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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7656567" data-attributes="member: 4937">So, a couple of points.   First, my first post on this thread was to note that I found the original flow chart far too simple, because it didn't take into account a lot of factors that could sway how you rule on a particular point.     Some of the factors that I noted were:"Are you in play or between sessions?""Are you the DM?""Do your player's trust you yet?""Will a player's PC or player be significantly inconvenienced by the rule change?""Is the life of a PC at stake?""Does everyone at the table agree that rule is unclear?""Does everyone at the table agree that your new rule is clear, balanced, and playable?""Is one of the players that is objecting normally an insufferable rules lawyer?"The ideal situation is that players trust you and find that you are doing what they would have done themselves in your shoes.  The ideal situation is that everything goes smoothly, you don't make mistakes, everyone has a good time, and everyone is content.   Of course, in reality, you'll make mistakes, you'll find yourself in uncharted territory rules wise, you'll forget the fictional positioning, the player's will feel uncomfortable with a rule that you make either intentionally or because you forgot some detail of the rules, players get bored, and some of your players will be prone to being moody.  And you have to be able to deal with all of that gracefully as possible, which isn't easy.As a DM, you are as many have said: "first among equals".   You are more than that.  You are an elected judge that the other players have invested with the authority to make ruling, conditionally on the expectation that you'll be just and fair the vast majority of the time.  You are a referee.  You are the games secret keeper and as such inevitably its foremost architect.  You are the voice and mind of the opposition.  You are every single NPC in the game.  You are the player at the table with the hardest job, the most pressure, and almost inevitably the most time invested in the game (and at many tables, the most money).   As such, you are also the player whose role calls for the most skill and also the player that will make 90% of the mistakes that are to be made and the player most likely to ruin a session in most groups (and if you aren't the player most likely to ruin a session, the player that is is probably such a jerk that your best bet is to toss him).What this means is that because the DM is appointed to this role, and because the role is hard, and because everyone's enjoyment depends on the DM, if you are player you have an obligation to assist the DM in every way you can.   And foremost, this means don't be a dick.   Because the last thing the DM needs is a player being a dick.   And it means that often you should pretty much keep silence if the alternative is a table argument.  By all means, help the DM remember the rules and the current fictional positioning.  I appreciate that as a DM.  I can't keep all the rules straight and I lose track of the fictional positioning all the time.   Anyone actually trying to assist me in those things is more than welcome to it.  But there is a big difference between trying to help your DM and arguing with him.  I've been playing for 30+ years, had 10+ DMs, and 5 or 6 groups of players, and I've never once seen any player actually argue with a DM except to obtain some sort of advantage.   The general gist of all of those arguments is, "Hold on, you messed up.  I'm taking over the DM's chair for a while, and I'm going to make the rulings."   If that happens, I've got very little sympathy for the player.  I've been a player.  Sometimes the DM screws you.  I can't think of any time it was actually malicious, though I can recall early in 3e a DM just blatantly getting a rule wrong (grappling or some such), and refuses to listen to me.   So I shut and finished the encounter with rulings that weren't by the book unintentionally, because it wasn't worth arguing about.   Maybe if it was definitely going to end in a dead PC, I would have tried more than once to correct the DM.   But I don't intend to be 'that player'.You Hussar didn't make a mistake in your ruling.  There are a lot of reasons why you were right, which I'm not going to list again because I've already listed a bunch of them - and I could list a lot more.You could have, but you would have been wrong to do so IMO.  One reason I'm confident of that is that your reasoning that you are wrong is based on a counter-factual.  You can't really know what would have happened had you switched the manticore for a wyvern because that player complained.  Acting as if that imaginary alternate time-line is solid evidence of something is to make a logical mistake.  You know what did happen; there was an argument.   But that doesn't mean that if you'd done something else there wouldn't have been an argument.  With a player like that, you probably would have had arguments regardless, and it's not at all clear that backing down would have reduced the number you had.  Probably quite the contrary.What you probably didn't do is handle the challenge as gracefully as you could have, but I can only speculate about that.  That particular challenge should send up red flags like crazy, because it really is trivial.  And the fact that is trivial doesn't make it better for you to compromise; it makes it worse.  If the guy was legitimately arguing a point where his character's life was at stake, and the point really is debatable and you can see the other side of the argument that is when you want to be as reasonable and flexible as possible.   If the guy is being a tedious rules lawyer - and this is clearly tedious rules layering - you have to deal with that in a completely different way.  The red flag is going up because if a guy is willing to provoke a table argument over something this trivial, he'll provoke it over everything.   A general gameplan might be:a) Deflect with humor.  I'm only half joking about: "This one won an all expense vacation on Wheel of Fortune" or "This one is on his way to see a man about a horse.", being a good first answer.b) If he doesn't laugh and shrug but persists, remind him gently to play his character, and that his character might not actually know anything about the ecology of manticores.c) If he doesn't seem to know how to play his character, coach him how to play his character, and suggest paths for acquiring that knowledge in game.d) If he's still being a tedious rules lawyer, out maneuver him as a lawyer.  In particular, 'favored/terrain' isn't a binding contract that the monster always appears in that terrain and that is spelled out in the text.  In this case, out maneuver him should have been pretty easy.e) If he persists in arguing, you've got problem case.  Explain to him again as gently as you can the style of play you expect from a player and why.   If that doesn't work, stand on your authority as a DM, make up a fiction that justifies the manticore on the spot if you need one, and tell the player really if he'd rather run the game, then the group should take a vote regarding who the DM should be.  Because really, that is what now is at stake.  It's not at this point just your ability to keep this player happy, but the group asked you to be the DM and now someone thinks he can run the game better than you can.  If the group agrees, it probably is a sign you've not been doing a very good job and you probably should stand down.  If he group doesn't agree, then problem player is no longer making this an 'us against the DM' contest, and you can show the group the fiction that justifies the manticore.  That's subversive and I don't think I've ever had to take things that far, but mostly because most of the time I really already have a fiction explaining things because I do like to plan ahead.f) Regardless of what happens, if the player argues at all, take the player aside after the session and talk to them privately about their concerns and try to figure out why they were willing to argue over something this ridiculous, and explain to them clearly again why you ruled as you did and further why you think as a DM it is necessary to be allowed to place monsters as you see fit. Now there are probably special circumstances were I wouldn't do that, and I'd handle it some other way.  But if you aren't even allowed by a player to make reasonable monster placement in the setting, trust me, it isn't you at fault and acting like it is you won't make it better.</blockquote>

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