How strict are you with the rules when you DM?

[Glade Riven]

I, personally, hold players to the rules while I (as DM) cheat, cheat, and cheat. This is for several reasons:

1. Paper Management: One of the flaws of 3.5 is that it was encouraged by WOTC & 3rd party publishers to stat everything. Most of that information is not necessary in 90% of the circumstances. If I don't need that information, I don't copy it out of the books.
2. Battle Management: While I run a Pathfinder campaign, I've picked up a few things from 4e. I use minions, terrain, multi-room combat zones, and encourage my players to try to do crazy things because sometimes crazy works. What I do that isn't 4e is vary the amount of HP my baddies have depending on how the fight is going.
3. Game fluidity: If a rule or having to look up a rule slows down gameplay, I'll houserule and say "we'll look it up later". Mainly, this is to keep things moving as some of my players have really short attention spans.
4. Skill Checks: The skill check examples in the books seem fairly arbitrary, so I use my own fairly arbitrary process that scales with what I want them to know and the skill rankings + roll.

I've gotten what used to be the longest turn on the map (the DM's turn) down to nearly the smallest, and my players enjoy my battles. Granted, there's more to role-playing than battles, but that concerns the rules far less. Usually that involveds jotting down a few general plot points, make up a few NPCs, involve a bit of something for everyone (each player gets something different out of D&D, so each one needs something special every once in a while to keep them involved).

 

[Festivus]

When I DM 3.5/Pathfinder, I find I am pretty lax with the rules. I even rewrite stat blocks from those systems so that they exclude anything I won't need in combat, and make them to be more 4E like to make things easier for me to manage (I hate the 3.5 recharge mechanic for breath weapons for example... something else to remember... argh!). In any edition, once the major portion of the fight is done (e.g. the boss is dead) I call the fight by explaining in some sort of dramatic fashion what happened to the remaining combatants.

 

[weem]

I've been playing 4e exclusively since the release (so this response relates to that edition) and between myself and my players, we know the rules pretty well.

As such, we follow them pretty strictly for the most part. If a question comes up and there is not a solid "this is how it works" consensus pretty quick, I call it one way or another and move on quickly. It's better to get one small thing wrong and keep the flow going than halting the game to figure it out.

In those cases, we look up the rule after the game so we know for future reference.

 

[Rechan]

I'm very lenient.

Especially when it comes to "My character can't do this because the rules are too tight". I'm hitting this wall with some new players.

The only fear is making a ruling and then it becoming precedent rather than a one-time off the cuff call.

 

[Celebrim]

I, personally, hold players to the rules while I (as DM) cheat, cheat, and cheat.

Interestingly, I don't hold players to the rules (although I do hold them to my rulings), but I adhere to them behind the screen. The reason for this is simple. I've had to many instances where I decided to fudge for dramatic effect where the results were not what I wanted.

On the other hand, I'm not sure what you call cheating is always what I consider cheating. 'Cheating' in my book is only changing what you've previously decided on based on player propositions. If you write down that the 1 HD monster has 29 h.p., that's not cheating. If you decide in the middle of the fight that the 1 HD monster shouldn't die, and in responce to the monster getting damaged you give it 20 more hitpoints to prevent it, that is 'cheating'.

[*]Paper Management: One of the flaws of 3.5 is that it was encouraged by WOTC & 3rd party publishers to stat everything. Most of that information is not necessary in 90% of the circumstances. If I don't need that information, I don't copy it out of the books.

That's not cheating. The DM can stat a monster however he likes. That's just appropriate time management. I believe the monster creation rules in 3.X were created to be a help to DM's, not a hinderance to them. If they ever get in the way, they are easy enough to chunk even while strictly adhering to the rules. Any monster can have an extraordinary ability that effectively breaks the normal monster creation rules.

[*]Battle Management: While I run a Pathfinder campaign, I've picked up a few things from 4e. I use minions, terrain, multi-room combat zones, and encourage my players to try to do crazy things because sometimes crazy works. What I do that isn't 4e is vary the amount of HP my baddies have depending on how the fight is going.

Ok, now that is 'cheating'. Most of the time that I've done this behind the screen, I've regretted it (including most saliently a PC death that occurred when the NPC's bad luck suddenly swung wildly the other way). I don't think its worth it. Some fights will just be brief and anti-climatic. If your plot can't deal with that, then you've got a bad plot with too much novelization and not enough consideration of what works in an RPG.

[*]Game fluidity: If a rule or having to look up a rule slows down gameplay, I'll houserule and say "we'll look it up later". Mainly, this is to keep things moving as some of my players have really short attention spans.

Specifically informing your players that you are using a temporary ruling to handle an ambigious situation is not cheating. It's, again, just good time management. Having good pacing trumps having the rules exactly right. When in doubt, give the PC a slight edge and do a 'coin flip'. Telling your players that you are 'coin flipping' is just gravy, and not even I think essential to the social contract. Under most rules, the 16 succeeeds and the 4 fails. Figuring out edge cases in resolution between the best system and something that works for one use case is generally not worth it if it stops the game.

[*]Skill Checks: The skill check examples in the books seem fairly arbitrary, so I use my own fairly arbitrary process that scales with what I want them to know and the skill rankings + roll.

