Encounters with rules man Alex

[Beren1]

Hello, this is the part of the forums where uhh, rules man is it? Yeah rules man Alex comes out and shares his ideas for encounters and such.

Being probably the most tactically minded of the critical hitters, as I am not officially a Torqueltone, and definitely the most interested in making and innovating with encounters for dnd, I decided to share a few of my past and present ideas for making, horrible run-on sentences, I mean interesting encounters.

Anyway I'll start with a few Rodrigo has mentioned on the show.


We'll call this one Pirate Ship Attack!

This one works best with the dnd tiles, which dnd Brian has contributed so kindly to our gaming group, and simulates a boarding action between two ships.
For the setup you want 2x(4x8 tiles) for the ships and a mat or enough 2x? tiles to separate our two ships by 10 squares and a one or more 2x2 or 2x1 tiles for the boarding ramps. Basically you want the two big tiles to represent ships slowly closing with each over the course of a couple turns and will end adjacent yet separated by 2 squares. What is key here is to make it feel exciting but if you have any players who are melee oriented, this will be a lot less exciting if it takes forever for the ships to close, so it should only take about 2 turns for one ship to board the other.

The ships:
     To add a bit to them consider if these ships have a mast which should block line of sight and whether to have raised sections of the deck. Also very important to decide is what happens when a character/npc/monster ends up falling overboard, it will happen plan for it now!
For the game I ran this in the ships were airships so falling was very bad. I had railing on all ships that added a square of forced movement necessary to push someone over the edge. I also added 2 saves for falling, one was the normal being forced off an edge that the rules has.(see falling PHB pg284) The second save was to catch hold of something after falling the character would then spend their next turn climbing back up to any unoccupied square on the ship they fell off of (with room for crazy acrobatics if it ever came up). Further I only had one player trying to abuse forced movement so I didn't really use any monsters with this ability.

The Monsters:
   Pick a good mix of ranged fighters and melee fighters. If using the dmg suggested encounter templates(DMG pg 58) I recommend the double line or maybe Commander and troops but don't feel restricted to exactly those numbers, a few ranged minions could be a lot of fun in this fight.

The Fight:
   Start the two ships about 10 squares length and 2 squares width from the back of one ship to the front of the other. This makes the first round volley a place for your long range player to show off as soon things are likely to get crowded. It also means a lot less headaches as to whether someone is getting a range penalty as they likely have either 10/20 or 20/40 range on their weapons with exceptions that will be bothersome, oh well. Have the players set themselves up in logical positions based on your setting, ie. Captain at the wheel. Roll initiative and run the first round as a surprise round, 1 action a piece. Then slide one of the ships closer by 8 squares. Now everyone should largely be in range of everyone else but not quite yet ready for melee. If you have someone so inclined they very well might make a heroic leap right now, be ready to save them if they fail to make the jump. Run this round normally, even melee heavy characters should have a heavy thrown weapon of some sort and now would be a good time to have one laying around somewhere for them to pick up or even throw back if your melee monsters have thrown style attacks.

   Ok now the real fight begins. For round three put both ships adjacent with the 2 squares separating them. Then drop one or more 2x2 or 2x1 tiles in between them as boarding ramps. After this the fight should proceed normally. It probably shouldn't require any actions to drop the boarding ramps unless your players really want it to. I've found that penalizing my players or the monsters for things that have to occur doesn't always work that well, unless it is a focus of the encounter. Minutia should mostly just occur to keep things running smoothly.

Wrap up:
   As with any naval fight the best part be the booty. Do your characters want to sink, capture or just take the spoils and set the enemy ship free? Although this encounter is fun it gets old fast for that poor defender and his melee attacks. If this kind of encounter comes up again try mixing things up with, different sized ships, no boarding ramps and monsters capable of making the jump, a surprise attack where the ships start boarded, or even having three or more ships of a mix between ally and enemy. Other fun could be a balista of some sort a player could use (hurrah for the defender), or to mix a bit of skill encounter in you could say a player at the helm must perform an athletics/arcana/whatever check each turn to prevent the ship from running into dangerous shoals or buildings or whatever, if they fail everyone must roll an athletics check at the end of the round or be knocked prone.

So anyway tune in next time to find out where How The Other Half Live came from.

[Beren1]

So here is the story as  know it although I imagine there is more of a prologue that Rodrigo knows more about, but hey he credited me so...

