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Good DMing and Following the Rules

Post/Author/DateTime Post
#1
archtyrant_terevoth
Dec 02, 2003 22:46:15 I've seen a bunch of threads that deal with a troubled DM asking for help because a player has come up with some very broken, but legal character that is disrupting the game. Sometimes it is nothing more than a single broken spell or feat, hide life for instance. Sometimes it's a combo of some kind, like stacking caster level increase items and casting holy word.

The most prevalent ideal of a DM nowadays is one who completely adheres to the rules, the "good" DM is just a passive observer who controls NPCs and goes strictly by the rules. He is as bound by the rules as the PCs are. Well, let me just point out that this DM ideal is total garbage. This is bad DMing, plain and simple.

If you want to be a good DM, you have to be willing to toss out the rules when you disagree with them. If you think something is imbalanced, you have to be willing to disallow it.

The question: "Is it balanced?" should always have precedence. As a DM you should always be thinking of game balance first. Because game balance ultimately leaks into everything you do. If a particular rule is unbalancing then don't play with it. Just because astral projection (one of the most broken spells in the game) snuck into the core books does not mean you've got to live with it. You can and you should put a big red X through it.

We've all seen that 3.0 was riddled with balance problems and the problem still exists in 3.5. The thing is that neither of these editions are playable as written. There is that human element built into the game for a reason. D&D is a huge project when you add up every supplement published, and all of these can't be balanced.

You should weigh all things equally. A good DM must be vigilant in maintaining balance in his games. I've seen a lot of DMs who would completely disregard a mediocre feat from a 3rd party project like the Quintessential warrior or the netbook of feats, while allowing something horrendously broken like hide life because it came from an official book. Even if it's in the core books, you have to keep that same eye for balance.

And the best balance guideline IMO is this. If a player came to you with this feat, PrC or spell, and he invented it... would you allow it in your game? If the answer is no, then you shouldn't be letting it in. It's that simple. Even if it has the Skip Williams stamp of approval, you should put a big red X through it.

Every game we run is different and as a DM you have to take into account how this ability will interact with your game, not the game that the playtesters ran... but your game. Some spells aren't balanced if you have a party that rests after each battle. Some spells are overpowered if your campaign consists of mostly encounters against huge packs of weenie enemies or one massive solitary foe. If you run a city quest as opposed to a dungeon quest... different things happen. And guess what, the rules designers can't tell you what's balanced for your campaign. Only you can.

DMs should not feel constrained to follow the rules. Legal does not mean good or balanced, and the better DM is the one who makes the somewhat unpopular decision of banning something he deems unbalanced as opposed to the DM who ends up begging for help a month later on the "What's a DM to do?" board.

Only you the DM know what's best for your campaign. Don't let any rulebook or rules lawyer tell you otherwise.
#2
77im
Dec 05, 2003 10:09:55 Many people have different styles of game play and different expectations about participant behavior. I think it's important for everyone to figure out what their own preferences are, since so many D&D arguments are between folks who are both correct within the framework of their own game play style. For example, some people like to strictly follow the rules because they like finding clever rules loopholes and overpowered ability combinations; this applies to both players and DMs (in fact I've found that strict rules usually works against the players rather than for them).

Here are two questions you can ask yourself to determine how and when the rules should be used in your ideal game: What is the purpose of the Dungeon Master? What is the purpose of having rules? Because you can play without either: in free-form role playing, there are no rules and the DM decides (based on her own judgment) the outcome of every action, and TSR used to put out single-player adventures that had no DM (it was like a "choose your own adventure" book but with combat and skill checks). It's possible for a group to role play with neither rules nor a DM; it's called "sitting around and making up stories" and is usually not so much a game.

Here are my answers to these questions. I encourage everyone to think about these issues and figure out where they stand.

The purpose of the DM is to provide fun role playing activities (adventures, encounters, puzzles, NPC interaction, etc.). The DM bears a larger part of the responsibility for making the game fun, although the players also share this responsibility. It's like hosting a party versus attending a party: the host provides fun activities (bobbing for apples, gift exchange, Twister(tm), etc.), the guests participate, and hopefully everyone has a good time.

The purpose of the rules is to aid the DM with his or her task of providing fun role playing activities. Free-form role playing -- in which there are no die rolls or character sheets, just a DM exercising good judgment -- can actually be pretty fun. However, it puts enormous burden on the DM. The DM already has to control every NPC plus the world; if I were DM and had to decide the outcome of every attack and skill check, my brain would overheat and explode. I'd rather have a set of fairly complete rules to govern physical reality, so that I don't have to worry about making sure that the party fighter hits more often than the cleric and that the rogue is able to scale a rock wall in a realistic amount of time.

Rules aid the DM more if both the players and the DM know (most of) the rules. It's possible for a DM only to know the rules and to keep track of everything, but if the players know the rules too, they can help out by managing their own character sheets and handling their part of complex rules (such as combat).

