That smug feel when you DM and don't even give a shit about the stats of your monsters and just eyeball it

Sure, buddy.

>DM with only vague stats in mind
>Player wants to DM, but is worried about remembering rules and stats
>I tell him to just make a basic plan and improvise the rest, like I do
>He thinks I'm lying to him and that I plan out my sessions to every detail
>tfw forever DM because all my friends are too scared to run a game

I've been doing this stuff for years. I just bullshit notes and make it look like I'm well prepared, at least for systems i understand well.

But now I've got to stay about 10 different encounters for our Pokemon Tabletop United game because after sessions 1 and 2 I have no fucking clue where my players will want to go. Seriously, agreeing to play a Pokemon sandbox might have been a bad idea.

>start playing D&D 5e
>game is absurdly easy to eyeball stats for
>have to do maybe 1/10th of the mental math I had to for prior editions
>can focus on roleplaying and making fights interesting with terrain hazards and unusual tactics without worrying about setting balance-breaking precedents
I love this edition.

You can still be an all-powerful conjurer [4], you just need to buy it at double-pump cost because I'm using the Minute-Made Magic houserules.

95% of DMs just bullshit their stats. 4% refuse to admit that they bullshit their stats. 1% are turboautist numbercrunchers and only play with other turboautists.

Literally my only complaint is the lack of published character options, and that can be solved by good enough homebrew.

It makes kind of sense, most players forget the huge responsibility DMs have. They have to set up a campaign, keep track of encounters, be able to deal with players getting sidetracked and doing things that weren't expected, randomly pull encounters, loot and NPCs with personalities, dreams and wishes out of their ass and also have to be aware of party relationships, what items they have, how they interact with the world and how their behavior could potentially lead to further plot developments to make sure that none of the players feels left out. In addition to that a GM has to be impartial and not develop preferences for specific players since the rest of the table will assume that they are treated unfairly. And the worst thing is that as a DM you kind of ruin the whole game for yourself from the player perspective because you start to understand how little control the DM actually has and that 95% of the shit he says is probably not even pre-planned.

...

Thankfully, making homebrew in 5e is also super easy.

There is no way I can keep up with the constant murder hobo speed train they got going, so I have vip's with set stats, but if I stop to stat out every god damn rat and junkie in an ally they attack just because, then it would bog down the game like crazy.

A good dm can Guage acceptable ac, health, and attack if he knows his players like he should. If they somehow go so off track and fight a paladin out of nowhere, I just give him some stats, and occasionally look at the paladin spell list. And Fucking player that says "hey! That spells level 2 and he dosnt seem that good!" Has missed the entire Fucking point of the role play game. My combat usually goes without visual maps as a way to get people to roleplay combat. It's faster and more dramatic.

>"hey! That spells level 2 and he dosnt seem that good!"
Any player who cares enough about this sort of thing to interrupt the game to complain about that is no gentlemen and is most definitely not my nigga.

The purpose of a DM (and OP explicitly said DM) is to run the game in such a way that the world is as internally consistent as possible so that players can make decisions that make sense as much in-character as they can. The purpose of the party is to take that and make their own fun.
I'm not even that user, but I agree basically 100%, assuming we're talking about D&D, which we are since OP said "DM."

>"hey! That spells level 2 and he dosnt seem that good!"
"his order focuses on different teachings"
"he is a noble with a heirloom amulet that let's him cast it"
"strange right? maybe you should investigate it"
"as you notice it, you also feel a strange holy energy emanating from the ground"
every plothole is a new unusual npc for the roleplayer, or an artifact for a munchkin, or a quest hook for an investigative player, or a place to explore for the wanderluster.

Worst gm I ever had was a collector of pnp minis. Every sessions encounters were, without fail
, based on the new mini he got that day. And he would stick to the stats like glue. He wouldn't budge. Creature is maybe 6 levels beyond you? Heh, isn't this thing so cool guys?

Yeah, it seems like literally the ONLY way he could have avoided doing that would have been to just eyeball it and make everything up as he goes.

...

Can I have players like you? As the guy who posted it, I tell my players all the fucking time: I don't make mistakes. Somthing seems off? Ask and look into it. Recent one without much detail:
>you see the off in the distance, the spitting image of "vip npc"!
>lol gm dosnt remember he killed her
>oh I do
"Lol uta ok to admit you forgot. You even had her ghost talk to us so we know she's dead
>GEE, FUCKING WEIRD RIGHT?

