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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Glade Riven" data-source="post: 5135766" data-attributes="member: 86468">I, personally, hold players to the rules while I (as DM) cheat, cheat, and cheat. This is for several reasons:<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">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.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">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.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">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.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">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.</li> </ol>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).</blockquote>

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