Rules also aid the DM by increasing DM/player trust. In free-form role playing, each player has to trust the DM to make competent judgment calls about a wide variety of situations. If the DM has rules to fall back on in ordinary situations, and to use as guidelines in unusual situations, a player is less likely to believe that their character's actions failed because the DM is mistaken about how the world works.

To tie this response back to the original post, there's a very important corollary to the idea that rules exist to aid the DM, which is: a rule that hinders the DM in his or her task of providing fun role playing activities is a bad rule. A bad rule serves no purpose and should be scrapped. In my ideal D&D game, this would be the criteria by which the DM decides which rules to use and which to ignore. Players might offer advice, but ultimately only the DM can know for sure how well a rule is working out.

These are only my opinions about role playing games. There are some people who like a much more rules-light or free-form style of play, and others who like following the rules very strictly because of its other benefits. Figure out what it is that will make the game fun for you, and then play that way.

-- 77IM
#3
zombiegleemax
Dec 05, 2003 16:35:26 I agree with the points you have made - the rulebooks are not always right - yet I think that DMs should not automatically delete every rule they disagree with. The rules presented in (most, hopefully) official rulebooks have been playtested thoroughly and whoever wrote the book thought that they are balanced. They are there for a reason. Therefore a DM that decides to "toss out the rules he disagrees with" should do so carefully. He should read the rule again (maybe he missed something), talk about it with his gaming group and possibly post a thread on these boards, only then delete it. Frequent deletion of official rules has a great potential for causing inconsistency in the rules and new balance problems.
#4
zombiegleemax
Dec 07, 2003 1:53:35 The only beef I have with this kind of GMing is if he doesn't write it down for the group to see what changes the GM is going to make. Character balance isn't really the issue for me, it's the act of changing the rules that make up the general game mechanics without player acknowledgement. If he's going to make house rules, write them down and not some 'I will change something that I don't like' kind of crap, I'm talking about specifics.
#5
zombiegleemax
Dec 11, 2003 20:41:20 *sigh*

Another thread that encourages lazy DMs to simply nerf, ban, or 'rebalance' any class ability, spell, or feat on the fly because they feel like it, or more likely because they were shortsighted or inexperienced and failed to take said ability into account.

