Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 9647549" data-attributes="member: 1465">There is probably many more than these, but at least what comes to mind:1) I used to grant individual XP based on personal player's performance (both in tactics/ideas and roleplay)- I realized this was wrong pretty quickly as one of the players in my first campaign was much better than the others and I would always give additional XP to the same person, then felt I should give to others to compensate even if they weren't doing anything special; some players also tried too hard to roleplay only to get bonus XP, with terrible results- I just ditched the whole idea quickly, and give everyone the same XP- XP just feel more fair if shared equally without DM's judgement2) I used to let PCs die without considering the consequences- I realized this during a conversation in the first session at someone else's game, when a player asked if they could have their PC protected from permanent death, as the player was going through some difficult times mentally and was afraid of their own reaction if their PC had suddenly died after playing it for a long time; I had never considered the issue before- I first just tried to make PC death less probable with house rules, but it doesn't solve the problem and can make the game feel too easy; eventually I just decided I wouldn't let any PC die permanently without player's approval, and figure out other sorts of penalties instead of death- less stress for everyone3) I used to create lots of house rules (in the sense of actual in-game rules modifications and additions)- I realized I was forgetting some of my own house rules in our 3.0 game, which in fact had grown quite significantly and required time to be explained before starting a game with a new group; eventually I also realized house rules don't really make the game better, very few of your players care for them, and some of your players might even hate them- next edition I DMed (5.0) I started off purposefully trying to avoid house rules- since the beginning, I gradually added a few personal adjudication methods that someone might call house rules but in my mind they are just applications of "rule 0" or otherwise creating boundaries around certain abilities, otherwise I haven't felt the need to make changes to the game4) I used to carefully explain the game and its rules to beginners in "session 0"- I had someone never make it to "session 1" probably because we haven't really played anything in "session 0", the whole time of which was spent explaining rules, describing the fantasy world, or creating characters- I tried to start playing the game on the first evening without explaining any rule until needed- since then, I pretty much stopped having a "session 0" at all, and I just have everyone start playing very quickly5) I used to do "top-down" worldbuilding- I realized it was fun only for me, but most of it is irrelevant for the players, and only requires more work to adapt published adventures- I started running published adventures as-is and make them determine the settings instead of viceversa; I started allowing players to choose freely their PC's background material (such as deity, region of origin, or memberships and affiliations) instead of picking from a predefined list, and then whatever they choose exists- if the campaign is short, the fantasy settings matters little; if the campaign turns out to be long, the setting builds itself "bottom-up"</blockquote>

Verification