"Random DM Conference"

Hello ladies, gentlemen, ghoul, and ghosts. I am Mutt and I have been using Roll20 a bit now and am a great fan of the overall community. Together with you all I have shared about 10 or so days behind my keyboard hosting sessions and trying to help player learn and develop. I have seen other DMs doing the same, regardless of what edition or game they run. So I propose the following, I have a google hangout ready to go as a sort of open floor for the discussion of idea in an orderly fashion. You can come and go as you please but I will have a list of topics from start to finish including Map-Making, Encounter Design, "Build a Boss Workshop", One and Dones, and of course anything else people come up with.&nbsp; <a href="https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_/86c28ff8fcf68182e937593785692f66fac28397?authuser=0&amp;hl=en" rel="nofollow">https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_/86c28ff8fcf68182e937593785692f66fac28397?authuser=0&amp;hl=en</a>

Your impromptu stuff is always so random mutt! I will try to pop in a few cuz I love a learning experiences.&nbsp;

Have to keep the community on their toes... or claws... or... astral floating goo?

As a note I have started broadcasting with me and a player looking to DM; current topic is Open-World Campaigns v Railroads etc.

Fun times.

Is this still going on? How's this work?

Sorry no, but this is something I would love to make an actual regular thing :3

I'm curious about the Open World v. Railroad dichotomy. Why do you feel that way? You can very easily have a constrained campaign does not force the players to go in any particular direction. My campaign's world is open and fully developed, but they cannot, for example, cross the ocean to a different continent at level 1. Does that mean they're being railroaded?

i have mixed feelings about open world campaigns. most open world campaigns i have been in just seem to meander, this may be because of ineffective DMing or my own lack of player ingenuity, or both, but it always seemed like the these games got alot funner once they veered into railroad territory, after you slap the king and must now make your way out of the castle, only to he saved by sewer dwelling citzens, who then are your only chance of survival so you help them overthrow the monarchy, only to find out his daughter is actually evil incarnate and is really pulling all the strings...yadda yadda yadda...with a railroad there is direction, the important thing seems to be to make that railroad look wider than it is by giving the illusion of choice in some circumstances. &nbsp;thats what works for me as a dm atleast with my current group,&nbsp;

I have found through experience that the D&amp;D community in particular is deeply confused as to what railroading is. Railroading is just a tool for a DM that writes plots in the Hickman style of adventure preparation. A plot in an RPG is a pre-determined sequence of events for the game's content -&nbsp;A happens, then B happens, then C happens, and so on. Like any tool, it can be good or bad. What makes it good or bad is whether or not you have asked your players for their buy-in. DMs who use railroading techniques like obfuscation, redirection, Schrodinger's gun, quantum ogre, etc. and do not tell their players they are doing so are using the illusion of choice. This is bad if your players have the expectation that their choices are actually meaningful in the context of the game. It's doubly bad when they have this expectation and they find you out (and they will). Railroading can be just fine if your players know they're being railroaded and, having given their buy-in already on that premise, and can even help make it happen by staying on the obvious tracks to experience the prepared content. So if you're going to write a plot for your adventures, tell the players so! Your game will run better. Railroading can only happen with a game that has a plot. Games without plots are in the Gygaxian style of adventure&nbsp;preparation&nbsp; These are situations and locations, either static (monsters hanging out in the dungeon) or dynamic (monsters in a location pursuing their goals and motivations), with no predetermined sequence of events to experience the game's content. Many Gygaxian adventures are called "sandbox." Above, Reb S. mentions (correctly) that many open world campaign just seem to meander. I refer to these games (and they sure are common) as "quicksand box" games because nothing really seems to be going on and it's boring as hell. This is because the DM confuses having an open world with having a world that just sits there reacting to the PCs. This can work if you have very dynamic players, but this is rare because dynamic play requires fictional context which an open world under these DMs often lacks. So, in order for a Gygaxian game to have more "direction," the DM should prepare motivations and goals for his monsters and NPCs and have them pursue and achieve those goals (and visibly so). This will allow the PCs to both act and react, which greatly increases the action in the game. This is why, in a game like mine without plots, so much stuff is going on that it's easy for the players to make choices and then we play to find out what happens. (Even I don't know the outcomes.) Obviously, I have some thoughts on this matter, so I hope to make it to one of the DM conferences!

Alex R. said: I'm curious about the Open World v. Railroad dichotomy. Why do you feel that way? You can very easily have a constrained campaign does not force the players to go in any particular direction. My campaign's world is open and fully developed, but they cannot, for example, cross the ocean to a different continent at level 1. Does that mean they're being railroaded? If your game is prepared with a plot, yes, it can be mean they're being railroaded. If the game has no plot, then there is no railroading. The PCs may simply lack the means at level 1 to do what they want and thus this desire becomes a goal for the campaign - go across the ocean at some point when they have the resources. Goal-building through collaboration with the players would also be a good topic for the DM conference!

A DM Conference (held semi-regularly) with several breakout rooms in Google Hangout would be super. A room for experienced DMs to mentor new DMs, a rules debate area, a design idea area etc. There are a bunch of lurkers in this community waiting for something to happen. A persistant conference area could spark all sorts of activity.

Wonderful write up Iserirth :3. When I say rail-roading though, I generally mean that the players found something aside from what you have prepared and you tell them "no" while open-world you encourage them but incentivize targeting goals that NPCs have informed you about. At least this is my viewpoint. If it happens that enough people find we all have time off together I would love to do another one of these, alas I work all day today :o

Thanks. Yes, "railroading" like "metagaming" are words that have lost pretty much all meaning in the RPG community. These words have definitions. (I gave the one for railroading above.) Most of the time, these words are now used to mean "that thing you're doing that I don't like." That's a shame because knowing what these terms mean allow you to understand when things like railroading or metagaming are good and when they are bad. Neither are inherently bad, nor inherently good. Telling a player "No" in order to keep them on your prep is not railroading, unless your prep includes a plot - PCs must do A, then B, then C, and so on. If your prep is simply a dynamic location with no plot and the players choose to have their characters leave that location, saying "No" is simply a matter of the DM indicating (rather un-diplomatically) that the content for that session is in that location and nowhere else. But let's back up and find the source of this problem: Having to say "no" in the first place is a failure on the DM's part of obtaining the players' buy-in on that game's content. If you've created a dynamic location for the game and nothing else, you should tell the players that this is where the content (and thus, the adventure) is, and ask them if they'll stay there until it's complete, at least for this session. If they say "Yes," then you'll never need to tell them "No." The difference between a great game and a crappy one - regardless of whether the DM prepares plots - is whether or not the DM has the players' buy-in. It should be noted that the only difference between Hickman and Gygax styles is whether or not you have a plot. All other elements are completely the same - locations, situations, NPCs, goals, monsters, etc. If you have a plot, you're in the Hickman style. If you do not, you're in the Gygax style. Both mean approaching DMing differently... but both require buy-in from the players to work best!

Well, being a lover of definitions myself, I do not mean to mis-use a word. But as with most words in modern times their meanings are lost and so I personally use the term in the way most common to the mind. Personally,&nbsp;preparation&nbsp;is both my greatest enemy and my greatest ally in that I know I have enough prepared for my players to last awhile, but the moment I stop preparing they'll catch me with my pants down XD.&nbsp; As for what Atomic Knight said, this is kind of what I had in mind. This community is amazing . I know there are plenty of players that would love to do this sort of thing though my own experience is quite limited and there are DM's far more qualified to run this sort of thing as my only real goal of this is brain-picking/luring players to the dark-side of the DM screen. Anyhow I will look at setting up a community on G+ since Hangout is a nice feature (the rest of G+ not so much XD) ( Last little thing I do before I settle down for my work day )

Denathil "The Mutt" Verasi said: Well, being a lover of definitions myself, I do not mean to mis-use a word. But as with most words in modern times their meanings are lost and so I personally use the term in the way most common to the mind. Personally,&nbsp;preparation&nbsp;is both my greatest enemy and my greatest ally in that I know I have enough prepared for my players to last awhile, but the moment I stop preparing they'll catch me with my pants down XD.&nbsp; If you pierce the arbitrary barrier on who's "allowed" to create content in the game, not only is the DM's prep greatly reduced, but it comes with the inherent buy-in of the players as they put their own ideas into play to create content for the group collectively. This collaborative process breaks down the wall between players and DM. It makes it easy to improvise games that way and to always be prepared for anything, because if the DM can't think of something interesting on the fly, it can be offered to the players to flesh out. If a DM has a problem with player engagement (very common from what I see when I play in other people's games), this is one way to solve it. It works wonders in my own games. Collaborative play, the "Yes, and..." technique, and how those can be used to both enhance the game experience and allow games to be more frequent (since prep is greatly reduced) would also be a great topic for the DM conference!