The year is 2007 I believe. The place, Fort Hays State University, where I am an attending member and Rodrigo hangs out with us. The game is Star Wars Saga edition which is new to us all. The setting is old republic just before Revan returns at the head of a newly created Sith war machine. The characters are diplomats trying to heal the wounds of the Madolorian wars.

  So we were having a little trouble getting characters created and I wanted to have a little bit of a test of the system before we got under way with our characters so I pulled out the equivalent to the MM and read everyone the stats to basic republic troopers while I wrote down the stats for basic Sith troopers. The fight took place on the players ship which is under surprise attack and being boarded. Long story short the republic soldiers fight bravely yet in the end are betrayed and the ship is destroyed. Everyone enjoyed the fight and started giving nicknames to their faceless soldiers, I remembered this.

  Suddenly I had a way of showing what was happening elsewhere in the universe and keeping a sense of danger and betrayal strong in the players minds as a character under their control is killed. It became an every other session thing with each new one testing out different types of combat, like star fighter combat. Also these side things began to get more complex and I devoted almost as much time to them as the actual campaign. I think the biggest one I did was where I handed each person essentially a character to play and the stats of his squadron of star fighters/ small capital ship. The fight was a republic defense of a space station already under attack.  Each person had a secret to hide. one was a member of a secret society that was under orders to shoot down anyone trying to escape the station or the sith fleet as a sith spy had obtained important military secrets and could be anyone already in the battle. One had an uncle who was more like a father living on the station and therefore would try to protect a ship from the station trying to escape. Drama I love it. The third fighter squadron had a paper that read something along the lines of, "You are a sleeper agent, if I ever say the phrase "____ dances like a wampa" you will immediately do everything in your power to kill that person." There was at least one more that I don't remember but it was a very fun fight that may have stole that night.

   So essentially I created a way to get everyone focused at the start of a game session along with a way of providing background and ambiance to my game. More importantly I showed first hand how it is like to have your character killed or stabbed in the back without actually losing an important character for the campaign. It got to the point where the players were giving their soldiers names and stories and even keeping track of which player had died the most during these fights. I think this game was probably my most successful role playing game thus far as GM.

  Back to How the other Half Lives. Rodrigo, since I have met him, has been fond of one shot games where he hands us character with no name, which we are to then fill out, and we play a few encounters and have fun. I think he really likes making character almost more than actually playing them and even what they morph into when a different person is at the helm. So it was only natural for him to 'run a one shot' while borrowing my way of adding it into an already ongoing game. Brilliant!

  So that's about it for now tune in next time to find out about some of the worst encounters I have run and you should avoid.

[Beta Ray Bill Cosby]

   It got to the point where the players were giving their soldiers names and stories and even keeping track of which player had died the most during these fights. I think this game was probably my most successful role playing game thus far as GM.

Jeremy was definitely the MVP of that game, not only did he die the most times, he also had the highest kill count on account of killing half the party with a frag grenade.

[litanyofthieves]

I totally stole how the other half lives for my Exalted campaign - the players are going to be playing a DB hit squad during the Usurpation and fight their Solar characters' first age incarnations.

Keep the stories coming, I love them.

[Tondi-]

I have a question for Rules Man.

When your playing as a character do you find yourself being a rules lawyer?

[Beren1]

I have a question for Rules Man.

When your playing as a character do you find yourself being a rules lawyer?

I think Rob still holds that title. I do sometimes test the limits of a battlefield but I think Brian still tests our limits more than anyone with his Revenant Assassin and fun powers like Shadow Jack which causes all kinds of problems when combined with anything else.

So anyway with a break for a 24 hour flu from hell,... hmmm that does not do it justice how about from HELLLLLLLLLL!!!!III!!!LLLL!!!!

   As I said I'll now talk about some things to avoid in an encounter. I'd say the most important one is 3d encounters. Wizards had a rare opportunity with 4th ed to finally get some concrete rules for the 3rd dimension but again they did a little hand waving and avoided spending any real time on it.

   So here is the solution we have come up with, with credit mostly going to Rodrigo. For an encounter taking place on a surface with aerial units we give the units 3 choices as to their height. There is the ground zone, the flying zone and the fair escape zone. A unit can be "flying" in the ground zone and just ignore difficult terrain but they can still make and be the target of melee attacks, this zone represents around the first 5 squares from the ground. The air zone is about the second set of 5 squares, melee attacks can be traded in this zone but not to the ground zone, with possible exceptions if someone can come up with a really good stunt, ie. a 50 or so on a jump check.

