D&D General DM's: How transparent are you with game mechanics "in world?"

[Lyxen]

Your players must not care as much about accurate positioning etc. as mine do, then.

In my view, playing on a grid is anything but accurate, if you want accuracy, play gridless on a vtt, at least it will avoid totally inaccurate computations for angles and for areas of effect.

Were I to ever try running a combat in ToTM I'd be amazed if we got through one round in an entire evening; we're so used to using the visual cues of minis and a board to see how things spatially relate to each other (and even then there's arguments, but nowhere near as often as would be the case with ToTM).

To each his own, I agree that TotM is not precise, but it's much better for imagining things in one's head, and it's blindingly fast. That being said, I think it's a question of preferences, of course, but also what you were trained to do. I was running TotM 43 years ago when we had nothing to track actual positions, most of our players are completely familiar and comfortable with it, and able to train newcomers very easily in it.

Absolutely - the whole "fog of war" idea where combat is often pure chaos.

There's tweaks to the rules you can make to edge closer to this in-system, but they also add to how long it takes to run a combat.

Which tweaks are you speaking about here, I have no idea what you might be referring to ?

In our groups, the one tweak that enhances fog of war is the total inability for anyone whose turn it's not to speak during that turn, which means that they can't get clarifications or interfere, but I'm not sure it's the same thing. Anyway, that strict application of speaking turn speeds the game by a considerable factor.

One thing for @Chaosmancer to keep in mind is that those sort of mistakes can and do go both ways - I-as-DM might forget to apply ongoing damage to a PC, for example. In the long run I suspect they largely cancel out.

Eaxctly, as long as there is no intent to bias results whether from the DM and the players, this makes the mistakes even less significant overall.

 

[Chaosmancer]

And you'd be wrong. It's impossible to cheat at a game when you literally cannot break a rule. It's simply abuse of authority(if it's an abuse, rather than a valid use of power like getting rid of arrays), which as I said is just as bad.

And I find that way of looking at it just leads to more abuse. Because nobody gets upset that they are "abusing your authority to run the game" because people abuse authority all the time. Cheating carries more weight, and people try and avoid it more strictly than they try and avoid abusing authority.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Yes - it's the bolded part b/c if they are engaging in those behaviors, they haven't grasped the basic premise of the game.

I don't disagree with this.

Literally, getting an advantage is an integral part of the definition of cheating. If you want to change the definition to make your point, I'm not sure we have anywhere to go from here.

I disagree. There are plenty of people who will cheat because they think it gets them something, even if in actuality it offers no true advantage. But getting into the precise definitions of cheating seems like it would only end up with people continuing to try and define it so that DMs are incapable of cheating. And I don't see what purpose that serves.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Can you name someone who has said that? I don't remember seeing it in any thread I've seen here on this forum.

Do you have Lyxen blocked?

 

[smcc360]

We all tend to express things in game mechanics around the table--everybody enjoys the nuts and bolts of it. But if the GM has a different interpretation of something, or decides to houserule it on the fly, that becomes the new mechanic. For that session at least.

 

[Maxperson]

And I find that way of looking at it just leads to more abuse. Because nobody gets upset that they are "abusing your authority to run the game" because people abuse authority all the time. Cheating carries more weight, and people try and avoid it more strictly than they try and avoid abusing authority.

Look it however you want to, but you can't make something that is impossible possible just because you feel that it carries more weight. It is literally impossible for the DM to cheat. Not possible. There are no rules that he can break.

 

[Maxperson]

Do you have Lyxen blocked?

No, but I don't read all of his posts. He did explain it afterwards in response to my post and it's a cultural thing apparently, not the bad thing you implied it was. If that's how his culture is, who are we to comment on it through the lens of our culture?

 

[Maxperson]

I disagree. There are plenty of people who will cheat because they think it gets them something, even if in actuality it offers no true advantage.

Being bad at gaining the advantage that they are cheating to get does not negate the fact that they are cheating in order to get an advantage. Not everyone that cheats is good at it.

 

[Oofta]

And I find that way of looking at it just leads to more abuse. Because nobody gets upset that they are "abusing your authority to run the game" because people abuse authority all the time. Cheating carries more weight, and people try and avoid it more strictly than they try and avoid abusing authority.

Well, I'm not sure if "upset" is the word I would use. Disappointed? Underwhelmed? A bit frustrated? Sure. A bad DM means I don't get to play.

But cheating? Guess I don't really see it. But if you want to call it flarfegnugging you can for all I care.

 

[Northern Phoenix]

My perspective on DM "cheating" (which seems to be what the last few pages are about) is that it's only cheating if you do it to try to "win at DND" against the players. If you move HP or save or AC values around without it fundamentally changing the end-result the players get, it's not really "cheating" imo.