Is it bad I felt the hairs on the back of my neck informing me there was a post? /addict Many a great topic has been listed, now if only there were more hours in the day. Since there are so many viewers it seems, there is clearly a great deal of interest in this sort of thing, and that makes me a happy dog. Topics in particular from what I listed that I really want to go over with other DMs would be Encounter Design and Boss Encounters, I loosely went over this in the short chat we did yesterday but would love other opinions.

@Iserith - As I am a new DM, I simply pulled my definition of railroading from the Dungeon Master's Guide that I recently read. Railroading : If a series of events occurs no matter&nbsp; what the characters do, the players end up feeling&nbsp; helpless and frustrated. Their actions don’t matter,&nbsp; and they have no meaningful choices. A dungeon that&nbsp; has only a single sequence of rooms and no branches&nbsp; is another example of railroading. If your adventure&nbsp; relies on certain events, provide multiple ways those&nbsp; events can occur, or be prepared for clever players to&nbsp; prevent one or more of those events. Players should&nbsp; always feel as though they’re in control of their characters, the choices they make matter, and that what they&nbsp; do has some effect on the end of the adventure and on&nbsp; the game world. My understanding was that the word has a negative or even pejorative connotation — that a world with plot needn't railroad its players. Is that the case, or do I have a misunderstanding of the term? I defer to your judgment, as I have only enough experience to parrot the works of others at this point in my DMing career. Iserith said: Alex R. said: I'm curious about the Open World v. Railroad dichotomy. Why do you feel that way? You can very easily have a constrained campaign does not force the players to go in any particular direction. My campaign's world is open and fully developed, but they cannot, for example, cross the ocean to a different continent at level 1. Does that mean they're being railroaded? If your game is prepared with a plot, yes, it can be mean they're being railroaded. If the game has no plot, then there is no railroading. The PCs may simply lack the means at level 1 to do what they want and thus this desire becomes a goal for the campaign - go across the ocean at some point when they have the resources. Goal-building through collaboration with the players would also be a good topic for the DM conference! Ah, but this brings up another interesting issue. What would you call a plot in the context of a D&amp;D game? Could it be as simple as a motivation instilled in the players from the start? Or does it require robustly defined exposition, conflict, and story-driven events? My world has a conflict; the players must deal with the conflict. Everything else is up to their imagination. Does my campaign fit into the Gygaxian or the Hickman style? The boundaries of the world are defined, and the geographical and demographic features are mostly static, but the world does not have inherent constraints on where the party may travel. Is it still considered open-world? Why or why not?

@Alex R.: That definition of railroading is not entirely accurate. Even game designers can get this wrong (and do). In fact, the part about it being railroading to have a dungeon with no branches is actually ridiculous. The word does carry a negative connotation, but much of this stems from people being miffed about the effects of railroading, not the railroading itself. Plenty of players are perfectly happy to go along with the DM's rails as long as it leads to Awesome Town. It's when you don't get their buy-in on that where you run into problems. Plenty of DMs either assume they have the buy-in on their plot or use illusion of choice techniques to subvert choice to make it happen. That's when people start to hate railroading and what most people think of when the term is used. Buy-in is key to having any technique work without blowback. In an RPG, a plot is a predetermined sequence of events for the PCs. It's a very specific thing. "Plot" is another word, much like railroading or metagaming , that many gamers use to describe just about anything in a D&amp;D game. It's not accurate and is very confusing when they do this as it muddles some very critical concepts required to be a great DM. The most common conflation is between "plot" and "story." Those are not the same thing. So, a plot in an RPG is very similar to the plot of a TV show: The PCs do A, then they go and do B, then they go and do C, etc. The story is the tale produced by playing through that plot. If your game doesn't have that predetermined nature to it, then you don't have a plot in your game and you're not in the Hickman style. Here's an example plot (taken from this article ): "Pursuing the villains who escaped during last week’s session, the PCs will get on a ship bound for the port city of Tharsis. On their voyage they will spot a derelict. They will board the derelict and discover that one of the villains has transformed into a monster and killed the entire crew… except for one lone survivor. They will fight the monster and rescue the survivor. While they’re fighting the monster, the derelict will have floated into the territorial waters of Tharsis. They will be intercepted by a fleet of Tharsian ships. Once their tale is told, they will be greeted in Tharsis as heroes for their daring rescue of the derelict. Following a clue given by the survivor of the derelict, they will climb Mt. Tharsis and reach the Temple of Olympus. They can then wander around the temple asking questions. This will accomplish nothing, but when they reach central sanctuary of the temple the villains will attempt to assassinate them. The assassination attempt goes awry, and the magical idol at the center of the temple is destroyed.&nbsp;Unfortunately&nbsp; this idol is the only thing holding the temple to the side of the mountain — without it the entire temple begins sliding down the mountain as the battle continues to rage between the PCs and villains!" That's a plot. Adventures with plots like that started appearing in 1982, many years after the game's inception, and was considered revolutionary ("The Hickman Revolution"). It was a departure from the Gygaxian style of dungeons and locations to be explored and subdued (or whatever). &nbsp;By contrast, here's a non-plot situation: "The villains have escaped on two ships heading towards Tarsis. One of the villains transforms during the voyage into a terrible monster and kills the crew, leaving the ship floating as a derelict outside the coastal waters of Tharsis. At such-and-such a time, the ship will be spotted by the Tharsis navy. The other villains have reached the Temple of Olympus atop Mt. Tharsis and assumed cover identities." A situation is just a premise really. A thing that's going on which may or may not have a timeline independent of the PCs and that takes place in a location. To use an example from a game you played in that I ran ( Vanguard of Dis ), that's a location and a situation. There was no plot there because there was no assumption on the part of the DM on a predetermined sequence of events for the PCs. It was up to you how that all unfolded, even with the timeline of the scenario in place. As a result, each group that goes through that adventure has a different outcome and a different story is told as a result. It should be noted that neither style is superior, just different. But neither style works well without player buy-in. So my advice to DMs out there is to know what style you're running in, what it means to run in that style, and to be absolutely transparent with your players as to what you're doing and what that means. Failure to do so is an open invitation for problems in your game.

I want to agree with you on the issue of buy-in, but the fact remains that depriving players of agency may lead to some crestfallen gamers. What if they don't realize what they're buying into or get sick of being told what they're doing halfway through? It's more likely to occur with inexperienced players, I s'pose. As for the description of the two styles — that clarifies things greatly, but it does not entirely answer my question. The world that I have crafted has a vast web of finite possibilities: The villains have escaped on three ships.&nbsp; If they choose to pursue villain A, they run into a derelict ship. If they board the derelict ship, they discover that villain A transformed into a monster and killed his crew (this happens whether or not the PCs discover it). If they try to help the villain reclaim his humanity, they discover X adventure hook. If they try to fight the villain, they discover Y adventure hook. If they retreat, they discover Z adventure hook. If instead of boarding the derelict ship, they ignore it, the adventure progresses. They may later hear a tale of the consequences of their action. Perhaps a merchant ship boarded the derelict and met a gruesome end. If they chose to pursue villain B instead............ you get the gist. So you see, it's not an A -&gt; B -&gt; C -&gt; D -&gt; E type of plot-based adventure. It does not provide an illusion of choice, but asks for actual choice which leads to real possibilities. I react to the players' decisions in real-time when necessary, and with pre-planned alternatives when possible. I fully expect that half or more of my encounters, maps, challenges, and puzzles will never see the light of day. That's okay. I can add them to a library of assets that can be repurposed for later use in a different situation, or as emergency material when improvisation goes sour. But neither is it an entirely open world of the Gygaxian sort with limitless possibilities. If the players choose, instead of going north at the beginning of the campaign, to go south, I will have nothing to offer them. Thankfully, such a drastic disruption of my overall plan has not occurred, but if it does, I will have failed. I am extremely reluctant to say "no" to anything, but there are certain conceivable answers — which should theoretically be possible — to the problems that I have crafted that are simply not acceptable solutions. I cannot call it an open world. Could you?

