“Warstories” is the name I’m giving to a series of short, quick articles that I want to do that involve DM’s sharing exactly that: warstories from around the table. I see it as an avenue for griping and venting and as a way to share solutions and answers to little things that may creep up in your games. It could be a simple as food choice gripes, small playing spaces, or bigger issues like controlling problem players. As always, feel free to submit your own columns for future Warstories.
You’ve got your encounters set up, your maps are drawn, your stats are in front of you and you are ready to roll… The fight starts, your monsters take damage… the players take damage… the monsters get bloodied… the players hurt a bit… monster heal, players heal… you fudge numbers a bit and *WHAM*–everything screeches to a halt “What do you mean he’s not down? He’s taken over xx points of damage!! Hold on, hold on! Are you sure?”
You’ve been second-guessed!
How many of you guys DM that one player that sits at the table and looks over your proverbial shoulder making sure you’re doing everything by the book? He’s busy making sure your are applying ongoing damage to your monsters, and he’s tallying hitpoints on the monsters to make sure you are counting right, because he knows how many hitpoints they have, or at least should have… He questions your DC’s on skill checks or AC on enemies, because he knows better than you…
You’ve been second-guessed!
Or you put an encounter together and decide that X monster is going to be part of the encounter, along with Y and Z. “Whoa whoa, what does X have to do with Z, they would never be hanging out together? That doesn’t make sense.”
You’ve been second-guessed!
What can you do with this guy so he gets off your back and lets you DM in peace? I think the best remedy here would be to turn the tables on him. Ask him to DM the game for a bit because you need a break, and think he’d make a great Dungeon Master. Then hit him with the full second-guess assault. BOOM! Sit next to him at the table and bombard him with “I wouldn’t do that.” “Are you sure? It doesn’t sound right”. He’ll get the picture.
Another remedy is to remind this guy that technically, whatever you do at the table isn’t really cheating. The rules are there for you to bend as much as you may need. You can certainly toughen monsters up or weaken them as you like in order to fit your particular game and group makeup. Remind him off that outside the table.
So for this first edition of Warstories, I’m curious as to how many of you DM’s out there have faced this type of situation at the table? How do you handle it?
I look forward to your comments.
Edit: It seems that the ChattyDM had posted an article about the same exact topic as mine before I published mine. Arghh, I hate looking like a ripoff artist! Here’s the link to his article. Let’s compare notes, and I’m sorry for the appearance of impropriety 🙂
www. Newbie DM .com 
Manny
October 8, 2009
Personally, I’d flog em.
newbiedm
October 8, 2009
Thanks for the insight, eh… Manny. 🙂
Hungry
October 8, 2009
I give them a wink and a smile and pronounce quite clearly to the table at large, “Yep. I’m cheating. I can stop anytime and we’ll see how rough things get.” My groups all know that I fudge dice rolls in favor of the story and the characters. Not lots and never to a large degree. I also never save a player from stupidity through fudging the dice, but as soon as I stop being “the nice DM” then the game gets really rough for the players.
For some reason, as a player, my dice suck. Royally suck. Especially d6. For some reason, as a player, my dice rock and roll… except d6. They still suck for me. It’s one reason I always get my butt kicked while playing Battletech, GURPS, Shadowrun and any other d6-based game. I still keep coming back for more, though!
Kameron
October 8, 2009
Woah! Remedy #1 is a surefire why to never get a player to try their hand at DMing. It’s a tough enough job as it is. I think just giving them some time in the seat will be enough for them to gain a little perspective. No need to give them a taste of their own medicine, not to mention it’s more likely to just put you in a bad light as a player.
My preferred strategy for dealing with rules lawyers and second-guessers is what you lay out in remedy #2. I’m the DM. I’m the one behind the screen with the encounter. Where does it say that my goblins have to behave just like the goblins in the MM? What rule prevents me from coming up with DCs that I think are appropriate? Those are all expediencies.
geek ken
October 8, 2009
I’d take a step back a moment and ask why is this player doing this?