This isn't exactly cheating, but its too much DM manipulation for my tastes. The problem with this is that you tend to end up unfairly punishing a player who has made sacrifices to be good in one area of the game. If the player takes Skill Focus as a feat, he reasonably assumes he'll succeed more often than if he doesn't. If all DC's a scaled according to a meta-game consideration ('What I want them to know' or anything like it), then you might as well not have skill ranks or progress them.

I've gotten what used to be the longest turn on the map (the DM's turn) down to nearly the smallest, and my players enjoy my battles.

Good job. I try for that too. I try to have a plan of action in mind as soon as the DM turn begins. I roll about 10-20 d20's at once, and then move through the narration as I tick off results for each NPC. The goal is to get the players back to their decision making point as rapidly as possible so that I don't lose anyone's attention.

If find it also helps to break up the DM's turn into several initiative groups. You take more time out of the whole cycle, but it comes in less of a wall of narration.

 

[Otterscrubber]

I'm very lenient.

Especially when it comes to "My character can't do this because the rules are too tight". I'm hitting this wall with some new players.

The only fear is making a ruling and then it becoming precedent rather than a one-time off the cuff call.

I agree with this, I try to be strict in order to maintain consistency but I also want to reward PC creativity as frankly I think that is what makes the game so enjoyable. So if someone comes up with a good idea that will really add to a fight or scenario I try to look for ways to make it happen rather than point to a rule that might forbid it.

The downside is of course if you have someone in your group who is a rules lawyer or terminal min/maxer who will seek to use this leniency to their advantage without putting in the effort to roleplay it or otherwise add to a scenario. This type of player might look at this one time hand waving and refer back to it at a later date when they are trying to do something similar, but that perhaps does not add to the scene at hand, but rather trying to squeeze some advantage out of it.

 

[Crothian]

Strict for what goes done on the character sheets and the public section of the notes. This stuff has to have some consistancy for the players to understand and be able to know what to expect. But in the heat of the battle rules can fly out the window if they get in the way of a good and fun session. Sometimes this can help the PCs and other times it can really screw them. I'm sure if polled my players would say that it was about 95% screw them 5% help them when in fact it is more like 40%/60% in ther favor.

 

[Filcher]

I'm super strict about Rule Zero. Beyond that, it varies.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

I try to play things by the book during play, but in planning, I'm pretty lax: I'll happily give monsters weird powers, unique feats/features/skills, ad hoc their HD or ability scores, or the like-- but once the numbers are down on paper, I stay fairly close to RAW (or HRAW- "house rules as written").

As for on the fly adjudications, I don't fret too much about setting precedent; keeping things flowing at the time is more important, imho. It's always made clear that a mechanical ruling stays in place for the session. After that, it gets replaced once the official rule is located or a house rule for the situation is codified and made "official".

Rulings for dramatic purposes are always one time rulings, and don't set precedent. Once is cool; more than that is cheese.

 

[Amaroq]

Hmm .. I suppose I alternate between "not very" and "extremely".

In general, my theory is "make the players feel like their character is awesome!"

That manifests in different ways, of course.

"Want to Jump as part of a Move and Grab a creature at the apex of the jump?" Awesome! Let's roll!

"You want to try what?" Fine, you can try, but I'll set the DC's so high you shouldn't be able to hit them - and not tell you what those are. What? You rolled a 20, and an 18, for the two skill checks I asked for .. plus your mods? Criminy, now I've got to figure out how this works!!

Building a monster, I'll follow the Monster Builder guidelines for HP, defenses, etc, for balance .. but then I'll make up my own powers with fairly little concern for "are they balanced", and much more concern for "do they feel threatening?"

However, I'll usually "prep" an encounter by figuring out a lot of the rules ahead of time, and for that I'm pretty solidly rules based.

For example, the archers are shooting off the second floor balcony? Okay, if I were a melee fighter, I'd try to get up there. How would I do that? I might use a rope .. let's set a DC for that .. and a much easier DC if you have a Grappling Hook ... I might want to Climb .. hmm, maybe I should give the balcony arches so they have something to Climb .. okay, lets set a DC for that, and note both the "I succeed" level and the "I fall" level ... okay, I might want to Jump and grab the ledge .. okay, lets calculate the DC for that, running, and standing .. now let's set another (easier) DC for pulling yourself up .. hmm, if you fail that, maybe its an Endurance check to have enough going for you to pull yourself up again .. oh, what if somebody climbs most of the way, then falls? They should totally have a last-ditch-chance to put themselves in the "grabbed the ledge" state .. cool, here's the DC for that.

So, coming into the encounter, I've got a lot more stuff "prepared" than my characters actually try ... in practice, I wound up with one Jumper, no climbers, no ropes, no grappling hooks, two people trying ranged attacks from the floor, and two others heading off to find a staircase .. and making it to the balcony through I route I hadn't prepped but found perfectly legitimate.

But past that, I'm fairly House-Rule-ey, so we have a number of different house rules in play, including an "Awesome Point" mechanic which basically lets the character break the rules in some way ... e.g., if my jumper's maximum Jump was a 19 (due to armor) and the jump DC was 20, she could have used an Awesome Point to succeed anyways.

I'm less worried about "allowing" something cool and having it turning out unbalanced: I'd much rather reward a cool idea, and then inform the player that it was a one-off and won't be repeatable every time they need to .. X.