Here's the thing with buy-in: You either get it from your players or you don't. Would you prefer to find out you don't have it halfway through the adventure as the player purposefully derails your plot or leaves your prepared non-plot location? (This is a very common DM "complaint" by the way.) Or would you rather the player knows what he is getting into first, agrees to it, and helps you make it go smoothly? Buy-in happens&nbsp; before the game, not during. ("Player agency" only exists during the context of the game.) They agree to it and play or they don't agree to it and don't play. That one simple thing makes every game so much better. Based on what you are telling me about your game, you are not running in the Hickman style. You're running in the Gygaxian style with what appears to be heavy contingency planning. Contingency planning is one of the biggest time sinks a DM can have and can represent a great deal of "wasted" effort. (Re-purposing things, as you say, helps with that.) I make no judgment as to whether one should or should not do it; myself, I don't, because I value the least amount of prep time compared to the most amount of play time. Contingency planning goes against that approach. The whole concept of an "open world" is a funny one because there's really no such thing. Meaningful choice and decisions require fictional context and fictional context is a form of creative constraint. Constraint is by definition the opposite of "open." Do we go north to the swamp or south to the forest? Those are constraints because they are things established in the world and we can't choose "go to the space station." That you may not have prepped the forest could be an issue, but only to the extent that you're not comfortable with improvisation or collaboration. This is not a failure on your part as you say above. It simply requires different skills than the contingency planning you're doing now.

You need to pop this on a YouTube channel "DMdebate" or something. I would love to listen in on anything I missed. As is I need to put some time aside to absorb this thread. &nbsp;

Buy-in happens&nbsp; before&nbsp; the game, not during. Yes, but you don't always know the result of the buy-in until later, right? People change their minds. Someone could have been okay with it, but once he got a taste of the way things were going, he didn't like it. What do you do then?&nbsp;&nbsp; You're running in the Gygaxian style with what appears to be heavy contingency planning. I can agree with that assessment. However, see if you like this article . It offered me an interesting perspective on the non-dichotomy that is plot-driven/sandbox world design.&nbsp; Those are constraints because they are things established in the world and we can't choose "go to the space station." That opens up another new topic. Do the laws of physics, magic, and nature in your world prevent it from being "open"? I would argue that they do not. Precluding your players' characters from visiting a space station in an average campaign is no different from forbidding those characters from visiting your living room. If it doesn't make sense within the context of the world's natural or metaphysical laws, it should not be considered a constraint, but merely a reasonable stopping point for creative progress. I guess you could argue that that's just a different way to spell "constraint", but again, the issue is in the connotation.&nbsp; &nbsp; This is&nbsp; not&nbsp; a failure on your part as you say above. It simply requires different skills than the contingency planning you're doing now. It is not a failure in the sense that I have no content planned for a session that visits the hypothetical forest. It is a failure because I have no story for what happens in the forest. It does not affect the plot. I would need to somehow get the players out of that forest and back on the path to the swamp, or the campaign would not be the one that I had created, but something altogether different. But if I told the players that, then they would feel like they were being robbed of a legitimate choice. EDIT : To add to the topic of the theoretical space-station, I would argue that such a setting would be outside &nbsp;your world, and therefore not a limit upon it. As long as you don't advertise that setting as a place that the players could conceivably go (since they invented it), it is not a constraint on your world, but on theirs . In contrast, the hypothetical forest that I created is really just a wall with some trees drawn on it. This is not an exact metaphor, but it suits the purpose of this discussion. In reality, the "forest" plays a part in the latter half of the campaign; it just is not useful at this point.

Just noting I'm still alive and enjoying heavily the back and fourth while in my tired little brain I have the little girl from that taco commercial going "Why not both?" The World Map itself is open-ended. This by no means infers that the world is dynamic, in fact that would be absurd unless your world is a literal sandbox (don't forget your shovels!). The events in the world are the dynamic things, and it is up to the players to trigger them and in my opinion the DMs job to set up the trigger events. But that's a sort of dumb-downed viewpoint as I am a bit pressed for time and hope what I mean gets through.

@Alex R.: As to the results of buy-in, this is either a failure of the DM to explain the style and theme of the game or a player who is not acting in good faith. Enjoying a game and offering your buy-in are separate issues. You can offer your buy-in and then not enjoy the game. It'd be a jerk move to be halfway through the game to which you've given your buy-in and then to act out in ways contrary to that because you don't like it. I admittedly skimmed the article, but I can tell it does make a presumption: That the DM is not sharing foreknowledge to the players. I think this is a mistake, one that many DMs make because they fear "metagaming." DMs who fear metagaming are actually shooting themselves in the foot and completely setting themselves up for failure. Me, I share the potential outcomes of choices to the players so they can make a decision that they find most fun. In fact, oftentimes, I collaborate directly with the players on what those outcomes will be. I have no plot and no contingencies planned, so what's it to me? I get the fun of playing to find out what happens, too! Not being able to go to a space station is a constraint whether it's a lack of means or a lack of existence. The issue is that constraints aren't inherently bad! In fact, they are very helpful because they give context to make decision-making easier. I still hold to the idea that you have not failed in any way by not preparing for a player's choice. It just requires different skills - improvisation and collaboration - to handle. As well, "story" in an RPG context is an artifact of play - it is the thing that is produced by actually playing the game (whether that's a plot or a non-plot situation/location). You can't "create" it beforehand. I think you're also conflating some terms with regard to adventure and campaign. It would be an adventure in the swamp; multiple adventures which may or may not be in the same swamp would be a campaign . Adventures are made up of scenes . The DM need only prep the adventures (which may or may not have a plot), not the scenes, and not the campaign or story. Those will happen on their own by simply playing. At most, the DM need only frame them and discuss the stakes questions. Preparing the swamp and then the players going to the forest that you don't have prepared is a failure of getting buy-in which takes place before you play. Players that give their buy-in on the swamp and then up and decide to go to the forest are not acting in good faith on the buy-in they gave you.

Gentlemen, while I stressed that I love the discussion at hand, the subject is a bit beaten at the moment. Overall would be considered lovely if perhaps another of the topics brought up could get nibbled at? Just saying going over each post a second time before &nbsp;I log out for the afternoon's work the same concepts are being traded back and forth with no real meat being added to the stew.

So if I understand correctly, a railroading adventure will always play out the same way regardless of PCs. A Gygaxian adventure will do nothing until the PCs do something. Is the issue problem solving ? As a DM, I see it my job to provide problems for my PCs to solve. I only need to know that it can be solved but if I decide how it will be solved I'm railroading. If I don't put in any problems then it's too open-world.

@Denathil: Throw us some meat! @John B.: An adventure with a plot will more or less play out the same way regardless of the PCs actions. It can be a linear plot or it can be more complex like a Choose Your Own Adventure book. (Making no judgment, and after some reflection, Alex R's game could be approaching this style. Plotted, but complex. It really depends. Contingencies tend to be "if" and plots tend to be "will." If you've got "will" buried behind "if" and you can't make a choice that isn't an "if," then you've got a plot there.) Some choices will be different and it may color the narrative in different ways, but the general outcome will be the same because there is a plot. Note, however, that DMs frequently create plots, then abandon them when the players have a good idea or the like. This doesn't mean there's no plot. It's just that the DM was willing to throw away some of his prep. A Gygaxian adventure is a location and/or situation. A location-only game is static... some monsters are hanging out waiting to be killed. A location with a situation is dynamic - things are going on regardless of the PCs until they intervene. Then things can change dramatically. Choosing the solution to a problem beforehand is not railroading, but it's also not a good idea because it stymies forward motion in the game.

I think you had a great idea Mutt, but if it is going to turn into a debate and not a&nbsp;collaboration&nbsp;of ideas and ways to DM, I think I will pass. This seems now to be the same old&nbsp;arguments. Tracy would get a kick out of the "Hickman style of adventure&nbsp;preparation." I know I did!

We're not debating or arguing. We're discussing and collaborating. Do you have something to add to the discussion as others have done? Perhaps you'd like to discuss a different topic?

