What is the worst experience you have ever had with a GM? This thread is here for you to vent so have at it! But keep it actual game-experience related, don't mention a guy who is fine when playing, but emails you ever hour of every other Tuesday.
But anyway, my worst was in a game of Call of Cthulhu, The GM in question had us wandering around a town (he did a lot of "you decide to get in a taxi, it takes you to this place" events going around, talking to people who knew just about next to nothing, and when we eventually had a lead on something and we were having actual fun, he decided to introduced his Mary Sue GM PC. This guy was an all-knowing eldritch abomination (I forget what he called it, but I remember he made it up) in human form, who was for some reason "helping" us. I put "helping" in quotation marks because all he did was take away the fun of wondering what we were searching for by just telling us. told us to go somewhere else (yet again) and when one of our members refused, (the only high charisma character in a game where all we did was interrogate people) he had Mary-Suethulhu remove all his sanity instantly and with out a roll. At that point a silent decision seemed to have been made by the players to get rid of this guy, because we began to attempt to get him killed every chance we had, but dues ex machina saved him again and again...

Rogue Trader GM; I was the Rogue Trader, and we came across a desecrated old Imperial Cathedral. Seeing this as my sacred mission to purge the chaos taint within, I send my numerous bomber and fighter wings to bomb this place to oblivion (since it was that thing we saw along the way while doing another endeavour).

Well, turns out those 100 bombers and 150 fighters didn't do nothing, so we had to do it by hand almost died and we burned some fate point to survive.

turns out the GM had some deamon he wanted to have us faced (with warp weapons- which totally ignore all armour, getting us in the crit zone with 1-2 hits) and after that part, he specifically barred me form using my bombers and fighters in anything else than space combat.

Ambition knows no bound...except a GM that's pissed you're by-passing his planned adventure.

Same DM, but with D&D 3.5; we traveled to the north pole, escorting a professor in search of some thing or another. We reached some long forgotten place filled with doors to other dimensions, crazy monsters, and (finally) a actual possibility to get some fancy gear (since we were traveling in the wilderness all campaign long,w e never stopped at a town to buy gear, and we mostly faced monsters that don't use weapons). Then he stopped it, saying he was 'bored with it' and 'lacked inspiration'...his next campaign? We're escapees from some orc raid, and ourselves and the other in the town with us as now living in the freaking TUNDRA where the most technological items there is around is whatever we brought, and we sure fought alot of those snow wolves!

The worst GM I had was in a Shadowrun game, mostly because of his habit of ensuring that every fight was a barely-won scrape with death. While I get that Shadowrun is a harder and more complex game, there was never a fight that did not leave one or two people of a 6 man party downed. Even if that fight was against a smaller group of street punks (who somehow had military grade assault rifles, but they broke of course when they died. Of course).

My GM loved to use the carrot and stick approach, only to yank away the carrot every time. There may or may not also have been a fair deal of railroading.

Another friend of mine, who is an experienced (and great) GM has always said that a sign of a bad GM is one who does not lot players enjoy their growth and loot. If the challenge simply ramps up so that players' new loot and powers equal the same level of challenge, they quickly lose motivation.

A challenge is good and all, but constantly having to see the reward getting snatched away by circumstances or a good old impenetrable wall is just plain old bs in my opinion.

"You should be grateful for what you have."

Gee, thanks dad.

 BrookM wrote:
A challenge is good and all, but constantly having to see the reward getting snatched away by circumstances or a good old impenetrable wall is just plain old bs in my opinion.

"You should be grateful for what you have."

Gee, thanks dad.

And it isn't just taking away rewards. It's instantly inflating the challenges so that even with the rewards, the party has to work just as hard or harder.

 curran12 wrote:

 BrookM wrote:
A challenge is good and all, but constantly having to see the reward getting snatched away by circumstances or a good old impenetrable wall is just plain old bs in my opinion.

"You should be grateful for what you have."

Gee, thanks dad.

And it isn't just taking away rewards. It's instantly inflating the challenges so that even with the rewards, the party has to work just as hard or harder.

I personally don't mind the challenges inflating with character progression. Ideally, the new loot makes me awesome for a session or two, but then I have to work hard again. Prevents a boring cakewalk, but still gives you a sense of power and progression.

Inquisitor Jex wrote:
Rogue Trader GM; I was the Rogue Trader, and we came across a desecrated old Imperial Cathedral. Seeing this as my sacred mission to purge the chaos taint within, I send my numerous bomber and fighter wings to bomb this place to oblivion (since it was that thing we saw along the way while doing another endeavour).

Well, turns out those 100 bombers and 150 fighters didn't do nothing, so we had to do it by hand almost died and we burned some fate point to survive.

turns out the GM had some deamon he wanted to have us faced (with warp weapons- which totally ignore all armour, getting us in the crit zone with 1-2 hits) and after that part, he specifically barred me form using my bombers and fighters in anything else than space combat.

Ambition knows no bound...except a GM that's pissed you're by-passing his planned adventure.

That doesn't sound horrible, maybe... but I guess you had to be there. I'm assuming the GM was kind of a dick about it, and banning use of bombers is a going to be annoying, I'd guess. It sounds like the GM might have been better off trying a 'soft' way of dissuading the bombing (have a flunky say, "But... but, my lord... What if there are relics inside that are still intact?") and, if you persist, have the immunity-to-bombing be a 'special effect. (OK, your bombers make repeated runs, with the fighters providing air-cover and strafing. They break off as the cathedral collapses, but you hear panicked reports from pilots describing something horrible happening... A twisted mockery of the former Cathedral has grown from the ruins as an even greater atrocity against the emperor replaces the wrecked structure."

It's the spirit of the thing that counts, and how it's presented.

Rogue Trader seems to have a 'known issue' that players need to buy-in and be willing to send their players into battle instead of using the ridiculous resources at their disposal.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 curran12 wrote:
Another friend of mine, who is an experienced (and great) GM has always said that a sign of a bad GM is one who does not lot players enjoy their growth and loot. If the challenge simply ramps up so that players' new loot and powers equal the same level of challenge, they quickly lose motivation.

I think a good GM balances things such that there's a mix of 'challenge' encounters and 'show-off' encounters. Both have a role: the show-off encounters let the players feel they've achieved something and do 'bleed' some resources even if they aren't the most threatening combats. The challenge encounters allow for more drama and sense of risk.

As an analogy, for those who've played the classic PSX game Castlevania: Symphony of the Night this game combines some very tough sections (some of the boss fights and a few corridors) with some great sequences where you get to enjoy the abilities you've acquired in the game (find a corridor with infinitely spawning zombies and just shred away!

Exactly. I did not mean to imply that it should all be a cakewalk or that challenge is a bad thing. Let me see if I can give an example...

Well, let's go to my Shadowrun game that I mentioned before.

After a particular session, we had earned enough money and karma to amp up our characters with new skills, abilities and weapons. Our gunners had new, better guns, our mages had new better spells and I (an adept) had new, better punches and kicks. But the next session, we found that the enemies had immediately upgraded to match our levels with no explanation. The same corporate security guys now had new gear and armor to place them at exactly the same challenge as before, so all of our new abilities and gear felt way less meaningful. One instance actually had the guards suddenly show up with anti-gas gear as soon as we had got toxic gas weapons and spells.

That's what I mean by no value in growth.

If a GM gives his mooks gear to specifically counter your new kit, he needs to stop right then and there.

That scaling issue is a problem with "modern" RPGs generally. It's wrapped up in the idea of "game balance." The overarching context is a significant change in the nature of rule sets. Earlier RPGs tend to pit the PCs against a situation where the GM is the neutral referee interpreting a set of guidelines. Later RPGs tend to pit the PCs against the GM with the rule set itself providing fairness and neutrality.

Lets see
>2" three ring binder of house rules that not only would he not let our of his sight so you could make a copy for yourself
>Would make house rulings on a whim, that usaly countered and earlyer ruling. This might not have been to bad, but sometimes it would happen in game play and then not tell those that missed the game of such rulings.
>If you came up with a good idea that was not game breaking, but anoyed him he would just outlaw it.
[We had a guy who started to cast Inviability on doors to see what was on the other side. One day he just said NO!]
>Inconsisten to when he used his house rules.
>If you were female the rulings when her way, but if a male did the same thing it usualy did not work.
>He did nothing about the power gamers, in fact usaly gave them the broken things and those who were not got the sort end of the stick, most of the time with a peneltay for not bing powerful.
>A funky EXP system that you were reworded for being higher level or Female.
>Was Never Wrong!

 BrookM wrote:
If a GM gives his mooks gear to specifically counter your new kit, he needs to stop right then and there.

On the other hand, while 'new kit' should be safe, I've had a few game ideas (primarily some Deadlands ideas I wanted to run) where the prologue would have included something along the lines of, "The world runs on the Golden Rule. If your characters shoot to kill immediately and word gets out, the law will respond in kind. On the other hand, if you're traditional cinematic 'morally conflicted' cowboy-types that take prisoners, don't kill without need, etc. expect the police to treat you much the same. Your choice. Of course, this does not apply to evil spirits, zombies, black hats that jsut don't care or things with too many heads."


