My preferred playstyle is to treat role-playing as a collective creative story. Consequently, there's no Us v. Them mentality, no hide the ball, no grossly unfair gotcha moments.
I see my role as Dungeon Master as presenting the players with challenges to solve. I frequently offer advice or insights to the players, particularly if they have difficulty with something or if their proposed course of action puts them in foreseeable danger. It also helps that my players have bought into my view that adventuring is dangerous, that adventurers always need to be cautious, and that often the best tactic is "Run away!"
Another key maxim of mine is "Keep the story moving": if the PCs get bogged down on a plot point, sometimes I'll feed suggestions until they get rolling again. As a corollary to this, I dislike having to look up rules too often, so I adjusted the target numbers in my homebrew to be more intuitive (i.e., I don't need to refer in-game to charts or the like). Thus, I can eyeball a die roll and decide within 3 seconds at a 95% confidence level whether something is a success or failure. If I decide something incorrectly against the players, typically they'll quickly let me know.
I see my role as Dungeon Master as presenting the players with challenges to solve. I frequently offer advice or insights to the players, particularly if they have difficulty with something or if their proposed course of action puts them in foreseeable danger. It also helps that my players have bought into my view that adventuring is dangerous, that adventurers always need to be cautious, and that often the best tactic is "Run away!"
Another key maxim of mine is "Keep the story moving": if the PCs get bogged down on a plot point, sometimes I'll feed suggestions until they get rolling again. As a corollary to this, I dislike having to look up rules too often, so I adjusted the target numbers in my homebrew to be more intuitive (i.e., I don't need to refer in-game to charts or the like). Thus, I can eyeball a die roll and decide within 3 seconds at a 95% confidence level whether something is a success or failure. If I decide something incorrectly against the players, typically they'll quickly let me know.
It helps to keep things moving that my homebrew's group is small, tight knit, and been playing together for a couple years. As of today, I'm running my homebrew with a couple guys from a REIGN game that I also GM:
- D is a veteran player, whose knowledge and system mastery of D&D (all editions) exceeds my own. He's running a Thief (stats pre-generated):
- Str 16, Int 16, Wil 8, Dex 17, Con 15, Cha 9
- Base HP: 8
- Proficiencies: Additional encounter HD, Short Blades (i.e., Daggers and Short Swords), First Magic-user level
- Skill Points: Hasn't decided on most but did take a point in Painting
- K was (prior to this campaign) a complete rookie to D&D, whose only experience with RPGs was our REIGN game. He rolled up a Fighter:
- Str 17, Int 8, Wil 8, Dex 18, Con 11, Cha 16
- Base HP: 6
- Proficiencies: Additional encounter HD, Short Blades, Thrown Weapon, Armor Bulkiness
- Skill Points: Has one point each in Climb, Ride Horses and Negotiation, and the rest are to be determined
NB: "Base HP" and "Additional encounter HD" refer to a house ruled way to handle Hit Points that's in between the original system and the system presented in Carcosa. "Short Blades" refers to a house ruled way to group weapons inspired by Baldur's Gate. "First Magic-user level" refers to a house ruled way to handle limited, genre-inspired multi-classing.
Also, as per my view of OSR, the characters don't get names unless they survive until 2nd level.
Next up: Giving the homebrew a spin!
Oh, I don't like the no-names policy. The name makes the character, whether he dies at 1st level or after. YMMV
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