Warning: incoming bulls$&%.

Yep, I’m letting myself have a bulls$%& article this month. And this is it. Which means there’s no Long, Rambling Introduction™. That’d just be redundant.

An Angry Style Guide

This is a bulls$&% article. That means it’s long and rambling and pontifactory. Except this one’s got a twist. It’s got an actual f$&%ing outline. And there’s a bunch of actual things I actually want to share. Truth is, if not for one little issue I’d call this a “How to F$&%ing GM” article. But I don’t have time to explain that issue. I barely have time to explain what this article is and why it exists.

What it is is a sort of statement of my core beliefs and a style guide. Basically, if I was the sort of GM who’d make my players read a bunch of bulls$&% about how I run my game and why I run it that way and what I expect from them — if I thought that sort of thing was actually a good idea, which I absolutely f$&%ing do not — if I was the sort of GM who’d make my players read ten pages explaining my approaching to game mastering, this is what I’d give them.

Why it is is a long story that involves me suddenly running a metric f$&%ton of games for upwards of thirty strangers in a very short period and noticing that certain things I do seem to catch a lot of people off guard. Basically, I’ve been rubbing up against a lot of different styles of play. There’s been some friction. And it’s made me think about what I do and why that’s absolutely the right way to do it. Because, I mean, I make it a point to always do things the right way. It’d just be stupid to do wrong things.

I’m not writing this for any of my players. They can read it, sure, and it might actually help them. But I’m not writing it so they’ll read it. When issues arise at my table, I deal with them. The way adult game masters do. And until they arise, there’s no reason to bother people with this s$%&. I’m writing it as an example of how my core principles — my ideas of what an RPG is and how to RPG right — inform the choices I make at the table as a GM. And specifically, what I expect from players.

That’s why it’s broken into two parts. The first part’s all about what I really think about role-playing games and how they should be done. My core beliefs as a GM, I guess. The second part’s all about how I interact with my players and the rules and how I expect them to interact with me. When a player acts outside of those rules and expectations, by the by, I don’t just kick their a$& to the curb. Instead, I say something like, “at my table, this is how I do things.” And then we move on. Unless they put up a fight. Then I kick their a$& to the curb.

Because tabula mea, regulae mea. My table, my rules.

The Tao of Angry

Why do I run my games the way I do? Why are some behaviors cool and others not? Why do I expect what I do from my players? Why do I modify the rules the way I do? I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about these things. Mainly because I’ve had to explain myself a lot in the past few weeks to a lot of strangers who don’t know how I run things. Because I actually will explain why I do the things I do. Insofar as I know why I do them.

This ain’t an exhaustive list. And it might not be entirely accurate. It’s just a snapshot of what I think I believe right now based on the way I’ve been doing things and the feelings I’ve got about that. Which is the best any human being can do when it comes to figuring out their core beliefs.

The Big Triad: Agency, Consistency, and Engagement

I devoted an entire chapter of my book, Game Angry: How to RPG the Angry Way to these three things. I called them the Hearts of the Game. And they are. They make RPGs RPGs. The players must have agency because role-playing is all about making choices. The world must be consistent, understandable, and persistent so that the players can make good, rational choices and so that the consequences of those choices follow logically. And because the g stands for game, an RPG must supply an engaging gameplay experience. It isn’t just imaginary happy fan-fiction storytime.

Think First, Then Rules

TTRPGs aren’t possible without a brilliant and infinitely imaginative human brain running the show. Computers can’t do this s$&%. Thus, whenever I have to do anything at the game table, I turn to my brain first and trust it to figure out how to run things. Whenever I turn to the rules, that’s a deliberate choice to use those specific tools — the game’s mechanics are tools — to resolve a particular situation. It ain’t automatic. The rules help my brain run the game. But my brain runs the game.

The Word Is What It Is And I Decide What It Is

The game takes place in a consistent, persistent, understandable fictional world. That world cannot be ignored. And it can’t be broken. It’s my job to keep it persistent, consistent, and unbroken. If anything threatens the world — be it a stupid rule, a ridiculous abstraction, or a player’s idiot wants — the world wins. Because if the world ever breaks, I can’t run the f$&%ing game anymore and that means everyone loses.

It’s All About the Action On the Screen

Like movies, TV shows, and video games, RPGs communicate through the medium of action. Everything’s about what the characters do. Sure, it’s about choice. But choice is just a precursor to action. An action is a choice expressed. The s$&% going on in the character’s heads? It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t affect the game. Except insofar as that s$&% informs the actions the characters take. And that’s basically akin to the action’s backstory. It belongs in the subtext.