They are in for a hell of a surprize when the surrogats come and just assume I fucked up.

Things that look like they're wrong in setting but are actually not are fun to confuse players with.
A personal favorite of mine is making a really resistant foe that CAN be killed by normal means but is a pain to, and is actually some sort of puzzle that can be deciphered by cunning and a simple skill check. Latest example being this sun-god falcon that kept healing the enemy swordsmen party and was nigh invulnerable. After spending many resources on the fight, the druid finally noticed he could just throw a blanket over the falcon to stop his light from healing the foes. Covering the swordsmen and/or using water on the falcon to refract the light was also acceptable. Everyone including me had that really smug face on, like when you finish a hard puzzle in zelda without checking gamefaqs.

>Hard puzzle
>Zelda

????

ever played oracle of ages?

Heh. I mostly just do this with hitpoints, especially with bosses. The players just struck a dramatic blow against the demon lord after a long battle? Oh hey, that just managed to remove the last of his HP. Plot-important fights are a lot more fun for the players when they're settled in an awesome fashion, instead of being won with a random arrow from the ranger three rounds after everyone's exhausted their per-day/encounter abilities.

>the purpose of a GM is to make the game fun for the party.

So the GM can suck dick for four hours and still be GMing? No, fuck off. If you are playing, you are playing a game. It's fine to bend the rules, but ignoring them is false advertising and outright deception.

>lets players win every combat cos mah narrative
>complains players always want to murderhobo

No, I never owned a Game Boy.

Are you sure about that?

Shit I do this. I collect minis and usually within a week or so of getting them I need to use them in something.

But I don't do 6 levels beyond you kind of shit. I just have them as my favorite monsters, or buy multipupose minis (like orc warriors work okay for pretty much any humanoid enemy).

That said Minis let me sink money into gaming crap once I have all the RPG books I want. So there is that.

Maybe you should play something like dungeon world that encourages the GM to arbitrarily railroad the players and ignore stupid geeky shit like the rules of the game that create the consistency for the players to be able to actually roleplay. Leave D&D to the nerds please.

Which is the rule that says "The GM/DM is always right"? I'm pretty sure I've read this rule.

Would they still be having fun if they knew what you were doing? It's dishonest no matter how you look at it. they'll lose a lot of trust in you if they ever find out, and trust is important. This obviously depends on how good you are at it and how much effort you put in of course. If you're making halfassed shit up on the fly because you're lazy, you're definitely a scumbag.

It was invented by shitty gm's to justify them cheating at the game out of laziness.

The GM is sticking to the rules. They're just not the rules in the book. They're the slightly different system executed in the GM's head. The book is a useful approximation to the actual game.

The players know and expect this. They're aware that they're not playing against a computer programmed with the rules in the rulebook. The rulebook is an example to help ensure that the players and GM are working from the same page, but the only metric for "have you gone too far off the rulebook" is "do the players think you've gone too far off the rulebook."

>but ignoring them is false advertising and outright deception.

the players don't fucking know. Especially if there are no other DMs on the table. You have to keep in mind that as a DM you have to deal with all the insane ideas players throw at you, every little plan, every story hook you prepared, all the foreshadowing and intricate little details can be thrown out of the window by one player simply fucking something up that you didn't take into account. And every DM knows that this shit happens quite frequently. So you stop giving a fuck about the exact wording of a rule or the precise stat distribution because it would sometimes completely ruin the pace of a critical moment.

>GMs
>cheating
Did someone hurt you? You seem upset about something.

Yeah it's called Rule Zero, which represents how much fucking value it has.

The entire contract of an RPG gets thrown out the window when you go "LOLOLOL I'M RIGHT BECAUSE I SAID SO"

That's the clearest sign of shitty writing out there. A plot-hole-riddled story with terrible unrealistic characters whose actions make no sense, and when you complain, it's "well it's MY STORY fuck you I'm right because fuck you lol what are you gonna do about it fuck boi?"

And when you walk out of that shitty movie after two hours, you feel cheated out of your money and time. And rightfully so.

