Comment on “Homework Time”

The topic of "Rules for the DM" in general is something that seems to tie people in knots.

"But the DM can break/change/ignore the rules," they say.

Yes, but those are the "rules of interaction," which govern how entities in the world function. The DM can declare that these goblins know how to use poison without having ranks in Poisoning; or that on the DM's say-so, PVP cannot result in a death, so get your shit together guys; or, having rolled* HD for the camp of orcs, decide to place high-HP ones at the front lines; or decide that this particular NPC paladin can't lay-on-hands for some reason.

But all that doesn't mean there aren't standards for the DM: "rules of engagement" by which the DM abides while running the game. I'd kick a player out for being an immature troll -- and I'd leave a game if the DM was an immature troll. In both cases there's something that's being

* Would ignoring the numbers rolled would be a violation of "rules of engagement?" Yes, I'd say -- that's fudging. If you're going to ignore dice, don't roll them in the first place -- make a judgment call, as is your right within your ability to selectively ignore "rules of interaction", and go with it. Then, write anything new about that judgment call down as part of your world, and if you change it before you enshrine it in that way, let the players know.

"Hey, last session was the first time using Mud Men, and I gave them too much AC. If you fight them again they'll be easier to hit." I'd greatly respect a DM who was willing to do that, who recognized that the information previously given to the party (toughness of Mud Men) had changed, and that change deserved to be propagated to the party's available information because it wasn't the result of in-game forces, but rather a meta-game adjustment.

So many fucking "DMs" can't even get the "be consistent and treat the things you do in the game like legal precedent" thing down so that the players can actually GATHER INFORMATION and ACT ON IT. There's no concept of record-keeping whatsoever. That's pleb-tier. It doesn't mean every effect has to be explicable to the party or replicable by the PCs (the Foo Monster casts 3rd-level spells as a special ability and ignores fire damage? deal with it) but it does mean that there should be consistency (next time you fight a Foo Monster, unless there is in-world reason, that Foo Monster should be as the previous ones.)