Things I hate

[BryonD]

Here's a thought -- not using a grid forces a DM to learn how to describe scenarios clearly and succinctly. When you need your players to understand what the potential interferences and paths and dangers are in a room, you need to be able to communicate your vision very clearly.

No offense. But BS.

I have a large map grid on the table at all times. According to my players, they have never known another DM that describes things as clearly and succintly as I do.

I have played without grids. Who hasn't?
Just as a grid *can* slow down a game, so can *not* having a grid.

My grid almost never slows down the game because I don't get hung up on drawing on it. I have the pens there, and sometimes entire sessions go by where they are not touched. Grid provides an objective scale and imagination provides everything else.

Without grids, even the best intentioned players can disagree on interpretation of subjective scaling.
One simple "Oh, I thought he was a little further over there." can disrupt the fun of the moment. Then you either have to let the player take a mulligan or they get jipped because the game reality wasn't as they perceived it. Either way you get pushed out of your character.

Plus, while D&D is a very good role playing game, I find it to be a very fun, rewarding small skirmish tactical game as well. And speed, range and scale are all critical parts of the balance of that system. If you throw those out, you can still play, but you give away part of the experience. To me its like watching LotR on a B&W TV. You CAN, but why if you don't have to?

 

[Gothmog]

Originally posted by DocMoriarty:

I do this all the time via the character background the player created with me.

The only time it is a problem is when you get someone too lazy to create a character background. They will likely never get to be center role in an adventure since I have little to use as base material. This does change as time goes on and levels are gained. Eventually everyone gets some background just from the adventures alone.

Agreed, I didn't make myself clear enough in my inital post. What I hate and have seen many times is a DM choosing one player constantly as the golden boy, who gets all sorts of benefits and whom every story revolves around. Example: the wife of the DM was given very preferential treatment for her paladin- every session revolved around her gaining back her noble title while everybody else fought when she said to, but otherwise waited in the background. Add this to the fact the guy was a plot nazi, and I don't know why I put up with it.

I do make adventures that center on one character's background or involvement in the world, but its important to remember that EVERYONE is there to have fun, so I try to include many possible ways for other players to involve themselves as well.

 

[ejja_1]

DnD peeves

Never had a problem with grids, in fact even way back in basic and advanced we used graph paper representations of the rooms the players were in so they could actually see where they were. We didnt always use minis, in fact the first couple of sessions we had them they basically got stuck at the top of the characters sheets as a model to what the character looks like.

My biggest pet peeve is when one character ruins the entire adventure for the rest, we had a player that would be obnoxious and attack anyone he felt like at the slightest whim.

Example: DM to the player- Before you is a small man bent over at a table working on what looks to be a small wood copy of the grand hall in this very town. The carving is beautifull in it's intricate lines and is an almost perfect likeness of the building.
He looks up upon your entrance to his home, and spits on the floor saying. " you always barge into a mans private home? Well what do you want you bunch of gawking sissy mary's? Get on with it already."

Player a's response. I crush his head with my warhammer, rolls dice- 17 is he dead?

rest of party- GROAN!

That and when multiple players go off in different directions at once, they usually wind up dead. I have had a few exceptions though, and then it usually creates an imbalance in the party. With one player being two levels above the rest of the party, and pretty much grabbing all the glory in any future encounters.

If you ask my players about what they dont like about my DMing, im sure the word stingy would come up. I dont think magic items should be handed out like candy, if they they are that common that all low level characters have at least some form of magic item then everyone should have them.

Example: One of the local farmers has had a bit to much to drink and insults the party fighter, striking him across the face for 2 points of subdual damage.

BOB the Fighter. I grab the ruffian and throw him bodily through the barroom window.

DM- he speaks an arcane word and his boots glow slightly, he stops in mid air just before the window hovering there grinning at you. He then pulls a glowing scyth from his rather smallish backpack, and advances upon you.

Silly, but you get the picture.

I think that if you treat magic items as rare, then the players are more in awe of them when they do get them and will treat them accordingly. The mage in my group has just come upon a wand of fireballs, his first magic item since he started the campaign 5 levels ago. He treat this wand as a last ditch weapon only due to the limited charges it has, and tends to roleplay his using it with greater zeal.

Anyway just my 2 copper.

 

[barsoomcore]

No offense. But BS.

Gee, why would I take offense to that?

Just as a grid *can* slow down a game, so can *not* having a grid.

Indeed. As I said, sometimes they're appropriate, sometimes they're not.

My grid almost never slows down the game because I don't get hung up on drawing on it. I have the pens there, and sometimes entire sessions go by where they are not touched.

So your grid doesn't slow the game down when you don't use it? Neither does mine.

I was hearing a lot of people saying they hated DMs who didn't use grids, as if using a grid was somehow objectively superior to not using one. That's clearly nonsense, and the proof is that plenty of games are run with lots of fun without grids.

The point is that we have fun. If YOU have more fun always using a grid rather than not, that's fine. I'm not saying use one or don't, though I am suggesting to those who haven't given non-grid playing a fair shake that they try it out.