@Iserith Well, I personally would love to hear how other DMs go about encounter design, and I don't mean simply what kind of creatures or what have you, but the strength. In the brief talk we had yesterday I mentioned the "Exp Budget" and apparently had twenty eyes and a horn coming out of my head with how those who heard me reacted. Now there are a&nbsp;plethora&nbsp;of tools out there to aid in making Random Encounters, this is also not the target of my topic. More in line are the planned encounters. I run my game with extreme emphasis on fighting, my players slog through fight after fight once they have triggered an event but I question myself when I do this. This means they are rarely ambushed so it is something I am, as a DM, trying to work on. @OldSchoolChris Having read and read each post back and forth I can understand how it may seem an argument, but both sides are more... picking apart the subject rather than trading blows with it, both were looking inward and it is fascinating to witness :3. If anyone, and I mean anyone, has a topic they would like to discuss, either out of curiosity, or if they feel it would aid newer DMs by all means post it here and the google community group I linked before will be given a topic section specifically for that. Not that I do not adore Roll20's forums, this allows for the discussion to branch out without people wading through their specific conversations :) If any DM's are free in say... a half hour (2030 CST ((-6 GMT))) I would love to get the minds to meet verbally and go over the topics in that light :3 TLDR I love this community and you guys are just proving I was right in finding it to be awesome :D

<a href="https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_/558326f8670ff8aa9c4a7761af7c210db6a75eba?authuser=0&amp;hl=en" rel="nofollow">https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_/558326f8670ff8aa9c4a7761af7c210db6a75eba?authuser=0&amp;hl=en</a> &nbsp;For anyone lurking around with ideas to share.

@OldSchoolChris - I did not get the impression that Iserith and I were debating or arguing. He is vastly more knowledgeable than I am about DM topics. I literally did not consider the possibility of DMing until March of this year. If you take a look back at my responses, you'll see that many of them were phrased as questions. I am interested in learning more about planning campaigns, worlds, and adventures — not in arguing my point of view. I admittedly skimmed the article, but I can tell it does make a presumption: That the DM is not sharing foreknowledge to the players. I think this is a mistake, one that many DMs make because they fear "metagaming." DMs who fear metagaming are actually shooting themselves in the foot and completely setting themselves up for failure. Me, I share the potential outcomes of choices to the players so they can make a decision that they find most fun. In fact, oftentimes, I collaborate directly with the players on what those outcomes will be. I have no plot and no contingencies planned, so what's it to me? I get the fun of playing to find out what happens, too! @Iserith - I fear sharing knowledge with my players because I don't want to ruin the surprise of what the world holds in store for them. My campaign is a vast adventure of exploration and discovery, with potential conflicts sprouting up along the way. The world map is hidden (save for the areas they have explored), and the PCs only know as much about the world as a reasonable historian might. How would you suggest I share foreknowledge but keep the sense of mystery and excitement?&nbsp; Well, I personally would love to hear how other DMs go about encounter design @Mutt - I do take the XP budget into account, but it's only as a "sanity check" of my encounter. In other words, I build the encounter first, and then I check to see if my budget seems reasonable. The way that I begin planning an encounter is by choosing the overarching style of the fight. For example, will there be one powerful monster leading a host of weaker troops? Will there be several powerful monsters acting in concert? Will the encounter begin with a small fight, only for powerful reinforcements to arrive?&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;After I determine the "type" of encounter that I'm interested in producing, I examine the types of races and monsters that exist in the geographic and social locale of the area where the PCs are present. If it is illogical for a particular encounter to occur, given the pre-established parameters of my world, then I scrap it immediately and choose another. Usually, however, I can choose something that makes sense. For example, a pack of wolves in the forest might hunt in much the same way as a roving band of goblins in the plains.&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;Now that I have chosen the "type" of encounter and the "races" that will participate, I look for monster synergy. I try to find interesting tactics that keep players on their toes. I determine how many of each role of monster is necessary to execute a particular maneuver, and I ask "what would happen if this &nbsp;monster were to be killed? what if this one were to be temporarily disabled? what if the PCs sneak up on the group?"&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;When it seems like the encounter is difficult enough to be non-trivial, I decide what level of difficulty I would like to assign to it. If I want it to be a difficult encounter, I increase the number of monsters or add traps or skill checks to the battle. I also include emergency contingencies in the case that the PCs have thought of something that I haven't. Perhaps there are additional monsters sleeping in a nearby cave that must roll perception checks to hear the battle and come to the PCs aid. Perhaps one of the monsters becomes more powerful when bloodied. As far as the PCs know, this is all pre-ordained, unless I produce some logical inconsistency in my storytelling. Since I prepare all of this beforehand, it doesn't tend to happen. Also, I usually do not scale encounters down. I typically underestimate my party rather than overestimate them. Stupidity is rewarded with pain.

@Denathil: As a philosophy, I don't design encounters, I frame scenes as they come about, introduce tension, and leave it to the PCs. In my experience, if the DM thinks of things as encounters, two things happen: (1) The DM pushes the encounter to happen because it otherwise represents wasted prep, or (2) encounters become seen as a problem to be solved only one way (power cards). Which is fine, mind you! I love fighting. I just don't want to push an agenda when I DM or give the players the impression that a given problem must be solved with the sword.&nbsp; So instead, we frame the purpose of the scene with stakes questions and see how it plays out. It flows more naturally, in my view, and you don't have that huge "gearshift" between combat and non-combat interaction (paperwork like initiative notwithstanding). I have my content for a given location (NPCs, traps, monsters, hazards, etc.), the number and strength of which is based very loosely on level +2 to level +4 in a given sector* (but not necessarily concentrated, distinct from other "encounters," or even allied). I know where monsters and NPCs are or what they'd likely be doing given their goals at any given time depending on what's going on. They react according to how the PCs aid or interfere with their goals. They may also react to random (usually rolled during a short and/or extended rest) or scheduled events that occur as the situation unfolds. &nbsp;Five-minute workdays are reduced with time limits (real or fictional) or random events and escalation. Resting costs&nbsp; something , always. So a group of PCs might play it safe and take out a few guys over here, bypass that trap over there, make a deal with this other group against this rival faction, etc. Or they might attract the ire of multiple sectors of threats which converge, producing a hard encounter. I honestly don't know how it's going to turn out and neither do the players, so the difficulty varies and the outcomes are always different. The result are dynamic scenes with multiple goals and opportunities for resolution by any means. It also means that the challenge level seems a lot higher in our games. Most people who play in my games say both combat and non-combat scenes to be very challenging (for what it's worth). And playing to find out how this all goes down as DM makes it more fun to DM, in my opinion. I'm as surprised as the players are. * A sector could be either a single large area or a number of smaller areas connected by corridors.

@Alex R.: Surprises can be risky and the desire to surprise can make the DM do funny things with regard to player choice and agency in the game. If you think about it, we're telling a story about the characters (protagonists) by playing. Our goal is thus to put the characters in surprising situations and surprise them , not necessarily the players . You see, you and the players control, with some mechanical exceptions, the characters ' reactions. You, the DM, can't control the players ' reactions to what you hope will be a surprise (to the player). It may fall flat. Or be annoying. Or be completely missed by the players. One must then wonder, if the outcome is not a guarantee, how much time and effort and potential curtailment of player choice does the DM want to do in the pursuit of that surprise? My answer to that is "almost none." (For the record, I'm stating a preference, not a fact.) Instead, I flip it around, and turn metagaming on its head. I use it for good, not ill. I enlist the players in helping to create surprising situations for the characters, challenges and surprises they'd like to see happen to their characters. Now, here's the thing (and this is probably a whole topic unto itself), if you're running a collaborative game where players can establish fiction in the game world (as I do), you have a very interesting situation: When one person establishes something, and another adds to it, and another, the end result is often a surprise to everyone at the table, including the DM. Things have a way of coming around full circle, completely unguided, on their own. By playing this way, we all get to see an unfolding story, without contingency planning to make surprises come about. And it happens all the time. As an added bonus, because players do this, they're putting their own ideas into play which comes with inherent buy-in and increases engagement. So it may not surprise you then, that my prep is greatly reduced because I don't create a world. Or a plot. Or planned surprises, or twists of any kind. All of that stuff happens on its own as we play.

Killing PCs When do you let PCs die? When their mistake causes it? When they took the wrong strategy? Under absolutely no circumstances?

When they fail three death saves or manage to be sat on by a dragon.

So sticking entirely to the rules of the game and the world?

