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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Quickleaf" data-source="post: 7490050" data-attributes="member: 20323">Entirely possible there are other issues involved, but based on what you shared, I wonder if you could apply some “problem is the solution” thinking here.I’d recruit him (?) as the rules lawyer. When there’s a rules question I’m not sure about or don’t care to look up in the heat of DMing, I’d ask him to make a ruling based on his superior rules knowledge.Sounds like one player is in touch with his (?) sense of humor. It may not be to your taste, but it’s making at least one more casual player laugh, and that’s a good thing. You want some amount of humor in your D&D games. It breaks tension, it helps the group avoid inter party conflict, and reminds the more serious-minded to have fun.You’re introducing new folks to D&D - hats fantastic! Don’t worry that they don’t know the rules or are bit quieter or whatever. If they’re having fun, it’s all good. Hey, maybe one of them is not so good at math & I could have the math whiz buddy up to support that person?This story is true of most DMs at some point in their DMing career. The thing I did was embrace it, and run an adventure/setting that supports that style.Maybe the 10-foot pole dungeon search / painstaking description of searching for traps isn’t their style of play? Nothing wrong with that. Maybe a more cinematic/swashbuckling game of derring do would be up their alley?Fantastic! You’ve got a player who - despite a warning from the DM about danger, sticks to his guns in portraying his character as a forager. I’d describe the berries he finds (goodberries?) along with some conflict of challenge tied to the berries. Maybe he notices some of the fallen overripe ones are squished forming a trail of hyena like humanoid tracks with berry seeds in them...gnolls!Every DM will face this challenge too. “Take no prisoners, remember no names.” One trick I use is coming up with names that are a bit close to something recognizable. Even though it charges my inner narrator to hear the players call Ras T’fima “Rasta” or Asric “Asterisk”, you know what? They’ve actually remembered those names cause they had a good laugh about it.But humor isn’t the only way to get players to remember names you want them to remember.Memory is linked to emotion. The more the players feel something when that NPC is introduced - fear, humor, sympathy, suspicion, anger (or several at once) - the more likely someone in the group will remember. For example, I hinted about a death knight for my low level PCs and they were scared, when they found out his name was Ras T’fima they made the “Rasta” joke, and then after a tense first meeting they realized he was kind of sympathetic. That play of emotions means they remember his name now.Another way to reinforce this is with a recap of last session at the beginning. Usually I have a player do this, but I read the room and if I feel like I need to go it (e.g. to repeat a name they’ve forgotten), I will.Wonderful learning moment for you as DM. Google the “three clue rule” on the Alexandrian blog: basically, if there is a clue the PCs need to get where you want them to go, you need to be prepared to drop that clue 3 Times. The first they’ll miss, the second they’ll misinterpret, and by the 3rd time they just might get it.Wow! Players arguing with you to stick to rules even to their detriment! That’s a very fair-minded group. Sounds like they want a real challenge, and they want to see their actions have consequences for good or ill. Maybe establishing that baseline of trust - that you respect their style of play and are going to run it without fudging much - will help them be more generous towards those few times when you really do feel it’s in the game’s best interest to fudge. Personally, I appreciate it when players say “No, lets play it where it lies.” I just had a player do that with a zombie scene I was trying to wrap up as their progress through a dungeon had been slower than I’d haves liked, but one player said very emphatically “no, don’t give me benefit of the doubt, I want to play this combat out.” Listen to players like this! They are a gift!“I could see a dagger or short sword as a stretch.” Classic. Good one. <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=";)" /></blockquote>

Verification