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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Loonook" data-source="post: 4221838" data-attributes="member: 1861">This is one of the big no nos I learned as a DM and watching other DMs commit this error time and time again. As A DM: Don't take it personally, and NEVER let your feelings for the player contort how you're playing.  It isn't just about SOs.  Sometimes, you get a player who is a complete misanthrope... but is just worth sticking into the game. One of my favorite games to run was with a group of teens from... not so good circumstances.  These guys were great players... but not so great people.  A lot of the ability to melt down time in institutions, prisons, or wards is the wanton suspension of the interior and expansion of the exterior.  This group (which I actually mentioned in the post on <a href="http://www.enworld.org/showpost.php?p=4213744&postcount=19" target="_blank">Racism in Gaming</a>, was not... the best seeds.  However, there was a connection.  These guys enjoyed fantasy and science fiction, pretty bright, just allowed themselves to get into bad situations which snowballed into worse and worse ones.  However, when we were at the table, I wasn't thinking about my players as people who were stuck where they were... I was thinking about them as their characters.  And they didn't think of me as some sort of bad guy; the game was a privilege, not a right, and when you had made your way through a week without disciplinary action you got to come over and have the setup.Of course, this is probably the only game I played where pens weren't strewn casually around for player access... or where I had to make sure that I was sitting in an appropriate position to view the whole table.  Tense scenes, but it really helped the players to get through a rough time, and when they came out there was a lot of glowing reviews on it.If I (playing the part of 'the man') and they (playing the part of 'the convict' or 'condemned') could get along in and out of the game without bias, have fun, and get through, then I don't think you should criticize your former players (or DMs, in many cases) for faults.  We all have them.  And posturing as a player or a DM is childish and kinda rude to the other side and sets a bad example for the hobby in general.  When I see DMs who favor players... I'm probably bailing after a short talk with them and a few sessions where nothing changes.  And that's it...The stories can be funny (and I have plenty of them), can be sad (a few of those), pathetic (considering some of my players . . . .) or just plain scary.If you've never had a sharp object waved around over a bad die roll, sit down and let the big boys talk about 'hard gaming'  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

Verification