On taking power away from the DM

[Ridley's Cohort]

I've no problem with some sorts of player empowerment. Having a 'trip' mechanic tells the player, "This is something you can try to do. You could have always tried to do it, but I'm making it explicit to you." That's a great thing, because player's (and some DM's) tend to assume that if the rules don't say you can do it, then you can't. Unfortunately, when the rules have the illusion of covering everything, as the 3rd edition rules do, this perception is even more strongly enforced so that IME the explicit options in the 3rd edition game often limit the player's actions even more than situation in the 1st edition game where the player didn't even know the rules.

On your last point, I can say that my personal experience is very different. I certainly do not see such issues "often". Can you give me an example or two?

If the DM by personality has a tendency to say No when in doubt, then light rules mean almost all Noes, while skill rules mean that the players get lots and lots of Yesses in common situations by default.

If the DM by personality has a tendency to say Yes when in doubt, I am not sure that there is much difference between light rules and skill rules. Somebody at the table needs to know the skills and attempt to apply them reasonably, not necessarily even the DM.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

I have always been a DM and I want to have as much fun as possible and so do my players. We have always worked together and the concept of the DM cheating is beyond me.

Best example of DM cheating is fudging or ignoring dice rolls.

Lets say your running your game and your players are confronting the BBEG, and your ready to run a knock down drag out fight. You have spent months building up to this point in the game. Its time for the final, climactic act.

You roll initiative, and the Cleric goes first. He throws out a Hold Person. You roll the save behind the Dm Screen (as you always do, for the purposes of this example). It comes up as 1.

Now, an honest DM will let the dice fall where they may. BBEG is now Held, rogue calmly walks up, performs a Coup de Grace, BBEG is now dead.

But, as a DM, you think it will be more fun if the fight goes a bit longer. You tell the players he made the save.

That example is fairly inoccuous. But lets consider if instead of starting the fight, this was meant to be a recurring NPC villain, and he always escapes? What if after that point the dice start to favor the villain heavily and you manage a TPK? At the start of the encounter, the players had won. Now they have lost. It is a slippery slope, but there is a point where rather than enhancing the game, the DM is just cheating his players and protected a pet NPC.

When that line is crossed, it is DM cheating.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[Geron Raveneye]

I would not be surprised.

Which is why generalizations that are useful to someone else are so difficult to make, including whether the DM has less "power" in 3e in any meaningful sense of the word, and whether this is a good thing or a bad thing or both.

I am very very far from the only one who has seen the "veto by many dice" effect. "Rules light" can be very heavy and ponderous in actual implementation.

Oh, I had one DM like that, too...successive checks that in the end added up to "no chance". Sucks, really. But that can be done with rules-light as well as with rules-heavy systems, as long as the DM knows his rules.

On the other hand, I remember one of the better moments where the fate of a character was hanging on a GM decision I had to make on an idea of my players. And I WANTED the same result as they, namely one character back in the game, but I also wanted it to feel special, especially because I loved the idea they had come up with, too. This was in an L5R 1E game, which is pretty much rules-light in my book. And it was a hell of a lot of fun.

I think Melan and Henry already touched on the most important point: Trust between all involved that nobody wants to screw the other over, and everybody is taken seriously. I currently see the effect of damaged trust and not being taken seriously on both sides in a game of some friends...and it's not pretty. Sometimes I prefer kids for that...they at least get it out in the air. Adults are GREAT at keeping it bottled up and festering.

 

[Reynard]

When that line is crossed, it is DM cheating.

I agree, but it works the other way, too. If instead the villain had won intiative and critted the cleric, killing him instantly, fudgiung to save the cleric would have been just as bad (or good, depdning on one's viewpoint -- me, I am a let the dice fall where they may guy).

Few people, I think, want the DM not to cheat -- most just want him to cheat in favor of the PCs to get rid of all those "unfun" things like losing, dying oir having to retreat.

 

[Raven Crowking]

If the DM by personality has a tendency to say No when in doubt, then light rules mean almost all Noes, while skill rules mean that the players get lots and lots of Yesses in common situations by default.

