NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5101713" data-attributes="member: 2067">Bill made a mistake, because he didn't tell his characters what kind of campaign to expect, and he also didn't let them choose the direction of the campaign.That doesn't mean he's a bad DM. That just means he made a mistake.It's a mistake that's easy enough to correct. He either apologizes and asks for replacement characters, or corrects it himself, taking adventures in a direction that gives everyone a chance to do something (perhaps, given the illusion/interaction shift, a more urban campaign where what the group bashes thugs and sewer horrors, and can interact more with the local government and populace) or letting the players take it there themselves (the group decides to go to the big city, and the DM provides them with big city adventures). One of the frequent tricks of "good" DMs is specifically providing opportunities for characters to use abilities that they have.This can be done in a "sandbox" style game by letting players direct their own action, and then presenting them with logical threats (the players get to pick what challenges they face -- if they don't want a dungeon crawl, they go do something else, and the DM doesn't make them dungeon crawl. If they do dungeon crawl, then they can't really object, because they chose to go do this thing their characters weren't very well suited to do).This can be done in a "narrative" style game by specifically taking abilities into account, and giving players a chance to use them. So if in a party like the one above, the DM would give out rotating challenges. He'd take Erin's love of bashing into account sometimes, and Mike's illusions sometimes, and Jeff's humanoid-focus sometimes, and Mike's charge-and-intimidate sometimes. When he's good, he gets to combine them all into one challenge, but even if he can't do that, he hits the notes in sequence ("Ah, I see Erin is getting bored of all these politics this week, we can give her something to bash in the face next week.").Bill is only a bad DM if he refuses to let his players have fun. "No, you can't pick a new character, you chose him, you're stuck with him, you have to be him until you die, this game is called Dungeons and Dragons, not Politics and Paper, you made the character, you suck, live with it."That would take a pretty extreme DM. Bill can be a better DM if he recognizes the mistake, and can do something to correct it.</blockquote>

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