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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3507990" data-attributes="member: 4937">Without question.  While Gygax gives some very good advice IMO in the 1st edition DMG, he also gives some advice which is IMO very bad.  In some fairness, I think Gygax's bad advice was reactionary in nature and was meant to be over the top and extreme.  Gygax I think had a reputation he was trying to keep up and much of the extreme stuff should be read with wry DM humor.  Gygax certainly didn't want to be accused of being a softy.  I think in context it should probably be seen as a response to Gygax hereing how some DMs had lost control of thier campaigns, and giving the DM's ammunition to fight back against that.  For example, if the PC complained that the NPC was being unreasonable in not simply giving the PC the spell, the DM could respond by pointing to the text in the DMG and saying that in context his demands were actually quite small and if he would prefer the official guidelines to the generous terms the DM was offering, well that could be arranged.  Besides which, I myself maintain a public persona of a RBDM which is very much at odds with my private feelings.  I may publicly gleam at killing PC's or 'screwing the party over', but behind the screen I'm often fudging a bit to keep PCs alive because while I might keep a running table of PC deaths and gloat about it, secretly I think killing PCs is not much fun for anyone.  But, its better I find to make players think I'm in at least somewhat of an adversarial role, hard but fair, and somewhat fearsome because it keeps them in line and thier mind on what they're doing. But, mostly, your right; it was just bad advice.</blockquote>

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