   To move between zones is a move action that has to be at least 5 squares so if slowed you may not change zones unless you use two move actions (still not 5squares but close enough.) And the last zone is the fair escape. If you fly high enough for this zone you can leave the encounter but may not later rejoin the same encounter. You basically remove yourself from the fight and may not reenter until the current encounter is over. It seems kinda harsh but it prevents a lot of problems and keeps things moving smoothly.

   To represent which zone a unit is in we usually use some kind of marker and even though it doesn't make a whole lot of sense we prevent two units from occupying the same square even if one is in the flying zone and the other is in the ground zone. Any kind of aoe effect like a burst or blast will effect all units in the same zone as the effect, ie. a flaming sphere will ba able to attack anyone in the ground zone even if the unit is 'technically' flying 3 squares off the ground. Just say no, you are either in the flying zone or the ground zone and will be effected based on that decision. We ruled this way because there is no ruling on the height of a zone effect in the book. Should a blast/burst also have a height as long as it's length/width? Should a grasping vines still be able to effect a creature who is flying? These questions are why we chose to separate things into zones.

   As far as 3d encounters this way works pretty well however when there is multiple levels of terrain on the ground it causes some problems. Does a unit on a higher square have cover or even line of effect to a lower square of terrain? What if they are further back from the edge? Does it work the same way in the opposite direction? Like I said problems. Rob recently ran an encounter that dealt with this rather well. It was a fight in a courtyard with creatures on the wall around the courtyard and us either in or in the building around the courtyard. His ruling was that any creature from could draw a normal line of effect from any ground square to any wall square and vice versa. However if a unit was under a roof they could not. Further any area effects used the origin square as normal to decide if they entered buildings, and ignored height when considering the wall. This worked pretty well, was remotely frustrating when you wanted to do certain things but it was fair and outlined from the beginning of the encounter.

Anyhow tune in next time to find out my idea for how to run a fellowship of the ring party. Yes that fellowship, the one with huge differences in power level between characters.

[Beta Ray Bill Cosby]

   To move between zones is a move action that has to be at least 5 squares so if slowed you may not change zones unless you use two move actions (still not 5squares but close enough.) And the last zone is the fair escape. If you fly high enough for this zone you can leave the encounter but may not later rejoin the same encounter. You basically remove yourself from the fight and may not reenter until the current encounter is over. It seems kinda harsh but it prevents a lot of problems and keeps things moving smoothly.

This ruling is fine, but I actually run it as a move action (regardless of squares) so you can still move up and down unless you're immobilized or restrained.

   To represent which zone a unit is in we usually use some kind of marker and even though it doesn't make a whole lot of sense we prevent two units from occupying the same square even if one is in the flying zone and the other is in the ground zone. Any kind of aoe effect like a burst or blast will effect all units in the same zone as the effect, ie. a flaming sphere will ba able to attack anyone in the ground zone even if the unit is 'technically' flying 3 squares off the ground. Just say no, you are either in the flying zone or the ground zone and will be effected based on that decision. We ruled this way because there is no ruling on the height of a zone effect in the book. Should a blast/burst also have a height as long as it's length/width? Should a grasping vines still be able to effect a creature who is flying? These questions are why we chose to separate things into zones.

This is another one that can change as long as you stay consistent. You can rule that a burst or blast will hit all the appropriate squares in both Altitudes (I recommend you use the word altitude rather than zone as it can be confusing), same thing with Areas of Effect. You can rule that all AOEs are essentially pillars that hit everything above them, as long as they all do. This increases the value of zones and decreases the value of flying, in the end you should pick the option that encourages what you want.

Speaking of which, what happens when someone is flying and is knocked prone or off their mount? The answer is, whatever the power they're using says. But if there's no such entry then they fall.

At the lowest, or Skirmish altitude you take no falling damage, you are simply knocked prone normally. You stop flying but may resume once you stand if the power you are using allows you to.

At the second or Sniping altitude you always take a set number of damage dice. Again this is up to the game master as to how risky they want flight to be. I find that between 1 and 2 D10 is a reasonable amount of damage.

Falling from the third altitude should be a narrative event, since you have left combat anyway.

[Beren1]

Yeah, the first part there is fine either way but it has always frustrated me when what is flavor wise a very tied to the ground power is able to target something regardless of altitude. I suppose it is up to the GM as long as they are consistent. And yeah now that I have a bit of liquid inside me that is staying there I see that using zone for every other word probably wasn't the best plan. Also I just found out a roommate has caught the flu I had, Rodrigo stay away from us, and prepare your zombie survival kit.

