Interesting. I’ve never been exposed to any other settings so that’s all new to me.

That makes a lot of sense. I’ve just always been a little thrown off by people who seem like lore nerds for it. I don’t mean to insult anyone, just curious to hear about it from someone who’s into it.

What’s the appeal of the default dnd lore? It’s always seemed very generic to me and I’ve always rolled my own instead, or made so many changes it might as well be homebrew.

I always wrote a recap right after each session because it helped keep a history of what happened and made sure I didn’t lose track of things.

I thought you were going to take this in the direction of unrealistic expectations about how long a session takes. I’ve always been really amazed at podcaster DMs’ ability to get so much done in a 1-2 hour segment. When I used to DM I felt like I got the same amount done in about twice the time.

Nice, thanks!

Anyone know where the image is from? Very evocative.

I was kinda wishing they used some better evidence in this, too. Based on that horrible quote from him there’s no doubt he sucks, but the other examples weren’t very well researched or explained. It just does a discredit to an important topic in my opinion.

I definitely agree that the beauty of ttrpgs is how many different things they can be to different people. We’ve got very different styles, but I think it’s great you’ve found a way to play that works for you and your table!

I definitely dislike the idea of stopping the action and suggesting a direction. For my games I always try to aim for immersion, and this would really take me out of it.

I think you might have gotten the wrong idea about how I approach it, though. Part of keeping things surprising and impartial is avoiding changing things all the time secretly. That being said, I don’t believe in a hard and fast rule of never fudging anything.

Here’s an example where I would consider it. The players have been trying really hard to overcome an obstacle, and have had many setbacks already. They come up with an exciting and novel solution, but a bad roll happens on my end that would end this great idea in another failure. Because they’ve earned it by this point, and it will make for a more exciting game, I would likely fudge that roll and give it to them. I would do this in secret, because calling attention to it deflates the experience for the players.

I see the GM as a storyteller and entertainer, whose primary goal is to immerse the players into a story, and to create an exciting and unpredictable experience. Not everyone will view things like I do, and that’s fine, but I wanted to clarify what I mean anyway. Hopefully that makes more sense now.

I agree with this. I’ve always seen the rules as a framework to assist in collaborative story telling and keep things impartial and surprising. At any point where they begin to do more harm than good, we can change them.

Ain’t that the truth

There’s been ads in Google for over a decade now.

Thanks for the answer 👍

I’ll be honest I have no clue what these memes are about

Same, never had this happen and I’ve also been in the woods many times.

Stop trying to fuck the lizard

Both of these are my favorite art movements, so apparently I’m playing for both teams.

I am the dm, but yeah I get your point. There’s always ways to homebrew things.

I still think it’s too generalized, but I get your thought process. A giant muscley barbarian should be good at intimidation, as should a spooky necromantic wizard, but it’s not designed to make that easy to do. 3.5 did a better job at skills I think.