Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 202 - Back to Basics - Most Important Rule

Episode Date: November 26, 2023

DMs, our job is varied and difficult at times.  We have so much on our plate to get ready for the game that we sometimes lose sight of the most important advice we can heed behind the screen.  In this episode, I’m going to remind you of that advice that keeps your game centered and your players excited to come back.   #dnd #pf2e #DMTips #OneImportantRule Resources: 3D Crafts & Curios etsy store - https://etsy.com/shop/3DCraftsAndCurios 

This week on the Taking20 Podcast. The rules that are written are hampering the fun for the players at the table. And plus, it's making the story hard to continue. In those cases, fuck the rules. Thank you for listening to the Taking20 Podcast, Episode 202. A back-to-basics episode to remind DMs about the most important rule behind the screen. I want to thank our sponsor, 3D Crafts and Curios. They have beautiful 3D printed products for sale on their Etsy store, and if you haven't gone there

yet, why not? Head over to etsy.com slash shop slash 3D Crafts and Curios, and if you don't want to write that down i'll put a link in the resources for the episode so that you can find it click there and go right to their shop they produce beautiful artwork that's the best way to describe it so please head over there and purchase something for you or a gift for that role-playing gamer in your life in honor of thanksgiving here in the u.s I also want to thank our sponsor, Turkey. I love cooking turkey, and I have a trick to make sure it doesn't turn out dry. I am all about that baste, no trouble. If you wouldn't mind, please take a moment to like, rate, and subscribe to the podcast wherever you find it. Every one of those feeds back into the

mysterious and all-knowing algorithm that hopefully will spread word to this podcast far and wide, and I can become the Pied Piper of bringing people into this fantastic hobby. If you've already helped spread the word, thank you so much for doing so. Well, it's official this week. I hit 40,000 downloads for the life of the podcast, and I cannot believe I'm hitting a number that high. It only happened because of you. Thank you to my listeners and to anyone who dials in and downloads and spends time listening to me ramble about just anything related to RPGs. I'm now more than 200 episodes into this podcast, and I realized this week that

I've been falling down on the job. Not literally. I don't drink that much, and if I'm falling out of my chair, then there are serious issues I need to address with myself. No. What I realized is that when I'm being interviewed or having discussions with other gamers, I'm always asked what's that one piece of advice I would give to every DM new or experienced. I've given this answer dozens of times, and I'm sure I've alluded and hinted to it in other episodes, this answer dozens of times, and I'm sure I've alluded and hinted to it in other episodes, but I've never dedicated an episode to explaining the most crucial rule for DMs to remember.

I'll bet you're wondering what I think the most important rule is. Well, is it the initiative rule? No, no, no. Is it what happens when you reach zero hit points? Nope, not that either. Grappling rules in D&D 3.5. Oh, hell no. I've never been so happy to leave a version of the game behind because grappling in D&D 3.0 and 3.5 needed a fucking flowchart to make it work. If you love it, then love what you love, but I won't be joining you in cheering for an overly complicated mechanic. Before I reveal what I think the most important rule is in tabletop RPGs,

I want to ask you a question. Why do you play tabletop RPGs? I'd be willing to bet it's a mixture of the following, like escapism, to get out of your skin a little bit and leave your worries and problems behind. Role-playing a hero, or a villain for that matter. Being able to act out those dreams you have of saving the day, or being the reason the sun never comes up again. Exercising creativity, stretching that mind a bit and coming up with creative solutions to problems,

working with other party members to brainstorm solutions to nasty problems. Telling a good story. You have an idea for an amazing story for the party or for your character, and RPGs are the way you tell it. Immersion, being able to lose yourself in a fictional world and imagine it to be real and exciting, or just accomplishing great things and being rewarded for doing them. I would agree all of those are great reasons to play RPGs, and I've probably enjoyed each of those in various games throughout my life. But I think there's something else that's an undercurrent to all of those reasons. Fun.