Denathil "The Mutt" Verasi said: When they fail three death saves or manage to be sat on by a dragon. * chortle * John B. said: Killing PCs When do you let PCs die? When their mistake causes it? When they took the wrong strategy? Under absolutely no circumstances? If the PCs do something stupid, like challenging a level 20 dragon to one-on-one combat at level 3, then I usually give them ample opportunity to back out of the horrendous situation they have created for themselves. If they, in spite of my efforts, rush bullheadedly into the arms of death, I am not going to save them with DM magic. If the PCs are the victims of a great series of terrible die rolls, I may have some semblance of mercy and give them an extra save or something to let them survive whatever calamity is about to befall them. I, however, am as much at the mercy of the dice as they are. The moment we consistently start disregarding die rolls to fit our own agenda is the moment we cease playing a game. If the PCs make a tactical mistake that results in death, I will usually let them die. Mind you, this is difficult to do. Most monsters will cease attacking a target once it is knocked out and no longer a threat. They would have to do something like crit-fail a jump to clear 5-squares of lava with 3 hp left. Iserith said: Our goal is thus to put the characters in surprising situations and surprise them , not necessarily the players. I find it hard to be surprised on behalf of my character when I personally am not surprised. I can feign surprise, sure. But it's simply not as exciting unless I, as a player, am also shocked. Iserith said: You, the DM, can't control the players ' reactions to what you hope will be a surprise (to the player). It may fall flat. Or be annoying. Or be completely missed by the players. One must then wonder, if the outcome is not a guarantee, how much time and effort and potential curtailment of player choice does the DM want to do in the pursuit of that surprise?&nbsp; I'd like to address each of those separately. If it falls flat, it probably wasn't a good surprise to begin with, and it's my fault for not putting enough time and effort into crafting it and building it up. If it's annoying, I probably have the wrong target audience and should have ascertained desire for this sort of story-telling element before beginning. It should never &nbsp;be completely missed by the players. This becomes a non-issue if I follow the three-clue rule. You assume that one clue will be missed by the players entirely, that another clue will be dismissed as unimportant, and that a third clue will cause incorrect assumptions about the situation. In any given scenarios, only 0-2 of these will occur, leaving at least one clue to lead the players to the solution. Each clue should independently be enough to lead the players to the proper conclusion. Iserith said: Instead, I flip it around, and turn metagaming on its head. I use it for good, not ill. I enlist the players in helping to create surprising situations for the characters, challenges and surprises they'd like to see happen to their characters. Now, here's the thing (and this is probably a whole topic unto itself), if you're running a collaborative game where players can establish fiction in the game world (as I do), you have a very interesting situation: I'm not entirely sure what you mean here. Isn't every game collaborative? I can't imagine a situation in which you literally tell your players what to do. If they have no control over their characters or their actions, then it's a novel, not a game. So in a sense, every game forces collaborative storytelling between the players (driving the main characters) and the DM (driving the setting and minor characters). As a sidenote, I do not think I would enjoy this technique. I get kind of a sour feeling when I feel like I have nothing to discover by playing a game, and that I need to fake surprise for my character while I really know what's going on. It's why I could never let someone co-DM my own game, or DM a game in my own world. I already know too much about it. It's spoiled for me forever.

Re: Killing PCs: Here is my standing house rule - "When you would normally die according to the rules, you get to decide whether your character dies or not. In any event, you are effectively “out” of the current scene though you may continue to participate in other ways as appropriate. If you decide your character lives, tell us what happened, the cost, and what knowledge you brought back from The Other Side . This rule is in effect because the only way to lose in a non-competitive game is to not participate. Game rules in a non-competitive game should not decide that for you. Thus, the choice will remain with the individual players as to when death “sticks” if it comes up. If you prefer to abide by the standard D&amp;D rules with regard to this issue, you can do that, too – simply choose death when it comes around, every time. What others decide to do with their character in this regard does not affect you." @Alex R.: Isn't acting surprised as your character when you're not necessarily surprised as a player roleplaying ? :) Every game is collaborative, but we take it a step further and break the separation of roles that you describe between DM and player. In our games,&nbsp;a player’s ability to affect what happens in the game is not dependent on their character’s fictional ability to do those things. The players have limited control over other PCs and lots of control over "the world." This is all part and parcel to the "Yes, and..." approach to improvisational acting and roleplaying. You don't have to do the usual "DM May I?" stuff I see at other tables. You just create and do and when dice need to come in to determine an outcome where success and failure is potentially interesting, we roll. This means I have 5 other creative minds working in tandem with my own, creating the world, the adventure, the NPCs, the monsters, the threats and challenges. It produces a huge amount of detail in the world and, as a big plus, since the players had a hand in creating it, they remember it and are engaged by it more.

I s'pose I enjoy playing the mastermind DM more. I like to create the world myself, and have my players as actors within it. I don't feel like that limits their creativity. The only immutable things in my world are the geographical features and the major settlements. "We look for a village." *rolls History or Perception* "Okay, you find one." I try never to say no to my players; the exception to that is if they want something game-breaking, like a vorpal sword at level 1.&nbsp; This rule is in effect because the only way to lose in a non-competitive game is to not participate All games are competitive, IMO. If you're not competing against each other, you are competing against the environment. You can lose/die in a co-op game like Space Alert, Arkham Horror, etc. It represents the game beating you, rather than you beating the game. As a DM, I am not &nbsp;the adversary of the players. But the environment is . The desert wants them to die of thirst, the kobolds want to loot their corpses, the wolves want to eat tonight, and the King of Undeath wants to use their bodies as soldiers. I want them to prevail against the evil forces in the world, but I am not going to coddle them. Sometimes they make mistakes, and those mistakes have consequences, and one of those consequences might be death. And that might not be the worst thing in the world, in a game where a Resurrect Dead spell is 600gp away, at the nearest temple.

As long as the result of failure on the History or Perception check you mentioned is not "you don't know" or "nothing happens," then I think that's a clever way of establishing fiction collaboratively. Removing death as a mandatory failure condition from the game isn't "coddling" the players. You've played in at least one of my games and its difficulty is representative of games my group plays regularly. The only difference in the rule is it's simply the player's choice if it sticks if it comes up, not the rules and not the DM. If they want the sting of death, they can choose that if it comes around (or even if they just want it to happen for heroic effect). If they didn't think that death was as heroic as it could be or didn't bring a backup character or don't want to take up time during the session to go get access to resurrection if they don't have it, then they can just say they were knocked out or had an near death experience, or anything interesting. It just adds to the drama and fiction in the story we're collaborating on together, becoming fodder for character development and future adventures. (In my view, resurrection spells are a weak patch on an underlying problem with D&amp;D that other games have solved.) As well, death is only one form of failure in the game and a very limiting one at that. I prefer games in which you can win a fight and still lose or die and still win at your goal or objective (such as dying, but still saving the world when you played in Vanguard of Dis ). Or games in which failing our objectives and goals are worse than simply dying for the characters, the world, or all of the above. Dying in some cases might be preferable (to the characters) than what follows due to their failure. That's a lot of fun for the players and very dramatic during play. Moreso, in my opinion, than possibly cheapening a dramatic moment like that by shrugging and popping a rez. (Obviously that last bit is somewhat tongue-in-cheek.)

As long as the result of failure on the History or Perception check you mentioned is not "you don't know" or "nothing happens," then I think that's a clever way of establishing fiction collaboratively. What would you have happen on a failure?&nbsp; &nbsp; Removing death as a mandatory failure condition from the game isn't "coddling" the players. Death needn't be a failure condition. Perhaps one character dies while the others fight more fiercely to avenge him, and save the world.&nbsp; I do think that allowing your players to think they're invincible destroys the spirit of the game. Occasionally, I feel the need to remind them that not everything in the world is there for them to bash on. They are visiting the Great Gold Dragon of Westmoor, a colossal being as old as the world. If one of them takes a swing at him and irritates the dragon enough, he should damn well be vaporized for his insolence. That's logical. Having the fool suffer a near-death experience and come back spick and span only instills in him the idea that consequences don't matter, and that he is a god at level 1. I strongly dislike that. And from what I've gathered from opinion surveys on DnD forums, players don't like that either. Where's the sense of challenge and risk if you always keep the thought in the back of your mind that your DM would never dare let you face something that you can't handle — and that if you do lose a fight, he won't let you die? As a player, I didn't like thinking that, and I think my players would feel the same way. &nbsp;(In my view, resurrection spells are a weak patch on an underlying problem with D&amp;D that other games have solved.) I disagree. Even resurrection spells have their limitations. The soul must be willing to return, the body must still exist, etc. I like the idea of the possibility of resurrection in a game where dragons and demons and gods exist. What's so weak about it? cheapening a dramatic moment like that by shrugging and popping a rez. I don't think it cheapens it at all. Dealing with the possibility of resurrection is just something that you should accommodate for. Perhaps the villain uses disintegration magic to prevent just such an occurrence, or perhaps he chooses to fling his dead victims into a pit of lava. Maybe, instead of killing them outright, he turns them to stone, or drags their souls into the Far Realm, beyond the reaches of the gods. There are limitless possibilities on how to kill a creature and preclude the possibility of resurrection. On the flip side, heroes must take into account the possibility of resurrection for the villains. Maybe, while you were gloating over the pile of treasure you just earned, a minion quietly shuffled away with his master's corpse in hand and brought it to his lifelong friend, a priest of Orcus. Maybe the villain will rise again as a wrathful lich or a monstrosity of sewn-together bodyparts, bent on revenge. I think resurrection is a very powerful mechanic, and I wouldn't give it up for anything.