Also I don't think I put enough emphasis on how you really don't want to do a 3d encounter other than the couple options I gave. Unless you have a party of nothing but geometry majors who are great at picturing 2d images in 3d, it is going to be headache inducing. We had a while there where at the start of any encounter if the description started with anything to do with 3d we all groaned immediately. I mean if you go with the rules as written and apply them to the 3rd dimension then you have to figure from a different altitude whether the target has cover/ no cover/ or even no line of sight every time something wants to make a ranged attack. I took math all thee way to Differential Equations, that doesn't mean I want to mentally do heavy geometry it in my dnd.

[@lantis]

I get what you're saying about 3d encounters and agree almost completely.  However I have had one experience where it worked pretty well because it didn't worry about real geometry.

You have one group on a higher level with a ledge of some kind.  Ruling was, if you aren't at the edge you can't target anything on the ground level and anything on the ground can't target you.  The ledge had a railing so all ranged attacks from the ground had cover penalties.  And all range between levels had 3 squares added to it.  So long as you don't have math experts calling you out on your makeshift geometry adding a 3rd dimension can work so long as, like with flying you're consistent and tailor the rules to achieve the desired effect.

[Beren1]

   Yeah we have tried a few fights that way @tlantis, they usually work but every now and then someone comes up with something to disrupt the balance and then it gets back to frustrating. However usually small changes in height on the battlefield and or a single area keeps things roughly simple enough. Anyhow,

   DnD definitely has some roots in Tolkien's The Lord of The Rings trilogy. And I think it is a normal part of every person who plays DnDs' career to wonder how the fellowship works as a DnD party, or even some other system that better fits it. When I came to this point in my career I did what any man of my generation would do, I  asked the internet.  From what I gathered most people eventually agree that Gandalf is an npc run by the GM, he is just so far more powerful than anyone else and he frequently leaves the story to do other things allowing the "players" to fend for themselves for a while. Beyond that the problem occurs when people try to make some sort of equality between the hobbits and the rest of the party.

   I think the most common solution I have heard is that the sytem they are "playing" is not as much about combat as DnD. So the hobbits have other skills higher to make up for not having as good combat skills, ie. cooking or climbing or talking skills. The problem with this is if you start trying to list off the skills the hobbits have compared to the others you will again find the hobbits to be "weaker" characters, not as many or as powerful skills. Debate it if you will this is my conclusion, however I think I might have come up with a better solution.

   How many games have you been in/ heard of that have more than say 6 people in them? Ok how many of those games last very long and have a coherent in depth story line? Yeah it is beyond my experience too. Ok, now try this on for size, how many hobbits are there? And how many non hobbits, excluding Gandalf of course? That's right 4. In my experience four players is a good size for a serious game that lasts a while. The best part is that you see strong levels of parity between each of the hobbits together and each of the big folk together. So my conclusions is if the fellowship were to be a DnD group, they started a game as 4 low level characters and then to show the scope of the danger they were in they each got to make higher level characters that could face it and continued playing both. (From now on low level hobbits are smalls and other higher level people are bigs)

   I even tried running a game like this to prove my theory, with mixed success. Yes mechanics wise and even player enjoyment wise it was a solid game, with a bit of a hiccup when the shaman died because of AoE's hitting him and his totem.(Psst AoE's can't target totems, poor Herkumer) But otherwise I did a good job of setting up a world that was just too hard and difficult for the low level characters, without killing them, and then introduced their heroic counterparts on a quest to save and protect the little folk on their journey. The real problem I ran into was with myself, my brain fried very crispy trying to keep everything juggled at the same time. We were having rules problems, 3d encounter troubles, and I had to keep trying to find ways to present a challenge to the bigs while not running the risk of accidentally one shotting a little.

   Here are some of the ways I figured out to do this. I think the simplest and  probably best is to split the big and small folk into 2 encounters back to back. You can have these encounters be any mix of skill and combat, for instance the bigs have a combat encounter with horrible monsters and afterwards we have the skill encounter where the littles have been trying to sneak away while the fight occurred to safety. If they fail the skill challenge you can have the next fight actually have the littles in danger while the bigs try to wade through the enemies to get to them.

  Another way is to run the encounters together at the same location. with a skill challenge they mearly need to have different dc's based on their level. For a combat encounter however this gets more difficult. The worst part is that you now have eight player turns and presumably a large number of monster turns as well blech. I say don't do it, it just drags on way to long. If you want you can split the party so to speak so that you have 2 bigs and 2 littles in each party and then have some interesting things occur.