At its heart, we play and run tabletop RPGs because we enjoy it. Sitting with friends, acquaintances, or heck, complete strangers around a physical or virtual table. Making characters, rolling dice, acting out scenes of action, comedy, and suspense. Stuff that makes us smile and pours dopamine right into the pleasure center of our brains. Tabletop RPGs are supposed to be fun. The most important part of the most important rule that DMs should know is that players are there to have fun. I believe Dungeon Masters should use that measurement as the number one indicator as to whether it was a good game session. Did the players have fun? If so, yes, Virginia, you are a wonderful DM. And as a reminder to my beloved DMs out there, you're a player as well.

That means you should be having fun at the table too. You shouldn't sacrifice your fun on the altar of player characters having fun in your game. I know being a GM can be stressful, but you should be having fun behind the screen, not just your players. If the DM isn't having fun, then DMs aren't going to want to run games, and that means the players will lose out on fun as well because there will be no game to play. So make sure your fun is aligned with the players' fun as well because there will be no game to play. So make sure your fun is aligned with the player's fun as well. Now there's a lot to making sure your players have fun. Knowing your players and what kind of game they prefer, checking in with the players to solicit feedback from them,

and having meaningful choices and consequences to your game are probably my gold, silver, bronze advice for making sure your players are having fun. But part of that is your fun. gold, silver, bronze advice for making sure your players are having fun. But part of that is your fun. Behind the screen, juggling encounter difficulty, coming up with NPCs on the fly, scared that the players will finally see that this entire game is just a thinly veiled version of the movie Fifth Element. My sincere hope is that when you're DMing a game, you feel the same mix of invigorated and excited and thrilled that I do when I run a game session. That's the dragon that I chase every single week. That my players had a great time and so did I. Fun should be the most important thing at your table. But Jeremy, the players completely torpedoed my session

planning. They spent the entire session talking to an NPC that I made up on the fly, a knight by the name of Sir Prize, who was in love with Periwinkle Pigwickle, but can't profess his love for her because he worships Swanson, the minor god of reheated leftover dinners. I didn't know they were going to spend so much time with them, and they've completely discarded the story I had made up where they would meet the Thieves Guild and be given a Sophie's choice of either helping out a crime boss or letting the poor of the city suffer. I had it all planned out and it was going to be epic for everyone. You're right. The session didn't go as planned. But I ask you, would you rather your session go completely off the rails and everyone have a good time anyway? Or for your story to unfold exactly as you meticulously planned, but you're not sure if the players would have fun? If your answer is that you'd rather your story unfolded exactly the way you want, then I'd say you'd be better off writing a book than you would be DMing a game.

As an author, you have complete control of the story, the choices made by the protagonists and antagonists, and how the narrative progresses. Yes, my beloved DMs out there, choices made by the protagonists and antagonists, and how the narrative progresses. Yes, my beloved DMs out there, you are running the game, but you are not writing the story. The players write the story as they play the game. You should be giving them situations and challenges, conundrums, confrontations, combat. But how the PCs resolve them dictates the story.

Even when you're running pre-made modules where everything is already written for you, the players evolve the story the way they want to. Personally, I'd rather have my players walk away having fun than driving them down a road that I paved and their miserable driving down it. So DMs, the first part of this most important rule for you to know is that everyone's fun is more important than your or some company's pre-written story. But that's only half the rule, and the second half might be where I lose some of you. For the rest of the rule, what if a scenario presents itself at the table where the players

are having fun and the story dictates that there will be a months-long siege of Castle Watertorn? The game you're playing has rules for a siege, but the siege rules are ridiculously complicated. There are dozens of die rolls to determine food storage, disease spread, soldier and civilian attrition, while there's an equal number of rolls for the sieging army, tracking desertions and wounds and everything else. And it's way more detail or realism than your table would enjoy. Or maybe there aren't rules for escaping through the castle's wastewater system, and that's what your players say they want to do. Or the rules that exist aren't flexible enough. They're too restrictive,

and that impacts both the fun and the story. In these cases, the rules that are written are hampering the fun for the players at the table. And plus, it's making the story hard to continue. In those cases, fuck the rules. The rules aren't there for what would make sense for the player's story. Disregard them or make up your own. Now, before you go burn your rule books or an effigy of me, I want to give you a caveat.