The failure condition would depend on the context of the scene, what's going on, what's at stake, what interesting situation a failure like that might lead to. It would have to be something , some action created, some escalation of the scene, or anything interesting like that in order for me to call for a roll. I don't generally call for knowledge or perception rolls like I see at a lot of other tables. In our approach, the village exists if you say it exists provided it does not contradict existing fiction (no roll) and the successful high DC History check (or whatever) means you can make it there in good time, if you want, based on that knowledge you established. A middling check (moderate to high DC) might mean you make it there, but it takes longer or extra resources or there's an encounter along the way. A failure could mean that you end up some place completely unintentional and very dangerous. Maybe you got lost or this was the town, by gods, but now it's... overrun . Skills that rely upon action and forward motion rather than having or not having information make for a much more dynamic and surprising game, even for the DM. Making sure failure is always interesting is important, too. With that house rule on death, if you prefer to die when death comes around, you just choose death! Plenty of people do, even with the option not to. Still a challenging game, still lots of risk. I've seen none of what you assume during play. Play in some more of my games and see. Resurrection spells are about restoring player participation in the game through their primary interface (the character ). It's no surprise then that as characters became more complex with editions and you could no longer reliably build a character in a few minutes (like you once could) that it became harder to be killed and resurrection spells more available and less costly. It does mirror certain genres and fiction, certainly. But take that change over the years as sign that D&amp;D is learning from what other games have already addressed - that in a collaborative storytelling adventure game like D&amp;D, removing a player from participation is not ideal. Check out how other RPGs deal with death. There's some really interesting stuff out there.

Iserith said: The failure condition would depend on the context of the scene, what's going on, what's at stake, what interesting situation a failure like that might lead to. It would have to be something , some action created, some escalation of the scene, or anything interesting like that in order for me to call for a roll. I don't generally call for knowledge or perception rolls like I see at a lot of other tables. In our approach, the village exists if you say it exists provided it does not contradict existing fiction (no roll) and the successful high DC History check (or whatever) means you can make it there in good time, if you want, based on that knowledge you established. A middling check (moderate to high DC) might mean you make it there, but it takes longer or extra resources or there's an encounter along the way. A failure could mean that you end up some place completely unintentional and very dangerous. Maybe you got lost or this was the town, by gods, but now it's... overrun . Skills that rely upon action and forward motion rather than having or not having information make for a much more dynamic and surprising game, even for the DM. Making sure failure is always interesting is important, too. I call for knowledge or perception rolls in two situations: The players are actively looking for something. The players want to use some visual, historical, magical, etc. information to their advantage. Are you telling me that you do not? If the players were searching their memories for some historical reference to a village in the area, and they fail the check, then I would assume that they cannot remember anything suggesting the existence of such a village. Nevertheless, I spawn such a village upon the players' announcement and give them a chance to stumble upon it by mistake in the event of a failure. If the players are searching for some visual cues that indicate sentient activity, such as cart tracks or a structure in the distance, and they fail the check, then I would assume that they don't notice any telltale signs. Again, I spawn a possible village upon announcement, and if that village has any particularly easy to see features, then I would give the players a hidden bonus to their check. One example is a village that I created built around a massive black stone obelisk of mysterious origin. The players would have a hard time missing such a structure, and so they found it easily, despite low rolls. What I don't do, however, is allow the players to have what they want in every given situation, despite poor rolls. It just doesn't make sense in my head. You look for a village and fail, but you find it anyway (granted, with different features than you were expecting)? How does that make sense? Additionally, some particularly inhospitable areas are less likely to have settlements all over the place. In such a situation, I will give players their village, but roll to see how far away it is. With that house rule on death, if you prefer to die when death comes around, you just choose death! Plenty of people do, even with the option not to. Still a challenging game, still lots of risk. I've seen none of what you assume during play. Play in some more of my games and see. Okay, but you're telling me, unless I'm mistaken, that in no situation do you force &nbsp;players to accept death, no matter how logical it would be? That is what I'm talking about when I say "let you die" — not granting permission to die, but allowing death to take its course without DM intervention. I just can't comprehend that. Nothing ruins immersion for me more than DM magic. If your unconscious body falls into a pool of lava in six different pieces, how do you justify that as a near-death experience? In my mind, someone in such a situation is required &nbsp;to die, and it kicks me back to reality if they don't. I'm speaking as both a player and a DM when I phrase my opinion on this. Resurrection spells are about restoring&nbsp; player&nbsp; participation in the game through their primary interface (the&nbsp; character ). It's no surprise then that as characters became more complex with editions and you could no longer reliably build a character in a few minutes (like you once could) that it became harder to be killed and resurrection spells more available and less costly. It does mirror certain genres and fiction, certainly. But take that change over the years as sign that D&amp;D is learning from what other games have already addressed - that in a collaborative storytelling adventure game like D&amp;D, removing a player from participation is not ideal. Check out how other RPGs deal with death. There's some really interesting stuff out there. Even so, it is a temporary removal. Worst case scenario, the player misses out on a session of gaming. You could use that death as a cliffhanger for the end of a session, allowing the player plenty of time to roll up a new character. Resurrection isn't always the best or only option. In fact, my attitude toward it is quite similar to your attitude toward character death. Could you give me an example of how another RPG deals with death elegantly? I'm afraid I'm not very well-versed in other tabletop systems.

Alex R. said: All games are competitive, IMO. If you're not competing against each other, you are competing against the environment. You can lose/die in a co-op game like Space Alert, Arkham Horror, etc. It represents the game beating you, rather than you beating the game. This is a common point of disagreement among gamers so take what I have to say with that in mind.&nbsp; The RPGs that I run and play in can be characterized as games in which a story is told through collaborative play.&nbsp; The focus is on collaboration - the story unfolds as a result of the decisions made by the players within the environment.&nbsp; There are certainly other ways to&nbsp;approach games per your examples above, but not ALL games are competitive.&nbsp; As long as the story is moved forward in fun/interesting ways, for me and my players, the goal is achieved. The characters face enemies, but the players and the DM are working together to develop the story.&nbsp; It is the players and the DM who are participating in the game.&nbsp; Nothing competitive about it. Like I said, this is a common point of disagreement which just stresses the importance of making sure everyone's on the same page in this regard when they sit down to play. This is a great forum thread. Cheers.

Mike N. said: The RPGs that I run and play in can be characterized as games in which a story is told through collaborative play.&nbsp; The focus is on collaboration - the story unfolds as a result of the decisions made by the players within the environment.&nbsp; There are certainly other ways to&nbsp;approach games per your examples above, but not ALL games are competitive.&nbsp; As long as the story is moved forward in fun/interesting ways, for me and my players, the goal is achieved. The characters face enemies, but the players and the DM are working together to develop the story.&nbsp; It is the players and the DM who are participating in the game.&nbsp; Nothing competitive about it. I understand where you're coming from, and I find value in such an experience, but I would have trouble calling it a "game". I think I would call it collaborative storytelling — which, again, is perfectly fine. I just think that the idea of a game including competition of one sort or another is a tautology.

