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<blockquote data-quote="pming" data-source="post: 7499616" data-attributes="member: 45197">Hiya!Yup...pretty much this.I seem to have started at almost the same time you did (but I was a year younger than you, at 10). I was sort of &quot;forced&quot; into learning how to DM because my father (who was the DM; we learned together with a friend of mine) needed to slow down how much time he was spending on it (y'know, father, husband, career, etc). So...I ever so reverently opened up the book and started reading all the &quot;stuff I wasn't supposed to read as a player&quot;. I felt..well...&quot;special&quot;. Like I was being taught the secrets of the universe. Then, almost a year of COMPLETELY screwing up with a ridiculous no-holds-barred Monty Haul/Munchkin 'campaign' (if you could call it that), I realized my choices were not good ones. So I started a new one. Sticking as close to 100% to the rules as possible. If it wasn't in the book, NO! That didn't last long either...another 3 to 6 months. Then it dawned on me; it needs to be a mix. Rules are there for a starting point. A baseline for running the game. Things came up ALL the time that didn't quite fit the rules. I would have said NO before, but now it was &quot;Hmmm... it's close, but should be harder/easier/whatever. Lets do this in stead...&quot; And I would make a ruling.Turns out, I make pretty decent rulings and thus my DM'ing career was off to the races! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Sticking as closely to RAW simply doesn't work. There WILL be situations ALL THE TIME where a rule is &quot;close enough&quot; to not matter. But there will be a consistent trickle of rules that don't quite fit &quot;close enough&quot; to what the games circumstances at the moment are. So we use the DM to come up with a &quot;bridge&quot; between RAW and I'll-just-make-it-up. This is the sweet spot for DM'ing. IME, the best DM's are the ones who use the rules as a base, but are happy to adjust/modify/ignore/replace rules as needed.TLDR: Guidelines. Even when a game says &quot;Don't change this rule!&quot;...hehe...yeah, right! Like I'm gonna trust some young whippersnapper barely out of his diapers with something so serious like the rules for my RPG campaign! HA!&nbsp; <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&nbsp; &nbsp; ;)"&nbsp; data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />^_^Paul L. Ming</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pming, post: 7499616, member: 45197"] Hiya! Yup...pretty much this. I seem to have started at almost the same time you did (but I was a year younger than you, at 10). I was sort of "forced" into learning how to DM because my father (who was the DM; we learned together with a friend of mine) needed to slow down how much time he was spending on it (y'know, father, husband, career, etc). So...I ever so reverently opened up the book and started reading all the "stuff I wasn't supposed to read as a player". I felt..well..."special". Like I was being taught the secrets of the universe. Then, almost a year of COMPLETELY screwing up with a ridiculous no-holds-barred Monty Haul/Munchkin 'campaign' (if you could call it that), I realized my choices were not good ones. So I started a new one. Sticking as close to 100% to the rules as possible. If it wasn't in the book, NO! That didn't last long either...another 3 to 6 months. Then it dawned on me; it needs to be a mix. Rules are there for a starting point. A baseline for running the game. Things came up ALL the time that didn't [I]quite[/I] fit the rules. I would have said NO before, but now it was "Hmmm... it's close, but should be harder/easier/whatever. Lets do this in stead..." And I would make a ruling. Turns out, I make pretty decent rulings and thus my DM'ing career was off to the races! :) Sticking as closely to RAW simply doesn't work. There WILL be situations ALL THE TIME where a rule is "close enough" to not matter. But there will be a consistent trickle of rules that don't quite fit "close enough" to what the games circumstances at the moment are. So we use the DM to come up with a "bridge" between RAW and I'll-just-make-it-up. This is the sweet spot for DM'ing. IME, the best DM's are the ones who use the rules as a base, but are happy to adjust/modify/ignore/replace rules as needed. TLDR: Guidelines. Even when a game says "Don't change this rule!"...hehe...yeah, right! Like I'm gonna trust some young whippersnapper barely out of his diapers with something so serious like the rules for my RPG campaign! HA! ;) ^_^ Paul L. Ming [/QUOTE]

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