So, I have been playing with wordpress...

[Buster's Uncle]

The DM has to be in it to make it fun for everyone, screw the rules if that's what it takes to be fun.  The rules and procedures are tools towards an end, not something adherence to is a goal itself, and we didn't know that.

Eh. The rules need to be consistent, otherwise you end up watching the DM play Calvin-ball. Which can be fun for a while but it's easy to get out of hand.

That good DM years later -a jerk a lot of the rest of the time, but he really got this- did our rolls for us half the time behind his DM screen, and you know he just made up a lot of results.  His campaigns were SO much less math and grind, SO much more fun.

Depending on which rolls, I would find that much less engaging, thus lessening my emotional investment in the game, and thereby causing me to question whether I should be doing something better with my time.

It depends on the DM.  This one fudged in favor of making it better/more fun, to the extent he fudged; I'm just guessing - it may have been Calvinball, but it was good Calvinball.

I was in it to have a fake adventure, not roll dice and do math.  The players had plenty of say in how things went.

[Green1]

The DM has to be in it to make it fun for everyone, screw the rules if that's what it takes to be fun.  The rules and procedures are tools towards an end, not something adherence to is a goal itself, and we didn't know that.

Eh. The rules need to be consistent, otherwise you end up watching the DM play Calvin-ball. Which can be fun for a while but it's easy to get out of hand.

That good DM years later -a jerk a lot of the rest of the time, but he really got this- did our rolls for us half the time behind his DM screen, and you know he just made up a lot of results.  His campaigns were SO much less math and grind, SO much more fun.

Depending on which rolls, I would find that much less engaging, thus lessening my emotional investment in the game, and thereby causing me to question whether I should be doing something better with my time.

DM rollng behind the screen was abused too much back in the day. Good Calvinball or not. It is one of the reasons I got to DM. My players back then would not have tolerated it.

Plus, what is the worst that can happen? You Total Party Kill them because the enemies rolled really well? Starting mid levels, PCs have a nasty habit of coming back to life. A squad from a nearby Temple could have found your bodies (minus all the stuff, of course). There are also jail break scenarios.

Most I know are like Cold. We will take an honest wipe any day over a fudged victory just to advance story. If a character dies, so be it. And I have killed characters. Not often, but the possibility is there with bad choices or bad luck. There must be success and failure. Otherwise, we can just do some kind of succession story telling game instead or go write fanfic.

There are even ways around the whole "vey high level monster" vs level 2 players thing some DMs mess up. As I said, I run sandbox and a hermit frost giant would occasionally rampage a tundra village. Well, the giant was not too bright, and he was a massive hoarder and had giant bottles of Frost Giant pee everywhere. You could not even see the floor. The frost giant was there, usually sleeping 18 hours a day and the refuse WAS a low level dungeon. Since the giant had a psychosis against moving anything he had in there, if he heard combat or giant rats, he would just throw something on his nightstand at the tall refuse piles then turn over in his sleep. Of course, saves to avoid the discarded clothing, knick knacks, books, and useless stuff piled up crashing on top of the PCs!

Not... "heres a Frost Giant..... initiative...!!"

[ColdWizard]

I'm torn on fudged victory, on the one hand I like character continuity (I tend to put a lot into backstory and coming up with new material is difficult at times) and on the other bad tactics, bad decisions, and bad rolls should have potentially dire consequences. Some rolls I'm ok with not making, such as the thieves checks for traps and avoiding the meta-gaming that can occur with those. But mostly if I'm not doing the rolls, then it's only a step or three away from being a multiplayer choose your own adventure book.

My previous DM got more adversarial over the years and started to go a little Calvinball at the end, changing the scale of the battlemat from 5' in the old campaign to 2.5' in the new campaign so he could get the undermanned party to fit into his (mostly obvious) ambush. It would have been fine if he'd included that in his 9 page pdf of new house rules or even started drawing it that way at the beginning but nope, only mentioned when it was time to squeeze everyone into the killzone. He never grasped that it was the change and not the scale that confused/irritated the dickens out of us.

[Buster's Uncle]

Some Calvinball is more equal than others, though - Mike wouldn't have had the Melvin cheat-character problem, period.  Mike did good on-the-fly improv.  Mike made it fun.

Mike did rewrite my character sheet a little when I started - partly to my advantage - but he never just made it easy; he knew how to tell a story.