I’m the Character’s Eyes, Ears, and Brains

The world of the game only exists in my head. It needs to be there because I need to run it. To let the players project their characters into it, therefore, I have to give them all the information they need to build a copy of the important bits of my head world in their own brains. Otherwise, their characters can’t interact with the world. I have to be clear, concise, accurate, and honest. And when there’s a misunderstanding, I’ve got to do everything in my power to clear it up.

Players Shouldn’t Have to Ask Questions

This is a corollary to the above principle, but it deserves a special mention. Yeah, I’m the characters’ brains in the world, but the players are running the thinky and decision-makey parts of those brains. That means the players have to know what’s in their character’s brains at all times. They shouldn’t have to ask me for information. If they do have to ask, I screwed up as eyes, ears, and brains.

Of course, the practical reality is that, sometimes, they will have to ask questions. But I should do my damndest to minimize that s$&%.

The Players Must Bring Their Brains

I may be the characters’ brains, but the players’ brains are driving the characters’ brains’ decision-making processes. And isn’t this turning into a mess?

Thing is, an RPG is a game. It’s an activity. The players — not the characters — ultimately determine the outcome. You can’t leave the player out of the player-character and it’s wrong-headed to try. The player’s own mental skills — deduction, logic, strategy, planning, attentiveness — they’re all part of the game. And should be.

Characters don’t win the game, players do.

Characters Gather Information and Execute Actions; Players Draw Conclusions and Formulate Strategies

This might be the holy f$&%ing grail in this entire article: a firm dividing line between player skill and character skill. Yeah, finally, some gaming genius figured it out. And it’s me.

The world feeds information to the character’s brain through the character’s senses and perceptions and experiences. That information then gets passed along to the player’s brain. The player’s brain then assembles that s$&% together into a plan of action. A strategy. Usually based on a goal. The player then feeds that plan of action back down to the character. And the character executes it. It’s as simple as that. Ha!

So, the player learns all sorts of information by using the character to interact with the world, right? But then, the player has to figure out what to do with that information. How to assemble it. And how to exploit it to get what they want. They then execute that plan using the characters’ skills and abilities. That’s why it’s the player that decides what to say to the NPC but the character that determines how well it’s said and whether it works. That’s why players can’t have their characters solve mysteries or puzzles just by rolling some dice. And that is why the players can play characters more charismatic than they are but not smarter than they are.

Sorry if that offends you. Don’t @ me. Don’t care.

Regulae Meae

So, those things above form the core of my brilliant and utterly correct game-mastering philosophy. And it’s that philosophy — and the normal whims of an irrational, emotional human brain — that determines how I actually run s$%& at my table.

What follows now is a list of… well, I guess they’re rules. The rules of my road. The Angry highway. If you want to sit down at my game table, accept that this s$&%’s how it’s going to be. And if a rule gets broken, expect to hear about it. And while all of these rules are flexible and subject to evolve or change, the simple fact of the matter is that if you can’t play by these rules, we are fundamentally incompatible gamers. We can’t share the same table.

For simplicity, I broke these rules down into three broad groups. The first, Rules of the Dice, specifically deal with how I use the rules. And, for this article, they focus on Dungeons & Dragons 5E. The second, Rules of Action, are all about how the players communicate their character’s actions. The third, Rules of Information, deal with how the players deal with what their characters know and perceive.

The categories are vague, slapdash, and sucky. And there’s a bunch of overlap. I mean, the human decision-making process is vague, slapdash, and sucky. And there’s no clear lines. I just classified the rules to organize them for this article.

Rule of Dice

These rules talk all about how I use the game’s mechanics at the table. When I choose to use them, that is.

When I Need a Die Roll; I’ll Ask For It

As a player — I’m just going to make this s$&% easier by writing it as if I’m addressing a player — as a player, it’s your job to decide what your character is trying to accomplish and what specific action they’re undertaking to accomplish it. As a GM, my job is to determine the outcome. If I need a die roll to help me figure out what happens, I’ll ask for it. Or I’ll roll it myself. I’ll decide what to roll when and what it means and who should roll it and who gets to see the results. I’m a pretty by the book GM. I trust the rules to work well enough, even when I don’t like them; but if the rules threaten agency, consistency, engagement, or the world, I will ignore them, break them, or change them.

Nonetheless, just tell me what your character is trying to accomplish and the specific action you think will make it happen and I’ll figure out the outcome.