@Alex R.: Outside of specific rules governing tactical play or the like, I ask for skill checks only when: (1) We're not sure if the PC will succeed or fail; (2) The PC wants to try something bold, challenging, dangerous, or in opposition to someone or something else trying to stop him or her; (3) When success AND failure can be interesting. I never ask for a die roll if: (1) the outcome isn't an interesting part of the unfolding narrative; (2) there's no risk, challenge, or threat involved; (3) the only outcome of either success or failure is that nothing happens. So rolling to see if somebody knows something or not doesn't get a roll. They just know it because through the power of "Yes, and..." the players can simply establish things as being true, provided it does not contradict existing fiction. Same with finding something or not - if there's no threat and failure isn't particularly interesting, then there's simply no roll. They just find it. I also find no value in the DM creating information or an asset in the game then obscuring it behind a roll that a player may not even attempt later or fail at even if he or she does make the roll. This is potentially wasted effort, much like contingency planning. I'm sure we've all been at tables where the DM asks for a knowledge or perception roll and no matter how low someone rolls, they get the information they "need." (Which is really information the DM feels he or she needs to give out because the DM prepped it.) No good, in my opinion. Rolls need to mean something and they need to have consequences for failure. Fun and interesting consequences, mind you, for the players if not the characters. Thus, the History check that I may or may not call for would be about acting upon information the player established. Not to see if they do or do not know the information. Because when you think about it, that's binary and boring. It drives no action forward. It creates no new fiction (though I see you still "put the village there" which is good though limited if they can't actually go to it when they want to, which is likely now, in context). When I do actually ask for a roll, it's governed by these three general outcomes: High DC - You get what you want or do what you attempted to do. Moderate to high DC - you get what you want or do what you attempted to do, but there's a setback of some kind (perhaps a hard bargain, worse outcome, or ugly choice). On a low DC or lower, you may or may not get what you want and there's a price to pay for your failure, now or later. On the topic of death... No, I never "force" players to accept death. Especially not for the pursuit of realism or logic in a fantasy game. This means the DM is not intervening in any way or using "DM magic" as you say. It's completely up to the player to decide and explain what happened. Of course, the explanation cannot contradict existing fiction, just like I mentioned above. But in a fantasy world, how and why a thing can be so is limited only to your imagination and the fictional context up to that point. The only reason why something can't be in a fantasy world is if you say it can't be. If you as a player prefer to die when the death rules come around, then simply choose death, every time. The rules are thus unchanged for you. Most objections I see to this house rule in forums are actually related to one player not wanting another player to live if they would die because that player thinks it right to choose death every time. That's kind of a jerk way of thinking if you think about it. "I want Bob to sit out the rest of the game because he's not as clever or lucky as me." (I'm not saying this is what you're thinking, but it's common.) What would have happened if your character in Vanguard of Dis died in the first scene? Let's assume you didn't have a backup character and didn't have ready access to raise dead . (Or better yet, let's assume you drove a half hour to my house to play instead of just hopping online.) I guess you could have stuck around and watched. Or tried to make a new character before we were done and then rejoin. Or walked away and played some Xbox. Nevertheless, these are all examples of being forced out of participating in the activity you chose to participate in. That should be your choice, not the DMs, and not the game's. It's your leisure and entertainment time, not anyone else's. There's a real world, human element to this that I think many players forget. If you're concerned about immersion, there's nothing that ends immersion faster than not being "allowed" to play anymore! (Immersion's another good topic because I see that word way overused as well. There's a certain tyranny about the way people discuss it these days. Pursuing character immersion can actually be counterproductive to the gaming experience because it often means eschewing the metagame. Now, becoming immersed in the scene and then by extension your character by using metagame information positively to build and explore scenes and produce action, that's a different story. It's the most creative, engaging, and immersive way to play in my view.) Both Marvel Heroic RPG and Spirit of the Century have rules governing death that are similar to my house rule. You're not dead, you're "taken out." You're done in this scene, but true to the genre, you show up in the nick of time at some other point with a good explanation as to how you caught yourself on a ledge before falling into the lava or whatever. Truth be told, if you're true to D&amp;D's rules, you'll know that hit points is actually an abstraction and pacing mechanism, not a simulation of actual health. You can be battered and broken and be at full hit points. Or perfectly fine, bodily, with 1 hit point. Even being a negative hit points can simply represent mental stress, having run out of luck, or lacking the endurance to go on right now. Hit points only represent loss of blood and limb if you say it does.

Iserith said: So rolling to see if somebody knows something or not doesn't get a roll. They just know it because through the power of "Yes, and..." the players can simply establish things as being true, provided it does not contradict existing fiction.&nbsp; I don't see "Yes, and..." that way. I see it as a suggestion to not limit your players. If they want to do something that is not covered by the rules, I don't say "no"; I say "Yes, and...". I don't see it as an excuse to allow your players to get away with doing things without checks. It doesn't make sense to me that every player would know everything about the world. Realistically (and I'm going to cover realism later), players have gaps in their memory, are poor students of history, or are unobservant in some instances. History and knowledge and perception checks simulate this. If the players roll well, then they know about that village's existence and have a rudimentary understanding of its location at the very least. If they rule poorly, they are in foreign territory and they find no trace of civilization. I feel that this is more of a pragmatic approach to roleplaying than simply allowing your players to wish any convenient amenity into existence at their whim. That said, it doesn't appear that we conflict very much on your three rules there. The difference is that I find challenge and interesting consequences for failure in every roll that I ask from my players, rather than asking for rolls only when I think there's something challenging or interesting about the situation. Iserith said: I'm sure we've all been at tables where the DM asks for a knowledge or perception roll and no matter how low someone rolls, they get the information they "need." I have &nbsp;been at these tables, but I can assure you that nothing of the sort happens at my table. That's because for every check that I have planned, I have planned the results for failure just as well. There is no information that the players "need". If they fail such a perception roll, then they deal with the consequences of such, be they good or bad. Iserith said: Because when you think about it, that's binary and boring. It drives no action forward. It creates no new fiction (though I see you still "put the village there" which is good though limited if they can't actually go to it when they want to, which is likely now, in context). I do not think it's binary and boring. If the players seek a village, it's for a reason. Failing to find a village may force them to endure harsh conditions for want of a safe location to camp. It may force them to ration valuable supplies. It always makes the game more interesting if the players don't always get what they want. And the creation of the village, though perhaps not immediately apparent to the PCs, after their fruitless search, may at one point come to bear some significant purpose. Perhaps the PCs will rescue a villager from a pack of wolves or an angry dire boar, and he will direct them to his family's homestead. *shrug* I find that actually creating the village in my head grants me additional options in the future, whether they come in handy or not. Iserith said: When I do actually ask for a roll, it's governed by these three general outcomes... I like this, and I tend to follow the same rules. Iserith said: On the topic of death... No, I never "force" players to accept death. Especially not for the pursuit of realism or logic in a fantasy game. This means the DM is not intervening in any way or using "DM magic" as you say. It's completely up to the player to decide and explain what happened. ... But in a fantasy world, how and why a thing can be so is limited only to your imagination and the fictional context up to that point. The only reason why something can't be in a fantasy world is if you say it can't be. There is an instance where my style parts ways with yours. Players, in my games, have full control over their own characters' actions, reactions, thoughts, and so forth. But they do not control the forces of nature. They are subject to them in the same way I am. How would your players feel if you took the same approach for an NPC that they had just soundly trounced? "Nope, he's not dead. Near death experience. Roll initiatives." It cheapens the game, in my opinion. It removes the thrill of having barely survived staring death in the face, when death is a cuddly rabbit subject to your will. Realism is key &nbsp;in my games. Suspension of disbelief only goes so far. I can accept wizards, and goblins, and gods. But when a man fights for his life, I feel that his life must actually be in danger. I would not allow my players to claim they did not die in the same way I wouldn't allow them to claim they hadn't made a particular decision 3 sessions ago in the interest of avoiding the consequences they face today. Iserith said: Most objections I see to this house rule in forums are actually related to one player not wanting another player to live if they would die because that player thinks it right to choose death every time. That's kind of a jerk way of thinking if you think about it. "I want Bob to sit out the rest of the game because he's not as clever or lucky as me." (I'm not saying this is what you're thinking, but it's common.) I can't speak for other players, but my interests in asking someone to accept death are not out of a desire to see them die — they are in the pursuit of fairness and preservation of continuity. When a player is put in a situation in which he should &nbsp;die, e.g. he is crushed by a dragon, or thrown unconscious into a pit of lava, and that player doesn't die, it causes a break in the continuity of the game. We pause and wonder why the rules don't apply to him. It really kills the mood. I respect a player's wish to keep his character alive at any cost, but I do not think that he should have his wish at the expense of the enjoyment of the other players.&nbsp; Iserith said: What would have happened if your character in Vanguard of Dis died in the first scene? Let's assume you didn't have a backup character and didn't have ready access to raise dead . (Or better yet, let's assume you drove a half hour to my house to play instead of just hopping online.) I guess you could have stuck around and watched. Or tried to make a new character before we were done and then rejoin. I would have accepted it, because I'm not a poor sport. And I would have asked if I could stick around and watch the rest of the game unfold. The same thing would have happened if I was bankrupted in the first hour of a game of Monopoly. The rules don't change because I want them to. The same applies for any game that has a failure condition. If there was no risk of losing, then I wouldn't be having fun. The fact that you did end up enforcing the time limit and killing our characters came off as an integrity move in my book, and I appreciated you not DM magicking us to the finish line. The same would apply if I drove to your house. Naturally, I don't assume that everyone has the same attitude about these things as I do. But I do expect players to show a measure of grace in defeat. Iserith said: Pursuing character immersion can actually be counterproductive to the gaming experience because it often means eschewing the metagame. Now, becoming immersed in the scene and then by extension your character by using metagame information positively to build and explore scenes and produce action, that's a different story. It's the most creative, engaging, and immersive way to play in my view. Metagaming does, in my mind, kill immersion. I feel the same way about metagaming in a campaign as I do about receiving spoilers about an exciting book's ending. It isn't as fun if I know what's going to happen, or how. I like to be totally surprised by my DMs. I can see your approach's merit, and I respect it, but I see things differently. I feel most immersed in a game when I am watching the story unfold, page by page, unsure of what lies beyond each sentence, word, and letter. Iserith said: Both Marvel Heroic RPG and Spirit of the Century have rules governing death that are similar to my house rule. You're not dead, you're "taken out." You're done in this scene, but true to the genre, you show up in the nick of time at some other point with a good explanation as to how you caught yourself on a ledge before falling into the lava or whatever. Truth be told, if you're true to D&amp;D's rules, you'll know that hit points is actually an abstraction and pacing mechanism, not a simulation of actual health. You can be battered and broken and be at full hit points. Or perfectly fine, bodily, with 1 hit point. Even being a negative hit points can simply represent mental stress, having run out of luck, or lacking the endurance to go on right now. Hit points only represent loss of blood and limb if you say it does. I am familiar with this mechanic, though not with those RPGs. I picked up a card game called Sentinels of the Multiverse. When heroes "die" in this game, instead of taking their turns, they get special powers that aid their team mates in the fight against the villain. These powers represent the surviving heroes' drive to avenge their fallen comrade(s). I have seen DMs take advantage of a similar mechanic in D&amp;D. Perhaps, instead of allowing your player to walk off and play xbox, you could allow them to re-emerge as a ghost, exerting their influence on the world. Perhaps some other effect could cause them to sway the battle in the heroes' (or even the villain's!) favor. I played a paladin of the Raven Queen in a prior campaign. When my character died in service to his god (at the climactic battle), instead of being entirely removed from play, he took the Raven Queen's place and became the new God of the Dead. Ultimately, I used his new found powers to help my allies save the day. It was an excellent twist, and it made me feel important despite having died in the final battle.

