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[LeoLeonardoIII]

I've definitely played under some adversarial DMs. When I started DMing I was kind of adversarial - but more of a story DM. My DM style now is as impartial as I can make it. I come up with challenges and stuff, but I'm not groaning every time one of my monsters dies. I don't look at it as a loss when the PCs succeed - I love it when they succeed! Basically, I'm not going to fudge things one way or the other.

The problem I'm currently facing is players stumbling into stuff they probably aren't ready for. I put stuff in a place, and they might end up getting there. Say you have a dragon's lair - I feel there should probably be a Desolation of Smaug that lets you know without a doubt you're about to enter the territory of something horrible. But what if it's just a high-HD monster in a dungeon or some mountain valley? Should the DM work to put in signposts that let the players know when they're in a really dangerous place?

Generally dungeon depth is a good indicator of danger, and possibly distance from town in the wilderness (and proximity to especially bad wilderness areas - blasted badlands, haunted deserts, etc). But what if something is dangerous out of its depth? I'm not talking about a balrog on Level 1, I'm talking more like a Grey Ooze on Level 2.

How much of that signposting is the DM veering the gameplay away from certain areas? How do you effectively communicate a specific danger level to the players - or do you communicate "this is higher than you, it's pretty unnerving" vs. "dangerous like any dungeon area, but you can handle it" vs. "you'd have to get really unlucky to have any problems" vs. "this is a town, you're probably fairly safe".

I want to get away from the problem of players stumbling onto what feels like a "killer gotcha" that's really just a challenge slightly out of its depth. Either by making it clear it's tougher, by evening out the difficulty so Level 1 encounters are predictably Level 1 difficulty, or by shrugging and letting the players figure it out (which encourages caution but slows down the game considerably).

And clearly there are boundaries, like Level 1 party getting attacked by a dragon or trolls or something.

So, I'm worrying less about crafting perfect encounters and more about what boundaries I can pull off in an encounter. Make lowbie encounters more interesting, make tough encounters usable because the players are used to the idea of negotiating / sneaking / running / using consumables immediately to win. The wider I can get that range, the less "encounter balance" you need, and the more you can focus on what ought to be there. Freakin' snowy owls and lynxes and ice nixies and shit. Just encounters all over the board but thematically, in the "role-playing the environment" sense, supposed to be encountered by anyone who wanders through.

[Neonivek]

Well it is a strategy for DMs to specifically set things up against the players and try their hardest to kill them with the limited resources they have been allotted.

[Muz]

2. The Release Timetable. First, a brief history of D&D. Back in the 80s, the D&D brand was owned by a company called TSR. They released the 2nd edition in 1987 and made lots of money, but went bankrupt when the founder of the company died and it was taken over by his children, who did not have very good business sense. D&D was then bought up by WOTC, who decided that they would release their own edition. Cue 3rd Edition D&D in 2000. This was deemed to be a good idea and people liked the change for the most part. Then comes 3.5 edition. This was basically 3rd edition with more polish. It came out in 2003. People were a little miffed at having to update their core books, but ultimately they did it. But then in 2007, 4th edition is announced and all further publication of 3.5 comes to an abrupt halt. People declaimed it as a naked cash grab by WOTC, with the entire idea of the new edition to be to force D&D players to buy a whole new set of books. Lots of people just straight up refused to switch over.

This clicked for me. Roleplaying rulesets are hard to learn. They take at least a week and tons of money (especially when you're a teenager!), so people get really attached to them. I spent a few months back then coding AD&D (2nd Ed) tools and playing AD&D MUDs

Then they came up with D&D 3.

Fine. I looked for the books online, spent a bunch of effort learning D&D 3. My favorite game, Baldur's Gate started to switch over, adding classes from D&D 3 but still running AD&D. This was a little confusing.

Then D&D 3.5 came out. I spent a lot of time learning it and bought it and some side books.

Then D&D 4 came out. And when you've spent like a month's salary (as a teenager) on D&D books, this gets really annoying if they're going to flat out throw the old stuff away. So I've decided to stay far away from D&D games, and on viewing other game systems, D&D doesn't look so good anymore.

