Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 5084224" data-attributes="member: 18280">AFAICT, the problem this thread is dealing with comes down largely on the "DM as summer camp director" meme (as opposed to the "DM as creator of challenges and impartial referee" meme).You want to know why people stopped having fun DMing 3e (those who did)?  Look at this thread.1.  The players don't want to suffer the negative consequences for the character builds they have created.2.  A player asks why the DM put them in that situation, failing to take any responsibility for entering the encounter/influencing what the encounter is.3.  The DM feels he has to make things "fun" for the players at all times, so there can be no "unfun" consequences related to (1) or (2).Sorry, but if you dump a stat, you should suffer the consequences of doing so.  If you kill a guy in town, you should suffer the consequences of doing so.  I mean, isn't this the edition where "0 hp" means whatever the player delivering the blow decides it means?  In 4e is there any reason that an NPC has to end up dead at the end of any combat?So, the player dumped stat.  One or more players decided to kill the NPC.  And the result is the DM's fault.The real solution here is to ask everyone to take responsibility for what happens at the game table.  Players are responsible for the weaknesses of their characters, and if that means that the player feels left out sometimes, it is that player's responsibility to make the most of it.  The more the players contribute to deciding where to go and what to do, and the more the players can affect how an encounter unfolds, the more responsibility they must accept for what they encounter/how the encounter unfolds.In return, the DM has a responsibility to create a milieu that has a lot of potential for fun (encounters, locations, and NPCs with the same), to adjudicate the rules and the world fairly so that the PCs can win or fail on their own merits, and to give the players plenty of opportunities to make meaningful choices.So, in short, it isn't the skills that are the problem, it is the way the game sets up player expectations, and makes the DM responsible for everything that goes wrong should the players actually meet the consequences of their choices.  Meh.In a lot of ways, this is the "Gary" vs. "Ted" thread all over again, where the players are text messaging and wandering off, but it is all "Ted"'s fault.<img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/erm.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":erm:" title="Erm    :erm:" data-shortname=":erm:" />RC</blockquote>

Verification