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Anpu42 wrote:
Lets see
>2" three ring binder of house rules that not only would he not let our of his sight so you could make a copy for yourself
>Would make house rulings on a whim, that usaly countered and earlyer ruling. This might not have been to bad, but sometimes it would happen in game play and then not tell those that missed the game of such rulings.
>If you came up with a good idea that was not game breaking, but anoyed him he would just outlaw it.
[We had a guy who started to cast Inviability on doors to see what was on the other side. One day he just said NO!]
>Inconsisten to when he used his house rules.
>If you were female the rulings when her way, but if a male did the same thing it usualy did not work.
>He did nothing about the power gamers, in fact usaly gave them the broken things and those who were not got the sort end of the stick, most of the time with a peneltay for not bing powerful.
>A funky EXP system that you were reworded for being higher level or Female.
>Was Never Wrong!

Yeah, that's pretty bad. Best to just find a different GM, really.

The banning a tactic thing is interesting, though. One reason I don't really like to run D&D is it's hard to run without some weird logical Setting Fails* anyway, but that's always a difficult trick. Once it's a tactic and cool, but anything repeated gets old. I get bored if the players are too well trained and run a dungeon crawl like a SWAT team clearing a house. On the other hand, GMs can encourage this kind of behavior by abusing traps and other 'cheap' surprises, so neither party is blameless. It's a definite balance.

 Balance wrote:

 BrookM wrote:
If a GM gives his mooks gear to specifically counter your new kit, he needs to stop right then and there.

On the other hand, while 'new kit' should be safe, I've had a few game ideas (primarily some Deadlands ideas I wanted to run) where the prologue would have included something along the lines of, "The world runs on the Golden Rule. If your characters shoot to kill immediately and word gets out, the law will respond in kind. On the other hand, if you're traditional cinematic 'morally conflicted' cowboy-types that take prisoners, don't kill without need, etc. expect the police to treat you much the same. Your choice. Of course, this does not apply to evil spirits, zombies, black hats that jsut don't care or things with too many heads."


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Anpu42 wrote:
Lets see
>2" three ring binder of house rules that not only would he not let our of his sight so you could make a copy for yourself
>Would make house rulings on a whim, that usaly countered and earlyer ruling. This might not have been to bad, but sometimes it would happen in game play and then not tell those that missed the game of such rulings.
>If you came up with a good idea that was not game breaking, but anoyed him he would just outlaw it.
[We had a guy who started to cast Inviability on doors to see what was on the other side. One day he just said NO!]
>Inconsisten to when he used his house rules.
>If you were female the rulings when her way, but if a male did the same thing it usualy did not work.
>He did nothing about the power gamers, in fact usaly gave them the broken things and those who were not got the sort end of the stick, most of the time with a peneltay for not bing powerful.
>A funky EXP system that you were reworded for being higher level or Female.
>Was Never Wrong!

Yeah, that's pretty bad. Best to just find a different GM, really.

The banning a tactic thing is interesting, though. One reason I don't really like to run D&D is it's hard to run without some weird logical Setting Fails* anyway, but that's always a difficult trick. Once it's a tactic and cool, but anything repeated gets old. I get bored if the players are too well trained and run a dungeon crawl like a SWAT team clearing a house. On the other hand, GMs can encourage this kind of behavior by abusing traps and other 'cheap' surprises, so neither party is blameless. It's a definite balance.

Well when 4th came out a part of us just went "No House Rules For At Least One Year!" We also stated that we would not accept his house rules with out agreing first.
I have played D&D with him for alsmot 2 and half years and are now happy.

 Balance wrote:



That doesn't sound horrible, maybe... but I guess you had to be there. I'm assuming the GM was kind of a dick about it, and banning use of bombers is a going to be annoying, I'd guess. It sounds like the GM might have been better off trying a 'soft' way of dissuading the bombing (have a flunky say, "But... but, my lord... What if there are relics inside that are still intact?") and, if you persist, have the immunity-to-bombing be a 'special effect. (OK, your bombers make repeated runs, with the fighters providing air-cover and strafing. They break off as the cathedral collapses, but you hear panicked reports from pilots describing something horrible happening... A twisted mockery of the former Cathedral has grown from the ruins as an even greater atrocity against the emperor replaces the wrecked structure."

It's the spirit of the thing that counts, and how it's presented.

Rogue Trader seems to have a 'known issue' that players need to buy-in and be willing to send their players into battle instead of using the ridiculous resources at their disposal.

Well, the thing is we were already on planet as we were exploring the world as we worked with a Columbus rule that the RT must set foot on a planet to actually claim it for his Dynasty; in fact we came to see that Cathedral after we found some descendants of an old colony living in a cave and they showed us toward the Cathedral and some roaming chaos mammoth like monsters; I called the air strike so that we can get that colony back on track again and the resources exploited, not because I didn't want my char to forgo his 3 o'clock tea for some mundane and possibly dangerous fight against chaos...and really that GM is more axed toward fighting and fights; if we spend a session planning and doing endeavours and such, sure bet that we'll spend the next session almost entirely in a combat, or numerous combats in space and on land...nothing wrong with that, but if I wanted night pointless combat all the time (we always ended up fighting Orks and they always had no valuable loot, according to the GM, or sometimes daemons that poof back into the warp when killed) I would have gone with another game than RT.

So yes, way WAY better off than what others have experienced (truthfully, I am been a GM way more than a player, so if there's ever a Worst Player treat, I got a few examples) it was still rather a rundown for me, due to my lack of being a player..that and being a new face in a group of friends, most of my ideas were turned down due to age old argument of "Oh, it's Person X GM-ing, so he always does XYZ in ABC situation." then combat happened.

Worst DM I ever encountered spent 90% of the time looking up one thing or another in his books. He made no attempt to describe or color the place we were in, or how we got there.

One of my GM's made the main villain David Cameron, railroaded us with the most contrived excuses and eventually made a dragon rape one of the players.

We don't talk to him anymore.

 snurl wrote:
Worst DM I ever encountered spent 90% of the time looking up one thing or another in his books. He made no attempt to describe or color the place we were in, or how we got there.

Yes, I admit that is a rather horrible thing a GM can do....One session ok, since it's session 1 maybe he forgot things due to stress or whatever..all the time, no.

Let’s see other one.
We used to have an open game day, the idea was for simple table top games for 2-8 players like Shogun [now called Samurai Swords], Robo-Rally things like that. Well he kept pushing to run an Anime RPG even though that was for a different day.
Well I had to run an errand and when I got back he had ranged the group into the game. This was not bad, but I had no concept right then so he told me to let him know when I did and he would get back to me. It took me about 10-15 min to work up a character and told him such. Well the game continued and the characters started to dig them into a hole. The farther they went and the worse it got he started to cut off any attempt for them to dig themselves out of it. Then 2 and a half hours later when one of the players left to go to work [This was also the player who started everything] threw 50 gallons of gas on the fire so to speak and then left them to deal with it just because he was leaving. It was then that the GM asked me what I wanted to play with about a hour or so left play.

Another one kept trying to get us to try his Home Brew Game. After talking about it for a while about half of us said were not truly interested, mostly because you had no control over your character creation. And I mean no control, not race, gender, class or even gear it was all random. Well after about 6 months of him getting other players to roll up character in the middle of other peoples games we gave him his chance. Now he knew all of us and that we like to have a certain level of starting gear. Well to put in simple D&D Terms, we essentially were given 0-Level Characters armed with what we picked up out of the kitchen and off the farm. The powerful warrior was armed with a shovel. Now that was not that bad, it could have been fun, but we ended up taking on a band [10-15] 2hd Orcs lead by a Drow Wizard. If two of had not figured out a loophole in the rules that let us get up to 5 attacks around with a dagger more than 3 of us would have died. He was also another who would not give us a copy of the rules before the game started.

I've not had any really bad experiences. However i've had a bloody boring one,

D&D 3.5 Standard group. GM insisted we went with the D&D format suggested for groups. Spent the 3 months of the campaign dungeon crawling. There was no plot or story, just dungeon after dungeon as we got rich with the loot. I decided i wanted to hire a few guards ( I wanted to start a rebellion) nope cant hire guards, okay then I want to hire a market stall so we have a reason for the dungeon crawling, nope can't do that either.

The GM just made us dungeon crawl with the subscribed format group, and it was always the same monsters, nothing ever changed so it became a chore. I stayed for the 3 months because it was the only game my group played, left after the third month when the gm wouldn't even let us go out of the city.

Just remember a good GM is a GM that can react to anything his players do and not force them to follow his planned dogma.

I always try to have a story that's pretty straight forward, but open enough that the players can do it their way and interesting enough they actually want to.

Of course I always tend to see RPGs as more of a series of interesting squad scale tactical exercises separated by story segments...but that comes of being a wargamer before I got into RPGs.

I imagine if I ever had to run any kind of really investigative character driven combat light game I'd be a horrible GM, through incompetence rather than malice though (That said, I can run a mean game of Paranoia, although to be fair that game pretty much runs itself once you get the players initially off balance and keep giving them bigger and bigger boots to kick each other in the head with then they fall down).

Worst experience I had was with one of the best GM's I've ever played with.

He had his own home brewed edition of D&D. At first lvl he made us roll for hit points, and casters couldn't unlock spells until level 2 at the earliest. I was rolling with a lvl 1 cleric with 1 hit point.

Our first quest was to deal with a den of ogres. TPK in the very first encounter...

After that I stopped playing D&D with him. His other games were amazing though. That man could tell a story like no ones business.

 djones520 wrote:
He had his own home brewed edition of D&D. At first lvl he made us roll for hit points...

To be pedantic, I don't think that became an official rule until 3rd edition, although a lot of people used it for earlier editions and it might have been an option in the core books for earlier editions.