[Sensei]

Personally, I like sticking with 3.5. Not that I'm not interested in other systems too, but my group is pretty entrenched.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

   Huh, how did I miss this thread? Anyway I guess I should start with why I did not like 4e. Basically it wasn't D&D. For me D&D is a particular flavor of RPG that I happen to like playing. With 4e they completely changed a lot of the flavor. I have played it and the system is great for tactical combat in which you can go through chains of combat encounters in a easy fashion. It is just not D&D to me and thus despite liking the mechanics I can't bring myself to like the system.
   Now onto some stuff I have seen people mention. First is about roleplay in early D&D. While Gygax was said to have developed the game from the wargame chainmail a number of people in the OSR have actually been of late pointing out that this connection is probably just something that was done to help get it out there. The system actually had a lot of roleplay required though it was more dungeon centric roleplay. For instance the original classes where Fighting man, Magic User, and Cleric. Notice the lack of a thief, to find a trap the DM described the room and you described how you searched it. Even when the Grayhawk supplement added the thief class it did not have the ability to find traps but instead just the ability to disarm them. There are a lot of other examples of things like this but basically OD&D and the gaggle of various basic D&D versions needed roleplaying to work. This changed with AD&D because they wanted to put all of those type of things into the rules to make tournament play easier.
   Now for the matter of other roleplaying systems. I am surprised actually that a couple of really old ones have been missed. Mainly the Call of Cthulhu and the Traveller systems. Both of these quite old and quite focused on roleplay. Call is a horror game in the true sense of the word and not the modern slash horror so like any true horror it is based on the story and to build that it needs roleplay to work. Traveller can be played either way but the original system basically packed in your backstory in such a way that it was quite easy. Also you have to admit that any system that is willing to kill a character during character generation is interesting.
   Finally I want to talk about rule mechanics and house rules. Basically arguments between editions and systems should be based off of the rules as written no matter how much I dislike having to go by RAW. Houserules don't count because a good DM is where good houserules come from and a good DM can do that with almost any system. Its the same reason the Minecraft thread here was split into vanilla and modded. Once you start changing the rules you have a new game. A good example of this is how someone mentioned how the 4e monsters where bland and someone answered how they fixed it by making their own monsters. Now if that person had published a book which contained those monsters then its fine but since I find it highly unlikely that this happened if you needed to fix something with a houserule it means something was broken and both people agreed on that. The difference being that one person made up completely new content and changed one of the core parts of the gameplay.

[sambojin]

@Leo.

I guess I should have said "A good DM knows when to ignore the rules and the dice rolls, but ignoring them doesn't make them a good DM or it a good adventure". The players do deserve a good grounding in the game-world and mechanics of it, otherwise it ends up as you said, an experience of enforced storytelling. There is also the matter of outcome of the successes and failures of said dice rolls. A good description of what happens does a lot more than saying "You lose 2HP."

It's one of the challenges of DM'ing to "assist" your players through your adventure, and one that can go horribly wrong. Things like actual adventure mac-guffins compared to basic descriptive wallpaper often do get mixed up. So there's a few (dead) skeletons by the entrance of a troll cave? Well, they were probably there for scene-setting and maybe a loot-pile (I'm a lazy DM on occaision). But when an entire play session ends up with your characters searching for items, identifying them, talking to said skeletons, raising them, arguing about whether raising them is "righteous", equipping skeleton minions, then running away from the cave because there was rumbling and growls coming from inside, it can be quite annoying. They were just meant to see that the cave was a bad place god-dammit! In the end the players did go into the cave, because I "invented" an orc hunting group patrolling the area, a big one. Better the devil you don't know than 20 orcs you do know about.

Sheparding players is fun, but sometimes difficult. Doing things on the fly is a pretty necessary part of it. But believe me, they were all going to die if they didn't go into that damn cave by the end of that play session.

