I've got a rep!

[The_Gneech]

What I know of my reputation (I haven't come out and asked the players)...

* Detailed (but actually interesting) backgrounds and NPCs

* The "Oh ****!" opening (along the lines of, Me: "A dragon is breathing fire at you! Make your reflex saves!" Players: "The campaign just started! Don't we have to all meet in a tavern first or something?")

* Making the players frequently worried that they're all gonna die, even though they almost never do

-The Gneech

 

[Peterson]

You're only 16, you don't have a rep yet.

Now we're quoting DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince? (Parents just don't understand)

My rep? According to my players, just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.

That, and they think I'm freaky the way I sub-sub-sub-side-sub-plot and how it all manages to fit together.

He's the DJ, I'm the Rapper,

Peterson

 

[HellHound]

Mine is "will DM".
I used to have a "Killer DM" rep with my old group. A few TPKs will do that for you. This doesn't apply to my current group, though. Yet.

In the old days, we had something called a "Jake Kill" (my nickname is Jake, among others... although most call me Hound now). A Jake Kill involves a character death with no die rolling.

Jake: "Bill, you start feeling hot"
Bill: "I look around"
Jake: "Really hot, feverish"
Bill: "Uh oh, guys?"
Jake - to everyone else in the party "You see a flash back on the island where Bill was, what do you do"

---

Jake: "You see a strange glob at the end of the stick"
Glenn: "I touch it"
Jake: "You die... err... I mean, Glenn starts screaming and gurgling and collapses to the ground - what do you do?"
Bill: "I pull out my gun and put him out of his misery"

---

Then it became a rep for letting players see death just before it got them, especially in CyberPunk. Nine times out of ten, a surprise attack that hit the team would be noticed by one or two people, but inevitably, they rolled low for initiative, and the ambush, HONESTLY BY CHANCE, was aimed at those characters - so they were the only ones aware of the attack, and it killed them before they had a chance to react.

---

I had a reputation for visceral gore, and great descriptions thereof, but this has died off because I game with my kids now. I really enjoy describing weapons cutting through viscera and tendons, shuddering to a stop against bones, blood spray from bullet wounds, and so on... but this still exists in my other combat descriptions - flying spall as autofire weapons blast away at subway station walls, sending chunks of tile and concrete flying about - as well as descriptions of acrobatics, tumbling and good use of balance in combat as they hop up on banisters, fight across tables and so on.

---

Now... Now my rep is big scary monsters. In the middle of a game, if I pull out a sheet that is obviously from the printer when an encounter begins, the players have learned that it REALLY might be a good idea to not push the battle, and to run if it starts going bad. Things like ebon servitor mariliths, true mummy two-headed cairn dragons, custom psionic liches, a cerebrelith with lots of ranger class levels (can you say "predator"?) and so on...

 

[iwatt]

"Go back to rolling behind the screen"

I tended to fudge a lot since my dice have an inordinate abilty to roll 20s. And 18s to confirm criticals. Alas this ability is only active when I DM. The laws of probability come back and bite me in the *** when I play a PC.

So now I roll in the open. And the PC eaths and close calls have gone way.... up.

 

[Barendd Nobeard]

Negative: I house rule. I world build. I run campaigns that have definitive ends.

Maybe the first one, but the second two? How are those negative?!