Yeah go shove that "DM is always right" shit right up your ass. Then kill yourself, please, so that you stop poisoning the RPG community.

>Would they still be having fun if they knew what you were doing? It's dishonest no matter how you look at it. they'll lose a lot of trust in you if they ever find out, and trust is important.

Not that guy, but most of my party is well aware of the fact that I frequently bullshit things. They understand that it's done purely to keep things fun. I've never had a complaint, and I know when they DM, they do exactly the same thing

Page 4 in the introduction to the Dungeon Master's Guide in 5th edition has this nice little section of the bottom paragraph in the left hand column which starts "The D&D rules help you and the other players have a good time, but the rules aren't in charge. You're the DM, and you are in charge of the game."

Go emulate Link's Awakening and both oracle games... seasons might be easier on the puzzles, but they're all good

>Would they still be having fun if they knew what you were doing?

let me ask you a question. Would they still have fun if their lack of grasp on their abilities and damage numbers makes them continuously fail in every possible scenario?

I can only afford to give a shit about monster stats if the group I'm playing with is very familiar with the rule-set and the stats of their equipment and weapons. You can not do that with inexperienced players or any type of player that is more interested in exploration and storytelling. The moment you numbercrunch in a casual party full of people that don't give a shit about stats is the moment you see really dumb party wipes even against fairly basic enemies.

>The GM/DM is always right
So what if the GM/DM says his or her purpose is not to make the game fun for the party?

Does this result in a paradox, or maybe do the players also matter?

Play a system where that isn't the case and that problem goes away.

I wouldn't enjoy myself If I knew that the character design choices and my actions had no effect on the outcome of battles, but perhaps some people would enjoy that sort of game.

If the game is not fun then why are you playing? Are you being held hostage?

Read the goddamn thread before you post, idiot.

>But the whole "LOL I just BS all my encounters and put fucking 100 hit points 20 AC lololol basic stats I'm such a good GM I should start my own blog" shit is just pathetic. Makes me laugh, because I call GMs on this bullshit all the time. Once I find out I usually start explicit sexual relationships with NPCs, or other PCs if the DM doesn't cooperate, then when he whines I tell him to get the FUCK out of my house. (Protip: ALWAYS play at your house. That way you maintain complete control, and can weed out shitty DMs like these).

If you read this, and seriously think this is an actual person's sincere opinion stated to honestly contribute to discussion, and not deliberately constructed bait which may have no relationship whatsoever to reality or anything that poster feels, believes, or has experienced, then you should go sit in the shame corner.

Replying to somebody who is holding an opinion only because it makes people mad in a deliberate attempt to spur shitty discussion does not, actually, help. You can't argue someone out of a belief they don't actually hold, and are in fact only claiming to hold for the purpose of causing infuriating arguments.

Yeah and a movie writer is in charge of a movie.

But if you walk into Batman versus Superman and get a movie about a soldier fucking some woman who sent him a letter at the right time or whatever shit, you're going to feel cheated.

Similarly if you go to a D&D game you are expecting to play D&D, not some faggot making up bullshit and ignoring the rules. Your actions have no meaning if the DM is having the monster die whenever he feels like it and fudging literally everything because he's too lazy to actually run the system. Stop being a liar and run FATE or just do freeform. It's one thing to break with the rules on occasion when it makes a better story. It's another to hide behind Rule Zero like a fucking pussy and refuse to admit that you're a childish control freak who can't handle the game going outside of his autistic railroaded box of what is and is not acceptable.

no, because the GM can not overrule the task he is given. The only rule that stands above the GM's word is that he is supposed to make the session enjoyable for players. That doesn't mean that everyone has a good time by being a total badass, it just means that whatever happens is interesting enough for the players to stay hooked.

>Play a system where that isn't the case and that problem goes away.

LOL we fucking can't when OP is advocating for completely ignoring the rules of the game and then lying to your players by claiming you are playing D&D when in fact you are masturbating the GM's limp stiffy.

That is true, you should leave the group if you aren't having fun, but the DM should not advertise it is a D&D group when it's not D&D but in fact the GM's whims and random bullshit and the rules have zero part in it.

