D&D General How Impartial a DM Are You?

[Reynard]

[Note: this is tagged D&D because it is the game most associated with the "impartial GM" -- heck, they even used to call it a referee. Of course you can discuss this in relation to other RPGs.]

When you are running [whatever flavor of] D&D, how important is your impartiality to you? That is, do you try and remove your own desires for what happens, your fondness for the players or their characters, or the needs of the story from your rulings and application of the rules? Or do you curate your own partiality in ways you think makes the game better or more fun? Does it matter who you are playing with or under what circumstances (one shot, home game, con, etc...)

For my part, I wouldn't really call myself impartial. I am a fan of the PCs, and my preferences certainly show up in encounters and the way NPCs interact with the characters. However, once combat starts, I let the dice fall where they may and we roll in the open. Monsters and villains are usually out to kill the PCs, so that's how I play them. I don't know if that counts as "impartial" but I try to be fair.

 

[cranberry]

The Dice Gods always decide. I am just their vessel.

 

[TwoSix]

Tough to say. I think, like a lot of people, I tend to think of myself as impartial; howver, it's nearly impossible to not have some kind of bias in the framing of encounters and how we establish stakes. It would be doubly tough for me, as my GM-style is low-prep and high-improv, so a lot of my decision-making is done within the heat of the moment, where it's much more difficult to be impartial.

I will say that I do most of my rolls in the open, especially when the circumstances are high-stakes, and I always announce the needed DC of the check ahead of time, along with establishing the contours of what happens on success or failure. So I do try to to be as impartial as possible whenever mechanics are actually being called for at the table.

 

[AlViking]

I do my best to make the game fun for everyone without playing favorites or giving players a free pass.

With a few rare exceptions I don't really think of expected or desired outcomes, sometimes the most interesting changes in directions are based on failures or things going in a different direction than I ever anticipated. I think about antagonists, neutrals and allies in a general sense, what their goals and desires are. Then I set up hooks that make sense for the PCs to pursue. I'll have ideas of how they go about it, but it's always up to them. So if they decide to ally with the wererats instead of killing them off like I had expected, that's fine. Might come back to bite them on the ass someday of course.

When it comes to combat I don't fudge dice but I do consider the goals and intelligence of the enemies. Some will just charge into combat with no sense of self preservation, others are just there to slow the group down and everything in between. Not every monster will fight to the death, some will take a PC off to be eaten and so on.

I will sometimes not use certain features if I've screwed up or my dice are just burning hot. For example in my last game I had a scenario where at the end of a difficult fight a nimblewright hulk came out of the woodwork - but the goal was not to defeat all the enemies. The goal was to get out the door. One PC was holding the door open for everyone and at the very end the hulk got close enough and hit the PC holding the door. When I had grabbed the monster I had missed that on a hit the target's speed becomes 0 which would have meant no way for the PC to escape so I ignored the feature. Was it the right call? Not sure. It's not something I normally do but since the goal was to escape and one PC was risking themselves I thought it was. In a handful of other cases I've ignored the recharge of a big AOE effect if I thought it would lead to a TPK, but that has one happened a couple of times over the years.

It also does depend on the group and what they enjoy - especially when I was DMing public games. Some groups want to be on that knife's edge of failure, others just want to have fun rolling dice. So my dice rolls never change but tactics will be more or less brutal.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Anyone who brings snacks has me in their back pocket.

Unfortunately, I only run games online.

 

[payn]

Impartiality is the goal, but I dont always achieve it. My favorite fantasy RPG at the moment is PF1. It took a lot of years for me to learn to tune it the way I like. Thing is, its swingy nature means that some encounters are gonna get away from me. Id say 75% of the time the encounter is right on the money and I can remain impartial. about 20% of the time, I need to dial up my monsters to make the fight more entertaining for the players. Finally, 5% of the time I might need to tune foes in the middle of an encounter, something that I did not anticipate would take apart the players.

Folks may ask if impartiality is the goal, why not use a system that makes it happen 99% of the time? The experience ive found in such systems is that its too predictable. An unfortunate side effect of the swingeing nature of the system allows for that unpredictability that just makes the experience more enticing for me. YMMV.

 

[Umbran]

When you are running [whatever flavor of] D&D, how important is your impartiality to you?

To me? Not very. And I mean that in the sense that impartiality is not, in and of itself, a high priority or a particular guiding principle for me. It is just a tool.

What's important to me is how impartial my players want me to run. They usually want me to be... mostly impartial, but cognizant of story flow and pacing.

Anyone who brings snacks has me in their back pocket.

Unfortunately, I only run games online.

So, the one who figures out they can schedule a DoorDash delivery of snacks to you is gonna be a god, is what you're sayin'?

 

[Professor Murder]

Highly partial. The dice are a tool not an arbiter. The story is the arbiter. The GM is an arbiter. The players are arbiters. Good rules and practices constrain and channel how. But there is no moral calling in obeying the dice. The dice are not a suicide pact for the game or it's story, That said, do I ignore the dice often? No, it's very rare. But I just roll my eyes at people who view dice fidelity as a moral calling. My table has much more important moral callings than inanimate objects.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Not very. All of us at the table are working together to create a compelling long-form narrative that entertains us, surprises us, and excites us. So my focus as a DM goes towards running things in a way that helps bring that about. If that means on occasion I feel like I need to nudge my thumb on the scale to assist the players or nudge my thumb on the scale to assist the enemies-- all so that the parts of the narrative/game that everyone wants to feel and be important actually end up being so-- then I'm good with doing it as necessary. I'm usually not needing to... because we are all very good at creating drama on our own... but sometimes a nudge can help.

After all... we do not see D&D as playing a board game where people are worried about "winning legitimately". Because for us it's not about "winning" or "losing", it's about creating compelling story that will result in both happening, then making us hungry to see it all play out.

 

[Shiroiken]

I'm old school, so I'm both for and against the party. When coming up with adventures and challenges, I try to foil as many possible plans as I can, making me pretty antagonistic. However, because I don't want to ruin my campaign, I always leave a decent chance for the players to succeed. During the actual session, I shoot for as neutral an arbiter as possible, allowing the players to suffer the consequences of their actions and the dice rolls. As a result, character death/failure isn't that uncommon, but the party as a whole tends to succeed.