Toward my PCs, at least in my current campaign, I’m neutral evil, in that my two potential BBEGs are lawful evil and chaotic evil respectively. Many of my NPCs are neutral evil, true neutral, and neutral good. My players have reviewed them as “morally gray”.
Towards my players, I’d say I’m neutral good. I stick to RAW as much as possible, but I’m not afraid to homebrew something if it gives the players a good experience, whether that’s a reward or a challenge. Maybe that makes me true neutral. I don’t want my players to win all the time, but I do want them to win in the end. I think a small amount of adversarial play makes the game exciting and unpredictable. I was kind of annoyed when one of my players broke my dungeon with flight. I think he knew what he was doing, but he was challenging me to think on my feet.
Several times my PCs have questioned whether they are the bad guys, or working for the bad guys. One BBEG *might* be the good guy, the other BBEG *seems* less bad than the other. Morally gray would be a good description here as well. I guess that puts me in the neutral evil camp with you.
Towards my players, I'm true neutral or lawful neutral. I'll let them run whatever direction they want, and die on whatever hill they choose. I am currently in anticipation of how they are going to solve the latest "impossible problem" that they have wandered into. I also stick to RAW as much as possible. It prevents inconsistency between rulings.
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“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
There's something about suddenly thrusting a twist in front of my party that makes me happy, especially when that twist makes them re-evaluate the decisions they made. And it serves them right, after they do stuff I don't prepare for (Joining the Suspicious Cult, Fireballing a Tavern during the Lunch Rush, deciding to go and explore the Underdark because it sounds fun etc) and killing my BBEG's in 2 rounds. It's like they're just asking me to make their characters suffer.
Also my party say I'm evil because I make drinking a potion cost an action.
For my one group—old friends I've known since high school and play with over the summer—I'm Lawful Good. I love these guys and their characters, and I put effort into creating a fun world and story, which they in turn don't drive totally off the rails. We're a team. But that doesn't stop me from balancing challenging encounters, rolling dice in front of the screen, and letting characters die. For us, that's part of the fun. (They're genuinely just the perfect group, and I'll miss them when we start moving apart.)
For my other group—my roommates and friends from college—I'm True Neutral. Their characters just don't have the same fun, depth, and commitment, so I'm less motivated to see them succeed. And I don't put as much effort into writing interesting adventures, because I know they'll find a way to derail them. For them, I'm a neutral arbiter. And because the campaign is longer-running, and they're less excited by the danger than my other group, I'm guilty of fudging rolls on occasion.
I love taking breaks as a Chaotic Good or Chaotic Neutral kind of DM: pulling surprising non-sequitur twists out of my hat, letting players homebrew with almost no veto, improv the whole session, no stat blocks. But I don’t think I could play a whole campaign like that.
Lawful Neutral. Facts and rules are laid out before the players, we all play by the same rules, my rolls are always open. Good and evil is generally established, not many things are morally gray.
If you make dumb decisions, you die, if you're smart, you succeed. Plain and simple.
One of my players once said: "If you die in Rafa's games, he will just go GG, best luck next time".
I'd be Lawful Good. I administer rules consistently, but the game is geared entirely around the players having a good time and feeling like heroes. I allow players to try to do random and weird things, but that falls within Lawful since the rules make allowance for that.
I am lawful as I try to stick to the rules wherever it makes sense, though I will bend or add things where it fits. I also prep extensively for sessions!
I am chaotic as I include twists, break trusts, and mess with the characters emotions (like them finding out that the "hostile skeletons" they just killed were in fact terrified sailors on another plane being attacked by shadows which were the party!).
I am Good because I will avoid unfairly disadvantaging or killing characters, because I know a lot of work goes into them and if a character dies, it should be noteworthy (not a result of being mobbed by too many bandits whilst asleep!)
I am Evil because I do not hold back whatsoever on the NPC's, and the trail my players have led inevitably leaves behind heartache and sadness as people die and their loved ones mourn. Most notably when a shopkeeper was nailed to the wall by a gnoll spear, leaving his child-minded adult son, who had been happy to see the PC (and was basically always happy and a ray of sunshine) a quiet and closed person in the wake of her adventure.
