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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5623824" data-attributes="member: 4937">I consider probabilities the basis of all gaming.  There exists a fortune mechanic for determining what the outcome of a proposition is a special and important case of the fundamental law of RPing: "Thou Shalt Not Be Good at Everything." It's damaged because first it is noncontextual.  It's a Shrodinger Law.  We can't know if it applies until after we know the game state, and by the time we know the game state it may be too late to apply the law.  You fall into the flooding pit trap and drown.  Does the law apply underwater?  You are beheaded by a vorpal blade; does the law apply?  What about if you are swallowed by a purple worm and digested?It's damaged secondly because applying the law generally suspends disbelief in the game world.  The above cases were apply the law results in ridiculousness are a case in point, but they are generally true of many deaths which we cannot gaurantee will be long and dragging except by applying alot of force to the game.  I have a tendency to believe in trusting the dice.  If the results aren't what you want, its not the fault of the dice.  Either you have the wrong system for what you want, or you've become too committed to a single outcome to let the game breathe and you are acting like a petty tyrant and control freak.  If there is only a single outcome that must happen, then stop pretending this is a multiplayer game and write the novel.  I think DMs get themselves into big big trouble by asking themselves what they want to happen and fanticizing about how it is going to happen instead of focusing on what is and what the NPC's given the scene framing are going to do.  Alot of the best scenes will be the ones you didn't plan for, and in my experience fantasizing too much about getting a particular scene just leads to frustration and disappointment, not only for the DM, but for his players who feel like they are 'doing it wrong'.And in fact, a lot of people in this thread have suggested that the  players are seriously 'doing it wrong' by trying to heal the injured person.  A lot of people have suggested that those players need to be lectured, set straight, and possibly punished for attempting to 'ruin' the DM's scene.  I see that as a potentially problimatic approach to the game.  Sometimes it will work, and some players may be ok with taking hints from the DM that things are supposed to work out a certain way and that they shouldn't interfere with the DM's plans, but I wouldn't recommend that as a best practice.It's damaged thirdly precisely because a 'rule' like that is focusing on what someone outside of the game 'wants' to happen instead of what the characters inside the game actually do.  Rules are there for arbitrating out of game propositions and creating in game outcomes.  Meta rules tend to work only if the game is to have a very limited scope.  As can be seen from my first example, the rule might be fine, if and only if we want to say that are game is very much not about certain things.  Saying that your game is about something very narrow - like heroes always get dying monologues - is in fact excluding everything else your game could be about.  I generally don't want to narrow my game so much unless its a one shot with characters with a meaning and purpose that is only going to last for 4 hours or so.No purple worms?  No beheadings?  No dissolved in a pool of acid?  No drowning in the briny depths?  No screaming out your last soundless breaths in a vacuum trap?  No reduced to quivering mindless jelly by a chaos curse? Just dying conversations.  Ok, I got it.   I don't believe that there are 'bad DMs' and 'good DMs'.  I don't believe that something like skillful DMing is binary or even a linear axis.  There are lots and lots of aspects to skillful DMing, and one of them is adjusting your game to your particular players.  For example, in my current campaign a lot my players are new and are really enjoying the levelling up process, so I tend to not to 'punish' them too much for dying.  Sooner or later many of them will stop seeing leveling up as the primary reward of gaming, and some of them will want to only get a high level character 'honestly'.  For that group, maybe we'll have harsher rules about starting over if you die because ultimately it would be more satisfying to that group; for this group, it would just be frustrating.  That's just one example.  I do believe however that everyone can improve their game.  And when I start hearing how players are 'bad players' for not likeing a DM cut scene with heavy handed and generous use of DM force, then I'm thinking that those are DM's that could use some advice on how to improve that one area of the their game.  I'm not thinking however that they are bad DMs.  They might very well be very good DMs; the original poster seems fairly sound and interesting.  I just think in this one area he might find his group even happier with his direction if he's less heavy handed.</blockquote>

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