If he is being a metagaming jerk, no worries. Put your foot down. Tell him flat out, that while he is correct, you are trying to run a game here and have fun. If anything can be gleamed from the new DMG2, it should be change what you want to make the game fun for YOUR group.
But let’s say he has another reason for second-guessing you. Are you being fair and impartial (or are you favoring certain players)? Is your story engaging to the players so that they are the main part of it (or are they side characters to your awesome NPCs)? If you were striving for a verisimilar story, have you just dumped that out and gone with a totally wacky universe (and is the group cool with it if you are)? Are you meeting the expectations of most of the group, running a fun game (or are you dragging them through a constant meatgrinder for your satisfaction)?
If you have a backseat DM, take a long hard look and see if there is a reason why this player is second-guessing you.
Spenser
October 8, 2009
“A DM only rolls the dice because of the noise they make” –Gygax
@geek ken: While this is something every DM needs to consider, I find that this type of player has nothing to do with the quality of the DM. I’ve seen players try to whip out the Monster Manual *during combat* just to prove the enemy should be dead, and that was back in the heady days of 3.0, when monsters weren’t even expected to go by standard hp.
Personally, I don’t think this is behavior you can just let slide, even until the end of a session. If a player challenges you in the ways described above, just ask them how they know how many hp (or whatever) the monster has. No matter what they respond with, give them you custom evil DM laugh.
And if you don’t have an evil DM laugh, you’re not in the right line of work.
However, I don’t see how turning the tables really helps. You’ll just have two frustrated DMs instead of one.
rjbs
October 8, 2009
“Why on earth are gnomes and orcs hanging out??” // “Why didn’t that kill him?” // “What isn’t the Orb of Always Works working?”
In all cases, I find the best answer is to shrug and say, “I don’t know. Weird, right?”
cynicaloptimist
October 8, 2009
With this and Chatty’s article this morning about backseat DMing, I realized I’m totally THAT GUY. On the other hand, when it’s me behind the screen, I usually go with @rjbs’ solution. Keeps em guessing.
Alex
October 9, 2009
Actually, I tend to try and quash it with on the fly explanations or additions. For example, if a player called me out on the apparent longevity of my monsters, I might do something like this: “You know, you’re right. He was bloodied at 64 after taking 10 damage, so he can’t have more than 148 hp…good eye. Why not take a perception check, free action for the good spot.” A low roll would garner a “Oh…you don’t see anything…Maylay has next initiative.” response, where a high roll would give, “You see a as he quickly withdraws his head back around the here.”
If someone asks me why x is hanging out with y, I give more of a response rjbs gives, with more of an explanation to come in the form of a note from some evil gnome to his underlings, who are in the joint raiding party, if somewhat grudgingly. Now the player has two leaders to fight at the bandit encampment, a gnomish thief of somekind and an orc warchief of somekind, rather than just the orc I had planned before.
If a player tries to get clever with me, I give him spiteful cleverness back. We as DMs are encouraged to reward ingenuity with “yes’s” or rewards. No reason we can’t “punish” metagaming or uncalled for back talk with an extra challenge that fits the question posed.
That and I find it a fun game to see how quickly I can come up with a feasible solution to what’s been asked of me. Gives good practice to DMs for that time the party goes down path e when you’ve set up outlines for paths a, b, c, d, and f, thinking they’d surely take one of those before even thinking of e.
Zachary
October 9, 2009
Any rules discussion waits until after the game and between sessions. During the game, you don’t challenge my rulings. We can discuss afterwards.
Sci-Geek
October 9, 2009
Been victim to that in my epic-tier game. Some of the players had ludicrously high defenses and a number of ways of avoiding hits. Every time I told them they were hit the would cry out loud “Impossible!” and follow with a demand that I tell them exactly what AC or NAD the monster had hit.