I suppose it all conspires to make me lawful evil - I plan the twists and heartaches, and keep the player characters alive so that their emotions can be pulled around in this web I am weaving around them. But then, I also throw in comic relief. So there's that XD
To my PCs, I'm... complicated. I've forced them to fight monsters, become enemies of their kingdom, and put up with the party rogue. But I've also given them a chance to redeem themselves for their backstories and help make their lives better. So I would say I'm Chaotic Neutral towards them, forcing them to go through terrible things, but only to prove that they're worthy to achieve their goals.
Towards my players, I'm probably Neutral Good. I follow the rules when possible, but also use a lot of my own, random stuff, and my goal is to make them have fun.
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All stars fade. Some stars forever fall. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Homebrew (Mostly Outdated):Magic Items,Monsters,Spells,Subclasses ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If there was no light, people wouldn't fear the dark.
To my PCs, I'm... complicated. I've forced them to fight monsters, become enemies of their kingdom, and put up with the party rogue. But I've also given them a chance to redeem themselves for their backstories and help make their lives better. So I would say I'm Chaotic Neutral towards them, forcing them to go through terrible things, but only to prove that they're worthy to achieve their goals.
This gives me sphinx vibes: testing the PCs with a neutral attitude toward whether they pass or fail. The Monster Manual says sphinxes are lawful neutral, but I don't know. Riddles have a chaotic vibe to me. Technically, the answer is logical, but to be a riddle it must defy expectation. It's a little of both.
I am definitely chaotic good. I will actively reroll damage dice that are over a creature's average damage per attack, I will twist the rules so that my players can do cool stuff, and I will actively weaken the BBEGs so that they don't slaughter the players. This has allowed them to defeat CR 9 giants at 4th level.
I think I'm a chaotic neutral, I often don't prepare beforehand, and I give my players way to many magic items to strong for their level.
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This isn't actually a signature, just something I copy and paste onto the bottom of all my posts. Or is it? Yep, it is. Or is it..? I’m a hobbit, and the master cranial imploder of the "Oops, I Accidently Destroyed Someone's Brain" cult. Extended sig. I'm actually in Limbo, it says I'm in Mechanus because that's where I get my WiFi from. Please don't tell the modrons, they're still angry from the 'Spawning Stone' fiasco. No connection to Dragonslayer8 other than knowing them in real life.
I think I fall into the boring true neutral category. I don't try to twist rules for or against players, which would be lawful behavior, but I also don't necessarily strictly enforce rules if it will disadvantage players or has no impact on the party composition. I plan ahead, but also allow for quite a bit of improvisation (sometimes leading to entire storylines and character arcs) and don't hold players to my expected storyline if they do something that would "break" it, so I don't like being lumped into the strict lawful category.
I also have the same perspective to my good/evil axis. While I do want players to have fun and enjoy the table, I also think challenging players and encouraging good play habits are important. I try not to be a jerk about it, but I won't usually let players retcon things if they don't read the ability first or if something doesn't work because of information that they didn't obtain, but I don't cheat players out of their features and abilities. Sometimes I'll do something that messes with mechanics or that players can't identify, which has made some players salty because they thought "Zed is just taking away our ability because he doesn't like us doing X/Y/Z" (which isn't true- my only two major pet peeves that I do not like players doing is playing their items instead of their character and metagaming creatures and abilities- when someone says "Oh, that's an X" and names a creature off the picture from the books TO THE ENTIRE PARTY I die inside a bit- if you're a DM who plays remember NOT to metagame), or some homebrew abilities that allow a named/unique enemy to do a particular thing that players misidentify as being more extensive than it actually is, but if players don't trust their DMs then there's nothing you can do outside of strictly use RAW and let them metagame without having them think that, which I think robs players of encountering new and interesting things.