There's a reason the rules exist, and it's because the rules give a framework for consistent ways to adjudicate situations in the game. Armor class exists because it's a way to determine whether that randomly rolled attack hits or not. Skill bonuses exist to determine how easily characters can accomplish a certain task. Some aspects of RPGs are so baked into the core of the system that changing or disregarding those rules should only be done after very careful consideration. However, I want to take you back to the very first Dungeon Master's Guide and give you, my beloved DM, a quote by the man himself, Gary Gygax. Quote,

You, the DM, are the final arbiter of the rules. The 3.5 edition Dungeon Master's Guide states in page 6 of chapter 1, when everyone gathers around the table to play, you, the DM, are in charge. That doesn't mean you can tell people what to do outside the boundaries of the game, but it does mean that you're the final arbitrator of the rules within the game. Good players recognize that you have the ultimate authority over the game mechanics, even superseding something in the rulebook. So there it is. DMs can override the rules, even going back to the 3.5 edition Dungeon Master's Guide. But Jeremy, I can hear you say, the first Dungeon Master's Guide came out in 1979, and the 3.5e edition came out in 2003. That's 44 and 20 years ago, respectively. It's

a different game now. You're right, and thank everything good and holy for that. But I would call your attention to the 5e Dungeon Master's Guide, page 4, where it says, quote, as a referee, the DM interprets the rules, decides when to abide by them, and when to change them. From the very beginning of the tabletop RPG genre all the way back, the rules have taken a backseat to everything else. Everything in all those books that you bought to quote the great Geoffrey Rush as Captain Barbossa are more guidelines than actual rules. Let me give you an example. Suppose you have what I would call a problem player who's memorized every rule and every stat block for a certain monster.

You bring out a Cyclops who starts to fight the party, but a couple of times per short rest, they can close their eye and misty step or dimension door instead of having the precognition ability the stat block says they have. That sounds fun as hell, and you should do that, by the way. Customize your monsters. That player stands up and says, In the monster manual on page whatever, it doesn't say that Cyclops can do that.

They smirk like they've just caught you in a lie, and they're waiting for you to grovel in supplication to their superior knowledge. But suppose in your version of the Sword Coast, or Galarian, or whatever world you're on, the fallen Cyclops nation evolved on an archipelago where there were thousands of tiny islands close enough in places to teleport to them, so that is the innate magic their sages focus on instead of the ability to foretell the future. Makes sense to me, and that would mean the stat block for those creatures would be different. It's fun, it makes sense in

the story, but it breaks the rules? Who cares? Do it anyway. Personally, I'll bend the shit out of the rules if it means a fun story comes out of it. Rarely do I break rules like, haha, heal spells now only cure 1d4 damage instead of their standard amount. Why? There's no fun story reason for it. I just hate the players. That's just being malicious and an asshole. You're breaking the most important rule. Fun. In that last example, suppose the characters are on some plane of existence where

vitality or good powers are weaker for whatever reason. If you give the characters a heads up that that's the case, healing will be weaker there, then it's not a surprise change and they can prepare ahead of time. No game has rules that can cover every single situation that could possibly come up. There are always edge and corner cases where the rules simply aren't well defined or the rules as written don't apply well to that particular situation. Let's use a different term for it. Putting the rules last in importance is sometimes called the rule of cool. The rule of cool means that the DM or player wants to try something cool, then you go for it. Or in more formal terms, the amount that DMs and players should be willing to