I’m not a very combative person, so this kind of player bullying eventually lead me to give up on the adventure and they concluded that DnD (4e, specifically) is too easy and repetitive… Well, I guess that could be true for invincible characters that have been built with the sole purpose of not being hit. I even told them that once.
Somehow the 4E stimulated character optimization (they even made charop wikis now on the official forums) and I feel this kind of mindset leads to a lot of second-guessing.
Anarkeith
October 9, 2009
Second guessing about monster HP or other stats warrants only a shrug and a smile from me when I’m DMing. Second guessing about why the Kobold Wyrmpriest is hanging out with a group of Dwarves gets the “Why don’t you ask him?” response. If it’s a mechanical thing, I’ll say “That’s how we’re playing it now, I’m happy to talk about it later.” Otherwise, I love meta-twists that get players thinking about what they’re seeing, rather than just going by-the-book.
newbiedm
October 9, 2009
I agree with the comments here, the best way to fight this is to just shrug and say “I don’t know. Wanna find out?” when asked about monster groups.
For the guy that questions everything, Zach said it best. We’ll talk about it off table, don’t question me now.
Interesting topic and responses.
Tyson J. Hayes
October 9, 2009
I have to say I have been a guilty player of this, but then again I had memorized the entire monster book for the game we were playing (my character had a really high skill that allowed him to know a lot about the monsters and my DM concluded that considering I couldn’t fail the check we would go off of what I remembered).
So anytime it would happen I would quietly reach for the book read up on what I remembered and put it back. Much to the DMs annoyance as he thought I was questioning him on it, even though I would try not to bring it up during the game as it would have been disruptive.
I as a DM have a tendency to fudge numbers during the game. All to often the players will be thoroughly trouncing the big bad and the battle will be over in a few rounds. So I artificially inflate the hit points to keep combat going a bit longer and make them “earn the xp.” A bit of a dick move at times I will admit but if they have been just breezing through everything before then what kind of fun has it been?
JP
October 9, 2009
As a player I have a tendency to question rule systems moreso than GMs. An example such as when I asked in our Alpha Omega game how Strength factored into someone’s ability to hack a computer. I tend to give a lot of leeway to GMs to fudge as they wish since I know I do quite a bit.
As a GM, I recently ran into one of the worst of the worst, the guy who knows the people that wrote the game and think you’re running it wrong. GMs fudging and making house-rules are there to make the game more fun and/or more logical. If a player has a problem with not being able to powergame then I don’t want them there.
Manny
October 9, 2009
I’d say shrug then flog em…
Manny
October 9, 2009
..or call the DM hotline
JesterOC
October 9, 2009
I have been the DM about 50 times out of the last 52 games, but I can see that there are times when the player should second guess the DM.
I figure the player is there to have fun, and if his version of fun is planning and performing the “perfect turn” which could be ruined if the DM gets a rule wrong, then I think it is important for him/her to speak up.
This of course assumes that the player is honest in his intentions.
Alex
October 10, 2009
@Jester: That works as long as it doesn’t happen all the time, and as long as it doesn’t take a long time to resolve.
I knew I had seen something about this in the DMG. Another way to approach the rules lawyers can simply be to throw the book at them.
Refer the player to page 30, or page 32 of the DMG (4e) and let them read all about rules mistakes and rules lawyers. It puts it succinctly enough, and basically says what everyone here has been saying. If it’s a mistake, admit your mistake or find a way to fix it, which is fair if someone ended up, say, losing a permanent ability point because of a botched rule.
If it’s a rules lawyer problem, and you can’t think of a clever way to turn it back on the bookworm and make it make sense, of if you don’t want to plain and simple say “Who’s wearing the DM hat here?” hand him the DMG, open to page 32, and background his character until he finds the concrete reference to the “mistake” you made.
