Mega Vox
(?)Community Member
- Posted: Sun, 23 Sep 2012 07:23:29 +0000
Firstly, I start each campaign I run by telling all my players that I am a) not a good DM, at all. b) that I will frequently completely make things up. They are free to show me that -by the book- I did something wrong, but I don't care I am doing it this way. And c) that the vast majority of my campaign are almost entirely improv. If they have a problem with any of that, I'm probably not the DM for them.
I have recently been thinking of banning books from my game. I know that sounds dumb, but let me explain.
When I play, I have -written out- every statistic my character has, their inventory with anything located and weighted to the pound, and all their spells with all information related to it so that I don't NEED to look anything up in the books. Come to think of it, I do this for most of the NPCs in my games, I'm pretty much writing non-stop during my games to keep up with everyone the party meets.
What drives me mad is when the game comes to a grinding halt because the wizard decides to cast a spell that no one has ever heard of, taken from an obscure book. So he has to shuffle through a pile of books, try to figure out what book it is in, find it, and read the paragraph of text under the spell to see exactly what it does. By the time we get back to the battle, people have forgotten their initiative and everything has to slowly start back up again.
Or the remark, "Hey, I got this [insert magic item] games back, what does it do?" Now, this actually isn't a big deal as -unlike the spells- I have most of the items pretty well memorized. But still, why can't people write this stuff down on their inventory?
Pretty much, this is what I plan to do;
1) No books allowed at the table, at all.
2) If you can't remember what a spell does or how it works, I'll guess.
2a) If you don't like my guess, don't cast it. You can look it up after the game.
2b) If I don't have a clue, you can't cast it. Should have written it down.
Thoughts?
I have recently been thinking of banning books from my game. I know that sounds dumb, but let me explain.
When I play, I have -written out- every statistic my character has, their inventory with anything located and weighted to the pound, and all their spells with all information related to it so that I don't NEED to look anything up in the books. Come to think of it, I do this for most of the NPCs in my games, I'm pretty much writing non-stop during my games to keep up with everyone the party meets.
What drives me mad is when the game comes to a grinding halt because the wizard decides to cast a spell that no one has ever heard of, taken from an obscure book. So he has to shuffle through a pile of books, try to figure out what book it is in, find it, and read the paragraph of text under the spell to see exactly what it does. By the time we get back to the battle, people have forgotten their initiative and everything has to slowly start back up again.
Or the remark, "Hey, I got this [insert magic item] games back, what does it do?" Now, this actually isn't a big deal as -unlike the spells- I have most of the items pretty well memorized. But still, why can't people write this stuff down on their inventory?
Pretty much, this is what I plan to do;
1) No books allowed at the table, at all.
2) If you can't remember what a spell does or how it works, I'll guess.
2a) If you don't like my guess, don't cast it. You can look it up after the game.
2b) If I don't have a clue, you can't cast it. Should have written it down.
Thoughts?