I've also heard of people who rolled maximum HP per level or per session... So someone with 5 Hit Dice might roll 5d8 each time they sit down to play, and have an ever-changing HP max.

Admittedly, I've been looking at 1st edition AD&D stuff recently and it's scary how small the damage and HP numbers are. Even the big scary stuff rarely exceeds double digit HP, and most damage rolls are a single die from d4-d8 with a relatively small plus... Of course, the scary stuff might have three or more attacks per round.

Hmm, I used to always run big, cinematic style quests, that would inevitably fall apart as the characters ignored clues and bickered amongst themselves...in one quest alone, I had two players team up and convince a third player to murder a fourth player. In the ensuing battle, a fifth player copped some damage from an errant fireball and turned on the first two, killing one of them as well. So, two dead characters in a single game, and that was just in the bar at the start...after that we started playing a new game...

While I've only been a GM for other people once (and even then, it was to playtest a ruleset) I know that if I was a GM, it wouldn't have been good. I would likely wind up making almost endless amounts of retcons to make the story more "epic". It would have been awful.

Our group had the “Night of the Ninja”

We were playing an 1st edition Oriental Adventures Campaign.
The Party:
>Hengeyokai Panda Bushi [My Character]
>Human Samurai
>Human Ninja/Bushi [From Clan-A]
>Human Ninja/I Don’t Remember [From Clan-B]
>Human Ninja/I Don’t Remember [From Clan-C1]
>Human Ninja/I Don’t Remember [From Clan-C2]
>Bamboo Folk Wu Jen.

We were sent by the local Lord to go and investigate the strange goings on in a town about 5 days travel away, it would have been 1, but only the Samurai had a horse. Well things were going great until the night of day4. For some reason all of the Ninjas decided to head into the woods and throw on their Pajamas. Not as a group, but individually. This would have not been so bad but one of them spotted a rival clan member and attacked him. Well the Samurai hear the commotion and shows up Justin time to see a Ninja Attacking someone and Kills Ninja C1 [20, backed with a 20]. Ninja C2 sees this and Attacks the Samurai, Ninja A whose job was to protect the Samurai Attacks Ninja C2. Well Ninja B decides to take out the Samurai for some reasons still unknown. Ninja C2 kills off Ninja A as the Samurai kills off in one round Ninja B and then C2.

Meanwhile The Wu Jen and me are just sitting on the sideline are just watching having no idea what was going on.
That was the night that we all made Ninja an NPC Class only for years.

 Balance wrote:

I've also heard of people who rolled maximum HP per level or per session... So someone with 5 Hit Dice might roll 5d8 each time they sit down to play, and have an ever-changing HP max.

Oh, I LOVE that idea!

He said this to the group:
"You go to meet them on a ship - I know that is not what they said - but when you are on board, the ship explodes. Yea. . .I did not like that character."
The final word in singular was intentional.

That sounds like a 10 year old.

The worst example of a GM I knew, but didn't play for, was a complete carpet to his players. As part of HackMaster Tournaments (HMPA and HMGMA), we met his players a few times. The all had +10 dragon armor, +3 Vorpal swords, had all gained +1 Int from eating dragon brains, and so on...

Admittedly, I've been looking at 1st edition AD&D stuff recently and it's scary how small the damage and HP numbers are. Even the big scary stuff rarely exceeds double digit HP, and most damage rolls are a single die from d4-d8 with a relatively small plus... Of course, the scary stuff might have three or more attacks per round.

That's not so bad if the game supports it. My own homebrew game has most starting characters and most NPC's with less than 10 HP, but my system assumes an average of 3-5 HP of damage on good roll. It's a game where the number of combatants for a (good) fight is more realistic, rather than 4 heros versus 12 Goblins being a fight that's firmly in the heroes' favor. Once they get outnumbered in my game they would be in for trouble, but there is also plenty of options for in-combat healing that can easily return 3-4 HP at a time, too, or sacrificing a change to attack to parry all damage from an enemy attack.

Giant HP pools seem unnecessary to me. Even simple games like Dragon Age have starting characters/enemies with 20-30 HP, and weapons that only whittle away 5-10 Hp at a time.

It's just a weird experience coming from playing 4th edition D&D where high HP totals are common. I've heard that this was an admitted error in early-edition stuff; monsters had tons of HP and mediocre damage which could cause long not-fun fights, but it's also just the way the game evolved.

HP totals in 4th were very 'swingy' as well, as there was a lot of minor healing thrown around (including powers that at higher levels did an attack and maybe a little healing on a character) especially due to the use of the 'bloodied' half-hp status as a key to a lot of abilities.

I think there might be some sort of weird feature on display analogous to codex-creep in some ways: In Edition Y your characters regularly do 3-4 points of damage, but in Edition Y+1 we've boosted that to 6-8 because it's much cooler! (of course, it's a false comparison as HP totals are also increased, but it feels better.)

At the core, though I feel like there's an unspoken difference in what some base concepts mean in various D&D editions. In AD&D 1st and earlier, a Level 1 character is a pretty replaceable warm body. 2nd eds a few features, but is only marginally better. 3rd and then 4th scale this up: in "options" I'd say a 4th edition character at level 1 is much more like a 1st edition character at level 2-3, maybe higher.

A lot of this is really just 'modernizing' the game. I've been reading Playing at the World which discusses the origins of RPGs (mainly D&D) and a major point is how D&D was based off several wargames at various levels. While the early D&D and pre-D&D games were certainly 'story driven' it was in a very different sense from modern games, and player characters were definitely meant to be replaceable parts. (I love that one anecdote about Dave Arneson's pre-D&D Blackmoor games even used the D&D cliche of character being replaced by near-clones ("Ok, Throg the MIghty died, so he'll be replaced by his son, Throg the MIghty II") that would feel very out of place in a lot of modern RPGs.

Well D&D 4th has its own little issues.
It is to Balanced: If you tinker with it two much it breaks badly.
Bad Press: A lot of the old timers hated it for killing off “Sacred Cows” and changing to much.
[My example is our old DM (the one with the binder) did not like most of them even though they tacked all of his problems with the game, but not “His Way”
Nomenclature: The changed the name of so many Magical Items that some signature items were not familiar any more.
It is now a Roll-Playing Game, not a Role Playing Game: That statement at least for me is false. RPGs became Roll-Playing Games the moment a Skill System came into existence.

I have played in many RPG Games and Campaigns from 1st Edition D&D to Firefly. Some were good and some were bad. All of them though it was not the system, but the Game Master who made the biggest difference, sometimes the System, but mostly the GM.

I had come up with a saying that used to piss off some of my group, but they could never deny it.
“The System Is All Important!”
“The System Is Unimportant!”
What this means is you can adapt any system to any stetting, but some do the job better. Nothing beats D&D [any Edition] for High Fantasy. I have tried Palladium, Stormbringer, GURPS and even Warhammer Fantasy. None of them has felt right. I have also played d20 Modern, it worked until the characters got to about 12th or 13th, then the whole thing broke down when it was taking 2-3 30 round clips from a M-16 to take down a Guard.

I agree with Anpu42 and have subscribed to his newsletter.

 Balance wrote:
I agree with Anpu42 and have subscribed to his newsletter.

Great now I have to come up with a newsletter!

 Anpu42 wrote:

 Balance wrote:
I agree with Anpu42 and have subscribed to his newsletter.

Great now I have to come up with a newsletter!

It's OK. I have enough sitting in my 'to-read' pile anyway.

 Anpu42 wrote:

What this means is you can adapt any system to any stetting, but some do the job better. Nothing beats D&D [any Edition] for High Fantasy. I have tried Palladium, Stormbringer, GURPS and even Warhammer Fantasy....

To talk for Warhammer Fantansy, the setting is actually Low Fantasy, not High Fantasy; might be why it does not ahve the same "punch" as D&D

First time I have ever actually been able to play a game of RPG. I had always wanted to and we already had the chance. Sadly, nobody in our group was experienced at the time (and it has so far been my only time to rpg). DnD 4th edition was the name of the game. I have a group of friends that usually hang out so we all set up to try it out. Well, I was the only one that got to make my character, and the game was a disaster. There was never any progress. No level ups, he had some npc kill the monsters because he pit us against too much and our rolling was sub-par, he tossed us into a town where we could go to a shop. Then we were tossed to enter a dungeon to capture the princesses' baby dragon. We killed monsters, the combat taking forever, and planned strategies only to have boobie traps on a door that would blind you to make you step into a jelly that would gobble you up trap. Our plan became worthless. The other doors would not budge, the other door was magically locked (that's all we could get) and at that point our friend got stupid and bored and jumped through a portal well taht was actually supposed to kill him. Instead it sent him back in time so we all had to jump into it. We were getting bored and so he tossed a worthless hat and a talking ice magic sword at us. Anyways, I finally figured out the door trick (you just had to open it slowly) and the dragon was right there). He told us we would have to reason with it to make it follow us. I finally succeeded. Promptly he made the place shake and was going to make the dragon run away deeper. We compalined and he stopped. Gradually, we began to leave when everything fell apart into just nonsensical stupidity and laughing.

He was new to GMing so I can't blaim him but honestly it was miserable for all of us and it makes me not look forward to gming my first game (cause nobody else will do it)

I think the worst that a GM can do is railroading. I have only run two gaming sessions as a GM, and it's a very hard thing to fight down as an urge. Considering that I have not build up very much confidence yet in rolling with what the players might randomly do, I think that's where it stems from.