Chris
October 18, 2009
Personally, I wouldn’t employ the first strategy as it is just simply spiteful and it ruins his game as much as he did to you. We are suppose to have fun and if you are purposefully throwing rotten eggs at him in a way of ‘take that!’, I wouldn’t call it fun.
The way I resolved the problem with my metagamer is simply, roll for knowledge checks. He never does, hell, no one in my gaming group does it at all. He used to go ‘hang on, he;s taken more than his bloodied value already, what the hell?’ I use to fumble and going… hmmm ok… but now, I’ll say, ‘true. he has. but see if you can discern what’s happening with a nature check.’ If orcs are having a party with goblins in Eberron, I’ll call for a streetwise check to see if he heard anything new to contradict with the Historical enmity between the two races.
DM-ing to me, is like playing and living in a big elaborate lie. When one of the players calls your bluff, you just find excuses to sustain that lie. 😛
Chris
October 18, 2009
I should always check my comments before posting them *groans*.
I want to add that most of the time when players do the second-guessing, or as ChattyDM puts it – the backseat DM, they are not intentionally being malevolent or disruptive to your game, well, at least, I know my metagamer is not. Hence, the first method may not only annoy him, but might in fact, encourage him to now consciously do it to you in the effort of ‘correcting’ and ‘making you a better DM’.
Zorminster
October 21, 2009
When I get second guessed – specifically on monster healths or whatever, I givem what they want.
them: “Are you sure? He went bloodied @ XXX and we’ve done at least as much again, isn’t he dead yet?”
me: “Yup. He dies. That was exciting wasn’t it?”
Once is usually enough; occasionally it takes a few ‘oh well that was kinda lame’ moments for them to get it.
C Filson
October 25, 2009
I have two anecdotes from both sides of the table that slightly work against the conventional wisdome in this topic:
1. In the game in which I am a player, our DM, while a decent enough DM has a bit of the absent minded professor about him. He has grossly misused creature powers to the point where it is obviously unbalanced (like repeatedly using a very powerful, non-rechargeable encounter power). He often mixes up which creatures are vunerable or resistant. He sometimes would skip over players or monsters in the intiative (I got him the Paizo intiative tracker board, which remedied this problem by in large). The most disconcernting and egregious of his foibles is that he doesn’t keep a running tally on monster HP. He simply sequentially writes down the amount each time its damaged and sometime down the road uses a calculator to total it (he can’t do mental artihmetic). The problem with this, is sometimes monsters have died multiple rounds prior to actually being removed from the table and NEVER GOT BLOODIED. There have been several times where the DM has said, “Oh, I’m sorry guys, that lich died two rounds ago.” I have started to hound him about the bloody/non-bloodied or dead/not dead status of things because of this. He also tends to apply damage to the wrong individual in a group of the same monster. I have actually brought in numbered minis and tokens to help him better keep track of damage. The point is, my questioning the DM here curtails his absentmindedness from getting to the point where it “breaks” the encounter or the game altogether.
2. My second anecdote comes from my DMing. I have a bit of a rules lawyer at my table. And while he can admitedly become a bit annoying, he also has as much or slightly more knowledge of than game than I do. I have found that he is able to clarify rules I might have been a bit murkier on. I have established ground rules with him, though. If I disagree with his point, we will not stop the game to look things up in a book. If he wishes to look it up on someone elses turn and quickly let me see the rule, it will be applied correctly from that point on, but we will not retcon anything that had already been ajudicated. I also feel he has somewhat forced me to be a bit better in my encounter design to account for things I might not have thought of before.
I think both of these cases can show where questioning the DM might have its place at the table. I think any DM needs to be a little open minded about questions and be humble enough to admit they don’t know everything. As long as it does not disrupt the flow of the game or undermine it altogether, questioning authority is a good thing.
by_the_sword
December 13, 2009
I know that this is several months after the fact, but a DM really needs to know the rules well. Know ’em well and then you can break ’em as you see fit. Read that Players Handbook, know every combat rule, every spell/ritual/ whatever and when some rules-lawyer raises his ugly head to challenge you you can calmly deal with him. There isn’t even a need to explain yourself at the moment. Just calmly say “Yes. That’s right, this is exactly what is happening, now what are you going to do about it?”