This is literally gurps

This is literally the opposite of gurps. Are you kidding me? GURPS places the most value on internal consistency and following the rules of any game of which I'm aware.

well it does have an effect. But as a DM I occasionally shave off HP here and there, "fix" some of the positioning inconsistencies, add objects that didn't exist in my planning to steer the session into the direction I want. Of course I'm technically cheating but sometimes you have to choose the flow of the game over the complete consistent ruling of stat pages.

But I already stated that I thought it was ok to "cheat" when it was done with care, so why are we arguing?

>I wouldn't enjoy myself If I knew that the character design choices and my actions had no effect on the outcome of battles, but perhaps some people would enjoy that sort of game.

That's why a good GM doesn't do that either, because you are correct that players don't enjoy that.

"eyeballing the stats of your monsters" doesn't mean you just make the players always win, or that whether they win or not has nothing to do with what they're doing. It just means you're approximating things rather than doing precise calculations, and skewing things to better fit narrative criteria and player satisfaction.

The resulting distribution of outcomes conditional on player actions is only approximately related to what a mathematical simulation of the mechanics would output, and skewed according to outcomes that lead to a better game experience.

That doesn't mean that it's *unrelated* to the distribution a purely mechanical approach would create, or unrelated to player action, or that the players never lose. It means that the exact outcomes resulting from player actions are only qualitatively similar, and that things are skewed towards the GM's preferences.

The purpose of the rules and the dice are to provide a structure to avoid the pure-pretend "Nuh-uh!" syndrome, and to provide a framework to help the player reason about the world strategically. If the players and the GM are on the same wavelength, then drifting from the exact rules is no problem, since the players and the GM drift in the same direction.

yeah then explain how a DM who doesn't follow the rules of the game over 50% of the time, is still playing the goddamn game.

> the DM can do whatever they want

Well the DM can take a fat shit on the table and lie in it but that isn't playing D&D, now is it?

How do I git gud at this?

I did it comfortably for pathfinder a lot, but it feels so much more egregious when I do it for 5e
halp

Hm, maybe because when people say they do that, you say this?

>But the whole "LOL I just BS all my encounters and put fucking 100 hit points 20 AC lololol basic stats I'm such a good GM I should start my own blog" shit is just pathetic. Makes me laugh, because I call GMs on this bullshit all the time. Once I find out I usually start explicit sexual relationships with NPCs, or other PCs if the DM doesn't cooperate, then when he whines I tell him to get the FUCK out of my house. (Protip: ALWAYS play at your house. That way you maintain complete control, and can weed out shitty DMs like these).

>So the GM can suck dick for four hours and still be GMing? No, fuck off. If you are playing, you are playing a game. It's fine to bend the rules, but ignoring them is false advertising and outright deception.

>
Yeah it's called Rule Zero, which represents how much fucking value it has.

The entire contract of an RPG gets thrown out the window when you go "LOLOLOL I'M RIGHT BECAUSE I SAID SO"

That's the clearest sign of shitty writing out there. A plot-hole-riddled story with terrible unrealistic characters whose actions make no sense, and when you complain, it's "well it's MY STORY fuck you I'm right because fuck you lol what are you gonna do about it fuck boi?"

And when you walk out of that shitty movie after two hours, you feel cheated out of your money and time. And rightfully so.

Yeah go shove that "DM is always right" shit right up your ass. Then kill yourself, please, so that you stop poisoning the RPG community.

>I wouldn't enjoy myself If I knew that the character design choices and my actions had no effect on the outcome of battles, but perhaps some people would enjoy that sort of game.

Yeah, you're right, I don't see how that could possibly come across as argumentative or disagreeable.

Faintly fanny flustered, friend?

Solid post

The level of anal damage you caused is proportionate to the truth of what you said.

The point of having rules is to allow the players to interact with the game world. If you don't follow them when you run the game, everything on their character sheet is useless, because they have no way of knowing if any of it will actually work the way it's supposed to.

>Yeah and a movie writer is in charge of a movie

You have no clue how movies are made, do you?

I'd put "GM is familiar enough with the system to come up with an appropriate challenge for the party" under the done well column, however there are GMs who bullshit encounters completely like is talking about, though they are thankfully uncommon.
You seem to believe that that stat blocks are either religiously copied from a monster manual or wholly bullshit. Why is that?