As a side rant, too many DMs try to rob players of their abilities. Don't. You can occasionally defeat their abilities if it makes sense for the creatures they're encountering, but I have encountered so many players with trust issues because DMs have screwed them over in the past just to guard a storyline or "win" encounters. It makes them into players who constantly second guess the DM's motives, try to metagame encounters to "gotcha" any DM who doesn't strictly follow rules/creature stat blocks, and generally think of the DM as an enemy, and it makes it hard to be creative with encounters without players assuming you're trying to kill their characters. I had an elementalist NPC who hijacked a character's Conjure Elemental because, again, elementalist, using a custom ability I added. I'm pretty sure that another player assumed that this could hijack all their summons (they were a Tasha's summon spell build) which just wasn't true and they accused me of invalidating all their spells. To be fair, I probably gave that impression because sometimes players will ask me a question that they have no way of knowing and I have the bad habit of, since I'm used to DM'ing for groups that are quite familiar with my DM'ing, making comments that imply a variable broadness to abilities just to mess with players who are trying to metagame or make assumptions about things.
As a side rant, too many DMs try to rob players of their abilities. Don't. You can occasionally defeat their abilities if it makes sense for the creatures they're encountering, but I have encountered so many players with trust issues because DMs have screwed them over in the past just to guard a storyline or "win" encounters.
Oh no. I'd call that Chaotic Evil. In this scenario, I'd try to be more Chaotic Neutral. I might limit a player's ability so that it doesn't cheese the entire encounter, but I still let it have some significant effect. I think this is the best of both worlds. If a player one-shots an entire encounter, they feel like a champion, but they other players feel kind of disappointed that they missed out on a chance to contribute to the fight. Maybe I'm true Neutral. I'd really only do this if there was some ambiguity about interpretation of the rules. If it was clear that their ability neutralizes the enemy as much as they think it does, then I'd have to allow it.
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Toward my PCs, at least in my current campaign, I’m neutral evil, in that my two potential BBEGs are lawful evil and chaotic evil respectively. Many of my NPCs are neutral evil, true neutral, and neutral good. My players have reviewed them as “morally gray”.
Towards my players, I’d say I’m neutral good. I stick to RAW as much as possible, but I’m not afraid to homebrew something if it gives the players a good experience, whether that’s a reward or a challenge. Maybe that makes me true neutral. I don’t want my players to win all the time, but I do want them to win in the end. I think a small amount of adversarial play makes the game exciting and unpredictable. I was kind of annoyed when one of my players broke my dungeon with flight. I think he knew what he was doing, but he was challenging me to think on my feet.
How about you? What’s your DM alignment?
Several times my PCs have questioned whether they are the bad guys, or working for the bad guys. One BBEG *might* be the good guy, the other BBEG *seems* less bad than the other. Morally gray would be a good description here as well. I guess that puts me in the neutral evil camp with you.
Towards my players, I'm true neutral or lawful neutral. I'll let them run whatever direction they want, and die on whatever hill they choose. I am currently in anticipation of how they are going to solve the latest "impossible problem" that they have wandered into. I also stick to RAW as much as possible. It prevents inconsistency between rulings.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
Probably Lawful Evil.
There's something about suddenly thrusting a twist in front of my party that makes me happy, especially when that twist makes them re-evaluate the decisions they made. And it serves them right, after they do stuff I don't prepare for (Joining the Suspicious Cult, Fireballing a Tavern during the Lunch Rush, deciding to go and explore the Underdark because it sounds fun etc) and killing my BBEG's in 2 rounds. It's like they're just asking me to make their characters suffer.
Also my party say I'm evil because I make drinking a potion cost an action.
For my one group—old friends I've known since high school and play with over the summer—I'm Lawful Good. I love these guys and their characters, and I put effort into creating a fun world and story, which they in turn don't drive totally off the rails. We're a team. But that doesn't stop me from balancing challenging encounters, rolling dice in front of the screen, and letting characters die. For us, that's part of the fun. (They're genuinely just the perfect group, and I'll miss them when we start moving apart.)