Also, it doesn't help that many of the standard D&D/clone adventure modules are written in a very railroading fashion, which I think stems from having much of the old stuff come written as pretty linear dungeon crawls. My advise to newbie GMs is to only write the beginnings and the goal of a session/adventure in a concrete fashion (most gamers groups need a solid framework on each end or they flake out) and then just have generic ideas that can be used in the middle/come up with stuff on the fly.

Too many GMs are control freaks and try to somehow smack down the players for going off-road. If you are having a session where the players have to stop goblins from attacking a town, then only worry about having a concrete idea for how they get to the town, and what happens when they finally find and attack the goblin's hideout. Ad-lib everything else.

My personal "Bad GM" story is not really a "bad" GM, but works just fine. I occasionally play a game where I think the GM is very uncomfortable with conflict, so our sessions have little to no combat, and if they do, it's ludicrously short or easy. I usually feel like three-quarters of the rulebook is being ignored, and lots of times we can kill the threat in one-two rounds of combat. I am a story guy, but sometimes you just need some good combat to get the blood pumping!!

I actualy can find "Railroading" can be a good tool and if the players are aware of it an ok with it. In fact sometimes it is nessasary.
I run a Modering game simlart to CSI or NCIS and somtine if I don't push them on occasion they will sit around not knowing what to do. Of course occasinal I have to tell the players "It it 2:30am (Game Time) nothing is going to happen until all of you go to sleep and see what inormation comes from the Lab Results or Creature is not going to come out again tonight."

Bit of a Noob question, but what is railroading?

Railroading is when a GM basically 'holds your hand' and walk you through the mission/campaign/scenario/scene without giving you any chance of doing what you want or forcing you to do X before you can have your 'player time';
Example, you're in a city, to bring some file to a guy. You past the gates and decides to go buy a sword and visit a stable for your horse before heading to meet the guy and give him his file. No, said the GM, you *must* deliver that thing before doing anything else.

Sometimes railroading a bit is necessary because otherwise the players will ignore the framework of the session. Even free-roaming video-game RPG's have a framework once you "take a mission" from an NPC. Also, a time-limit can be an interesting plot device, rather than hand-holding.

But I am trying to make it a goal to get better at letting players roam around town a bit, and just making up characters for them to meet if/when they do. Even if the ultimate goal cannot be changed (because that is the point of a session), the illusion of free will is usually enough to make anyone happy. Sometimes players are even canny enough to make the goal of the session play out more interesting.

But really, I hate GMs who don't like conflict and fighting in their games. That is usually what about 80% of the rulebook for a game hinges on.

Railroading generally requires excessive effort to restrict player actions to the desired 'track.' As with a lot of things, the line of what is railroading and what is just keeping them focused.

I understand now, thank you!

No, you need it explained two more times before you can move on.

I think I am actually officially an "anti-bad GM", because some of my trepidation about running a game is that I will accidentally make combat too hard for the players and wipe them out, because I don't have the experience yet to really have a good handle on what's "too much" to throw at the party (we don't use systems that have "Difficulty levels", so it's all pretty much by feel).

 AegisGrimm wrote:
I think I am actually officially an "anti-bad GM", because some of my trepidation about running a game is that I will accidentally make combat too hard for the players and wipe them out, because I don't have the experience yet to really have a good handle on what's "too much" to throw at the party (we don't use systems that have "Difficulty levels", so it's all pretty much by feel).

The trick is to not worry about it to much. Your job is to make sure everyone has a good time. I have been running since 1981 and my games got much better once I took up that philosophy. I started a long time a go to “Cheat”. If I find myself Critting the same character 3 times over the last three rounds, I will call it a miss. If I find I am over powering them and I still have reinforcements to go, I forget the reinforcments.

 Anpu42 wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:
I think I am actually officially an "anti-bad GM", because some of my trepidation about running a game is that I will accidentally make combat too hard for the players and wipe them out, because I don't have the experience yet to really have a good handle on what's "too much" to throw at the party (we don't use systems that have "Difficulty levels", so it's all pretty much by feel).

The trick is to not worry about it to much. Your job is to make sure everyone has a good time. I have been running since 1981 and my games got much better once I took up that philosophy. I started a long time a go to “Cheat”. If I find myself Critting the same character 3 times over the last three rounds, I will call it a miss. If I find I am over powering them and I still have reinforcements to go, I forget the reinforcments.

It's also perfectly fair to plan big, scary conflicts with some 'escape routes' if it gets too ugly. Don't overuse these techniques, but you can dos tuff like having the enemies try to take prisoners; have the enemies fight among themselves; have a 'frenemy' show up, do something cool to scare off the main enemies, then run off (great if you're in a setting where villains that make the heroes do all the heavy lifting are a thing); or similar.

For example, years (decades, really) I ran the Ravenloft D&D setting for a couple friends. They were fighting some nasties and were, as far as they knew, in the middle of nowhere, in an old ruin. Fight goes south, when in comes Lord Soth. Lord Soth is a Death Knight from the Dragonlance setting. In case the word 'Death' doesn't set the tone right (and remember, we're a long way before Warcraft) he's a cursed knight who is evil, but still holds on to the shreds of his honor. He's paid with his life for one romantic misadventure (long story, but he also contributed to an entire world getting screwed). A later romantic misadventure left him as a Lord of a domain of Ravenloft, effectively cursed again. To keep it short, he couldnt even recreate the centuries-old routine of his life as the domain kept changing things on him... One night a walk from his castle would be 100 paces as it had for over three hundred years "at home". The next, it'd be 99... Just to mess with him, personally. Ravenloft hates adventurers as well as the Dark Lords that are cursed to rule portions of it.

Anyway, so this Serious Bad News makes a dramatic entrance,scatters the whatever. The players know that fighting Lord Soth is not much of an option, but he's willing tot all, and gives them a mission, in fact... He wants the same vampire that's recently moved in to his turf eliminated, so he'll let these adventurer types go... If they offer to help him out. I believe the adventure also involved some good-aligned stuff that Lord Soth probably couldn't touch easily himself but, again, decades ago.

The fight could've been a TPK (Total Party Kill) but I had already noted that Lord Soth could make an appearance if needed.

You don't learn how to balance things without doing so.

Modern games often have actual guidelines for building encounters, too.

 Balance wrote:

 Anpu42 wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:
I think I am actually officially an "anti-bad GM", because some of my trepidation about running a game is that I will accidentally make combat too hard for the players and wipe them out, because I don't have the experience yet to really have a good handle on what's "too much" to throw at the party (we don't use systems that have "Difficulty levels", so it's all pretty much by feel).

The trick is to not worry about it to much. Your job is to make sure everyone has a good time. I have been running since 1981 and my games got much better once I took up that philosophy. I started a long time a go to “Cheat”. If I find myself Critting the same character 3 times over the last three rounds, I will call it a miss. If I find I am over powering them and I still have reinforcements to go, I forget the reinforcments.

It's also perfectly fair to plan big, scary conflicts with some 'escape routes' if it gets too ugly. Don't overuse these techniques, but you can dos tuff like having the enemies try to take prisoners; have the enemies fight among themselves; have a 'frenemy' show up, do something cool to scare off the main enemies, then run off (great if you're in a setting where villains that make the heroes do all the heavy lifting are a thing); or similar.

For example, years (decades, really) I ran the Ravenloft D&D setting for a couple friends. They were fighting some nasties and were, as far as they knew, in the middle of nowhere, in an old ruin. Fight goes south, when in comes Lord Soth. Lord Soth is a Death Knight from the Dragonlance setting. In case the word 'Death' doesn't set the tone right (and remember, we're a long way before Warcraft) he's a cursed knight who is evil, but still holds on to the shreds of his honor. He's paid with his life for one romantic misadventure (long story, but he also contributed to an entire world getting screwed). A later romantic misadventure left him as a Lord of a domain of Ravenloft, effectively cursed again. To keep it short, he couldnt even recreate the centuries-old routine of his life as the domain kept changing things on him... One night a walk from his castle would be 100 paces as it had for over three hundred years "at home". The next, it'd be 99... Just to mess with him, personally. Ravenloft hates adventurers as well as the Dark Lords that are cursed to rule portions of it.

Anyway, so this Serious Bad News makes a dramatic entrance,scatters the whatever. The players know that fighting Lord Soth is not much of an option, but he's willing tot all, and gives them a mission, in fact... He wants the same vampire that's recently moved in to his turf eliminated, so he'll let these adventurer types go... If they offer to help him out. I believe the adventure also involved some good-aligned stuff that Lord Soth probably couldn't touch easily himself but, again, decades ago.

The fight could've been a TPK (Total Party Kill) but I had already noted that Lord Soth could make an appearance if needed.

You don't learn how to balance things without doing so.

Modern games often have actual guidelines for building encounters, too.

Balancing all that is work.
The game I like running the moast is a Modern/Horror Game, that with my old group I could not have "Bad things" happen or one of my players whould just hate me for the next 6 month. He is still mad about me killing off a throw away NPC that was in 2-3 sceens in front of the PCs.

 BrookM wrote:
If a GM gives his mooks gear to specifically counter your new kit, he needs to stop right then and there.

Agreed. +1 exalt.

 Anpu42 wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:
I think I am actually officially an "anti-bad GM", because some of my trepidation about running a game is that I will accidentally make combat too hard for the players and wipe them out, because I don't have the experience yet to really have a good handle on what's "too much" to throw at the party (we don't use systems that have "Difficulty levels", so it's all pretty much by feel).