[Green1]

I'm torn on fudged victory, on the one hand I like character continuity (I tend to put a lot into backstory and coming up with new material is difficult at times) and on the other bad tactics, bad decisions, and bad rolls should have potentially dire consequences. Some rolls I'm ok with not making, such as the thieves checks for traps and avoiding the meta-gaming that can occur with those. But mostly if I'm not doing the rolls, then it's only a step or three away from being a multiplayer choose your own adventure book.

My previous DM got more adversarial over the years and started to go a little Calvinball at the end, changing the scale of the battlemat from 5' in the old campaign to 2.5' in the new campaign so he could get the undermanned party to fit into his (mostly obvious) ambush. It would have been fine if he'd included that in his 9 page pdf of new house rules or even started drawing it that way at the beginning but nope, only mentioned when it was time to squeeze everyone into the killzone. He never grasped that it was the change and not the scale that confused/irritated the dickens out of us.

DM made one good call, but several key mistakes, barring player behavior issues which may have made him sour which was not mentioned.

I just had a conversation about the battlemat scale issue. It was a Dm complaining about a min-max Paladin just destroying stuff. The problem? Small play space that did not allow ranged enemies to shine. So, he went with a different scale. Instead of 1 square = 5 ft, 1 square = 10 feet. That way, you can have ranged ambushes that they can hopefully pelt the party before they come in with superior melee. Good call and gives PC archers a way to shine, too. No issues here.

But railroading is not very good. If you had scouts, they should have had rolls to detect it.

House Rules? All house rules should be approved by the players is the way I do it. That way if one of the house rules sucks, it isn't on me and we can state cases to reverse or keep it. That keeps down on drama. Of course, start game, I can go over minor house stuff. I, for one, don't use heavy handed botch rules. The PCs are heroes, not the Three Stooges hitting themselves, tripping, and breaking weapons 10 percent of the time. But anything major in the middle of the campaign without feedback isn't going to go over well.

Undermanned? You have henchmen and hirelings I would say level 5 maybe up to 10. There will be story reasons why you can not take them all the time (and agreed to meta reasons to keep down on book keeping - after all, NPCs have lives) but for a scenario where a lot do not show, it solves the problem of short staffed parties due to pesky real life. But, if you don't have this system as a DM, you need to tone it down or pull out another encounter. Bad choice.

Okay idea, bad presentation on top of being too rigid and heavy handed.

[Green1]

In 5e/4e, a lot of those opposed rolls are no longer as numerous.

4e/5e introduced Passive Perception. In 3e terms, you are "taking 10" at all times on perception. The only one that rolls is the creature trying stealth. Same thing for Insight (Sense Motive in previous editions). Want to lie? You roll against passive insight of whatever you are lying to.

Traps and stuff are the same. You are rolling against a difficulty class.

A lot of the opposed rolls died with 2e/1e and to a lesser extent 3e.

[Buster's Uncle]

Yeah; the case in question, the mistake was obviously the DM being married to his ambush.  Good DMs -not without enormous regret- throw out plans that aren't surviving contact with the party, not force then.  That's contrary to Article One: Fun and Pizza.

It's a problem of being too devoted to the math, too...

[Green1]

Some Calvinball is more equal than others, though - Mike wouldn't have had the Melvin cheat-character problem, period.  Mike did good on-the-fly improv.  Mike made it fun.

Mike did rewrite my character sheet a little when I started - partly to my advantage - but he never just made it easy; he knew how to tell a story.

You have to do good improv. A situation I have going right now, is my players want a diplomacy/city building/trade pacts/resource management game. They aren't too keen on combat. I have gone 2 sessions without combat. Oh... I WANT combat!! But, if they want to play DnD SimCity, I will more than let them. The other things in the area have intrigues and such and infrastructure too. It's looking as if any real combat is going to be mass combat with armies and such, barring espionage games.

But, do I send hordes of crap out to kill the PC's units to ENFORCE a battlemat 3 combat per session style because I AM DM? No. This is the way the story is, and you know? It is kind of fun coming up with machinations and subplots of various petty nobles and trade merchants. I think a lot has to do with 5e and the way levels scale, too. In 4e down, a 10th level PC could kill squads of 1st levels. Here, a few squads of 1st level, equipped troops is a fearsome prospect even for a level 15. The numbers do not scale up high at all and stats and AC are capped somewhat.

And, BU... the only math is rolling a d20 and adding a number or adding and subtracting HP once char gen is done. Maybe adding up multiple dice for damage.

