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Fear the DM
Toron
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I'm somewhat new to RPG's, having played for the first time this past fall semester. That being said, my love for reading, writing, and wild imagination quickly swept me away, and after only one campaign, I BEGGED to be a DM, for at least a three man-party. I got my wish, and without further ado, I proceeded to release a horrifying, yet quite entertaining, (for me at least) ensemble of monsters, plot twists, and puzzles, that usually ended with the loser who messed up being swallowed by a purple worm. I love those things. Anyways, My freinds, those who survived the campaign, actually enjoyed the game, quite a lot, and I am now a regular DM. However, I am feared and respected, and the cardinal rule is "If you fuck this up, you will die." It keeps the players on their toes.
All of this, only to introduce my topic: If your not scared, the DM isn't doing his job. If your in a dungeon, or a tomb, or on some God forsaken Island, your players better be asking themselves "Would I rather live, or attempt to complete this quest?"
Go Tycho. Slap those bitches up. Teach them that a DM is no kind and loving Diety, but an old god, who demands sacrifice.
Any other DM's feel the same?
All of this, only to introduce my topic: If your not scared, the DM isn't doing his job. If your in a dungeon, or a tomb, or on some God forsaken Island, your players better be asking themselves "Would I rather live, or attempt to complete this quest?"
Go Tycho. Slap those bitches up. Teach them that a DM is no kind and loving Diety, but an old god, who demands sacrifice.
Any other DM's feel the same?
Fight for Life
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There's never a time when they should be scared of the tempestuous wrath of the DM.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
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My track record reflects this thus far.
But, perhaps I should clarify my previous post.
If the players are comfortable, sitting there knowing that the beast they face will go down quickly, or if they know that this trap/puzzle will result in nothing more than a few hit points gone, or the stubborn elf they negotiate with will cave at the roll of a 10, the game is not truly enjoyable.
Yes, there are time when a realizing time can be spent at the tavern, or maybe they could goof around in a town, set fire to a few things, and then move on with the quest.
D&D is fun when you feel most in the game. And one of the best methods, is to bring the players within inches of death, where they can survive, but only with skill, ingenuity, and perhaps a pinch of good fortune. Which can be supplied by the DM. So, let them re-roll that 2 for a climb check, when they've got 10 points into the skill. After all, falling means landing on that very mean looking Hellhound, and nobody wants that.
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Making things challenging? Dangerous? Perfectly fine.
The characters should feel fear of the things they face, not the players fearing the DM.
The DM has to make the game challenging though.
You know you could ask your players what they think is fun instead of just assuming that you "being feared" will be fun for them... or instead of asking we (who are not your players) if we agree with this assumption.
Also carriage returns are very helpful to people reading your posts.
So, you advocate one thing and then undermine your whole point with this?
If you're helping to bail them out in any fashion then we're back at square one.
And it is a perfectly enjoyable way to play D&D, where the players don't expect to die to random dumb luck or a vindictive DM.
if you're just looking for ways to challenge players, can't you get that sort of advice better from the DMG? if you're just looking for a way to build challenging encounters, isn't it disingenuous to title the thread FEAR THE DM?
EDIT: also the reason so many of us seem to be responding a bit curtly is we JUST like got over (yet another) discussion about treating players as enemies / old school wrathful DM / etc
so it's not you personally
RIP AND TEAR FFFFFFFFFFFFFF
I'm perfectly relaxed, I'm pointing out and wondering why you made a whole thread for this and then backpedal on the OP/topic.
This.
Luck is a fickle mistress, and it's unreasonable to expect the players to be lucky repeatedly. The traps/encounters don't need to be lucky, they're one-shots for the most part. Either they happen/attack/fight/get found and disarmed, or they don't, but there's rarely any narrative beyond that in your average dungeon crawl. The ochre jelly didn't spend 2 hours making up a character and backstory, searching through books and character builder. The spiked pit trap didn't draw or google search for an hour to select the perfect profile picture.
Whereas the players hopefully did put this time into fine tuning their character, background and personality, and where failling for the monsters merely means exp and maybe loot for the players, the loss of a player could lead to more hours selecting, tweaking and crafting a new character.
As a player, you should have a little invested in your character; he or she is your fictional character that you've put time and thought into. Aside from notable NPC's (good and evil alike), the traps and encounters at a DM's disposal are just that; disposable. It shouldn't matter if the PC's punk an elite through cunning use of skills and tactics; their reward is in the system for playing well, and next time you can change things up (powers it has, numbers of foes, environment, other factors, etc) not to punish the players or put the fear of the DM into them, but to keep the game challenging (in a fair way) and thus hopefully fun for all involved.