I know this scenario is not the intention of the author, but it will be the effect. New DMs see threads like these and take it as free license to run games in an ignorant and lazy fashion, and cause so many of the complaints and horror stories that infest these boards.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 archtyrant_terevoth Dec 02, 2003 22:46:15	I've seen a bunch of threads that deal with a troubled DM asking for help because a player has come up with some very broken, but legal character that is disrupting the game. Sometimes it is nothing more than a single broken spell or feat, hide life for instance. Sometimes it's a combo of some kind, like stacking caster level increase items and casting holy word. The most prevalent ideal of a DM nowadays is one who completely adheres to the rules, the "good" DM is just a passive observer who controls NPCs and goes strictly by the rules. He is as bound by the rules as the PCs are. Well, let me just point out that this DM ideal is total garbage. This is bad DMing, plain and simple. If you want to be a good DM, you have to be willing to toss out the rules when you disagree with them. If you think something is imbalanced, you have to be willing to disallow it. The question: "Is it balanced?" should always have precedence. As a DM you should always be thinking of game balance first. Because game balance ultimately leaks into everything you do. If a particular rule is unbalancing then don't play with it. Just because astral projection (one of the most broken spells in the game) snuck into the core books does not mean you've got to live with it. You can and you should put a big red X through it. We've all seen that 3.0 was riddled with balance problems and the problem still exists in 3.5. The thing is that neither of these editions are playable as written. There is that human element built into the game for a reason. D&D is a huge project when you add up every supplement published, and all of these can't be balanced. You should weigh all things equally. A good DM must be vigilant in maintaining balance in his games. I've seen a lot of DMs who would completely disregard a mediocre feat from a 3rd party project like the Quintessential warrior or the netbook of feats, while allowing something horrendously broken like hide life because it came from an official book. Even if it's in the core books, you have to keep that same eye for balance. And the best balance guideline IMO is this. If a player came to you with this feat, PrC or spell, and he invented it... would you allow it in your game? If the answer is no, then you shouldn't be letting it in. It's that simple. Even if it has the Skip Williams stamp of approval, you should put a big red X through it. Every game we run is different and as a DM you have to take into account how this ability will interact with your game, not the game that the playtesters ran... but your game. Some spells aren't balanced if you have a party that rests after each battle. Some spells are overpowered if your campaign consists of mostly encounters against huge packs of weenie enemies or one massive solitary foe. If you run a city quest as opposed to a dungeon quest... different things happen. And guess what, the rules designers can't tell you what's balanced for your campaign. Only you can. DMs should not feel constrained to follow the rules. Legal does not mean good or balanced, and the better DM is the one who makes the somewhat unpopular decision of banning something he deems unbalanced as opposed to the DM who ends up begging for help a month later on the "What's a DM to do?" board. Only you the DM know what's best for your campaign. Don't let any rulebook or rules lawyer tell you otherwise.
#2 77im Dec 05, 2003 10:09:55	Many people have different styles of game play and different expectations about participant behavior. I think it's important for everyone to figure out what their own preferences are, since so many D&D arguments are between folks who are both correct within the framework of their own game play style. For example, some people like to strictly follow the rules because they like finding clever rules loopholes and overpowered ability combinations; this applies to both players and DMs (in fact I've found that strict rules usually works against the players rather than for them). Here are two questions you can ask yourself to determine how and when the rules should be used in your ideal game: What is the purpose of the Dungeon Master? What is the purpose of having rules? Because you can play without either: in free-form role playing, there are no rules and the DM decides (based on her own judgment) the outcome of every action, and TSR used to put out single-player adventures that had no DM (it was like a "choose your own adventure" book but with combat and skill checks). It's possible for a group to role play with neither rules nor a DM; it's called "sitting around and making up stories" and is usually not so much a game. Here are my answers to these questions. I encourage everyone to think about these issues and figure out where they stand. The purpose of the DM is to provide fun role playing activities (adventures, encounters, puzzles, NPC interaction, etc.). The DM bears a larger part of the responsibility for making the game fun, although the players also share this responsibility. It's like hosting a party versus attending a party: the host provides fun activities (bobbing for apples, gift exchange, Twister(tm), etc.), the guests participate, and hopefully everyone has a good time. The purpose of the rules is to aid the DM with his or her task of providing fun role playing activities. Free-form role playing -- in which there are no die rolls or character sheets, just a DM exercising good judgment -- can actually be pretty fun. However, it puts enormous burden on the DM. The DM already has to control every NPC plus the world; if I were DM and had to decide the outcome of every attack and skill check, my brain would overheat and explode. I'd rather have a set of fairly complete rules to govern physical reality, so that I don't have to worry about making sure that the party fighter hits more often than the cleric and that the rogue is able to scale a rock wall in a realistic amount of time. Rules aid the DM more if both the players and the DM know (most of) the rules. It's possible for a DM only to know the rules and to keep track of everything, but if the players know the rules too, they can help out by managing their own character sheets and handling their part of complex rules (such as combat). Rules also aid the DM by increasing DM/player trust. In free-form role playing, each player has to trust the DM to make competent judgment calls about a wide variety of situations. If the DM has rules to fall back on in ordinary situations, and to use as guidelines in unusual situations, a player is less likely to believe that their character's actions failed because the DM is mistaken about how the world works. To tie this response back to the original post, there's a very important corollary to the idea that rules exist to aid the DM, which is: a rule that hinders the DM in his or her task of providing fun role playing activities is a bad rule. A bad rule serves no purpose and should be scrapped. In my ideal D&D game, this would be the criteria by which the DM decides which rules to use and which to ignore. Players might offer advice, but ultimately only the DM can know for sure how well a rule is working out. These are only my opinions about role playing games. There are some people who like a much more rules-light or free-form style of play, and others who like following the rules very strictly because of its other benefits. Figure out what it is that will make the game fun for you, and then play that way. -- 77IM
#3 zombiegleemax Dec 05, 2003 16:35:26	I agree with the points you have made - the rulebooks are not always right - yet I think that DMs should not automatically delete every rule they disagree with. The rules presented in (most, hopefully) official rulebooks have been playtested thoroughly and whoever wrote the book thought that they are balanced. They are there for a reason. Therefore a DM that decides to "toss out the rules he disagrees with" should do so carefully. He should read the rule again (maybe he missed something), talk about it with his gaming group and possibly post a thread on these boards, only then delete it. Frequent deletion of official rules has a great potential for causing inconsistency in the rules and new balance problems.
#4 zombiegleemax Dec 07, 2003 1:53:35	The only beef I have with this kind of GMing is if he doesn't write it down for the group to see what changes the GM is going to make. Character balance isn't really the issue for me, it's the act of changing the rules that make up the general game mechanics without player acknowledgement. If he's going to make house rules, write them down and not some 'I will change something that I don't like' kind of crap, I'm talking about specifics.
#5 zombiegleemax Dec 11, 2003 20:41:20	sigh Another thread that encourages lazy DMs to simply nerf, ban, or 'rebalance' any class ability, spell, or feat on the fly because they feel like it, or more likely because they were shortsighted or inexperienced and failed to take said ability into account. I know this scenario is not the intention of the author, but it will be the effect. New DMs see threads like these and take it as free license to run games in an ignorant and lazy fashion, and cause so many of the complaints and horror stories that infest these boards.