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<blockquote data-quote="Ingolf" data-source="post: 4226093" data-attributes="member: 1783">I'm with you. I've been playing &amp; DMing for 29 years, and good DMs are system neutral in my experience, and edition neutral as well. If you have a rep as a hard-ass, or a killer DM, or a Monty-Haul style pushover, no wording of the rules can save you. You have to fix the underlying problems yourself, or get used to having no players.Years ago - almost 30 years in fact - a member of my &quot;summer holiday&quot; play group developed a rep for ruthlessly killing players. He'd throw a Spectre at a 1st level party, and cut off all means of escape, for example, or pit beginning RuneQuest characters against hordes of Trolls. We contemplated just not letting the guy run games for us, but we were kids, and geeks to a man, and the guy was our friend, so we felt obligated to stand by him. But finally, he wiped out the entire group in a game of Boot Hill when he was essentially serving as a &quot;guest GM&quot; - running our long-standing PCs from another GM through his well-crafted slaughterhouse of an encounter. I just sort of snapped, told him I'd rather be gut-shot than let him GM anymore and suggested that he do something probably physically impossible with his game. The poor guy - it was like the light went on over his head. &quot;Wait - you guys don't like being slaughtered like cattle in every game I run? Hmmmmmm.&quot;</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ingolf, post: 4226093, member: 1783"] I'm with you. I've been playing & DMing for 29 years, and good DMs are system neutral in my experience, and edition neutral as well. If you have a rep as a hard-ass, or a killer DM, or a Monty-Haul style pushover, no wording of the rules can save you. You have to fix the underlying problems yourself, or get used to having no players. Years ago - almost 30 years in fact - a member of my "summer holiday" play group developed a rep for ruthlessly killing players. He'd throw a Spectre at a 1st level party, and cut off all means of escape, for example, or pit beginning RuneQuest characters against hordes of Trolls. We contemplated just not letting the guy run games for us, but we were kids, and geeks to a man, and the guy was our friend, so we felt obligated to stand by him. But finally, he wiped out the entire group in a game of Boot Hill when he was essentially serving as a "guest GM" - running our long-standing PCs from another GM through his well-crafted slaughterhouse of an encounter. I just sort of snapped, told him I'd rather be gut-shot than let him GM anymore and suggested that he do something probably physically impossible with his game. The poor guy - it was like the light went on over his head. "Wait - you guys don't like being slaughtered like cattle in every game I run? Hmmmmmm." [/QUOTE]

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