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:)

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.

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.

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.

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’.

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.