In the more adversarial days of D&D, some DMs insisted that players announce their intent to draw a weapon before attacking. Obviously, this guideline exempts the anthropomorphic ducks in RuneQuest. Imagine this rule worded in a more amusing way: DMs should always assume the characters are wearing pants, even if no players said that they put them on. Assume players have taken reasonable actions. Basically, unless you actually go out of your way to check to see if you’re on a living hill, your character is dead.” 2. Lizard writes, “This is a perfect example of the classic ‘gotcha!’ monster. “They feed upon unwary travelers who camp upon their seemingly benign summits.” Campers only have a 1 in 6 chance of noticing a lost-and digested-party member. Living hills look like normal, grassy hills. See How to Scare D&D Players-Even When They Play Mighty Heroes.Īn outrageous violation of this rule appears as a living hill monster described in Booty and the Beasts, the 1979 collection of monsters and treasures co-authored by legendary D&D artist Erol Otus. DMs can still throw deadly, even lethal challenges, but not without giving players a warning or a way to avoid the peril. In today’s game, DMs more often contrive threats that the party can beat. See The Story of the Impossible Luck that Leads D&D Parties to Keep Facing Threats They Can Beat. The early rules made fleeing easier and clever players knew when to run. Certainly Gary introduced tricks aimed at luring characters deeper than they intended, but he saw such traps as avoidable tests of mapping skill. In D&D’s early days, players controlled the game’s difficulty by choosing how deep to delve into the dungeon. The avoid part of this rule is important. Never confront characters with threats they cannot either defeat or avoid. What are the dungeon master’s laws of fair play? 1. Eventually, these DMs either lost all their players or they learned. Meanwhile, struggling DMs never deduced the unwritten rules, and often unknowingly broke them to defeat the players and to “win” D&D. Still, Gary just aimed to challenge players and he mostly stuck to these rules that he never wrote down. He and his players enjoyed the battle of wits brought by this style of play. As soon as players gained an edge, Gary created something to foil them. He set an example that seemed to encourage dungeon masters to beat players. D&D co-creator Gary Gygax made these lessons difficult for many early DMs to learn. Oddly, these rules never appeared in print, so successful DMs learned them by observation and insight. Other DMs never track hit points and just declare monsters defeated when it suits the drama of a battle.ĭespite a DM’s dominion over the rules, D&D includes some rules DMs must never break-at least if they want their players to stick with the game. Some DMs stick to the rules as written, only overriding them when they defy the logic of the game world. The amount of breakage varies from group to group. In Dungeons & Dragons the dungeon master gets to break the rules, but only so much.
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