In the imaginary example of the pit jumping, it depends on just how necessary it is for the players to go down there. Piquing player interest in areas is very important (although, as said, can back-fire). Maybe they noticed a glimmer of something shiny whilst jumping across? Maybe they could hear noises coming from the pit? Maybe the player got grabbed by the monster, even though the jump would have been successful. Just saying "well, you didn't make the jump", even though they obviously did, is a bit harsh. But descriptive outcomes can cover a lot of that. Hand wavey explanations sometimes have to work. But sheparding players through interest or fear of death often works as well, better in my opinion. But as campaigns continue and characters get more flexible and powerful, I reserve my right for hand-waving. I'll let them happily destroy a perfectly set up scenario with spells and items, letting the players do whatever they want, as long as they don't mind me killing or maiming them all whenever I get sick of them faffing about.

As a good example of descriptive outcomes and player sheparding, have a look at Einsteinian Roulette on this board. That roll of a 3 can mean lots of things, even if it's just below average. There's a game-system at play, but the outcomes can be very different from what you expect. It does make for a great adventure however. The players still feel "reasonably grounded" in the rules and their "rights" within them, but there's a huge array of outcomes available for any action (like being horribly injured mostly). Pity I had to pull out due to time constraints. I never get time to bludge around on bay12 any more.

I do find 3.5e a far easier format for "complicated" situations than 4e is. It has just enough RPy'ness that you can resolve all kinds of things that are only marginally in the rules (or originally planned to be in the adventure) "fairly" for the players. There's nothing saying you can't do all that in 4th, I just find 3.5e easier to do it in. 

[LeoLeonardoIII]

The ability to easily add new stuff to a game is pretty important to me too. If there are tons of dependencies and interactions between things in the rules it can be hard to add something that won't screw everything up.

Then again, if the game has very little content, the DM might feel like he's forced to make up too much stuff.

So the trick is to include content in the game that's not interconnected - which gets tougher as you add more stuff.

[sambojin]

There is that. The 3.5e (and Pathfinder) ended up with such a massive array of optional rules that it started to get difficult to keep track of. When I did play DnD, both as a player and DM, it was a lot easier to run a campaign where there were only a few supplements (at most) used. By all means, the others are fine reference material, but the system bloated out pretty quickly.

There's also the idea of "player entitlement". Less books used means less options, broken combos, and less griping overall about what a player can and can't do, offically. I'm very much on the side of what-the-DM-says-goes, either as a player or DM. It's a lot more fun and helps play flow along better than constant book searching (even as laptop based .pdfs). Not having a look-up table is often a good thing, where descriptive outcomes and arbitary modifiers to a D20 roll covers situations far more quickly and just as fluently.

On the matter of player sheparding, I also found it useful to always include 3-4 groups of non-main antagonists in any campaign. It's a crutch for a DM, but a useful one. Orcs with character levels can fulfill a range of situations and can turn up anywhere except cities, which is where the local theives guild helps out, with a small mage-cult filling in the blanks between these two. These groups essentially level along-side your players, provide a relatable-to and persistant force of steering/item removal and hassles for the DM to use, and allow encounters to be set up that are interesting without the "insert useful monster here" syndrome.

They don't have to be deadly, they can just be a painful hassle. Eventually your characters start to get the idea of "don't go there" or "hurry the hell up" once thieves nick some of their best items during their "but I want to and can and will craft stuff for the next 2 weeks *adventure*". Sometimes an orc swooping over the area on a drake is all it takes for people to not decide to go exploring *way-outside-what-this-adventure-was-supposed-to-be-about*. If not, they'll learn.

I guess what I'm saying is that you sort of have to do this stuff sometimes. Making up stuff on the fly is necessary, but not when your PCs decide to go to an entirely different continent than the play-session you had planned was to happen on. You may not have actually done any creation of said continent yet (other than in very general terms). It exists, they just weren't meant to decide to travel there. Unfortunately at higher levels characters sometimes can do these kinds of things if you follow the game-rules too closely (this is an extreme example, but you get my drift). Invisible walls are a necessary evil in RPGs, they can simply take many different forms. Persistant antagonist groups are one of the easiest ways to do this and can become adventures in themselves later on. Or even during a play-session. I took to making a back-up adventure where my players can go "off-the-beaten-path" to go through these invisible walls. They were simply choosing-a-different-adventure and the walls just got deadlier. It also lets these walls not be insurmountable. They can provide XP, they can be overcome, but it certainly isn't easy or likely. Plus, those adventurers WILL get back to doing what they were meant to, or face the consequences of failing.