Background Rolls and Passive Checks

As a player — did I mention you’re a player in this scenario — as a player, you decide what your character wants to accomplish and what action they take to accomplish it. Everything else is my job. That includes making sure you have all the information you need to do your job. And I will handle that job.

To that end, whenever your character runs into a situation where their eyes, ears, magical other senses, previous experiences, memories, or hard-won education might provide some information, I will provide it. And to decide what information your character should have, I’ll use things like passive scores, Intelligence checks for various proficiencies, and other mechanical s$&% like that. Unless I think something’s common knowledge.

That means that, if you think there’s something to perceive or know and I didn’t explicitly tell you about it, your character probably didn’t actually perceive it or know it. No amount of questions like, “do I see anything else” or “do I recognize that monster” or “you know I’m trained in Weaver’s Tools; does that tell me anything,” will get you anywhere. I already checked the rules before I started giving you information. And I know what skills you’re proficient in. I keep a list. Why? Because it’s my f$&%ing job to know what your character knows.

If you’re convinced there’s something to perceive or know that I’m not telling you, well, then you’ve got to find out. That means you’ve got something your character wants to accomplish. And that means you’ve got to take an action. A real action. You have to interact with the world in a way that would be visible on screen and might expose you to danger. Here are things that aren’t actually actions:

• Looking around really hard
• Being really attentive
• Thinking really hard
• Trying to remember anything

You want to search the area? You’re going to be moving around, peering around and under things, moving things, tapping on things, parting the underbrush, getting a better view, all that s$&%. If someone were watching a movie of the game, they’d know your character thought there was something and that they were now looking for it. Hope there’s no traps you find by blundering into them.

Think someone’s lying to you but your passive Insight didn’t warn you? Time to ask some probing questions and try to catch them in a lie. Of course, that’ll alert them to your suspicions. And might offend them. But those are the risks you take.

Want to learn more about a monster? Find an expert and question them. Or go do some research.

And if you aren’t clear what action to take, tell me what you want to accomplish and I’ll suggest some ways to accomplish it. Maybe. Depends on whether your character would actually know how to accomplish it.

Some Proficiency Required

I don’t give a s$&% what the rules say, there’s just some things you can’t attempt — or know — without a basic level of proficiency in a given skill or tool. See, the rules break agency, consistency, engagement, and the world here, so they’ve got to be ignored. Lots of actions — and almost all specialized knowledge — are gated behind proficiency requirements. If you’re not trained, you can’t succeed. Not even with a natural 20. Sorry.

You Can’t Help with Everything

Speaking of places where the rules break the world, there’s rendering aid. Some actions benefit from an extra pair of hands. Or eyes. Or brains. Some don’t. Some actions just don’t benefit from assistance. And, in some cases, when people team up, they aren’t helping each other so much as each trying to succeed on their own. Searching a room? Best everyone can do is make their own search in the hopes that someone will turn something up.

The question is whether everyone is searching the entire room or whether everyone’s searching their own little corner. That’ll determine what any given person might find and how much time the search will take. But that’s a whole other article.

And, by the way, you can’t help some actions if you don’t have the right skills.

Your Character Can’t Invent a Solution

D&D ain’t a game about imaginary characters in a fantasy world. It’s a game about what would happen if you were an imaginary character in a fantasy world. You’ve got to bring your own brain with you. You will never, ever be allowed to roll a die to determine whether your character can create a solution to a problem on their own. If your character can solve their own problems and invent their own solutions, I don’t actually need you — the player — at the table. And you do not want to convince me you’re extraneous. Because I’d be a lot happier running this game without you. Your character can supply you with all sorts of good information and can even sometimes draw some conclusions from that information. And your character will execute any plan you come up with it. But you’ve got to solve the mysteries and puzzles. And if your character doesn’t bring you the information you need, you’ve got to come up with a plan to get more.

Rules of Action

Your job — as a player and as I have now repeatedly reminded you — is to decide what your character wants to accomplish and what action they undertake to accomplish the accomplishment. These rules are all about how you communicate that s$&% to me so I can determine whether the action leads to the accomplishment.

You Don’t Have to Put on a Show

I don’t really give a f$&% how you tell me what your character wants to accomplish and what action you think will get them there. I mean, I do. And that’s explained below. But I also don’t. As long as you’re clear and concise and give me all the information I need, I don’t care how you deliver it. You don’t need to be flowery and descriptive. You don’t need to speak as your character and put on some dumb-a$& accent. You just need to tell me precisely what your character is trying to accomplish and what action they’re taking to do it. This is especially true in social interaction. It’s okay to say, “I think he’s lying; I want to probe him and try to catch him out.” It’s okay to say, “I threaten to blackmail him with that evidence we found if he doesn’t give up his supplier’s name.” It’s okay to say, “I spin a sob story to play on the shopkeeper’s sympathies so he’ll lower the price.” It’s all good.