   Ok how to make things seem overwhelming to the smalls and an everyday fight to the bigs. Best answer, minions. When the smalls fight a certain type of enemy it is at least a normal monster if not an elite/solo, when the bigs fight "that same monster" it is now a minion. Be sure to describe them the exact same way but now the bigs mow through them like grass. Another great way to make the world seem harsh to the smalls is to put them in a combat encounter they shouldn't be able to win, just be careful. When I did this I had two elites that were each xp equivalents to their level+3 individually. However I then locked the monsters in position guarding the bridge the littles needed to cross. I specifically started it as you need to cross this bridge and there is no other way around then when they decided to "poke" the monsters I started drawing the encounter. (By poke I mean interact with)

  Once I was done I pointed out that the far end of the bridge was fair escape and that is all. The players quickly figured out that the monsters (club tail behemoths) were way to strong for them to take on alone, and since I hadn't revealed they were going to have bigs yet, they didn't have anywhere else to turn. So they tried making a dash for it but did so in a way that left one player, who was already badly injured, the only player in range of the clubtails during their turns. Squish he went down, this left Brian and Rob across the bridge and Rodrigo the only one still on the wrong side of the monsters and player number four on the ground at the feet of the monsters. Rodrigo could have run the gauntlet and I had a solution ready if he left his friend there alone, skill challenge, but he managed to run in, pick up his comrade, survive both attacks and drag him back out to the beginning side. We ended the fight there and had a skill challenge for them to get across the river with help from the other side now. (Rob and Brian who had made it during the fight)

   Like I said I believe everyone really enjoyed the game and I'd do it again. I just need to do so with more planning and more time spent planning each game. I'm pretty good at fixing things on the fly but it was getting me down doing so every game. So, what should I do next time? I think I'll leave it to listener feedback or grab bag if no one has any questions. So any questions?

[Beta Ray Bill Cosby]

Quick note: I'm pretty sure Brandon and Rob made it across, and Brian and I stayed behind.

[Beren1]

Brandon, Brian, whatever. Also drag perform a heal check same difference, Nitpicker!

  So it occurs to me that more than running encounters running a campaign might be more of a difficulty. It has actually been something I have been thinking about a bit lately. For instance I can't run the same time of game Rodrigo can as of right now. Maybe with more experience. I'd say one of the biggest differences is how social our games are. I haven't gotten very good at running a lot of npc's or ever using important npc's as a driving part of a game. It is probably one of my biggest weaknesses as a GM.

   So for me this means I like to run more PC driven games where it is man vs. environment rather than well Critical Hit season 3. So the whole part of the game taking place on the moon I really enjoy and am comfortable running. I usually run into trouble when I get bogged down in say a conference with CENCORED FOR SPOILERATION!(As the episode has long since aired, the gods of the Pantetheon) For instance I ran an exalted game where the players were mostly off on their own in the western ocean building a fortress on what they later learned was a 1st age warship, and not an island. Or the Star Wars game I ran where they had discovered a secret Sith plot and were spending time mostly alone trying to uncover the details/foil the plan once uncovered. Regardless I tend to convey information through the environment, ie here's what you see, the paper you found says this, from your research you have discovered, ect.

   I think it is important to figure out how you feel comfortable running a game and what events/ mechanics/ subjects you are uncomfortable with. To figure this out try running a couple one shots, your players will likely complain about how they want to keep their characters and why don't you continue it but it is good for you to learn these things to not get burned out. Once you know your problem areas try to avoid them for the short term but growth usually involves pain so try testing your limits every once in a while. Another great way to learn and grow is to play in someone else's game, even if they are newer than you. I think a good way to get another GM when there aren't any nearby is to go for one of your players. Even if you have to twist some arms try and get one of your players to try a one shot, you might have to help but that teaches pretty well too. Anyway I'm getting off topic.

   For an first game I recommend something simple, very simple. The third edition go to was you guys meet in a tavern and some guy shows up asking for help, go adventure. The fourth edition go to seems to be the pc's are in a caravan when pow monster attack, you find yourself back to back with pc #2 he looks like this go adventure. I really like this second method as it gives your players a chance to show off how cool they are and gives them a reason to trust each other as they have already fought together as a team. I recently ran this sort of start to a game with a group of brand new to greenhorn players and they really enjoyed it. Oh another note, it may seem like there are a lot of cool things you can do with higher level characters but I recommend you first game be with level one characters to keep things as simple as possible, and it may feel cliche or not, but use kobolds and goblins for the first few fights, don't worry about explaining why everything is here just have it happen and you can explain it later if you keep running this game.