Now I know the OP has commented on some of said original post being satire, but taken at face value, it wouldn't be the first (and won't be the last) time someone has portrayed Tycho's parody of the viscious and vindictive DM as a good model to follow. While some boardgames and RPG systems might include the DM as something of an antagonist directly against the players, most of the systems I've played or have familiarity with through friends (Palladium, D&D and White Wolf) involve a Storyteller, Dungeon Master or Game Master who is more referee than opposing player, and as such, even the facetious notion that an outright adversarial relationship is a good one is often frowned upon.
Just food for thought.
As a Player, I appreciate when the game is challenging, immersive and at least reasonably fair, as far as the DM is concerned. The dice alone add enough of an element of randomnes that despite an encounter being balanced and using exceptionally fine tactics, I might occasionally still get wrecked, ruined or killed outright. Adding a DM's personal stake in 'putting me in my place' just stacks the deck further against me as a player.
As a DM, I strive to do as I suggest; create unique, challenging and creative encounters for players. I won't say my efforts have been flawless, but my players have given me more positive feedback and constructive criticism than complaints, so far as I know, all is well as long as I'm learning from my mistakes and improving on my strengths.
Maybe I missed something while splitting my attention between this thread and my lunch.
So, no.
I've always played thinking that my character would fail a REALLY important challenge, and die. So I wans't too broken up when they did die. Intense, but after death, it just wasn't that big of a deal to me. That's how all my friends and I play. Fight for your very survival, and then if you fail, try again!
The DM's guide.
This is perfectly valid way to play, but it's not popular with most players that I've found is all.
We are played 2nd edition a lot back in the day, and we had most of us taking the DM hat at times. Despite playing the same game, it was clear that one DM was malicious / crazy with his game. We dubbed him the DM of Death.
His games were crazy powerful, for characters and monsters both. We also always started at some mid/high-level, because things needed to be crazy and survival expectations were slim. It was fun to get to try some power builds and face monsters that we hadn't encountered in our normal games, but we also considered our characters completely disposable.
So all his campaigns were oneshots, lasting an average of two sessions due to total party kill. We never got attached to any of our characters, and I'm having a hard time right now remember what we actually did because of that. All I remember is that he killed the shit out of us.
So for the overall D&D experience, it was seriously fail. It was good in a way for a break and learning some tactics against super powerful beasts, but if we didn't have our "real" games with memorable characters and events that we could get attached to then what would have been the point? We wouldn't have kept playing D&D beyond a month if we always ran it this way.
There was a post I wrote yesterday about the difference between challenging your players and being a dick, but I deleted it. It's not a sore spot with me,
as we were still relatively cool despite what he did, it's just a game.
There is a difference between losing (having your character killed/etc) in a game as part of natural flow, and having it happen due to malicious intent. Running a hard game? Fine. Running a hard game to compensate for something? Not so much.
Hell, even when I played Zombie Master (a competitive FPS vs RTS game mod) I was still stuck in the DM mindset- I could've easily crushed the opposition on many occasions, but kept finding myself thinking in terms of what would be interesting and challenging and fun.
Mind you, that’s maybe only because I couldn’t drop a dragon on people…
It's far too easy to just absolutely crush the players, and as such it is less fun; however, that is entirely against what online PC gaming has become. You don't let up in a PC game because you are worried your opponents aren't having fun. You sent wave after wave of zombies into the house until they are out of ammo, then you toy with them as they move through the twisted maze of traps and explosives.
So yes, you should challenge the players. Don't just hand them victory on a silver platter. Make them earn it - but also make sure it's earnable in the first place.
At least until the final battle. All bets are off then.
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This.
I'm also a fan of letting player's make choice (even bad ones) and live (or die) with the consequences. You want to go kill a dragon at level 1? Go for it.
But if they don't run away once I give them some hints they're outgunned, they'll probably die. And I'll let them.
Exactly. I will definitely kill characters that are not playing with some restraint and their own mortality in mind.
however, i also think that if your party is doing dumb things and derailing the game... you have a meta problem. no amount of letting the hammer fall of them is going to fix what is essentially your group saying they don't like your game.
you can only treat the symptoms for so long before you realize that there's an underlying problem.
thanks PA