>put film into type writer
>write the movie
>???
>profit
simple

Oh I know what I said was true. And I appreciate you having the balls to admit it. Veeky Forums just hides behind rule zero because most of them are those shitty railroading GMs who don't realize that every time you say "lol rule zero" your credibility as a GM weakens slightly. I've quit shittons of campaigns where it became clear the GM was just using them to masturbate himself. Ignorign the stats of the monsters in certain cases is fine. Ignoring them most of the time because you want things to go your way, is not even playing the game.And you need to kill yourself for lying to your players.

> it's an "user misses the point of the example" post

I want to say it was an excellent troll, but that sort of tard DOES exist. Hmm, well played, either way.

A lot of vanilla encounters seem like "how well the players roll vs how well the monsters roll"

I'm thinking of making an encounter with 2 skeletons that have 1hp, but will rez the other as a reaction as soon as the other dies. Basically, the only way to kill them is to kill them both at once by holding actions and syncing up or AOE/multitarget them. The bone bros are also shackled together by a 10ft chain, so a character could grab the chain and make a strength check to see if they pull the chain hard enough to kill the bone bros simultaneously.

>take the improved grapple feat
>try to grapple someone
>"lol user we don't use the grappling rules they're too complicated, just roll an opposed STR check XD"

So I took the feat for nothing, because the DM decided to make something up instead of running the actual game

If you're going to reply to my post and try to defend this type of behavior, consider taking your own life instead. You'll be doing the hobby a favor.

>Similarly if you go to a D&D game you are expecting to play D&D
You're going there expecting to role-play. Everything else can go. The rules are a tool. They can be discarded or adapted at will.

In this case, select elements are being ignored. Considering the Monster Manual solely exists for setting and balance reasons, it serves very little purpose if the GM can handle those things without it.

You keep talking about the rules, but what OP mentioned is only a very small part of them. In fact, they're keeping the rules, they're just applying their own stat blocks. And stats get changed or adjusted all the time. It's not like every entity is going to be homogeneous. You adjust, add and remove abilities and stats, skills, spells, etc, all the time to make the encounter more suitable for the specific context.
>who can't handle the game going outside of his autistic railroaded box of what is and is not acceptable.
You mean like you're doing? "Whaaaaa, that Hobgoblin died at 11 HP of damage, when the rules clearly say that they have 13HP. RAILROADING". That's what you sound like.

Sounds like you were too autistic to talk to the GM and group about house rules and game expectations before the game.

>laughingproducers.jpg

>and the rules have zero part in it.
There's that inaccurate hyperbole again.

Yeah, except that example was a classic straw man, you dense motherfucker.

>You're going there expecting to role-play.

No, you are going there expecting to play a roleplaying GAME. There are two parts to that phrase. Ignoring one means you are freeform wanking. Nothing else.

> You mean like you're doing? "Whaaaaa, that Hobgoblin died at 11 HP of damage, when the rules clearly say that they have 13HP. RAILROADING". That's what you sound like.

Yeah pretty much. There's no fucking point in them having hit points if you are just going to ignore them. Roleplaying games are not for you. Stop hijacking them to introduce legitimacy to your bullshit.

> n fact, they're keeping the rules, they're just applying their own stat blocks.

Stat blocks are part of the rules fuckboy.

> And stats get changed or adjusted all the time.

Yep. But OP is just making up bullshit to control the story how he wants. There's a difference between adjusting stat blocks and not even using them. "LOL 1000 HP" is not a stat block. It's not a creature.

> In this case, select elements are being ignored.

Nah it's just the DM abusing his power and not even putting any effort into it. The character's abilities have zero fucking relevance when the DM just pulls a number out of his ass for the monster and changes it every two seconds to fit "muh narrative." Why even play? Just ask the DM how the story ends. Then lube up because you're going to have the entire autistic plot of his next novel rammed up your tight hiherto-unfucked asshole.

I really wish GMs who did this were hit by cars. Or pissed off the Mafia by making up a bullshit RPG game. The day there is a Whitey Bulger of shitty GMs is the day I will give another man a willing blowjob.

> the default assumption of playing the game is that the rules in the book will be ignored

Nah that's the GM's job. If you're going to ignore rules, it is on YOU to tell the players up front. Full stop. Because saying "we are playing D&D" means you are playing D&D rules included.

