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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Destil" data-source="post: 1682040" data-attributes="member: 1980">It's no more the DM's game than the players game. If you can't provide a game that you both enjoy things need to change. Try and find a copy of Piratecat's yearly E-Mail to his gaming group he's posted before, it's an excellent example of how to get player feedback. Though I suspect that your DMing style and their playing styles may simply be too different to work together and everyone to have fun. What's the problem? Why is this even an issue? They don't like traps, don't use them (much). Is your opinion of what the game should be so much higher than the players (and traps being an integral part of that opinion) that it would really matter if you rarely used traps? Trap's setup for a rogue to remove are one of the most boring parts of the game IMHO. Roll search, roll disable. Or something deadly happens. I toss one in for vermisiltude every now and then and if I have a rogue with a lot of disable and disarm I'll make more (and put them in logical areas so I don't spend too much game time rolling for him to search every empty room), but if I don't I'll focus on the FUN stuff. James Bond style traps that aren't simply "pit trap, 300' falling damage" "okay, drop the rope guys, I'm still alive" but big, messy ordeals with monsters and mobile magic effects and lava and sharks and undead and antimagic cones and crushing walls and such that actually can take up significant amounts of game time. If I have a rogue in the party I either need to make search DCs on the fun ones too high to be easily found, make them too low and let them be bypassed with two die rolls (or take 10/20) or something similar. Was this before or after you began the module? If it's before why are you running a module your players don't have any interest in? How is this going to make the game fun for them?If it was after... accept it and move on. Avoid running desert modules from now on. Find out what kind of games they do want to run. Again: why oh why do you focus on things the players don't want to do? I mean, mapping a maze is asinine to me. It's not fun. I'd want to roll a simple int check or something, because running around measuring things on graph paper is not my idea of a good time.  This can always be a big issue. It's sometimes vital to work out exactly what your Paladin's code of conduct is before this stuff comes up. The PH is very vague, and Lawfull Good is one hundred times worse. You want to set up a very specific list of things that do and don't violate the code, have a list of priorities, values and dogma and similar. Not doing so just comes down to arguments that can very well disrupt many games. Are xvarts inherently evil or can they be redeemed? While it may not be good to gun them down wholesale(depends on previous answer), it could very well be lawfull and just in the eyes of your paladin or their god. If the DM and the player don't agree on these things then you're bound to have problems.And again, it's a play-style thing. Some players would look at it as something their paladin would feel ashamed about and role-play it as such, seek atonement, maybe even become some sort of champion of women / children in the future as a sort of penance.Some players just look it as you trying to screw them (particularly if they don't agree on the ruling in the 1st place).(I'd also very heavily recommend against not giving XP but rather reduce or remove their granted powers. Long term vs. short term penalties. Granted powers can be recovered through atonement and a role-playing hook, but the XP loss will always be there).Yes:In my opinion good DMing is something of a contract. You need to make a game both you and the players enjoy. That's the goal. This is the sort of thing I put at the beginning of my initial hand-out or E-mail before starting a new game or adding a player:I'm going to try and make a game that has things you'll enjoy in it. If you want lots of combat I'll spend my time giving my monster's stats. If you want lots of interaction with NPCs I'll spend time fleshing out interesting NPCs.Likewise, I'm playing this for fun too. So there will be some of my own bias in what's fun for me to prepare or run in the game (more than anything else I enjoy variety and, I've found, and most players do as well). And also it's not fun for me to spend a week working on a game or get some module and then have you just completely ditch the adventure I had planned just for kicks.The key to all of this is feedback. If some part of the game isn't fun for you the sooner I know the sooner I can think about it in getting ready to run sessions (and the less likely you are to just want to invalidate hours of prep-work). If I find part of your playing style that doesn’t mesh well with what I want to run, likewise, I'll bring it up if I'm not happy just adapting things.Above all else, I've found everyone has more fun when everyone's interested in playing the same kind of game (or at least a game where everyone has something they enjoy a lot in most sessions).</blockquote>

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