What makes a good DM?

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Originally Posted by Cid Highwind

On top of whats already said-- you shouldnt be afraid to bend combat rules to your advantage. You know what fights the players are supposed to win. You know what fights they are to be smacked down on. You know which ones are going to be epic fights that the plot has built up on, and the stakes are on the line. If you dont, you should.

If some pissant hobgoblin inexplicably rolls a double crit on the wizard, knocking his HP down to -15, after he was at near-full health, let it slide, especially if the party doesnt have a means of resurrection yet. Have the hobgoblin brain him a good one, maybe knock him to -5, so he isnt dead yet, but dont force a good player to reroll for no good reason. If they were fighting something known to be deadly and nasty, by all means. The players NEED a good reaffirmation of their mortality. But when something happens like this, it can only be bad. Nobody likes dying like that, it isnt fun, or heroic, and it will only break your campaign when the party goes back to town for a rez. The players cant see your dice, or at least they shouldnt. They dont know that you effectively just killed one of them, let the flow of battle go on naturally.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, you can never know too well what is going to be a hard fight for the players, a few errant numbers makes it an impossible fight, or an easy one. This usually isnt a problem, but we all like to put bosses in our campaigns. The dragon, the king, the archlich, etc. These are meant to be a difficult, epic fight, but how much is too much? Dont worry about it. If one of the player characters scores a lucky hit, halving the HP of your campaign boss, breaking the fight, making it boring, dont be afraid to tack on another 100 or so HP to the boss. In fact, my campaign bosses never have a set amount of HP. I dont even write it down. When I feel the player characters have put forth a heroic effort, have given it their all, the boss drops. No point it letting it drag on for another half hour, or stop before it got good.

I don't know. My players would absolutely revolt if I did this. It depowers their characters and their plays and removes any real sense of danger from the players because they know the DM is fudging.
It depends on your group.

[Cid Highwind]

The key is not letting them know if you did it. Youre supposed to be doing all your rolls behind a screen. They dont know if the enemy rolled a 20 or a 2. And it works both ways. Youre the DM, you have total subjective control over reality.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Yeah I just don't really understand the point of the players if you're just going to fudge everything so it goes how you think they should.
Players defeat my super uber guy in a round? Good on them. They get TPDked by my cunning level 4 goblin with a blowdart? It happens. They avoid the entire dungeon completely and manage to track the big boss in a business meeting and stab him through the chest, thus mitigating his fortress of traps intricately prepared? That's why we have players and aren't just running a computer through the maze.
I mean I'm not saying it won't work, I just don't see it myself. I always saw the point of players to mess up things and come up with crazy plans and strategies never thought of.

[Cid Highwind]

Oh yeah, thats what the players are there for, to be unpredictable. I just try to improve someones experience by bending the rules, because, they are just suggestions to the DM, especially in combat. TSR has even said it. But I see what you're saying too, I just try to add the unpredictability in ways not dictated completely by a set of numbers, dice and rules.

[Wyndon]

So, I think people might get angry at me but...

Dude, what the hell is a DM?

[Mr.Bookworm]

Originally Posted by Wyndon

So, I think people might get angry at me but...

Dude, what the hell is a DM?

Dungeon Master.

It's the term for the guy who runs a D&D game, or indeed most any sort of roleplaying game, though he's called different things in different systems (Storyteller, Game Master, etc.)

That's the short answer anyway.

It reaches near philosophy levels in some people's minds. You could probably write a book that would never see print off the subject.

[bluestarultor]

Originally Posted by Wyndon

So, I think people might get angry at me but...

Dude, what the hell is a DM?

Dungeon Master. It's what it's called in D&D. Most other games use GM, or Game Master.

[ThunderousWrath]

Originally Posted by Particleman

o.O Four natural ones in a row? The odds of that happening are 1 in 160,000. You must have been right about somebody wanting Daves character dead.

Not kidding at all. Things of that nature happen around our table with eery frequency. We always point out that it must be destiny for the character to die. My favorite character that I ever ran died after rolling three natural 1s in a row.

He was dual wielding shortswords, and accidentially threw BOTH of them. Then he pulled out his secondary weapons -- another shortsword and a crowbar (believed up to this point to be the lucky crowbar), threw away the sword with another natural 1, and died trying to fight with only a crowbar.

...Sad.