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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Musing Mage" data-source="post: 8428203" data-attributes="member: 7025552">I run what could be called a permissive yet oddly restrictive game... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f914.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":unsure:" title="Unsure    :unsure:"  data-smilie="24"data-shortname=":unsure:" />Player agency is important, as DM I'm simply the arbiter of the world, so I do my best to adjudicate their choices without bias or vested interest in an outcome.That said - I keep tight control over the parameters of the campaign - Whether it be my 1e or 5e game, I only allow options from the PHB as a default, anything else is a no-go unless I've specifically allowed it. IE: My 1e game allows SOME stuff from UA and OA. To date, I dislike all expansion options for 5e, so nothing outside of the PHB is allowed.I neither encourage nor discourage character conflict or PvP specifically, but players know they have freedom to act accordingly. Nothing is taboo in terms of class or alignment... but I DO stress to players regularly to remember not to take actions personally, this is a game - organic in-character conflict is great - PLAYER conflict is not. But everyone at my table generally knows the score so we've had some memorable stories and situations come up.I do my best to play NPCs as accurately as possible - bearing in mind alignments and goals etc. I use reaction charts, Charisma, racial modifiers etc... quite liberally. Players at my table learned long ago not to dump-stat Charisma. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":cool:" title="Cool    :cool:"  data-smilie="6"data-shortname=":cool:" />I don't like to railroad players, even though some scenarios are fairly linear. But I tend to note several options as potential adventure threads and let the group decide their own path. When we restarted the in-person campaign, I had over a dozen adventure hooks all ready to go, with the adventures plotted out - mix of modules and original ideas - in addition to giving each player a personal hook or rumour that they were free to share or keep to themselves. In a rather humourous turn - they'd narrowed it down to searching for a Noble's kidnapped daughter (reward 10k gp!) or hunting a wyrmling dragon. The 1st level team of chaotics said of the missing girl 'Ah, she'll be fine... let's go kill a dragon! It's a baby - how hard can it be?'  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f923.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":ROFLMAO:" title="ROFL    :ROFLMAO:"  data-smilie="18"data-shortname=":ROFLMAO:" />I don't fudge rolls - they are almost all done in front of the players. The dice land where they will. The only rolls I hide are NPC reaction rolls, and things like search rolls, or stealth rolls - where players shouldn't know how well they rolled rather must accept the description of the result. (I still don't fudge!)I don't scale encounters, though in planning a specific adventure I WILL ballpark it to the group's level. So no, my team of low level characters is not going to the Tomb of Horrors... but anything goes in the wilderness when it comes to random encounters. My charts are mostly animals (which isn't to say animals can't be a problem!), but there's the occasional super-tough monster and it's on the players to know when they are outmatched and run away. You cannot assume I have made the encounter beatable, especially if it's a random encounter.I track the calendar and dates quite thoroughly, and time passage is a big thing. Time away from the table is time passed in-game. If it's not logical to apply it right away, then I bank the time to apply later. Years pass quite quickly in game.And yes, I use the fiddly things that most other DMs dismiss as things that bog down play - Disease checks, aging modifiers, Weapon Type vs AC (for 1e), weather generation (I prep weather conditions several in-game months in advance so I know what's coming)... none of these things bog down play, rather they generate situations that add levels of detail I couldn't think of independently, and they are not arbitrary.And flow - I do my best to maintain a table flow and keep everyone engaged. If I see someone zoning out, I try an bring them back, but mostly people engage with one another... which means I'm doing it right. I've have great sessions where the players talked to each other in character for long stretches where I didn't have to do or say anything... and that's when you know they're vested.That's a taste of my DM style, for better or worse. <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    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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