So... I wake to find about 5000+ Words to read... I feel like I'm back in high school going over some Brit. Lit. As for having an actual conference via hangout, is there a particular day of the week, or just in the month ahead that stands out to anyone? Or shall we stick to just using the forums (Mind you there is a G+ Community linked somewhere up in that mess with discussion branches to keep things organized) Anyhow, sadly I am at work already so can't sit and read all of this =(. Glad to see a font of knowledge being readily shared though, I will never cease to be impressed by this community.

"Yes, and..." isn't just for the DM and it isn't a suggestion. This is a common misconception. It's for the players, too, and if everyone has given their buy-in on this approach, it's a rule like any other. It's the foundation for improvisational acting which is a large portion of what we do in an RPG. (Imagine watching some improv where only one person in a group of 6 abides by the principle. It'd go nowhere fast.) It's about accepting the fictional contribution of everyone at the table and adding your own ideas. It's also about not blocking those ideas for any reason, provided those ideas don't contradict something somebody has already established as being true and extant. If the DM says, "there are no villages around here for at least 100 miles," the player cannot then say, "I walk over to this village nearby." That would be the player engaging in blocking and everyone at the table is under an obligation to correct it. Now, if the DM or another player didn't establish anything about villages in the area, then the player can go ahead and say there's a village there to which the DM and the other players must say, "Yes, and..." e.g. "Yes, and it's currently under siege by marauding gnolls that came down from the mountains." There's no roll here - you're allowed to establish whatever you like, as long as it does not contradict existing fiction. You only roll when there is something at stake, such as getting to the village you established safely or quickly (or whatever) based upon your knowledge of History for &nbsp;travelling in this area or your Perception when it comes to avoiding threats. In this case, those checks are about action, not knowledge. Action drives the game forward, lack of knowledge does not. I'd add that with the approach I advocate, there is a lot of tension around rolling the dice, more so than other games that I see, because no die roll is trivial or binary. As for "making sense," anything makes sense in the context of a fantasy world, provided it does not contradict existing fiction. A player might offer, "There's a village near here - a backwater burg to be sure, but we can find some safety and rest." Rather than saying, "No, you don't know that," or asking for a roll to determine whether or not the character does know that, instead we ask, "Yes, and&nbsp; how do you know that?" Whatever answer is given is correct as long as it does not contradict something. The former shuts down ideas or potentially does; the latter adds new fiction. We just learned something new about the world and about the character. And every time new fiction is established and connected back to fiction previously established, the world and characters get richer and more complex and twists and surprises happen all on their own. These are the kinds of surprises you can expect at each and every one of my ongoing games. Surprises even for the DM! Thus, I don't even need to ever plan a check and its outcomes ahead of time. Or even what's in the world. They happen organically just by playing. Concerns about "realism" are more often misplaced concerns over "consistency." Which is valid. Concerns about realism are less valid in my view because once you can accept a pantheon of demon gods or dragons or magic, then realism goes right out the window. If you're concerned about consistency , "Yes, and..." takes care of that as I explained above. What you add cannot contradict what has come before. This plays into the issue of death as well. If you can accept dragons as being real in the context of the game, you can accept that Ragnar who we thought was dead after that last sword blow, is actually alive for [reasons]. If you cannot accept that, then I would submit you are objecting to this notion on some other basis. You appear to touch on that objection when discussing "fairness." Truth be told, I could say that the NPC the PCs just killed returns later. He should have access to the same raise dead spell as the PCs, right? Or maybe he's a lich now. Or a demigod. Nobody could gainsay me on those choices, right? The point is, that if I have this choice, then so too should the players especially given that I have infinite numbers of NPCs and monsters to play with that take no session time at all to put into the game. Most players only have one character as their primary interface to the game and if they want to keep playing, it needs to stay alive. That should be the choice of the player. "Dead" mechanically-speaking need only carry the weight we choose to give it and I prefer that choice to be on the players, not on the DM or the rules of the game. "Dead" can simply mean "taken out" as in other games. Or if you prefer death, choose death. What other people do with their characters in this regard, even if it is something you would never choose to do, has no affect on you except where you allow it to. So they lost, but they lived. Now things are more complicated for that guy going forward. What's that to you, the guy who didn't drop to 0 hp during the fight? Nothing, in my view. As for Vanguard of Dis , one critical element to that scenario is that I got your buy-in before we started play. You knew that if you didn't get done by midnight, rocks fall and everyone dies. You accepted that before playing. If Titivullis Rex would have iced you in the first scene, you would've had the option to get back up once that tension was resolved and continue on. It's not about being a "good sport" to sit the rest of it out. It's not being a "poor sport" to want to continue playing and to avail yourself of having effectively "lost" but still being able to participate. It's simply about who gets to choose when you're out of the game. I'd add that Monopoly is not&nbsp;analogous&nbsp;because it is competitive between players. If you're seeing D&amp;D as competitive between the players, I can understand why you'd consider it unfair or think Bob a "poor sport" for wanting to live when he should, by the base rules, die. But then, if that's the case, I think that's a negative way to look at things in a cooperative, collaborative game. As for metagaming, you metagame all the time, I'm sure, because you really can't play the game without doing it. But you likely pick and choose which metagaming is acceptable and which is not. For example, if all the NPCs in town are telling your smart and cautious PC that it's madness to go into the dungeon and you go there anyway because that's where the DM set up the adventure, you're metagaming. If someone joins the table and needs to bring a character into the group to play and you accept that character (more or less) no questions asked, you're metagaming. These are positive uses of metagaming, certainly. Once you realize that metagaming is all over the place, you can start to use it to further the game and push it forward rather than avoiding or policing it which can stymie forward progress. You can use it to build scenes and add fiction and challenges that you the player would find enjoyable in the game. When you find yourself building a scene with your fellow players instead of just trying to stay within the bounds of character immersion only, you may discover very quickly how much more immersed you can be in all aspects of the game. Policing metagaming is actually a form of blocking which goes against the spirit of "Yes, and..." It's about control of information. I do not fear giving up that control. All I can say on this score is that you should give it a try. Finally, as to your last bit, all of those outcomes you mention from other games are perfectly possible with my house rule on death. It's just a matter of the player saying so. It's their choice.