Dungeons & Dragons: 10 Simple Ways For The DM To Break The Rules (That Players Won’t Notice)

Being a DM can be stressful. You create these amazing plots and your players can’t even get past the first dungeon. Sometimes they need a little help.

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It’s often said that a Dungeons & Dragons campaign is the players’ story, and it’s true. D&D is designed to give the players opportunities to demonstrate feats of greatness or cunning, to make them feel like the main characters. But no matter who the story belongs to, it’s always going to be the DM telling it.

That means that it’s the DM’s responsibility to make sure everyone’s having a good time. It’s a big responsibility. They have to plan fights and come up with NPCs and pivot whenever the players decide to explore some random place you didn’t plan anything for. And sometimes keeping everyone happy involves breaking a few rules.

10 10. Ignore Un-Fun Mechanics

Some parts of the rules-as-written just aren’t fun. Things like tracking how much weight every character is carrying or ticking off how many days of food they have left. No one would argue that these are the most exciting part of a campaign.

It fully depends on what kind of adventure you’re running, because these aspects might be important to something like a survival game. But for your garden variety adventure, it probably won’t matter how much beef jerky your characters have left, and the DM can choose to not worry about it.

9 9. Come Up With Brand New Mechanics

On the other hand, there might be some new ideas you want to incorporate that make the game more exciting. There are tons of resources for homebrewing spells, player races, and even entire classes for enterprising DMs to throw into their games.

Communities of experienced DMs are always providing advice for ways to liven up a stale adventure, or improving on published campaigns by twisting the rules. If you have a mechanic you want to try out, slip it in and see how your players react.

8 8. Forget About Spells

Enemy spellcasters can be difficult opponents for any group of adventurers. Most often they’re used to beating up guys wielding swords or monsters trying to take a bite out of them. They might not be prepared to face something with a more advanced move set.

Your magic-users especially may not know how to deal with something willing to give them a taste of their own medicine. High-level enemy mages have a lot of dangerous spells at their disposal, so sometimes it’s in the party’s best interests if the DM chooses to…forget about some of their more devastating options.

7 7. Give Players A Clue

It’s an accepted fact of the universe that gathering together a group of adventures lowers their ability to solve puzzles to that of your average toddler. No matter how clever the DM’s traps or how well thought out their murder mystery, it’s more likely than not that their players will be at a total loss how to proceed.

We understand this can be disappointing, especially if it’s something you worked really hard on. But it isn’t fun for anyone else either to stand around for ages trying to work out the solution. Sometimes it’s merciful to just pretend they found a clue all on their own.

6 6. Reward Good Ideas

With the addition of the advantage and disadvantage mechanic to 5th Edition, players have a little more control over how they can approach a situation. Certain class actions can grant advantage to attacks or certain races advantage to saving throws. Players know they have better odds and are more likely to take risks.

Inspiration is also a resource DMs can hand out to reward exceptional roleplaying, like when players stick to the bonds and ideals from their background. While it’s not technically in the purview of the rules, DMs can give advantage on other rolls as well, if a player comes up with a particularly clever way to deal with a situation.

5 5. Nerf A Monster

Most players know that there’s a lot going on behind the DM screen at any given time. While they only have to worry about their own character, the DM is constantly juggling a number of monsters and NPCs all with their own stats, as well as the map of the dungeon and any other pertinent information.

Contrary to the belief of some, it isn’t the DMs job to kill your characters. In fact, it’s far more likely that they’ll cut a monster’s HP to give the adventurers a victory or lower the amount of damage it does if the PCs are looking worse for wear.

4 4. Or Get Rid Of The Monster Entirely

The DM has total control over the dungeon and the amount of challenge your party will find within. Most of the time, a series of encounters are presented in rising difficulty and culminate with some kind of boss, kind of like a video game. This leaves the players feeling triumphant since they conquered a formidable foe.

But with their birds’-eye view, the DM can anticipate how well their party will do against their encounters. If the players have been struggling near the end, they might erase some high-level encounters standing between them and their final climactic victory to save their strength.

3 3. Fudge The Dice

This is the closest any DM should get to out-and-out cheating. The game is supposed to be fair—that’s what makes it a game as opposed to a storytelling exercise. Sometimes the dice come up poorly and characters get hurt or even die. The tension caused by the possibility of negative consequences is what produces drama and investment in the story.

But sometimes a bad roll doesn’t cause the story to pivot in an interesting direction and instead just serves as punishment your players don’t deserve. Fudging the dice rolls allows DMs to take control of the action out of the hands of fate and throw their party a bone. It can be very powerful and should be used very sparingly.

2 2. Change The Plot

On the other hand, this isn’t necessarily breaking a rule but it can be used to deviate from the expected course of play. This is especially true when using a published adventure. Maybe your players have gotten everything they can out of a campaign as-written.

Maybe you’re tired of running someone else’s material. Maybe it’s just time for a change of scenery. If that’s the case, DMs should feel free to crumple up the parts of the story they don’t like and throw them in the trash.

1 1. Enact The Rule Of Cool

To reiterate: the goal of playing the game is to have fun. So when your players are engaging in the story and their characters, when they’re thinking out of the box, please don’t shut that down with a fit of rules-lawyering. It’s possible a great maneuver your players came up with doesn’t technically fall within the bounds of “legal”.

Unless there’s a good reason, like completely throwing off the balance of the game, DMs should be willing to enact the “rule of cool” which is that all other rules are moot in the face of their cool idea. This is another cheat that should be used sparingly, but when you do you’re sure to make your players’ day.

Link Source : https://www.thegamer.com/dungeons-dragons-dungeon-master-break-rules-simple/