If your flowery, descriptive, in-character-ness starts to get in the way of your being clear and concise — or it starts to detract from the game — I will ask you to stop.

Declare the Smallest Possible Action

You don’t have to tell me everything your character is planning to do for the next six hours. You don’t have to tell me what your character is planning to do if the first action succeeds. Just tell me your character’s current intention and action. The thing they’re doing right now. That gives you room to respond to changing situations and it helps me keep the clock in my head in sync. Which I’ll talk more about in a moment.

If the words ‘and then…’ or ‘and if that works, I’ll…’ come out of your mouth, stop. Stop right there. You’ve gone far enough. Let’s see how the first date plays out before we start planning our future lives together, ‘kay?

Don’t Pontificate; Don’t Broadcast Your Thoughts

Have I mentioned that your job — your only job — is to decide at any given moment what your character wants to happen and how your character wants to act to make it happen? I think I have. I’m sure both you and your character have all sorts of brilliant, complex, intricate reasons for aiming at your intended outcome and for executing the strategy you’ve invented, but I don’t actually give a crap about them. Nobody does. That s$&%’s for you to worry about.

Look, if you play your character consistently and make good decisions — and if your fellow players care — they can gradually come to know — or guess — what’s happening inside your character’s head. That’s how real people learn about other people — real and fictional. They infer the character’s motives from their actions. It’s what makes getting to know characters fun.

And, look, if there is something you think the other characters and their players should know about you and your character, well, sounds like you want to accomplish something. If only there was some kind of action your character could take to convey information to other characters in the world. Something that involved a noise hole and language.

But don’t do that too much. Remember, you can’t just tell people how your character feels; that makes me feel angry.

If You Want to Communicate, Communicate! Please F$&%ing Communicate

So, as I alluded to above, there may be times when you and your character want to pass some information to the other players and characters on your team. Maybe personal details about your character. Maybe a brilliant strategy for the next round of combat. Maybe a theory you have about what killed that body. Maybe a suggestion about how some other character’s skills might be useful in a given situation.

It turns out, there’s a simple action that players never, ever seem to f$&%ing remember that their characters can take to pass information to other characters in the world. Provided those characters are within earshot and share a common language with you. Can you guess what action I’m talking about?

Respect the Clock

You may not realize it, but the game’s action is actually playing out in my head. As a GM, that’s just one of the amazing things happening in my head to make the game work. And if you could see it, you’d agree it was amazing. It’s awesome. Not only that, there’s actually a time signature thingy on the little video playback window in my head. My brain is keeping all of the action synchronized and on the clock.

I’m not telling you that to impress you. I mean, you should be impressed, but I’m not bragging. I just want you to understand that sometimes, you’ll tell me what your character is trying to accomplish and how they’re trying to accomplish it and I’ll then say to the rest of the table, “okay, Alice starts doing this thing. While she’s doing that, Bob, what do you do?” And then the other players will start declaring actions. And eventually, I’ll ask everyone to roll some dice. And then I’ll describe some of the outcomes, but maybe not all of them, and then ask for more actions. And meanwhile, you’re — remember, you’re Alice — you’re sitting there waiting for me to resolve your action. Know why that happens? It happens because what you — Alice — are doing takes a long time. And meanwhile, the rest of the party doesn’t have to stand around gormlessly waiting for the outcome. Everyone can do their own things. You — Alice — you’re searching away in the background — or doing whatever — and the rest of the party is doing stuff in the foreground. Eventually, I give you your result. I tell you what you — Alice — found or didn’t find.

I’m doing that to keep actions in sync. So, if you search a room for fifteen minutes, Bob has time to take three actions that each take five minutes.

When the party’s not pressed for time and when people are doing all sorts of things and going in different directions, I’m juggling the very concept of time itself in my head to keep everything in sync so that if later, you end up in the same place as someone else while you’re both wandering town and taking actions, you can run into each other. Otherwise, there’s a time paradox and the world in my head breaks and the game is over.

Yes, by the way, it’s okay to split the party. It’s cool. Don’t listen to D&D. It lies.