If the DM by personality has a tendency to say Yes when in doubt, I am not sure that there is much difference between light rules and skill rules. Somebody at the table needs to know the skills and attempt to apply them reasonably, not necessarily even the DM.

I tend to think that Ridley's Cohort has the right of it here.

I, for one, was happy to see a skill system that actually worked most of the time, and have expanded it for my homebrew.

RC

 

[Celebrim]

On your last point, I can say that my personal experience is very different. I certainly do not see such issues "often". Can you give me an example or two?

Would a third edition player even try to leap off a balcony and knock a guy off his horse?

The grapple mechanics don't cover it. You tried to resolve it as a grapple, but anyone who knows the grapple rules could tell you it would be a full six seconds using a grapple before you could move the grapple, and heck the rules don't explicitly say what happens when you try to move a grapple off of a horse. Normally, knocking things over is a trip attack, but the rules say nothing about trying to trip someone using a flying leap onto a horse. "Is that even legal?" Even my suggestion that this is a bullrush involves a bit of interpretation. Is the player going to assume that I'll interpret bullrush in his favor?

My experience with players reared on 3rd edition is that they don't offer propositions like, 'I leap off the balcony and knock the guy off of his horse.' Instead, they offer clear rules propositions, "My character makes a bullrush attack." or "My character takes a full attack action", accompanied by moving the minature chess peice like across the table (which is one of the reason I try to keep the minatures off the table now). If the rules don't cover the particular situation, they don't usually look for a non-rules answer because they are used to knowing (or thinking that they know) the expected outcome of the propositions that they make.

If the DM by personality has a tendency to say No when in doubt, then light rules mean almost all Noes, while skill rules mean that the players get lots and lots of Yesses in common situations by default.

It's not necessarily a question of personality. I'm going to say 'No' alot more in my average D&D or CoC game than I would running SW or if I decided to run a M&M game. It's more a question of wanting to set a particular tone, not necessarily being in doubt about anything. If the game assumes that the characters start as super-heroes, I want to give it that comic book/wuxia/WWE feel. I want combats to effectively pause in the panels for one-liners and elaborate set up attacks, and I want most everything to work at least half the time and spectacularly.

For D&D, not so much. Sooner or latter you are going to be a sword or spell slinger in a cape, but we can take our time getting there.

I'm not sure I've been in enough rules light game systems to know what you are talking about. For me, the only difference between rules light and rules heavy is how much 'heavy lifting' I have to do and when. With a rules heavy system, I have more options to turn to during the game to resolve unusual circumstance rather than having to invent things on the fly, but I also probably have to do more preparation to run the game smoothly.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

Now, an honest DM will let the dice fall where they may.

Sorry, you're wrong. This doesn't have to do ANYthing with being a "honest" DM. Actually, you might want to rethink that statement, as you just called every DM who prefers to NOT let the dice dicate all parts of a story (which includes me) dishonest. And that kind of blanket insult is not really the best way to contribute to a so-far friendly thread.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Few people, I think, want the DM not to cheat

I want the DM not to cheat, as player or DM.

RC

 

[Celebrim]

When that line is crossed, it is DM cheating.

That might be bad DMing, but I can't see it as 'cheating'. I believe a DM to be well within his rights to adjust the dice.

And the example works the other way. The most common 'cheating' I do by your definition is ignoring criticals inflicted on the PC's by the NPC's. I don't like criticals, they are random and unfun, but most player's seem to. I get tired of killing PC's with random crits, so if they are having a bad enough time as it is, I just ignore the 20 I just rolled. The second most common is probably ignoring results on random encounter tables that I just don't want to deal with.

I've occasionally fudged in favor of an NPC (often an initiative roll), but I usually regret it.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Would a third edition player even try to leap off a balcony and knock a guy off his horse?

The grapple mechanics don't cover it.

Yes, and of course they don't.

Trip covers it:

Tripping a Mounted Opponent: You may make a trip attack against a mounted opponent. The defender may make a Ride check in place of his Dexterity or Strength check. If you succeed, you pull the rider from his mount.

And, yes, I have used this before.

(EDIT: Leap off the balcony treated as a Charge, of course.)