sentence:

Are still. Personal insults. Not allowed.

Are personal insults not still allowed?
Are personal insults still not allowed?
Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Anyways, only one person in the group really does stuff that would be considered "munchiny", if I let him get away with it more often than not. Of course, it's not the normal min-max style of things, it's the "I go after the <insert creature name here> with a lasso" type thing (especially when the thing's bigger than he is). Of course, he sorta got his comuppance when the group found him in his bird form (he was running a hengenyokai [SIC]), and decided to make him a pet.
I had nothing to do with it. Honest.
That's the only problem with the group. We don't try normal stuff very often, and it's often hard to plan for our twists of fate (natural 20s when needed) and flashes of "idiotic brilliance" (brilliant ideas only an idiot could think of), but hey, we all have fun and that's the important thing.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Yes, I trust my players. That's because we often change sides.

In our campaign, we take turns at being GM. Maybe we don't have as much continuity in a campaign as other groups, but it prevents GM burnout and often brings up fresh ideas.

And since every player knows the pain of being GM and facing players, we as players tend not to make characters and options that are too unbalancing. And if a controversial issue comes up, we vote on it (though this only applies for long-term game issues - within a certain adventure, the GM's vote is final, of course...).

 

[StalkingBlue]

Implicitly.

Same here. I wouldn't GM for them otherwise.