The trick is to not worry about it to much. Your job is to make sure everyone has a good time. I have been running since 1981 and my games got much better once I took up that philosophy. I started a long time a go to “Cheat”. If I find myself Critting the same character 3 times over the last three rounds, I will call it a miss. If I find I am over powering them and I still have reinforcements to go, I forget the reinforcments.

This is some great advice. The rules come second to people having fun and being engaged in the campaign. But without making the rules completely lose their structure. It's a fine balance but if everyone is having fun then you are doing great.

As for worst GM I encountered.. It would likely have to be the Dark heresy game I joined that never even got going one time. Initially contacting the guy seemed to be fine. But he insisted on having a long drawn out voice chat ( online campaign ) that was at a really inconvenient time for me, rolling the character together using "custom rules" he basically ruled on a whim every time I wanted to try and customize my starting character. Ignoring pretty much all of my input for my vision of the character. It resulted in a character nothing like the one I wanted to roll because his final say on what the char was like was final. Resulting in me not feeling any real significant connection to the character or his back story that the gm pretty much made up for me over this 2 hour voice chat online ( often with random traits he made up out of thin air ). After it finished I backed out and said I couldn't make it. I am fine with the GM having final say. But I would like to be able to actually make a character I want to play that isn't warped by the GM making the character for me. Otherwise it is hard to bother about the character in my opinion.

Ah yeah, my brother did that for Shadowrun, everybody can be anything they want, except I had to be the Face of the group. While I grew into it over time, my first few sessions were less of a joy and more of a chore.

I make characters for my games sometimes, but only the basic framework, and only if I know the players well. I basically fill in the dots and let them determine their persona and stuff; and after the first session always give them the opportunity to move stats/powers/spells whatever around if they want.

I started doing this after I ran a game which I clearly explained would take place in Flint, Michigan in 1987, and my only requirement was that characters be between 16 and 19 and have a reason for being in Flint, Michigan during the summer.

It took an entire session to make characters because I had to work around or explain why the crazy ideas my players had wouldn't work. Yes, you can be a Samoan, but why are you in Flint, Michigan? No, you can't be ex-military, because you are 19 at the oldest. Yes, you can be Navajo, but once again, why are you in Flint, Michigan? No, you can't be a private eye. No, you can't have five dots in Occult, you are a regular teenager. You can be a goth or Lovecraft fan and have two dots in Occult, maybe three. Why do you need five dots in Occult, seriously? Fine, go ahead and leave. NO, YOU CAN'T HAVE A DR. PEPPER FOR THE ROAD!

 Bromsy wrote:
I make characters for my games sometimes, but only the basic framework, and only if I know the players well. I basically fill in the dots and let them determine their persona and stuff; and after the first session always give them the opportunity to move stats/powers/spells whatever around if they want.

I started doing this after I ran a game which I clearly explained would take place in Flint, Michigan in 1987, and my only requirement was that characters be between 16 and 19 and have a reason for being in Flint, Michigan during the summer.

It took an entire session to make characters because I had to work around or explain why the crazy ideas my players had wouldn't work. Yes, you can be a Samoan, but why are you in Flint, Michigan? No, you can't be ex-military, because you are 19 at the oldest. Yes, you can be Navajo, but once again, why are you in Flint, Michigan? No, you can't be a private eye. No, you can't have five dots in Occult, you are a regular teenager. You can be a goth or Lovecraft fan and have two dots in Occult, maybe three. Why do you need five dots in Occult, seriously? Fine, go ahead and leave. NO, YOU CAN'T HAVE A DR. PEPPER FOR THE ROAD!

Why Flint, Michigan? Isn't Flint, Michigan the kind of thing people play role playing games to escape?

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 Bromsy wrote:
I make characters for my games sometimes, but only the basic framework, and only if I know the players well. I basically fill in the dots and let them determine their persona and stuff; and after the first session always give them the opportunity to move stats/powers/spells whatever around if they want.

I started doing this after I ran a game which I clearly explained would take place in Flint, Michigan in 1987, and my only requirement was that characters be between 16 and 19 and have a reason for being in Flint, Michigan during the summer.

It took an entire session to make characters because I had to work around or explain why the crazy ideas my players had wouldn't work. Yes, you can be a Samoan, but why are you in Flint, Michigan? No, you can't be ex-military, because you are 19 at the oldest. Yes, you can be Navajo, but once again, why are you in Flint, Michigan? No, you can't be a private eye. No, you can't have five dots in Occult, you are a regular teenager. You can be a goth or Lovecraft fan and have two dots in Occult, maybe three. Why do you need five dots in Occult, seriously? Fine, go ahead and leave. NO, YOU CAN'T HAVE A DR. PEPPER FOR THE ROAD!

Why Flint, Michigan? Isn't Flint, Michigan the kind of thing people play role playing games to escape?

It was a horror game, to be fair.

Well played, then.

All the wanted that Summer was to escape. Escape from Flint, Michigan! DUN-DUN-DUUUUUUUUUUN!

We had a game master once set his Vampier Game in Denton, yes the Denton of Rocky Horror Fame!
He forced the group to sing the Theam Song "Denton" everytime Deton was said or they lost EXP.
I am so glad I did not play in that game.

I think David Khan had to be one of the worst GMs ever. Daniel Snyder is pretty damn terrible. So was Kevin McHale.

But Matt Millen or Isaiah Thomas have to get the #1 spot, right?

 cincydooley wrote:
I think David Khan had to be one of the worst GMs ever. Daniel Snyder is pretty damn terrible. So was Kevin McHale.

But Matt Millen or Isaiah Thomas have to get the #1 spot, right?

What? Who?

Basket Ball general managers...

Not sure I would say the GM was the bad guy:
We decided to play the RPG that shipped with Diablo 2 and let us say we played it straight up and my necromancer and golem got owned by a demon. Really bad timing while trying to get past a large drop. Our GM friend could not roll low if his life depended on it at the time. All he could do is laugh hysterically and kept saying "please witness my rolls, I am not believing them either!!!".

We ritually melted the dice afterward and prayed the evil spirits would not hurt anyone further.

 Talizvar wrote:
Not sure I would say the GM was the bad guy:
We decided to play the RPG that shipped with Diablo 2 and let us say we played it straight up and my necromancer and golem got owned by a demon. Really bad timing while trying to get past a large drop. Our GM friend could not roll low if his life depended on it at the time. All he could do is laugh hysterically and kept saying "please witness my rolls, I am not believing them either!!!".

We ritually melted the dice afterward and prayed the evil spirits would not hurt anyone further.

Not bad GM; just the dice good being sort of dickish towards you and your grup alongside the DM

A good GM should have hidden the rolls so that he could 'cheat' in the players' favor when necessary. Rules are far less important than everyone having a good time.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
A good GM should have hidden the rolls so that he could 'cheat' in the players' favor when necessary. Rules are far less important than everyone having a good time.

I'm not sure I can agree with this fully.

Now hear me out.

I agree that everyone should have a good time, but to me, the good time gets hurt when I realize that the GM is protecting me. If he rolls hot, he rolls hot and that is the way of the dice. As soon as the GM starts cheating to save the party from a good roll, what's the point of fights anymore?

Half of the point of a GM screen is to hide the rolls that you are cheating on, as far as I know. Or maybe models you have put on-hand for coming encounters.

It's not like you are cheating on every roll to "save" the players. It's just for when you fudge the latest roll so you haven't just critted the same player for the third attack in a row.

Especially because sometimes you cheat in the game's favor, rather than the players, if you are having a really bad night of rolling. Fights are not epic when the big baddie whiffs with every single attack and the players kill them effortlessly.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Half of the point of a GM screen is to hide the rolls that you are cheating on, as far as I know. Or maybe models you have put on-hand for coming encounters.

It's not like you are cheating on every roll to "save" the players. It's just for when you fudge the latest roll so you haven't just critted the same player for the third attack in a row.

Especially because sometimes you cheat in the game's favor, rather than the players, if you are having a really bad night of rolling. Fights are not epic when the big baddie whiffs with every single attack and the players kill them effortlessly.

But that is the nature of the game. If the GM has full reign to modify and alter the rolls as his mood or desire takes him, why even have the dice at that point?

 curran12 wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Half of the point of a GM screen is to hide the rolls that you are cheating on, as far as I know. Or maybe models you have put on-hand for coming encounters.

It's not like you are cheating on every roll to "save" the players. It's just for when you fudge the latest roll so you haven't just critted the same player for the third attack in a row.

Especially because sometimes you cheat in the game's favor, rather than the players, if you are having a really bad night of rolling. Fights are not epic when the big baddie whiffs with every single attack and the players kill them effortlessly.

But that is the nature of the game. If the GM has full reign to modify and alter the rolls as his mood or desire takes him, why even have the dice at that point?

I have done "Diceless" Games for decades. The trick is to get players who are willing to miss.

 Anpu42 wrote:

 curran12 wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Half of the point of a GM screen is to hide the rolls that you are cheating on, as far as I know. Or maybe models you have put on-hand for coming encounters.

It's not like you are cheating on every roll to "save" the players. It's just for when you fudge the latest roll so you haven't just critted the same player for the third attack in a row.

Especially because sometimes you cheat in the game's favor, rather than the players, if you are having a really bad night of rolling. Fights are not epic when the big baddie whiffs with every single attack and the players kill them effortlessly.

But that is the nature of the game. If the GM has full reign to modify and alter the rolls as his mood or desire takes him, why even have the dice at that point?

I have done "Diceless" Games for decades. The trick is to get players who are willing to miss.

