| I am new to the PNP game, but I have played with 3 entirely different DMs.
First DM seems to have things relatively planned out and if someone wants to wander away from the party he tries his best to work 2 stories and tries to turn the wanderer back to the group somehow. And with him it is a lot about strategizing and actually playing the game with certain boundries, like a halfling rogue can't jump from one wall to another wall to 50 feet down the hallway and back in one round, it isn't physically possible unless it is hasted, has spider climb, and possible fly.
Second DM doesn't really give a crap what anyone does and it is all about talking to eachother and maybe one in ten games there is a fight, but a very easy one and everyone is pissed off for not actually doing anything in the game, but it is only fun because he awards xps mainly for RP.
Third DM blatantly tells players they are wrong if they don't do everything his way, like he is controlling both the players and being the DM at the same time.
The point of all this is to say..have things planned out with a bit of flexibility incase they don't want to just go into a dungeon hackfest so they can talk to eachother, make fun of eachother.
If you kill something you should get XPs, if you make people laugh for something you did IC you should get XPs.
NEVER tell a player they are flat out wrong if they don't play how you want them to play. (ex. 18 INT and WIS does not mean you can't have a personality and fool around and be generally stupid if you feel like it..you know better, but you don't have to follow those feelings.) Let me tell you the story about why I gave that example...
I played a dwarven cleric that had high int/wis/cha and he was in a bar and entered a drinking contest since he could hold his alchohol and he wanted the money to go to his temple, so one mysterious stranger entered the contest and offered to do shots with fey wine or something like that and the result of that was my cleric got very drunk, and lost the taste of all mortal alchohol. Well that was all fine but then after awhile the cleric was sober again (a long while after so I could do stuff I wouldn't normally do being a level headed cleric of a goodly aligned deity) and he went back to the bar to get a beer and he hated it, then he had something else and hated it, then something else and so on. Then after awhile he was crying like a baby because he couldn't drink anymore and enjoy it. Well, the DM got pissed off that my cleric was crying because he didn't think that one with high int/wis/cha would ever do such a thing. He didn't take into account that when people even in real life get depressed they do stupid things no matter how smart they are when they aren't depressed. And it ruined the game for me when playing with him as a DM or a player. Now whenever I play with him he calls me stupid because I am not playing exactly to his standards.
I will say it again..NEVER call someone stupid for them not doing what YOU would have done.  |