Am I A Lawful Good Dungeon Master?

Posted on by Joshua Macy

Basically, I think I am, according to the classification scheme devised by "Patriarch917" of the RPG blog lolforinitiative:

  • lol for initiative: The Lawful Good Dungeon Master

    If you’re a Lawful Good Dungeon Master, you respect the authority of the rules of the game, and you believe that those rules are the best way of achieving your goals. You know that fair application of the rules promotes a sense of objectivity, and you want your players to know that you are objective. Your players know that if you tell them the Owlbear made a critical hit, the Owlbear made a critical hit. They know it because of the 20 staring up at them.

See also the Good Dungeon Master.
Important points are that I don’t view DMing as a contest between me and the players, and that I actually do try to apply the rules openly and fairly.  World Builder and Facilitator are both roles that I am comfortable with and pretty much the goals of my DMing.

Published by Joshua Macy

You want to know what manner of man is Joshua, What manner of man, you want to know.... A man of the moment is Joshua, and when the moment leads, there do I go! I live to love, I love to live!

4 thoughts on “Am I A Lawful Good Dungeon Master?”

  1. I must respectfully disagree. Lawful Good is as much about the fair application of the rules as it is showing compassion when those rules turn against the players. Rolling your dice in plain view ties a DM’s hands unnecessarily and would be more consistent with a Lawful Neutral outlook. Even a Lawful Good DM should be allowed to fudge a die roll when the campaign depended on it.

  3. Anon, I must respectfully disagree with your respectful disagreement. Rolling the dice in plain view only ties a DM’s hands if you’re pretending that the DM will never overrule the dice (a pretense that everybody must know is false if you bother to hide the dice). To be Lawful, I think you need to be open about your willingness as DM to overrule the dice when the situation warrants, or to go with a system (such as Savage Worlds) that gives the DM and players a mechanic to overrule the dice. Otherwise, I’d suggest you were Neutral or Chaotic Good, pretending you were Lawful.

  4. Joshua,

    Hmmm, now I would see overruling an openly-rolled die roll as far more of a Chaotic act than fudging it behind the screen. Simply the act of not “hiding” the dice strikes me as an unavoidable declaration of neutrality (on the good-evil axis), whereas both Good and Evil GMs would want to roll behind a screen for purposes either good or evil.

    And I’m definitely a Neutral Good GM myself, with Chaotic tendencies. 🙂

Comments are closed.