Roleplaying
23
Nov
Today, we’re gonna talk a little about gameplay, things that do matter. I got the idea for this rant from newbieDM, who had a story about him as a DM missing rules.
My group, who consists of a very experienced group of players where everyone except two usually DM within this group or in other groups, and the player with the least RPG-experience is my seventeen years old son, he has only played for 12 years, so he is the newbie.
One guy brought in a concept from his group that we all liked from the start, The Monster Union and The PC Union. It is pretty straight forward thinking, and a way to correct the DM when he/she makes a mistake, without being rude or being a besserwisser. Instead of the “He can’t do that according to page 143 in the DMG and his stat block in the MM2″ approach, which sounds kind of rude and mostly provokes an opportunity attack from the DM, we use the “DM, the Monster Union protests against the unfair ruling here“.
Similar, we use the same kind of phrasing they other way around, like “DM, the PC Union protests against that last action.“.
This way, we can keep a fair and balanced game, and no one can afterwards come bickering about this or that was wrong. Everyone who sees anything will interrupt, if they feel something is out of line. This happens a handful times at the most on a full day game, as most mistakes done by both players and DMs are so minor no one ever spots them. How many times haven’t you forgot that +1 attack bonus you were granted by a spell by the cleric the previous turn? Or how many times did DM forget that -1 penalty to attack rolls applied to monster-x due to a previous attack?
Most of the times, they do not matter, but when DM says AC 23, and the players says “Damn, you just hit me, and I will die“, then another player (usually the one who caused that penalty) can say “DM, PC Union says have you remembered that -1 attack penalty?”
So, using the Monster Union and Player Union meta entities makes corrections to decisions much easier to make, without making who ever makes the correction look like a rule riding, game ruining jerk.
So, invite them to your game table, let them into your game, and you will have a much calmer session when things goes wrong, and one thing, if the PCs only plays the PC union but never the monster union roles, this will not work, so DM must see to that it is an even balance here. Errors are made on both sides of the screen, corrections should reflect that.
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