For my other group—my roommates and friends from college—I'm True Neutral. Their characters just don't have the same fun, depth, and commitment, so I'm less motivated to see them succeed. And I don't put as much effort into writing interesting adventures, because I know they'll find a way to derail them. For them, I'm a neutral arbiter. And because the campaign is longer-running, and they're less excited by the danger than my other group, I'm guilty of fudging rolls on occasion.
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
I love taking breaks as a Chaotic Good or Chaotic Neutral kind of DM: pulling surprising non-sequitur twists out of my hat, letting players homebrew with almost no veto, improv the whole session, no stat blocks. But I don’t think I could play a whole campaign like that.
It is not a good session until at least one of the players looks at me and says ...
"You sick, twisted, evil (epithet of choice goes here)."
Not sure where that puts me on the spectrum.
Lawful Neutral. Facts and rules are laid out before the players, we all play by the same rules, my rolls are always open. Good and evil is generally established, not many things are morally gray.
If you make dumb decisions, you die, if you're smart, you succeed. Plain and simple.
One of my players once said: "If you die in Rafa's games, he will just go GG, best luck next time".
I don't even like using alignments in-game...
...call me Neutral Fun.
Lawful enough to get some sweet set-pieces ready, chaotic enough to let them do something completely different if they like.
Evil? I give them fights they can't win sometimes, because running away screaming is fun.
Neutral? I give them CR-appropriate fights sometimes, because being a badass is fun.
Good? I give them sweet loot and the adoration of the crowds sometimes, because being cool is fun.
Neutral Fun.
I think this alignment is "unaligned", which isn't even an option for PCs and is only used by monsters, mostly Beasts.
So... I'm a beast?
...
Awesome. :)
Or a Plant, Construct, Ooze, or Monstrosity.
...I'm going to have to admit to all of those, tbh.
:)
I'd be Lawful Good. I administer rules consistently, but the game is geared entirely around the players having a good time and feeling like heroes. I allow players to try to do random and weird things, but that falls within Lawful since the rules make allowance for that.
Difficult one.
I am lawful as I try to stick to the rules wherever it makes sense, though I will bend or add things where it fits. I also prep extensively for sessions!
I am chaotic as I include twists, break trusts, and mess with the characters emotions (like them finding out that the "hostile skeletons" they just killed were in fact terrified sailors on another plane being attacked by shadows which were the party!).
I am Good because I will avoid unfairly disadvantaging or killing characters, because I know a lot of work goes into them and if a character dies, it should be noteworthy (not a result of being mobbed by too many bandits whilst asleep!)
I am Evil because I do not hold back whatsoever on the NPC's, and the trail my players have led inevitably leaves behind heartache and sadness as people die and their loved ones mourn. Most notably when a shopkeeper was nailed to the wall by a gnoll spear, leaving his child-minded adult son, who had been happy to see the PC (and was basically always happy and a ray of sunshine) a quiet and closed person in the wake of her adventure.
I suppose it all conspires to make me lawful evil - I plan the twists and heartaches, and keep the player characters alive so that their emotions can be pulled around in this web I am weaving around them. But then, I also throw in comic relief. So there's that XD
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To my PCs, I'm... complicated. I've forced them to fight monsters, become enemies of their kingdom, and put up with the party rogue. But I've also given them a chance to redeem themselves for their backstories and help make their lives better. So I would say I'm Chaotic Neutral towards them, forcing them to go through terrible things, but only to prove that they're worthy to achieve their goals.
Towards my players, I'm probably Neutral Good. I follow the rules when possible, but also use a lot of my own, random stuff, and my goal is to make them have fun.
All stars fade. Some stars forever fall.
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Homebrew (Mostly Outdated): Magic Items, Monsters, Spells, Subclasses
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If there was no light, people wouldn't fear the dark.
This gives me sphinx vibes: testing the PCs with a neutral attitude toward whether they pass or fail. The Monster Manual says sphinxes are lawful neutral, but I don't know. Riddles have a chaotic vibe to me. Technically, the answer is logical, but to be a riddle it must defy expectation. It's a little of both.
