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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 9633060" data-attributes="member: 6785785">Well, no... 5e is ill-suited for certain types of play. My point with 5e is that there are more essential elements that are not even clearly defined by the rules. So, if I was running a 5e game with players who were new to me, I'd explain that I will always roll in the open and will always share all DCs for any roll you're going to make, and so on. I'd do the same for Mothership or Alien or any other RPG I choose to run. In that specific instance, no... because if it is a modern bank, of course there are cameras. But that's far from the only example that could come up, isn't it?What about a subway station? What about a board room in an office building? What about a private residence of an affluent socialite? The presence of cameras in these places is less certain. So, what I'd do if I was running a trad mystery scenario of the kind that's been discussed, is I would consider any relevant factors in the decision making, including the likelihood of cameras being present, and also any guiding principles that informed my decision as a GM. Generally, I want to reward clever ideas... so unless there's a strong reason that cameras would not be present, I'd reward the idea and say yes they are. Then what they would reveal would be up to a roll of some sort... possibly a stealth roll for the perpetrator if this was a case of a camera at the scene of the crime, or perhaps some kind of skill check for the player to notice something in the footage. And then of course there are a lot of other examples that are harder to easily decide. I always try to explain my thinking on these things... sometimes during play if I see any confusion or uncertainty on the part of the players, other times after play when I simply want to share my process so everyone understands how things work. I'm not a stage magician trying to bewilder an audience. I'm a participant in a game... I want to facilitate play, not obscure it. Well, this is my point. It's not about writing it down... it's about the GM having a principle and sticking to it. They may write it down, they may just have it in mind. As for whether changing something like that is Bad DMing... I don't know. It depends on the game and the GM and players and their expectations. Certainly, there have been plenty of D&D products that outright tell the DM to fudge or to change things behind the scenes as needed. I'm not sure what advice the new 5e books offer on that, but I don't think the 2014 ones say much on it at all. Nor do I think anyone who does so must be doing so out of bad faith. They could be trying to serve some other principle of play or something.</blockquote>

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