And that is a workable system, absolutely. I'm not intrinsically saying that one or the other is bad, don't mistake me.

But I feel if you are going to use a dice system, use a dice system. Don't use a dice system with backsies.

But that is the nature of the game. If the GM has full reign to modify and alter the rolls as his mood or desire takes him, why even have the dice at that point?

That's the GM's JOB. They are there to alter the game fluidly while keeping everyone having fun. The whole point of a good GM's is to do it so the players can't tell they are changing anything.

I have played games where we steamrolled everything due to horrible GM rolls. Those games were not very fun.

It's the same reason you can save an accidental TPK by having the bad guys take the heroes captive instead of slitting their throats. Boom, additional adventure material.

 AegisGrimm wrote:

But that is the nature of the game. If the GM has full reign to modify and alter the rolls as his mood or desire takes him, why even have the dice at that point?

That's the GM's JOB. They are there to alter the game fluidly while keeping everyone having fun. The whole point of a good GM's is to do it so the players can't tell they are changing anything.

I have played games where we steamrolled everything due to horrible GM rolls. Those games were not very fun.

It's the same reason you can save an accidental TPK by having the bad guys take the heroes captive instead of slitting their throats. Boom, additional adventure material.

I think this is an instance where we have to agree to disagree on some points.

I agree that it is the GM's job to keep the game fun. And to ensure that the players are having a good time and that the story is moving forward.

I disagree that the GM has to cheat to make that happen. If a GM is fudging rolls because he feels things are too easy or too hard, that is a correction for poor encounter design. It is not the GM's job to guarantee that all players live, nor is it his job to ensure that there are always casualties either, mind you. The GM is the referee, and the referee cannot change the rules to suit the narrative. A GM should be designing encounters and events that challenge, and if there is no risk involved in the challenge, since the GM will bail out the players, I feel the value of the game is lost.

There is no joy in winning a game where you have a free out if things go bad.

I understand, but that theory is a lot like saying it's evil to build the framework of an adventure to challenge the party of characters your players are running and then "cheat" by changing some elements because a player is not playing that night and so would make the combat's too hard for their not being there. That's actually a giant leap up from fudging a roll or two over the course of an adventure.

Mind you, I'm not advocating fudging half your rolls. More like a couple in a entire night, mostly to even out a nasty curve in ways the player's shouldn't even realize.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
I understand, but that theory is a lot like saying it's evil to build the framework of an adventure to challenge the party of characters your players are running and then "cheat" by changing some elements because a player is not playing that night and so would make the combat's too hard for their not being there. That's actually a giant leap up from fudging a roll or two over the course of an adventure.

Mind you, I'm not advocating fudging half your rolls. More like a couple in a entire night, mostly to even out a nasty curve in ways the player's shouldn't even realize.

This is where I have less experience in that regard, as my gaming groups tend to be the type that sticks to the philosophy of 'if we all can't play, we'll do something else or wait' style. Since we primarily play via Skype and online rollers, this isn't as big an issue.

I guess the heart of it, to me, is that the GM taking the reins to direct the game, even with the most noble intentions, can begin a course where less and less freedom is given to players. After all, if the GM forces a fail/success because of a bad roll that screws up the GM's plans, what's to stop a GM from doing it if I as a player use my skills and items in a way that runs contrary to the planned encounter? Now, I would not imply that my GM would do that, or that you would, but there is a level of trust that I feel is violated when the GM simply takes command of the encounter. Because players trust GMs with the hidden rolls, with the rolls that they cannot know the general effectiveness of. If the player cannot be assured that their GM is fudging the rolls, even for the best of intentions, they lose the desire to have those, because hey, the GM might just say otherwise if he botches/crits the roll.

I get you. That's usually within the realm of trusting the GM. You trust him to take your out of the box idea and let it be effective (as well it should be), while at the same time throwing you a bit of pity every once in a while that won't be game-changing, but yet might relieve some frustration.

Now, it could also some from my playing games like Savage Worlds, where the dice rolling has a different flavor than with normal D20games because the game uses all levels of dice *except* D20's. To-Hit rolls are a pretty finite and well known thing to the players, so they will know they are winning or losing on their own merits of luck vs. skill level. Like, a Ranged attack always hits on a "4", plus or minus some well-known modifiers.

But sometimes there can be weird situations where in a combat it seems like the majority of a party is tending to get off scot-free with bad attack rolls on the GM's part, while one unlucky guy just keeps getting all the nasty hits right to the face. So maybe instead of the third attack knocking him down yet again, you fudge your roll unbeknownst to him and sarcastically tell them, "There- good god,he finally missed you for a change!"

But you are the one that knows that it is a rare occurrence, when at the same time that guy might later just mutilate a bad guy and you just go with it.

Our GM generally goes for full transparency as his style. Any rolls that the players would have be visible, he makes visible as well. He still has hidden rolls for things that would clue off players to bad events (such as a Perception rolled against my Disguise and so on, where I'd instantly know in an OOC way that I'd better prepare to fight). But things like attack rolls, we see them as he rolls them, so we have to take the good with the bad.

And, I gotta say, in our Pathfinder group...we get a lot of the good and the bad. I hesitate to call our dice bipolar...more like schizophrenic. Our house roll for critical fumbles is a d100 roll to see how bad the fumble is, where higher is worse for the fumbler.

And I ate a critical miss, followed by a 100. The saving grace was that I was far from the party, so a lot of the, shall we call them, AOE elements of the fumble were negated, but I still wound up with gear all over the ground and a broken leg. All this while I was trying to convince a guard I was a divine being...

 Anpu42 wrote:
We had a game master once set his Vampier Game in Denton, yes the Denton of Rocky Horror Fame!
He forced the group to sing the Theam Song "Denton" everytime Deton was said or they lost EXP.
I am so glad I did not play in that game.

That would become onerous.

Curran, you seem to have a more adversarial approach to RPG's than I have personally encountered in my groups. The way we play, it's more like telling a story. The GM provides the setting and some of the plot, but it is very much the players' story. Generally, we do not do very much dice rolling, except during combat or sneaking/gambling/hotwiring-style shenanigans, when random results simply force the players to be more creative. As the GM, I have let players die, when the time is right. However, no one wants to go out like a chump. At the same time, no one wants to feel a mission is too easy. If we had to stick purely to the dice mechanics, it would have taken forever to fine-tune the system into actual enjoyability.

I feel like I should point out there that my group tried a lot of RPGs, including several Palladium ones, D&D and others, yet kept coming back to the West End Star Wars RPG because the mechanics were more transparent (as in, they don't block your appreciation of the game) and the games were smoother for it.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Curran, you seem to have a more adversarial approach to RPG's than I have personally encountered in my groups. The way we play, it's more like telling a story. The GM provides the setting and some of the plot, but it is very much the players' story. Generally, we do not do very much dice rolling, except during combat or sneaking/gambling/hotwiring-style shenanigans, when random results simply force the players to be more creative. As the GM, I have let players die, when the time is right. However, no one wants to go out like a chump. At the same time, no one wants to feel a mission is too easy. If we had to stick purely to the dice mechanics, it would have taken forever to fine-tune the system into actual enjoyability.

I feel like I should point out there that my group tried a lot of RPGs, including several Palladium ones, D&D and others, yet kept coming back to the West End Star Wars RPG because the mechanics were more transparent (as in, they don't block your appreciation of the game) and the games were smoother for it.

I don't know if I'd call it adversarial, as that puts me in a position where it seems like I am in the more 'the GM is there to beat the players' side which is anything but the true. In fact, our longest-running GM is very similar in that he only requires rolls in combat and other situations like you described that have very clear numbers checks involved. In situations where, say, it is story building, or character roleplay, it is done purely through our RP abilities, with the dice rolls in social skills coming in situations where the RP is not enough to get a clear answer.

But I do stand by as much transparency in dice rolls as possible. As I said before, once the GM starts taking liberties with dice rolls, the trust between player and GM begins to dissolve, even if the liberties are taken for the best of reasons. Sometimes the dice fall good and sometimes they fall bad, it is something you have to accept in a game like this, imo. And this is not to say that if we crap out a roll our GM is utterly merciless, as I've had a long-lived and very loved character die in an event before, but rather than just rip up the sheet and go home, we discuss if there's any way to work it into the story, which in turn led to some interesting quests to bring my character back, that I could be involved in as part of it involved an adventure in the afterlife. The death did not lose meaning, and it had teeth (as I lost 6 months' worth of playing gear), but it wasn't handwaved away with a 'well that crit is actually not one.'

To me as a player, knowing that the GM can simply change the results hurts the story far more, it takes me out of the story knowing that I do not have complete freedom; if I roll too good or bad, there are limiting factors in place for that. This thread, we have pointed out GMs who railroad the plot as a very bad thing, but I would argue that fudging rolls and cheating the system is in the same aspect as railroading. After all, if I roll bad/good and the result is 'corrected', is that not the GM exerting control over my character's story in an artificial way?

Neither myself or any other GM I have played with has altered a player's roll that is in their favor That would smack hugely of being a "bad GM". I would never alter an enemies defense roll if it was bad, only strange extreme results of the attack rolls against players that would artificially halt the "feel" of the combat.

But then again, it's part of what system I play, I think. Savage Worlds actually gives each player a number of "bennies" before each session which can be turned in to re-roll bad dice rolls. And the GM also gets a mechanically allowed number of those for their use as well. That fosters more of a casual approach to gaming if it's what you're used to, I think, and can be seen on other parts of a gaming session.

