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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tatsukun" data-source="post: 2246459" data-attributes="member: 15511">Imagine this…I invite my friends over for the evening. We all sit down at a table, decide to play poker, and the dealer deals our hands. I look at my cards, see three fours, and announce that fours are wild. The rest of the table screams that we already dealt, but I simply say that it’s my house, and I am always right. Silly, huh? No imagine that we decided to play DnD instead of cards. Why do I then get to change rules mid-game? Why do I then get to change rules without any notice? I’m the DM? Who cares! The group is there to have fun, not to worship the mighty DM. Role playing games are just that, games. Games are fun things to do, but they need consistency, they need rules. Now, I have, as a DM been guilty of doing this very thing – and I have lost players over it. I once decided in the middle of a game that mage armor worked differently, because I had seen a cool way of doing it. The players went nuts, and we talked it over for a few minutes before I came to my senses and went with “precedent”. Now, as a player, I have played in games where the rules changed week to week based on what the DM thought was ‘cool’. I have had a DM announce that Full Plate meant you couldn’t ride a horse, in the middle of combat, between a dragon and my mounted Paladin. The DM just tells me my PC has to get off his horse now (mostly so the dragon could attack better). I guess what I’m saying is that if you (as DM) want to change a rule, you better have thought it out, announced it ahead of time, and you’d better have a good reason. If the world you create for your players isn’t set in a plane of chaos, things had darn well better work the same way every time (mostly). I guess the other thing I don’t like about DMs changing rules mid-game is that some of those changes effect role-playing more than ‘crunch’. I (as a DM) once decided pretty much on the fly that one of the PC’s abilities worked differently, because I wanted to see what would happen. Not my proudest moment. The player in question mentioned that the DM has millions of NPC’s to role-play, and he just wants his PC left alone. That really woke me up, and now I detest anything that smells like a DM telling a player how to role-play a PC. That’s my new pet peeve. Anyway, that’s my 2 yen.   -Tatsu</blockquote>

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