The rules might as well have zero part in it when you are removing half of their entire function. Rollign to hit against an empty vaccuum when in fact the monster is not going to die until the GM feels like it, means that your actions have no meaning and no purpose. Thus the rules are purposeless.

Geeze, you're a saucy one.

How about everybody just do what's fun for them? Anything wrong with that, familius?

>it is on YOU to tell the players up front
Nobody goes into a game expecting monster stat blocks to be adhered to fully. That's not something you need to mention unless you're changing the setting significantly to the point where existing words mean something totally different.
>we are playing DnD
It's not a computer game. The point of RPGs is the variability and ability to adapt. Playing DnD means what you started with was based on DnD, and that probably the mechanics of the game will be mostly DnD, at least to start with.

Beyond that, it's just monster stats. A very trivial part. If he was changing the resolution mechanics that might be a big deal, but shifting monster stats or making them up means almost nothing. These hobgoblins are using pikes. This cleric has a somewhat unorthodox spell selection. This Dragon is just plain tougher than most. Throttle back on the meta-knowledge and nothing happens that should annoy you.

What is fun in D&D for you guys? Why do you play these games with a DM? Because if you want the "100%, follow the rules, never fudge anything" experience then go play video games, cause that's what those are.

>you are removing half of their entire function.
OP wasn't, though.
>empty vacuum
The GM keeps track of damage and stats. If the GM was so bad at GMing that they needed the monster manual for that, they're in the wrong job.

These bait reaction images are getting out of hand.

Still prevents you from taking an Attack of Opportunity when you initiate a grapple fampai :^)

If just making the shit up as you go along isn't shitty, then why does it make you feel "smug" rather than "good about helping your players have fun?"

>Mfw this guy probably hates homebrew monsters too.

Its a fucking game mate. Calm the fuck down. If you don't want those kinds of games don't play them, holy shit.

>ignoring one
Except you're not ignoring it, you're just not fixated on a specific form of it.
>no point to them
Provided the GM portrays it competently, it means very little. It's not like he's giving them ogre stat blocks.
>part of the rules
A small part of it. And one that is highly chimeric even in the average group. Monsters don't come out of a replicator.
>making up bullshit
Not if it's consistent, doesn't break suspension of disbelief, and flows well. Then, he's just doing his job.
>abusing his power
That's far from proven.
>pulls a number out of his ass
Provided that it matches with the players approximate expectations and setting knowledge, then it doesn't matter. If he was doing the 'yes, these basement rats actually fight like cyclops', that might be a problem, but who's going to sperg about it if the orc warriors have 20hp rather than 15? They're just a slightly tougher bunch than average. Or maybe the previous stat block turned out to be way too easy for the PCs, or this tribe of guys is known for being better or worse. Or maybe they're far stronger than the base stat blocks.

Abuse would be railroading, or this kobold suddenly having 100hp and a wand of disintegration because the GM wants to kill the party, or hard block this path. Deviating from the setting specific stats for the purposes of story.

The GM already has near total power when it comes to encounter and scenario composition. This is merely the same concept, in a slightly different presentation.

I don't feel smug, i just feel lazy.

Yeah, every setting is a carbon copy of the monster manual monsters. And every game needs to have exactly the same stats, because there's no other variables in play, and having a fun game means not varying from the listed stats, because the listed stats are perfect in every way.

Given the posted image of a pig eating, I'd say he felt smug about getting away with being lazy. He cut a corner and everything worked out fine. Less paperwork for the GM, thank god, he thinks.

It feels like you're pulling off something you're not supposed to, because the standard rule is to plan everything way out, but sometimes the best features come from pulling shit out of your ass. Hell, i made an enemy with a custom statblock and halfway through a fight i gave them a new power because they weren't playing right and it made an otherwise unimpressive monster into something the party remembered and enjoyed.

Conversely, if things that aren't "supposed" to happen never happen, why the fuck are we rolling dice? If that's what you wanna do, own up to it and run a freeform game.

The most important rule is that you are trying to make it fun.

Every board should have IDs cause I love laughing at samefags

And I love laughing at people who get fucking BTFO

Keep replying, I'm sure everyone wants to see your attempt at damage control