suspend their disbelief for any element of a story is directly proportional to how fucking cool and amazing the element is. Suppose it's a space tavern brawl and you as a player say you want your character to slide across a table firing both laser pistols at an enemy combatant and in the turn behind a different upturned table that will give your character cover. Which answer to that would you prefer? Technically the movement to the table is one action and sliding across the table requires a second action while taking cover would be a third action so according to the rules what you're trying is illegal rules as written. Or, okay, technically you shouldn't be able to do all that in a single round, but it sounds freaking awesome. So let's slap a minus two on those attacks. I'd prefer to say and hear the latter. DMs do have the fiat to say, yeah, okay, that's allowed. Let's do that.

My only caveat for this is if you allow one side to do it, you have to allow the other side to do it as well. So that player can't get all butthurt because the scoundrel on the other side does something very similar. And if after bending the rules a certain way, you see that it's game-breaking, story-breaking, or ruins the fun, GM fiat, my friends. You can always tell your table that,

hey, there were some unforeseen consequences to this ruling, and I'm going to pull it back out of the game because it breaks things. All of this to say, succinctly, the most important rule for DMs is this. Fun is more important than story, which is more important than the rules. The rules are important, but not if they get in the way of a good story. A good story is more important than strict adherence to the rules. Similarly, the story that you're telling is important, but not if it means that your players aren't having fun.

Player and DM fun is more important than rigidly following a story, even one that's pre-written. As an example, not so long ago, I finished running Rain of Winter for a Pathfinder 1st Edition group. As I prepared the story as written for a group I'd never GM'd before, I started out adhering to the story as written with some weather rules and other subsystems built in. As the game picked up steam, I talked to certain members of the group and found out that some of the weather rules felt too punishing. No problem. At first they were reduced and eventually discarded, and my logic in-game was that even if the characters didn't grow up in a cold area of the world like Irison,

they would eventually get better cold weather gear and accustomed to the frigid temperatures. In that case, the rules weren't fun, so I discarded them. As we traversed through the books of the Adventure Path, I learned that the puzzle aspects built into the stories weren't fun to this group of players. So I changed the story up to disregard some of the riddle and puzzle aspects of the adventure and focused on the parts they did enjoy. Combat, social encounters, and finding what was once lost. It involved rewriting some of the parts of the story and changing boss fight mechanics in a couple of places. Making sure that the players were having fun was more important to me than the story as it was written. And I think they enjoyed the adventures more as improvised with parts of the

game that they wanted than they would have if I made them slog it through subsystems and political infighting. And that's my last caveat about fun is more important than story, which is more important than rules. If you're interpreting things for fun, make sure it's fun for everyone, you and the players. As GMs, we need to remember the most important part of the game for all of us is fun. Fun should not be sacrificed at the altar of a good story, and your story shouldn't lose out to ill-written or unfun rules. of a good story, and your story shouldn't lose out to ill-written or unfun rules. Keep player fun in your sights and make it the focus of your game, and I'd bet you and your players will have fun doing it. Thank you so much for listening. Like I said, I'm going to cut this off here because I've got turkey leftovers in the fridge that are calling my name. I hope this was helpful, and I hope you

all enjoyed the topic. If you like the podcast, please tell your friends about it or help me spread the word on social media. Don't forget to use that coupon code TAKING20 at 3D Crafts and Curios Etsy shop for 20% off your entire order. Check the link in the resources or go to etsy.com and search for 3D Crafts and Curios. Tune in next week when I'm going to give DMs some tips and tricks for running games with either smart or dumb enemies of the PCs. But before I go, I want to thank this week's sponsor, Turkey. I started selling smoked turkeys, but I discovered the sides were where the most money could be made. I guess you could say I'm on the gravy train.

This has been episode 202 of Back to Basics episode about the most important rule for DMs. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game. The Taking 20 Podcast is a Publishing Cube Media Production. Copyright 2023. References to game system content are copyrighted by their respective publishers.