And I make a clear distinction between grids and sketched-out maps. Drawing the layout of a room on a piece of paper is different than tracing it out in scale on a grid map for miniatures to use. I'm specifically talking about grids, here. Drawing little maps is almost always useful, drawing out 1" scale grids not so much.

To me its like watching LotR on a B&W TV.

Then I guess you shouldn't do it, if all you watch is LotR. To me, watching a colourized version of King Kong is in fact even worse than watching a B&W LotR. Use the appropriate tool for the job at hand, is all I'm saying.

 

[KenM]

I am a big proponent of the GRID.

I use them all the time. Especaially when the players are wandering around in a dungeon. I draw on the grid and they move on the grid. At the end of it all we've got a nice big map of the dungeon we can take a picture off and hang on the conqured wall.

Thats the way I play/ DM my games, it also helps to know where everyone is when the rogue sets off the trap........

 

[Fenes 2]

"I run past the bad guy out the door!"

"Okay, he's pretty close to the door so he'll probably get an attack of opportunity against you as you go by."

"Cool."

...blah blah blah... How is this difficult? Grids do slow things down, no question. Sometimes it's fun, but sometimes it's inappropriate. I'd rather keep the action rolling than worry about every little five-foot square.

I handle it the same way as a DM. As a player, I always ask the DM if something looks like it would work - I don't ask "How far away is the window?" "20 feet" "Ok, I tumble to the window and jump out.", I ask "Does it look like my PC could reach the window tumbling and jump out?" so that the DM can give me the needed info, or can decide what my PC would guess.

 

[jdavis]

No offense. But BS.

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Plus, while D&D is a very good role playing game, I find it to be a very fun, rewarding small skirmish tactical game as well. And speed, range and scale are all critical parts of the balance of that system. If you throw those out, you can still play, but you give away part of the experience. To me its like watching LotR on a B&W TV. You CAN, but why if you don't have to?

To me using a grid would ruin the game, it would be like wargaming instead of role playing. That's how it is to me, that may not be how it is to everybody but to me using a grid and a big set up with minatures is the BS part. My prefered setting for running D&D or any game is in a living room with couches and recliners and comfy chairs not with everybody sitting around a kitchen table looking at a map. We loose nothing from our experience, we don't unbalance the game in anyway at all we are role playing not wargaming for us it works out just fine without the measurements and the scale drawings. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with using a grid, I'm saying that there is nothing wrong with not using it, you can game without the grid and have just as good a time, it all depends on what the group likes and is used to. To me using a grid would be like putting in the LotR disk and it playing Patton, both are good movies but I didn't want to watch Patton I wanted LotR. I have never cared for minatures and grids in D&D it's just a personal preference, please don't imply your games are better than mine because you use the grid, you've never played in my game.

That and when multiple players go off in different directions at once, they usually wind up dead. I have had a few exceptions though, and then it usually creates an imbalance in the party. With one player being two levels above the rest of the party, and pretty much grabbing all the glory in any future encounters.

I hate it when the group splits up, it only causes trouble and slows the game down. most of the group is sitting on the porch smoking and two people are fighting the big monster, it's such a mess and it takes away from everybodies fun.

 

[Kweezil]

Since I DM a lot more than I play, my opinion is rather biased.

1. DM's who don't know the rules or don't know them properly AND refuse to accept assistance. ("You can't make a full attack and run (4xspeed)in one round." is one example that springs to mind.)

2. Railroad plots. I don't mind 'em if they're not obvious to the players, but the "You're all captured." style of play really annoys me.

3. Monty-haul/killer DM crossbreed games. Insanely powerful characters vs. equally or even more insanely powerful opponents. It's fun for a while, in the same way a high-G rolercoaster can be fun, and it burns off the most extreme powergamer and munchkin attitudes but it soon degenerates into long term tactical planning, lots of hope and a few short bursts of action. When your AC is 54 unbuffed, and your foes can hit you on a 4 or more anyway, it gets ridiculous.

4. Dull description. All the players have is the DM's voice to describe the world and a chain of 20x20 rooms, all described in the same uninterested/monotone voice, it ruins any sense of immersion in the game.

5. Deus ex machina. NPCs and plot twists that only exist to get the PCs out of trouble or, worse, show off the DM's kewl characters. I have to admit this is something I've done myself, but I try to use it more as a proof that the world does not revolve entirely around the PCs, that there are other people out there, some of them more powerful, who show an interst in the PC's deeds.

 

[Dark Jezter]

Things I hate...

DMs with "pet NPCs"

I'm sure some people here will know what I'm talking about. The DM's pet NPC is often (but not always) the former PC of the DM. The pet NPC keeps bumping into the PCs no matter where they're at, and the pet NPC can easily accomplish things that the PCs would never be able to. In more extreme cases, the pet NPC is the actual star of the campaign, while the PCs are constantly in his/her shadow.

 

[BryonD]

Use the appropriate tool for the job at hand, is all I'm saying.

Actually, if you go back and re-read the quote from you that I posted, you will see that that is NOT "all" you were saying.

You stated that playing without a grid requires better DM descriptive powers. Obviously inferring that using a grid implies the opposite. Which is, as I said, BS.

I agree with everything else you said in your reply back to me.