I am definitely chaotic good. I will actively reroll damage dice that are over a creature's average damage per attack, I will twist the rules so that my players can do cool stuff, and I will actively weaken the BBEGs so that they don't slaughter the players. This has allowed them to defeat CR 9 giants at 4th level.
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I think I'm a chaotic neutral, I often don't prepare beforehand, and I give my players way to many magic items to strong for their level.
This isn't actually a signature, just something I copy and paste onto the bottom of all my posts. Or is it? Yep, it is. Or is it..? I’m a hobbit, and the master cranial imploder of the "Oops, I Accidently Destroyed Someone's Brain" cult. Extended sig. I'm actually in Limbo, it says I'm in Mechanus because that's where I get my WiFi from. Please don't tell the modrons, they're still angry from the 'Spawning Stone' fiasco.
No connection to Dragonslayer8 other than knowing them in real life.
I think I fall into the boring true neutral category. I don't try to twist rules for or against players, which would be lawful behavior, but I also don't necessarily strictly enforce rules if it will disadvantage players or has no impact on the party composition. I plan ahead, but also allow for quite a bit of improvisation (sometimes leading to entire storylines and character arcs) and don't hold players to my expected storyline if they do something that would "break" it, so I don't like being lumped into the strict lawful category.
I also have the same perspective to my good/evil axis. While I do want players to have fun and enjoy the table, I also think challenging players and encouraging good play habits are important. I try not to be a jerk about it, but I won't usually let players retcon things if they don't read the ability first or if something doesn't work because of information that they didn't obtain, but I don't cheat players out of their features and abilities. Sometimes I'll do something that messes with mechanics or that players can't identify, which has made some players salty because they thought "Zed is just taking away our ability because he doesn't like us doing X/Y/Z" (which isn't true- my only two major pet peeves that I do not like players doing is playing their items instead of their character and metagaming creatures and abilities- when someone says "Oh, that's an X" and names a creature off the picture from the books TO THE ENTIRE PARTY I die inside a bit- if you're a DM who plays remember NOT to metagame), or some homebrew abilities that allow a named/unique enemy to do a particular thing that players misidentify as being more extensive than it actually is, but if players don't trust their DMs then there's nothing you can do outside of strictly use RAW and let them metagame without having them think that, which I think robs players of encountering new and interesting things.
As a side rant, too many DMs try to rob players of their abilities. Don't. You can occasionally defeat their abilities if it makes sense for the creatures they're encountering, but I have encountered so many players with trust issues because DMs have screwed them over in the past just to guard a storyline or "win" encounters. It makes them into players who constantly second guess the DM's motives, try to metagame encounters to "gotcha" any DM who doesn't strictly follow rules/creature stat blocks, and generally think of the DM as an enemy, and it makes it hard to be creative with encounters without players assuming you're trying to kill their characters. I had an elementalist NPC who hijacked a character's Conjure Elemental because, again, elementalist, using a custom ability I added. I'm pretty sure that another player assumed that this could hijack all their summons (they were a Tasha's summon spell build) which just wasn't true and they accused me of invalidating all their spells. To be fair, I probably gave that impression because sometimes players will ask me a question that they have no way of knowing and I have the bad habit of, since I'm used to DM'ing for groups that are quite familiar with my DM'ing, making comments that imply a variable broadness to abilities just to mess with players who are trying to metagame or make assumptions about things.
Oh no. I'd call that Chaotic Evil. In this scenario, I'd try to be more Chaotic Neutral. I might limit a player's ability so that it doesn't cheese the entire encounter, but I still let it have some significant effect. I think this is the best of both worlds. If a player one-shots an entire encounter, they feel like a champion, but they other players feel kind of disappointed that they missed out on a chance to contribute to the fight. Maybe I'm true Neutral. I'd really only do this if there was some ambiguity about interpretation of the rules. If it was clear that their ability neutralizes the enemy as much as they think it does, then I'd have to allow it.