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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KarinsDad" data-source="post: 7162313" data-attributes="member: 2011">I did not mean it to be insulting. But to be totally honest here, aren't all DMs making stuff up on the spur of the moment a LOT? The game goes off into so many directions, the players come up with so many different ideas that the DM really is telling a morphing story, one that is morphing at the table as the game is played. By whim, I mean that if I as DM decide on the fly today that there are Hill Giants in the nearby hills, there is no guarantee that if we started the game at 1 PM today instead of 2 PM today, that with that totally different change of start time, that an idea wouldn't have occurred to me (possibly triggered by something a player said) instead that there are no Hill Giants in the nearby hills because a historical event wiped them all out and if the PCs want to know more, they will have to do some investigating.That is what I mean by whim. The "Say Yes" philosophy (or possibly better expressed as "Ignoring the Dice" DMG philosophy) espoused by 5E removes some types of whim by trying to get the DM to always say Yes. I like to remove some of that whim by rolling the dice. I think that both DMing styles are perfectly reasonable. In the DMG terms, it's leaning more towards the "Rolling with It" philosophy than "The Middle Path" philosophy.And one of the reasons that I like rolling dice is because it shows fairness as a DM and it shows that no, the game world does not just revolve around the PCs. Their goals will not automatically eventually be successful just because they stated a goal and a reasonable approach to attain that goal, rather things may or may not work out as they envision. Some of the more fun gaming sessions occur because the players wanted to do A, but that way was blocked (maybe just by a random die roll), so they went off and did B instead. "When the DM shuts a door, he opens a window".However to be fair, using this approach might lead players to optimize their PCs a bit. As an example, they sometimes purposely take skills that match up with their ability scores, rather than taking skills that they think would be fun for their PC concept. Or alternatively, they take skills that they think will be needed by their PC (or used a lot by the DM), but ones that their ability score do not match up with. Neither of these reasons for skill selection derive directly from the history and background of the PC, rather the skill selections dictate changes to the background (or they influence the background after the fact).That sounds like a lot of work. Whew! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />It also isn't required to be a good DM. Both styles, in fact thousands of styles, are all ok. There is no "one good style" including the style suggestions in the DMG or here on the forum.As both a DM and a player, my criteria leans more towards having fun, but not at the expense of not having a plausible and consistent game world. A random great idea by a player does not mean a good idea for the campaign setting. This means that the DM shouldn't necessarily give in to player desires. The more a DM gives in to "the player's natural desire to avoid randomness wherever possible by having control over outcomes", the more he is making that player's choices not about what can the PC do, but more what the player can get away with (to some extent). People are people. None of us are totally altruistic and many of us are more competitive than we care to admit, so when given the opportunity, many of us will take advantage of a system or a DM. It's in our nature. Again, I'm not trying to say this in an insulting way (but I suck at sometimes expressing my ideas). I'm saying that boundaries are often good and saying No is sometimes ok. As a DM, I just let the dice tell the players No for me sometimes. And sometimes the dice say yes, so if it is something I am not ready for or something that I prefer not happen, I just suck it up. But I just say No (not out loud, but in a variety of other ways) when I really do not want the campaign heading off into some undesirable direction.Yes. I used to try to play that way. "Stop asking me questions, tell me where your PC is going and what your PC is doing". This is a DM style preference which is why I used the goat example. My group currently consists of 4 players in their mid to late 50s and 3 players in their early to late 20s. I have not played these older players for 25 years while living elsewhere and as a group, they acquired a lot of gaming habits that were different than mine. So when I moved back 5 years ago, I spent the first few years trying to get them to adjust their playing style somewhat towards mine. And some aspects of it was like pulling teeth. So, I decided that wasn't fun for the players or the DM, so I adjusted my DMing style to match the players, not the other way around. And guess what? It's still fun. It's a lot of fun.Note: Course, I'm not DM at the moment and probably won't be again for at least another year or more, so I now have time to think more about these types of concepts.As I think it would. However, your style (from what I understand) means that some player HAS to be standing guard, some player HAS to be searching for secret doors, some player HAS to be searching for traps, etc. for them to minimize the gotchas. Each or most players HAVE to be telling you their PCs' goals. In other words, if no player explicitly declares that they are standing guard, then the party will have a much higher chance of being surprised if a monster shows up. My style is that I just assume that the PCs are doing SOP delving actions and if I need to know if someone is doing something specific, I might ask each player what his/her PC is doing. Generally, that is not an issue because a few players speak up and tell me what they are doing. I have to actually go out of my way to try to get the spotlight to shine on some of the other players who are more content to go with the flow by sometimes asking them what they are doing. The downside of this approach might be that if nobody states that they are standing guard and I am assuming SOP, then I go back to the Perception roll to determine if they are surprised if a monster shows up. I don't necessarily know which PC is actually doing it, so everyone gets to roll.My players probably take the perception skill more than other groups because they want to avoid the gotchas. But, both play styles are fine (and yes, the goat example was purposely silly to highlight the playstyle differences). And to be fair, I am lazy as a DM and probably play the Roll the Dice play style a bit more because it is faster and easier and keeps the adventure moving. There isn't a 10 minute roleplaying session with the innkeeper as often (that being interesting to 2 players, but the other 4 players might get a bit bored if the conversation does not concern their PCs), we just cut to the chase and move on. I have 2 players who could care less about what the adventure is, they just want to get to it right away (and the in town prep work is a necessary evil to them <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/laugh.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing    :lol:" data-shortname=":lol:" />).</blockquote>

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