Like I said, it's all trust and going by the feel of the game session moment to moment. I have had the same GM drive my character into making Incapacitation rolls with a single attack, and in the same session after a horribly botched roll on my part smile and go, "What? I didn't see that roll- you might want to roll it again so I can see". He's my favorite GM to run games.

i always rolled in the open, just that sometimes, I don,t tell the player what this or that roll was for.

I mostly use the screen to note down the status/health of enemies, init order, other notes stuff like that..

if i roll behind my screen, knowing me, I'll always favour the players, since i don't want them to die and the game be done after some lowly combat...as for me rolling like crap and them rolling like Gods, I simply add more health to the bosses, so that gives me a round or two of grace to hopefully do someting

Kind of depends on the system/setup for me.

In my 4e campaign I usually ran everything off my laptop including using a computer dice roller. I'd kind of bump it both ways, although it seemed like I would consistently fudge attack rolls in my favor and damage rolls in the PC's favor. It's always kinda annoys me when the big boss monster misses 4/5 of the party with his 1/encounter mega burst attack. That and the cleric was pretty much invulnerable to attacks (not sure if it was a pattern in the dice roller or what, but I rolled more single digit attacks against the cleric than against the rest of the party put together), so I always had to bump attack rolls against him 1-2 times per encounter so he'd actually get hit.

If I'm doing a single evening adventure, or usually when I'm doing Pathfinder (when they rope me into that) I just roll out in the open and say "screw it". It's more a case of me not being invested enough in the game to care how the combat turns out at that point though. The players have learned to fear me rolling out in the open, because that's when I'm in a mood to have the monsters start coup de graceing whenever somebody goes unconscious.

Edit: You know, this post above makes me sound like a very bad GM indeed now I read it. I'm kind of ok with that. I figure as long as the players are enjoying themselves I can't be doing too bad, and to the best of my knowledge I haven't had anybody complain yet.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Neither myself or any other GM I have played with has altered a player's roll that is in their favor That would smack hugely of being a "bad GM". I would never alter an enemies defense roll if it was bad, only strange extreme results of the attack rolls against players that would artificially halt the "feel" of the combat.

But then again, it's part of what system I play, I think. Savage Worlds actually gives each player a number of "bennies" before each session which can be turned in to re-roll bad dice rolls. And the GM also gets a mechanically allowed number of those for their use as well. That fosters more of a casual approach to gaming if it's what you're used to, I think, and can be seen on other parts of a gaming session.

Like I said, it's all trust and going by the feel of the game session moment to moment. I have had the same GM drive my character into making Incapacitation rolls with a single attack, and in the same session after a horribly botched roll on my part smile and go, "What? I didn't see that roll- you might want to roll it again so I can see". He's my favorite GM to run games.

I wouldn't imply that you or your GM are bad GMs, of course, but I suppose it comes down to an interpretation of trust between player and GM. On the one hand, you have a level of trust that you know your GM is watching out for you, and on the other you have a level of trust where you know the GM is playing by the same rules as you are. They are not mutually exclusive, nor is one more right than the other, it is just what you find for the trust level, I think.

You guys seem to have much more formal relationships with your players. I only played with friends and family, usually just 2 or 3 of us playing at a time. Having a set number of re-rolls before hand wouldn't make any sense since we wouldn't be sticklers for any part of the rules if anyone felt the need for a re-roll to begin with. Our sessions were more like cooperative storytelling than a game that is won or lost. I tried getting into 4E and Pathfinder recently, but the mindset is just alien to me. Might as well play against a computer if we're going to let the mechanics determine everything.

I honestly have played sessions where I got more re-rolls than bennies, but still had a benny left after the game. Pity is my friend.

But I am also the guy who can use a benny to specifically re-roll 2D6 because I got a "1" and a "2", only to get a....."1" and a "3". Much laughter ensues after those.

Having a set number of re-rolls before hand wouldn't make any sense since we wouldn't be sticklers for any part of the rules if anyone felt the need for a re-roll to begin with.

One of the main benefits with bennies in Savage Worlds is that some defining abilities in that game system actually let you start sessions with more then normal (eg. "Luck" skill). Also, it's usually seen as good form for GMs to give out a benny for things that in normal D20 settings would generate bonus XP, or the like.

We even play a high-fantasy setting that introduces a single special one for each person (per game) that can only be used immediately on another player's roll, if something they do is deemed especially worthy of exaltation (usually an extremely good idea or awesome roleplaying), because when using a benny to re-roll, you always get to keep the best roll of the two.

So maybe my mindset is driven by the system, which is really the only one I have ever played (save for several sessions of FantasyCraft and it's bajillion different styles of attacking in combat, urgh)

A lot of games use some sort of equivalent of bennies/action points/etc. to take the sting out of bad luck. Nothing is worse than pulling off a special maneuver that is both really powerful and really cool in context then whiffing the roll and having it fail. :(

Savage World's implementation is good,though... Especially since they dropped the initial roll where bennies also converted to XP, so there was a huge disincentive to using them.

I know one of the major things that provokes me to tell a player to re-roll is when they roll a tremendously awesome to-hit roll, but then roll almost as low as possible on their damage roll. I'm not as familiar with D20 games, but with Savage Worlds that can happen on a fairly frequent basis. I can roll double what I needed to hit a monster, but then roll a 5 or 6 on 4D6.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
I know one of the major things that provokes me to tell a player to re-roll is when they roll a tremendously awesome to-hit roll, but then roll almost as low as possible on their damage roll. I'm not as familiar with D20 games, but with Savage Worlds that can happen on a fairly frequent basis. I can roll double what I needed to hit a monster, but then roll a 5 or 6 on 4D6.

Tell that to my Dark Heresy players..roll under 10 for hitting, then roll 1 or 2 on the damage dice.

My gaming group also kind of uses a sliding scale where the crazier and riskier something is that the player wants to do, the less likely the GM is to be charitable if they botch it.

If you suddenly want to grab the wheel of a car (against the driver's will) from the passenger seat and try to force the vehicle to ram a monster that is made of fire and capable of phasing through walls (setting the walls afire as it goes) because you want to be the center of attention, then go ahead. You have a Driving skill of barely above average, and you seem to forget that you are in a car full of gas, ramming a fire monster.

Pass/Fail, buddy.

*Absolutely true story from a modern fantasy game.

I think it all depends. I started out with more "plot" centric games with recurring villains and so on. As time went on I began to see the merits in allowing more freedom to the players, so I began to be pretty ruthless with my villains- if my players murdered him early, so be it. I was still fairly loose with other rolls as I felt it was needed.

As I've been gaming longer, I've begun to move into a more "sandbox" style, though reading about the OD&D stuff leads me to believe it's just how the game used to be played. In this system, I tend to roll everything in the open. I don't really worry about "balanced" encounters, either, I just make sure the players have reasonable signposts towards danger and if they make dumb decisions, then that's their issue.

Both playstyles are fun. If you are a GM that likes to run heavily based on the storytelling side of things, a little fudging here and there greases the wheels of the story. If you are the sort who leans on the simulationist side of things, rolls out in the open reassures the players that when things go wrong it really is the dice and not you being vindictive.

As to bad GMs, I've been avoiding posting in this thread for a while because I am a sort of perma-GM, so when I get to play under someone else I tend to be really grateful for the chance and prefer to encourage rather than criticise.

I've been a bad GM before though.
I started a homebrew once a few years ago (2007/2008). I had had a fairly successful run of running things in other settings, and my players were pretty keen to see what my homebrew was like. Well, I found out a lot about GMing from that. let me tell you.
1. I spent way too long on world building and not nearly long enough on fleshing out NPCs and villains like I normally would have. This lead to flat villains no one cared about.
2. The world was fairly generic, of course it had a twist, but looking at it now, it was just base D'n'D with all the problems inherent.
3. I was way too interested in "showing off" the setting and didn't work out any sort of plot or motivations for my players.
4. I broke my own golden rule of always giving the group a reason to be together, leading to group infighting and a lack of direciton.
5. When it became obvious the game was stalling, I fell back on some awful clichés (which I am still embarassed about!) including giving the female PC "visions" (argh, cringe, so overdone!).

My players were all very graceful about it, but I really learned a lot about my limits as a GM!

Thankfully, my latest "homebrew" has been much more focused on plots, situations and characters, and way less on cosmology and trying to be "different".

 curran12 wrote:

I agree that it is the GM's job to keep the game fun. And to ensure that the players are having a good time and that the story is moving forward.

I disagree that the GM has to cheat to make that happen. If a GM is fudging rolls because he feels things are too easy or too hard, that is a correction for poor encounter design. It is not the GM's job to guarantee that all players live, nor is it his job to ensure that there are always casualties either, mind you. The GM is the referee, and the referee cannot change the rules to suit the narrative. A GM should be designing encounters and events that challenge, and if there is no risk involved in the challenge, since the GM will bail out the players, I feel the value of the game is lost.

There is no joy in winning a game where you have a free out if things go bad.

'Fudging' is obviously a contentious issue. In my years as a GM, I've come to an opinion that some fudging and railroading tend to be necessary to fully enjoyable storytelling. Though it is a delicate balance, and anything beyond minimal fudging of the dice makes players and their actions irrelevant. Players also aren't idiots and experienced players can smell when things are being fudged and that takes away from the game. In the past there have been some sessions where I was just railroading things too much (for example, making encounters tougher by adding their stats or abilities on the fly when they proved too weak), but I toned it down big time when I noticed that the sessions were just less enjoyable that way. Players need to be able to play, not just travel along.