   Anyway I'm about out of encounters for  now I'll probably remember something later and I got a great one when I finish the game I'm running right now, we'll see how well it goes once I run it.

[Beren1]

This week I'll talk about railroading in my experience.

   First of all for me railroading is by my definition a game where the players have no control over the story and how it progresses and in extreme circumstances can't even effect the pacing. The opposite of the railroaded game is the mythical sandbox game. In this type of game the players have complete control over the game and in the extreme there isn't even a GM. First of all, like communism vs. capitalism, there are very few true games that are all one or the other. Most games fall somewhere in between.

   From my own experience the closest I have had to a railroaded game is one mentioned by Rob. In this game the players were not all that important, the story was from a favorite book of the GM's and we largely just tagged along with the main characters. We could however jump off the train or side track it for a while every so often. For instance when one character decided to sack the castle everyone else was busy defending from assassins after the Queen. However other times we would find ourselves all watching the GM monologue as several characters having a conversation we weren't a part of. So I would rate that closer to the railroad side by a good margin and also poorly run at times.  There are few time you want to monologue as a GM, even less where you want to have a conversation with yourself, and almost never do you want to have a conversation with yourself where the players can't participate, look for a different way to convey the information. For instance say you hear them talk about blah and here is the information you get from it.

  Now on to the grey areas. As a GM there is only so much you can or should prepare for. Agonizing over every possible choice your players are going to make is going to drive you crazy and burn you out very quickly. What I like to do is prepare the encounters I have planned and generally what I info I want to give them/ where I want them to get. I run a lot on the fly maybe too much but I have more fun that way. Lets say I have a game where the players are going to escort a caravan. I plan a goblin ambush and a skill encounter of keep the caravan together. Now I am not going to try to figure out much more than that other than maybe the caravan leaders name and the names of the cities being traveled from and to and the terrain between. Done. Now the players may just go hmm, caravan of stuff is mine and now we run off with it. In that case the skill encounter is scout through the woods back to your characters hideout and the goblin ambush is while they are in the forest. If the players go hmmm, roads? of course we will be ambushed on roads, lets take the more scenic hidden route, then the skill encounter will be scout through woods again and depending on how well they do the skill encounter will decide whether they are ambushed or perhaps get a counter ambush on the goblins instead. And so on.

   So in this case yes there is very little way for them to escape the same two encounters but they do have the power to meet those encounters in different ways and even state their own terms for those encounters. I have even been known to trash an encounter and pull out the MM to come up with something else or even completely change the plan for a whole campaign based on player actions that are just way cooler then what I had. For instance the Star Wars game I've been talking about was originally supposed to be stuck on the original planet for some time but during the first actual session they came up with this great escape plan that was all their doing and I decided to allow it and there went my plans, time to come up with new ones. I've also had games where some players didn't show up and I had to shoot from the hip to come up with reasons why their character wasn't there, some shots have been better than others. Missing players generally strains the narrative.

   So you have been asking yourself if your game is getting railroaded. Well ask yourself, do your players have control over the story? Can they force things to occur differently than planned/ come up with better ways of doing things? Another great way to GM is to, as much as is possible, never say no. If That Guy wants to play a home-brewed OP character, say no. If Rodrigo says "I can play anything I want to ehn,..." and then anything else, say NO! Oh wait... I said yes and now he is literally playing as the ship the players are riding around in, it is awesome. So be willing to bend your notion of what is reasonable and you never know what might happen. Be willing to change things up a bit and your players will likely love you for it.

    After all being a GM is letting your players walk all over you,.... Tune in next week to hear me talk about GM fatigue and you, have you been feeling walked all over?  But seriously a more dynamic game is fun. It may take some encouragement to get players to try things, I doubt it, but it is worth it when your game takes on a (healthy) life of its own.

Tune in next time to hear me talk about different ways to do skill encounters.

[Tondi-]

I was looking in the mirror at my wicked awesome crit hit t-shirt trying to work out if tork had eyes or teeth on his face when I thought.  Jeez you could easily fit 5 faces on this.

So just why haven't you joined the game yet rules man?  Surely playing would be more fun than calling the DM out on forgotten rules.  I liked your gaming style when Steven was GMing.

Do we need to start a partition?

Or is it true...are you and Rodrigo truly the same person?  Are you his rule lawyer side to some fight club-esque split personality gaming drama.

[schleicher12000]

I would like to start a petition to erect a partition around Alex when he is over