By the way NewbieDM, excellent blog. I am no novice DM myself but I find your blog refreshing and insightful. I have learned, and re-learned many things from reading your works.
Mazetar
January 26, 2010
Well personally I have this kind of players from time to time and I solve it usually in a very easy way:
I let them know that the Rulebooks are my guidelines but it’s my duty to make this game fun, challangeing and entertaining.
I find that combat is not a challange when you know the whole statblock of the monster, besides this is my Homebrew campain, if it’s about monster X and Y I migth just tell them a good reason for why it’s like that in my world or I just smile at them saying somthing like “Hmm thats a good question, maybe your charatcher should check it out? what could make an X hang out with an Z?”
At our very first session I said somthing like this:
Please rember that even though I use the rulebooks as my guidelines I will change things as I see it fit into my world.
The world I have created as well as the peopple and monsters that live there are different from the ones in the rulebooks in some ways, but if there is anything a normal person in my world would know that is different from what you know I will let you know since naturally your char knows this since he has grown up in this world, But things like stats and such are not known by your chars, if you wonder why then ask yourself how many of us know the HP of the peopple and animals around us in real life?
For the most parts I seek to make our sessions entertaning, fun, challenging and memoreable for all of us.
If you have any questions, suggestions or wish to discuss a ruling etc. I’d prefer if we can keep these out of gaming time, in a break or after the session it self, unless anyone of you disagree? (Everyone usually agrees to not having a rule discussion in the middle of a figth/game)
[I make an exception if the rule question is a really important “life/death/TPK” question that decides the fate of the party/char.]
Oh and thanks for a wonderfull blog:)
DaBugbear
February 15, 2010
Eh. I’m down with the flogging mindset, personally. And a full reset of monster HP and powers so I can do it right this time. Of course, since the players have been doing it right, they don’t need a reset…
Ehtel Frankford
August 6, 2010
Many thanks! I truly think that a couple of my buddies will enjoy this post.. now where is that email to your buddies button again?
Jason
August 19, 2011
Before I start a game, especially one that has new players or players that I havent played with before, I set down my stack of books on the table and let everyone know. “These are the books i am using for the game we are playing. I am using them only as general guidlines and will change things as I feel they need to so the game stays fun and interesting and keeps you on your toes.” It seems to curb any lawyering or at least keep it to a minimum. I may even throw in a life insurance selling troll to keep them off guard, not a critical element in the story, but enough to let them know everything is not as printed in the book. The name of the game is fun, why play otherwise.
Lepus
June 27, 2012
Because I’m God.
‘Nuf said, folks.
The Jake
November 18, 2012
Why does the DM get to cheat and the Players do not? the rules work for everyone, or for no one. you are playing a game that is largely in an imagined space. this means that all anyone has to go on is the rules in the books and the description given. the problem I have with the example given is that the DM is fudging die rolls. In that scenario the Player is absolutely justified in questioning the DM’s motives. he has broken the rules of play. He may have a good reason, or he may not. basically he has decided that the rules of the game do not apply to all the players(the DM is a player, he just has a differing role). at that point why not just let them roll dice until the DM thinks they have rolled enough and then the monster dies? fudging the dice is DM fiat, and in 4th ed, that breaks the balance of the game. Fudging dice rolls is only good for games that are poorly designed, and then the question is, why are you playing a badly designed game?
breitling bentley
January 1, 2013
That is the best blog for anyone who wants to search out out about this topic. You understand so much its nearly onerous to argue with you (not that I truly would want…HaHa). You undoubtedly put a new spin on a topic thats been written about for years. Great stuff, just great!