Having said all that, I think that "if the encounter is too easy/hard, then it's just poor planning" -folks just haven't played systems which are way too unpredictable for that. Maybe it's not such an issue in D&D, but when you play something like RuneQuest, where even weakling monsters can easily cripple or incapacitate very high level characters with nothing but plain dumb luck, sometimes players would just get too frustrated if you didn't tone down your truly awesome dice day.

Worst DM I've ever ever had was a friend of a friend. I joined my friend and played his D&D 3.5 game for 3 sessions. On my 3rd session, I brought another friend. At this point we were level 3 and I was playing a thief. Setting was eberron.

So we were asked to find this guy for this group of paladins. We found him in a small good-aligned town (this part is going to be important later on) and were supposed to report back but a me and my friend decided to stay back and watch him in case he sneaked away while the other party members rode off to report to the paladins.

Then apparently 70 level 15 paladins turn up and start burning the town and shooting and killing everyone with arrows. For NO frigging reason and with no foreshadowing. Even ignoring the fact that it's a good aligned town with the church of a lawful good deity in it, the fact they're killing all these innocent people should really have made them fallen paladins instantly.

So one of the party members, who btw is also a paladin, goes 'no, this isn't right' and tries to stop them. Gets ganked for his effort. My friend also dies to burning arrows. Meanwhile, I'm hiding in the church and praying to the deity to save my char. DM makes me roll a d100 to test if my prayer works. I have to roll below 5 on a d100 and I do, and I hear this divine voice respond. So I quickly hide in the crypt. But nooo, paladins come in and somehow spot me anyway and kill me too.

Needless to say, LAST game I played with that DM.

@Sining

Did the DM even give you a reason for the incredibly stupid story he came up with?

Because had that been my gaming groups DM we would have just immediately called him out on that kind of BS

Basically me and my friend were so annoyed we left almost immediately after that session so we didn't talk about it. But basically the DM tried to defend himself saying that in religious wars, people do burn down innocent towns etc for no reason. Then I pointed out paladins have actual tangible effects from doing evil things like this. Even Paladins of the silver flame.

Also, I don't see a point in making you roll for a deity to save you, have you pass it and then go nope anyway.

Yeah, that sucks.

Sining wrote:
Basically me and my friend were so annoyed we left almost immediately after that session so we didn't talk about it. But basically the DM tried to defend himself saying that in religious wars, people do burn down innocent towns etc for no reason. Then I pointed out paladins have actual tangible effects from doing evil things like this. Even Paladins of the silver flame.

Also, I don't see a point in making you roll for a deity to save you, have you pass it and then go nope anyway.

Yeah, that just doesn't make any sense, if the church wanted to send soldiers to do some dirty work it definitely wouldn't send their paladins, and the fact that they were all at such high level makes even less sense. And if the DM creates a situation were the players are rolling for Deities to save them through no fault of their own, the DM has done something terribly wrong to begin with.

Worst ones I can think of:

1) GM was a liberal arts major and all the players were engineering/science majors in a game with no magic and not very advanced tech. Needless to say there were a lot of "this happens" followed by a lot of "that's impossible, here's why" or "we do this" followed by "it doesn't work" followed by a physics lesson for the GM. The game ended after a couple of sessions because of the above as well as the GM spending most of the time pumping up his significant other.

2) GM that only cared about combat and was railroading us towards his uber race he'd created.

3) Couple other instances where the GM didn't do a good job in limiting players (Rifts & Shadowrun) prior to the game, so we ended up with some weird and overpowered characters that eventually caused the games to fail.

On dice rolling, the longest game I ever attended was diceless and the players got along fairly well. Any other games I played, the GM didn't use a GM screen and everyone rolled out in front of everyone. No dice cheating, good or bad.

 Noir Eternal wrote:

Sining wrote:
Basically me and my friend were so annoyed we left almost immediately after that session so we didn't talk about it. But basically the DM tried to defend himself saying that in religious wars, people do burn down innocent towns etc for no reason. Then I pointed out paladins have actual tangible effects from doing evil things like this. Even Paladins of the silver flame.

Also, I don't see a point in making you roll for a deity to save you, have you pass it and then go nope anyway.

Yeah, that just doesn't make any sense, if the church wanted to send soldiers to do some dirty work it definitely wouldn't send their paladins, and the fact that they were all at such high level makes even less sense. And if the DM creates a situation were the players are rolling for Deities to save them through no fault of their own, the DM has done something terribly wrong to begin with.

Ignoring the roll is what really annoyed me. What's the point in giving people a chance if you're going to deny it when they succeed anyway. Also,it was my friends first time playing pen and paper D&D, and this was a really poor introduction to it

The worst GM I know of is one of my friends. He can only run printed adventures, which isn't a bad thing, but he generally doesn't read them beforehand and gets annoyed if his players go off the track. As he gets more flustered he becomes more unintelligible, forgetting details and speaking at a super fast pace. He also lacks an understanding of game balance, dishing out high out high powered items, then moaning we're winning too easily. When this happens he's fond of trying to kill the party with a Tyrannosaurus Rex that sneaks up on the party. Honestly, a game with him is a countdown clock until a massive ragequit. Outside the game he's great, and importantly makes a fine cup of tea.

Zond wrote:
When this happens he's fond of trying to kill the party with a Tyrannosaurus Rex that sneaks up on the party.

That's lame, but in a it looks cool kinda way..

I ran a game that had the regular joke of "A big red fire dragon flies out of the sky blows everyone away!" for about two years until it was "A big red fire dragon flies out of the sky and. . .Roll for Initiative!"

Does that count?

 Balance wrote:


I've also heard of people who rolled maximum HP per level or per session... So someone with 5 Hit Dice might roll 5d8 each time they sit down to play, and have an ever-changing HP max.

I did that with 1st/2nd, it kept the randomness without making the character permanently account for a single roll on level up. It was easy to explain in as having good days and bad days, however you could make a 'system shock' test to keep the previous sessions HP roll. However if you have down time you lose that privilege and have to roll fresh. If I ever GM 3.5 I will reintroduce this system.

I used the same mechanic for heroic strength, as all the real bonuses for strength were jammed into the 18/% stat which was odd I thought.

 Orlanth wrote:

I used the same mechanic for heroic strength, as all the real bonuses for strength were jammed into the 18/% stat which was odd I thought.

I think Hackmaster added percentile bonuses to all the attributes, while second edition and greater just got rid of them.

It was also a weird core rule for 1st edition that Wish and such would only raise attributes by a 10th of a point, so a 16.1 dexterity was possibly, and absolutely useless. Just saw this recently, but can't remember where.

I've been reading 1st edition AD&D books recently and it's "interesting" how arbitrary rules could be at times. Thinking about it, there's a few sources for this which kind of explains it.

The first is the wargaming roots of the game. I recently read Playing at the World which discuses this and mentions that the origional release of D&D used an Avalon Hill game to handle outdoor exploration rules... So you had the precedent of switching to an entirely unrelated ruleset, that had no provisions for fantasy bits and such, to handle wilderness travel.

The second is that a lot of weird rules may have started as 'spot rules' for a specific adventure or scenario that got carried over to the main game. I've noticed this a few times in "Lets's Read" forum threads over on rpg.net: Some monsters, even well into the 2nd edition era, might have a weird spell, combat strategy, or special disease rules attached. These rules probably made sense in the original adventure but then got included in compilations like the Monstrous Compendiums.

Of course, a lot of stuff in AD&D was 'ground breaking' for RPGs at the time. Knocking on it for arbitrary decisions is kind of like complaining about the lack of AC in a Model T car. Not the first car, but an early enough example that a lot of things were still being worked out.

Backfire wrote:

 curran12 wrote:

I agree that it is the GM's job to keep the game fun. And to ensure that the players are having a good time and that the story is moving forward.

I disagree that the GM has to cheat to make that happen. If a GM is fudging rolls because he feels things are too easy or too hard, that is a correction for poor encounter design. It is not the GM's job to guarantee that all players live, nor is it his job to ensure that there are always casualties either, mind you. The GM is the referee, and the referee cannot change the rules to suit the narrative. A GM should be designing encounters and events that challenge, and if there is no risk involved in the challenge, since the GM will bail out the players, I feel the value of the game is lost.

There is no joy in winning a game where you have a free out if things go bad.

'Fudging' is obviously a contentious issue. In my years as a GM, I've come to an opinion that some fudging and railroading tend to be necessary to fully enjoyable storytelling. Though it is a delicate balance, and anything beyond minimal fudging of the dice makes players and their actions irrelevant. Players also aren't idiots and experienced players can smell when things are being fudged and that takes away from the game. In the past there have been some sessions where I was just railroading things too much (for example, making encounters tougher by adding their stats or abilities on the fly when they proved too weak), but I toned it down big time when I noticed that the sessions were just less enjoyable that way. Players need to be able to play, not just travel along.

Having said all that, I think that "if the encounter is too easy/hard, then it's just poor planning" -folks just haven't played systems which are way too unpredictable for that. Maybe it's not such an issue in D&D, but when you play something like RuneQuest, where even weakling monsters can easily cripple or incapacitate very high level characters with nothing but plain dumb luck, sometimes players would just get too frustrated if you didn't tone down your truly awesome dice day.

Could not agree more on this. It is a fine balance. But done sparingly/minimally when it helps with storytelling I find no issue with the odd fudging of the dice. Also have an exalt.