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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Glamdring" data-source="post: 235819" data-attributes="member: 4835">Yeah, I can understand that.  Further, I can understand how "some" players might think to honor their DM by exploring every map and dungeon they painstakingly draw up.  My players aren't like that.  I have plenty of maps, monsters, secret areas, and hidden treasure hordes that they've casually bypassed without ever knowing what they've left behind.  I'll provide another example of the "lessons" I provide for less-than-stellar players:Low level group.  Beginning of the Night Below saga.  2E.  They're exploring the ruins of Castle Grimstead found NW of Shadowdale.  A fallen tower is discovered, and the group explores inside.  Within is a ferocious brown bear, bristling and growling, ready to charge.  The party ranger notices two sets of eyes behind the bear (who was female): the bear's cubs.  The wiser members of the group back off, while the human psionist and the dwarven fighter move in, ready to slay this foolish bear for ever thinking to challange them.  They both look at each other and say, "Let's kill it."  I silently sigh and say to myself, "I knew they'd do that.  Fools."  Battle begins.  The bear is much stronger than a pair of 1st-2nd level PCs, and when the psionist decided to lasso the creature, he was killed almost immediately.  The rest of the party stood by and watched, partly because they didn't want to die, partly because they knew it was wrong to attack a female bear defending her cubs, and partly because it was amusing watching the psionist and dwarf die foolish deaths.  That they did.  By the end of the encounter, the psionist was so angry at me that he crumpled up his character sheet and threw it away, called me a prick, and stormed out of the room.  The dwarf didn't have much to say.  He didn't really seem to care about the game in the first place.  My point is this:The psionist (who was the original DM for this group of players until I showed up) was a power-gamer.  He ran his games that way.  Before I showed up, the group he was running was ran-sacking entire cities, raping women, slaying kings, and NOT playing the game properly.  I saw what was going on when I sat in with them, and I was chuckling inwardly.  The dwarf was the same way.  "Let's kill it" is not the way to role-play.  As for the rest of the party, this scenario was a lesson in how I run my games.  Yeah, I probably should have passed a note to the ranger and the paladin hinting that they should probably stop those two before they get themselves killed, but I didn't want to do that.  I knew that by placing an innocent female bear protecting her cubs in that tower would have caused an issue.  "Aaaargh, let's kill anything that dares to threaten us!  Let's kill anything that moves!!"  Fools.  This test is an easy way to weed out those who don't really know what D&D is all about.  Yikes, I'll probably get scolded for that one.</blockquote>

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