[ColdWizard]

Some Calvinball is more equal than others, though - Mike wouldn't have had the Melvin cheat-character problem, period.  Mike did good on-the-fly improv.  Mike made it fun.

Mike did rewrite my character sheet a little when I started - partly to my advantage - but he never just made it easy; he knew how to tell a story.

I would trust my current DM more with Calvinball as he's more flexible with his rulings and, thus far, more concerned as to whether the story is good rather than if the combat is too easy/too difficult. Which I feel would make him less likely to abuse Calvinball. (His story is great thus far and I've had concerns about my frontliners HP in 2 of 4 sessions).

I'm torn on fudged victory, on the one hand I like character continuity (I tend to put a lot into backstory and coming up with new material is difficult at times) and on the other bad tactics, bad decisions, and bad rolls should have potentially dire consequences. Some rolls I'm ok with not making, such as the thieves checks for traps and avoiding the meta-gaming that can occur with those. But mostly if I'm not doing the rolls, then it's only a step or three away from being a multiplayer choose your own adventure book.

My previous DM got more adversarial over the years and started to go a little Calvinball at the end, changing the scale of the battlemat from 5' in the old campaign to 2.5' in the new campaign so he could get the undermanned party to fit into his (mostly obvious) ambush. It would have been fine if he'd included that in his 9 page pdf of new house rules or even started drawing it that way at the beginning but nope, only mentioned when it was time to squeeze everyone into the killzone. He never grasped that it was the change and not the scale that confused/irritated the dickens out of us.

DM made one good call, but several key mistakes, barring player behavior issues which may have made him sour which was not mentioned.

I just had a conversation about the battlemat scale issue. It was a Dm complaining about a min-max Paladin just destroying stuff. The problem? Small play space that did not allow ranged enemies to shine. So, he went with a different scale. Instead of 1 square = 5 ft, 1 square = 10 feet. That way, you can have ranged ambushes that they can hopefully pelt the party before they come in with superior melee. Good call and gives PC archers a way to shine, too. No issues here.

But railroading is not very good. If you had scouts, they should have had rolls to detect it.

House Rules? All house rules should be approved by the players is the way I do it. That way if one of the house rules sucks, it isn't on me and we can state cases to reverse or keep it. That keeps down on drama. Of course, start game, I can go over minor house stuff. I, for one, don't use heavy handed botch rules. The PCs are heroes, not the Three Stooges hitting themselves, tripping, and breaking weapons 10 percent of the time. But anything major in the middle of the campaign without feedback isn't going to go over well.

Undermanned? You have henchmen and hirelings I would say level 5 maybe up to 10. There will be story reasons why you can not take them all the time (and agreed to meta reasons to keep down on book keeping - after all, NPCs have lives) but for a scenario where a lot do not show, it solves the problem of short staffed parties due to pesky real life. But, if you don't have this system as a DM, you need to tone it down or pull out another encounter. Bad choice.

Okay idea, bad presentation on top of being too rigid and heavy handed.

Oh, there were some player issues that he did find off-putting. Meta-gaming was one. We would want to burn every troll with fire every time. He would complain that was meta-gaming because there was nothing in his world that said they were vulnerable to fire. Although we were playing standard Greyhawk setting with no other background given. He also complained about rules lawyering but I'm not sure who that might have been directed at, unless it was me. I like my rules defined and consistently applied.

The house rules for both campaigns were given in advance to discuss. I forget if he ever had any movement on the first set. But most of the ones for the second set seemed reasonable and nobody publicly objected to any. I think he later nerfed the critical miss table though.

For the new campaign, we had 3 PCs (1st level, fighter, cleric, magic-user), one 0-level NPC, and my character's guard dog (left at the inn to recuperate from wounds from the previous session, which was nearly a TPK itself).  No rolls for the scout. My character was in the lead and peeked around both corners. I had even said in the previous session that this intersection was great for an ambush. I think I ended up killing 4 of the 6 goblins. The NPC did literally nothing in the ambush except die. Did not fight or run, merely took damage and died. The MU dropped early, the cleric critical'ed himself, and my fighter also critical'ed himself (though it was on simultaneous initiative and would have received a fatal wound). It was a tragically comic ending and we all laughed but he was downright gleeful.

