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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FreeTheSlaves" data-source="post: 2297429" data-attributes="member: 9952">In the past I have bought into this "punish the players" mentality, I don't really know why, I think the idea was that I would teach them a lesson and they'd go "wow, we did wrong but now we know better". It was part of the whole adversarial gaming thing that was going on, a natural extension of an abomination, so to speak.I did lots of silly stuff like:- railroad a LG adventure on the CN pcs because they were too reactive- law enforcement had long range & near instantaneous telepathy- handed out cool magic items that didn't fit the specialization to punish the lack of diversity- and other stuff that was nigglyTo be fair, in hindsight it was pretty much 2 way traffic - I remember being on the receiving end of some real bad player metagaming and the alternate DMs were sometimes absolutely dreadful. They did stuff like have a 'cartoon' session where everything became surreal slapstick or not prepare > get frustrated by us "going the wrong way" > arbitrarily kill us with an unavoidable & overpowering encounter. Utter madness. However the reality is that players will never understand & 'get' DM imposed punishments, they will merely receive it as "the DMs having a rotten session" and shrug it off or get frustrated if it's repeated.****Nowadays I let the law of natural repercusions control PC behaviour, I've said to the guys that well played & careful characters should thrive in my campaign. Sloppily played or heedless characters should not make it to the mid-levels - I may be wrong but I'll never know because the current crop are pretty decent.Punishing player behaviour otoh is a bit different - they're real people - your friends. Why would you, let alone how can this be done? My approach is to spell out the campaign theme & expectations early on and hark back to it if things get weird somehow. The only "punishment" I have it to push the nuclear bomb and cancel/cut short a session, but that is not an option exclusive to me as a DM.</blockquote>

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