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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Impeesa" data-source="post: 1911955" data-attributes="member: 498">There's an interesting article up on the official Magic site tonight. They have sort of a puzzle theme going on this week, and <a href="http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/daily/mg154" target="_blank">Mark Gottlieb</a> is apparently something of a puzzle fiend. The article itself is a good read, particularly if you like using a lot of puzzles in your game (duh). One particular passage caught my eye, though..This got me thinking again on something I'd realized earlier. I haven't done much DMing at all in the last couple years, and when I ran a two-night "one shot" over the summer while a friend was visiting, it made me think a lot more about some of my old habits. In particular, things related to challenging the players. I should preface this by saying that I tend to run a pretty combat-heavy game (as a player I'm an unrepentant powergamer - it's just what I do best, so I run with it <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=";)" />), so that's the context I'm thinking in, but this applies to any challenge you put in front of the players no matter the form. Anyway, I found that I tend to juice enemies up on the fly to make it "more of a challenge." If it looks like it's going to roll over without too much of a fight, I have a bad habit of fudging HP to give it one last round of fightin', things like that. When I'm preparing an opponent important enough to have his own detailed statblock, I tend to think in the same sort of manner as I might while creating a powerful PC. I think to myself, "this should dish out some nice damage," and so on. In those situations where it turns out it doesn't slow them down much at all, I might be a bit disappointed. But I realize this might be the wrong philosophy for a good game. As has been discussed before, combat doesn't have to be one life-or-death threat after another, of course. But beyond that, the quote above made me think of it another way... in general, anything you throw at the party (aside from encounters where they genuinely aren't intended to succeed) will ultimately flee or be defeated. No exceptions. If it does so with style, then the DM has succeeded. Obviously, most encounters should still challenge the party in some manner. I suppose what really struck me about this is how my own expectations and mindset in planning affects my satisfaction with how it plays out. In retrospect, that all seems pretty obvious, and perhaps even just a convoluted way of saying "It's not supposed to be DM vs. the players" (which is also obvious). Just wondering if anyone else has ever given this sort of thing any thought.Plus, I am tired and incoherent. One more report and the semester's over, just keep telling myself that... --Impeesa--</blockquote>

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