Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="iserith" data-source="post: 7306688" data-attributes="member: 97077">As I said, how someone describes their actions has no bearing on adjudication. I boil down what they say to a goal and approach and resolve.I am not immune to persuasion, but I strive to be fair and consistent and I have prep to fall back on. I'm also balancing out the use of dice against deciding on success, as the DMG recommends (&quot;The Middle Path&quot;), and avoiding the drawbacks pointed out in the &quot;Ignoring the Dice&quot; approach (also in the DMG). I also have players who play in good faith and manipulating the DM isn't that. So this is not a concern I have though I have heard the &quot;gaming the DM&quot; argument a lot.If we could go back to the WotC forums, especially in the D&amp;D Next Playtest or What's a DM to Do sub-forums (and possibly in enworld's Next playtest forum a while back, which I think they had), you would see me making that very same argument. I thought it was a clever attack on a standard approach suggested by the (then) new game and it certainly lined up with the D&amp;D 4e paradigm from which I was arguing. I didn't realize back then that &quot;gaming the DM&quot; is actually describing an act of bad faith by the players. I now believe it is inadvisable to construct an approach to DMing that counteracts bad faith play. I'd rather deal with bad faith play outside the context of the game and play to the &quot;Middle Path&quot; as described in the DMG.I hope you will see, as I did, the folly of this &quot;gaming the DM&quot; argument, especially as applied to adherents of the Middle Path.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="iserith, post: 7306688, member: 97077"] As I said, how someone describes their actions has no bearing on adjudication. I boil down what they say to a goal and approach and resolve. I am not immune to persuasion, but I strive to be fair and consistent and I have prep to fall back on. I'm also balancing out the use of dice against deciding on success, as the DMG recommends ("The Middle Path"), and avoiding the drawbacks pointed out in the "Ignoring the Dice" approach (also in the DMG). I also have players who play in good faith and manipulating the DM isn't that. So this is not a concern I have though I have heard the "gaming the DM" argument a lot. If we could go back to the WotC forums, especially in the D&D Next Playtest or What's a DM to Do sub-forums (and possibly in enworld's Next playtest forum a while back, which I think they had), you would see me making that very same argument. I thought it was a clever attack on a standard approach suggested by the (then) new game and it certainly lined up with the D&D 4e paradigm from which I was arguing. I didn't realize back then that "gaming the DM" is actually describing an act of bad faith by the players. I now believe it is inadvisable to construct an approach to DMing that counteracts bad faith play. I'd rather deal with bad faith play outside the context of the game and play to the "Middle Path" as described in the DMG. I hope you will see, as I did, the folly of this "gaming the DM" argument, especially as applied to adherents of the Middle Path. [/QUOTE]

Verification