[Green1]

Just out of curiosity, what edition? If that was 4e, it would not have been as bad. 4th edition characters are about as powerful as 4th level characters in other editions vs pure 4e MM goblins. If we are talking 1e,2e,3e, or 5e... yeah. Poor MU if it was 2e or 3e.

Sounds like 2e, though. 2e had zero level folks.

Thing about 2e and 2eishlike systems like 5e and Hackmaster are that low level characters are weak as heck. I usually level them to 2nd after the first session automatically, regardless of XP earned, just to make it easier on me and give them some sense of accomplishment. As a Dm, you have to be VERY careful. Hell, as PC you need to be very careful.

If I was a PC, I would have stayed in town and done diplo RP stuff or just let time pass unless going into the ambush was necessary or there was some kind of time constraint.

Or as DM, have a list of things in the area that are a bit less deadly that could be handled. Surely some farmer had some kind of rat problem in the grainery or a local street gang wanted some cat shaken down?

[Buster's Uncle]

Some Calvinball is more equal than others, though - Mike wouldn't have had the Melvin cheat-character problem, period.  Mike did good on-the-fly improv.  Mike made it fun.

Mike did rewrite my character sheet a little when I started - partly to my advantage - but he never just made it easy; he knew how to tell a story.

You have to do good improv. A situation I have going right now, is my players want a diplomacy/city building/trade pacts/resource management game. They aren't too keen on combat. I have gone 2 sessions without combat. Oh... I WANT combat!! But, if they want to play DnD SimCity, I will more than let them. The other things in the area have intrigues and such and infrastructure too. It's looking as if any real combat is going to be mass combat with armies and such, barring espionage games.

But, do I send hordes of crap out to kill the PC's units to ENFORCE a battlemat 3 combat per session style because I AM DM? No. This is the way the story is, and you know? It is kind of fun coming up with machinations and subplots of various petty nobles and trade merchants. I think a lot has to do with 5e and the way levels scale, too. In 4e down, a 10th level PC could kill squads of 1st levels. Here, a few squads of 1st level, equipped troops is a fearsome prospect even for a level 15. The numbers do not scale up high at all and stats and AC are capped somewhat.

And, BU... the only math is rolling a d20 and adding a number or adding and subtracting HP once char gen is done. Maybe adding up multiple dice for damage.

The dice look cool and feel good rattling in your hand before you roll - but I'm not in it for the dice - and we could trust Mike.  He amply demonstrated that with superior gaming sessions over and over.

[ColdWizard]

Just out of curiosity, what edition? If that was 4e, it would not have been as bad. 4th edition characters are about as powerful as 4th level characters in other editions vs pure 4e MM goblins. If we are talking 1e,2e,3e, or 5e... yeah. Poor MU if it was 2e or 3e.

Sounds like 2e, though. 2e had zero level folks.

Thing about 2e and 2eishlike systems like 5e and Hackmaster are that low level characters are weak as heck. I usually level them to 2nd after the first session automatically, regardless of XP earned, just to make it easier on me and give them some sense of accomplishment. As a Dm, you have to be VERY careful. Hell, as PC you need to be very careful.

If I was a PC, I would have stayed in town and done diplo RP stuff or just let time pass unless going into the ambush was necessary or there was some kind of time constraint.

Or as DM, have a list of things in the area that are a bit less deadly that could be handled. Surely some farmer had some kind of rat problem in the grainery or a local street gang wanted some cat shaken down?

1e with 2e non-weapon proficiencies. There wasn't a time constraint other than wanting to end the goblins threat to the innocent farmers they were ravaging. This was the hook we were given, investigate the farmers and get paid. I'm not sure why we didn't wait to heal up my dog. Possibly a sense of fatalism had already set in, my fighter and the npc hauled out my dog, the cleric, and the MU from the previous session.

The dice look cool and feel good rattling in your hand before you roll - but I'm not in it for the dice - and we could trust Mike.  He amply demonstrated that with superior gaming sessions over and over.

I'm always prone to having my attention wander, the dice help provide interaction and anticipation I otherwise don't always maintain.

[Buster's Uncle]

Lord, it's really a problem when someone gets bored and stops paying attention - especially if it's you...

[Dio]

Lord, it's really a problem when someone gets bored and stops paying attention - especially if it's you...

A decent measure of player engrossment in the present time involves counting the number of people that use electronic devices for other purposes while playing the game.

[Buster's Uncle]

Yeah; if I started reading non-game material during a session, that was not a good sign...