Make the walls not inpenetrable, but rather tough. Even let amazing things happen due to the players smacking their heads up against the walls. But they're walls and they're there for a reason. Found a crypt? Guess what? You are not allowed to hire 20 peasant workers for three months and at chump-pay and set up an archaeological dig-site with the local army and church providing security. Why? You just can't. Bad things happen to adventurers that overcome undead dungeon-crawls this way.
   
It may be up to you to not provide the tools to your players, but sometimes things do get out of hand. Players are incredibly creative creatures and you can't think of every horrible thing they'll do. Item, ability, HP and every other type of removal is necessary sometimes, but how you do it is another matter entirely. Let the characters live or die on their merits and actions, but sometimes a bit of a boost or a kick up the arse is completely justifiable.
   

[Lectorog]

I made a mansion for my players to explore. They literally destroyed the entire town before they made it through the second floor. Three player-induced player deaths happened in the process, and one player is now a powerful NPC antagonist who will be encountered later.
There was a clearly interesting entrance to the mansion basement visible in the ruins, but they ignored it. After a couple of disastrous small adventures (three more player deaths), the players decided to settle in a small town. They struck up a deal a nearby burrowing dragon (my design) and organized a mercenary-guild-slash-army. The town became a massive cattle trading hub, the mercenary population soon greatly outnumbered the civilian population, and the town amassed enough gunpowder to level a small city.
There are rules for none of this. My players had a great time taking part in making it up.

The moral of this story is that sometimes players enjoy messing with the game mechanics themselves. Transparency can be a game itself.

You can't do it in 4e though. Just because. 4e is stupid, come on now.

[Neonivek]

You can't do it in 4e though. Just because. 4e is stupid, come on now

As a stand alone it isn't stupid. It just lends itself to a different kind of game.

You don't become a sorcerer in Call of Cthulhu without your quick and fatal end. Yet that isn't a flaw.

I'd love to try doing a 4e game where the players are actually leaders of a hero's guild and they command their troops into battle. Where they need to be very strategic in their turns and decide who they take with them. Along with recruitment and all that.

That is a game type that is TERRIBLE-mediocre to do in most pen and paper RPGs but is PERFECT for 4e (and Battletech).

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

   Honestly a good GM can do a lot with a base to start off of. There are not rules in 4e that would allow the stuff Lectorog described but a lot of that can be roleplayed and houseruled by a good enough GM. The problem is that good GMs are a rare breed.

[Neonivek]

   Honestly a good GM can do a lot with a base to start off of. There are not rules in 4e that would allow the stuff Lectorog described but a lot of that can be roleplayed and houseruled by a good enough GM. The problem is that good GMs are a rare breed.

I would argue that it isn't that "good GMs" are rare... but that a good GM is very situational.

A great GM for one game may be a terrible one in another.

Heck there was this one GM I had once and his games were a BLAST!!! Why? Because he was such a terrible story teller that his games were hilarious! There was a magic television that was clearly not intended to be magical and "East Side Marios" that turned into a night of steamy passion. It didn't matter WHAT was on that television there always was going to be something bad going to happen. So one time after hearing about a part on the news there was an ending bit about the stock market clearly not meant to be important. So we all joked about how important the stockmarket was and we should plan a trip to wallstreet where a disaster was about to occur.

The only reason it ended was because eventually the GM caught onto how bad a storyteller he was and stopped GMing, which is honestly a shame because no one could write stories like he could even intentionally, heck I wish I could write like he could. Yet when it comes to the BEST games I've been in, this one is in my top 5 (Two others was a 4e one and a Harry Potter one... which are in my favorite because I roleplayed PERFECTLY! Which is rare)

[LeoLeonardoIII]

OK, it's on my list. Next campaign I run has gotta have a magic television.