In combat, by the way, that clock is ticking really fast. A combat round is six seconds long. Each turn isn’t six seconds. In six seconds, every creature on the battlefield takes an action and moves. Actions don’t quite happen simultaneously or else initiative wouldn’t work. But the difference between acting first and acting second is basically who starts their action a split second before the other. It’s an abstraction, sure, but it works well enough.

If you listen to my combat narration, by the way, you’ll notice I’m smearing the turns together. Like, actions are overlapping each other and one thing flows into another and all that s$&%. I’m really good at narrating combat. I admit I’m a little long-winded and I relish gory details — especially when the undead are involved — but I run a good fight.

Point is, though, that in combat, you don’t have much time to act. You have some fraction of six seconds to do everything you’re doing. Which includes blurting out a short sentence or communicating a simple instruction. If you try to do something that takes too long — like give a f$&%ing speech or formulate a complex strategy — I’m going to cut you off. And if you take too long to think about your action, I’m also going to cut you off. A lot of my players have heard me say, “a combat round is six seconds.” That’s my polite way of saying “you’re causing a time paradox and collapsing causality in the world in my head; stop.”

Your Character, Your Action

Your character is yours and yours alone. Your character succeeds or fails — and lives or dies — based on your choices and no one else’s. When I ask you what your character does next, I expect you to figure out the answer. You cannot role-play by committee and role-playing isn’t a team sport. Role-playing gaming is, but that’s different.

If you solicit the other players for help, I will stop you. If you roll a die to determine your character’s next action, I will stop you. I run a role-playing game. So role-play or get out of the pool.

But hey, if you decide that your character wants to invite input from their fellow characters? Well, that’s something your character could accomplish with a very simple action I’ve already talked about. Of course, in a fight, when the six-second clock is running? You really can’t do much of that. And when your character is alone because all the other players are off in other places or are out of sync with your temporal reality, well, you’re on your own. Keep the others around next time if you need them. Or agree on a strategy before you start a fight.

Rules of Information

This final set of rules deals with what the players know, what the characters know, how they know what they know, and how to resolve any differences. Except, really, it’s a stupid category. Because there’s only three rules here and they were leftovers and I couldn’t figure out a better way to lump them together. I could have called this section “The Other Three Rules.”

Pay Attention for F$&%’s Sake

Pay attention. Attention is required. It’s a prerequisite for playing at my table. Don’t like that? Can’t pay attention for some reason? There’s other game tables in the world. You don’t have to sit at mine.

First, I take my role as “eyes, ears, and brain” seriously. Really seriously. I’m detailed, I’m repetitive, I’m careful with my narration, and I telegraph the f$&% out of everything. If you listen to what I’m saying, you’ll have the information you need to make good choices. Sure, sometimes people miss details. Sometimes there’s misunderstandings. I will repeat information and I will correct misunderstandings. And I will never complain about doing so as long as I actually believe you’re doing your damndest to catch things the first time around.

And I’m serious about that telegraphing thing. Like, if you pay attention, at least half the time you’ll know which monster will attack who or what they’ll be doing on their next turn.

Second, I like to streamline things. And I like to foster an environment of teamwork instead of an environment of dickish middle schoolers stealing from and screwing over each other. So, I assume that the characters are pretty much sharing all the information they can as soon as they can. Do characters keep secrets? Sometimes, sure. That’s okay. But, like, useful strategic game information? If you want to withhold information that will help your allies win a fight, go find another table.

Point is, when I say something like:

You recognize the monster. It’s a gargoyle. Gargoyles aren’t sentient, living things. They’re statues and sculptures animated by the collective spirit of a place. They serve as protectors and guardians. They arise on their own or sometimes through the work of a powerful spellcaster or divine agent. Once the spirit of a place is gone — the temple falls to ruin, the town’s abandoned, whatever — the gargoyle continues its protection, attacking intruders relentlessly but no longer able to recognize anything as belonging to the place. They’re just mindless guardians that see everything as a threat. Because they’re solid stone, they’re resistant to most forms of physical damage. They are brittle, though, and force and thunder damage affect them normally. They are mindless, fearless, and lack any kind of internal biology. So they ignore most mental effects, psychic damage, poison, critical hits, sneak attacks, and other forms of bonus damage.

I assume that, in the world, your character is yelling something like:

S$&%! Gargoyles! Mindless stone guardians gone mad! Hit them with force or thunder; they shrug off anything else.

Thus everyone should be listening when I tell you what you know about gargoyles. Because you’re repeating the s$&% in the game world, just a lot more abbreviated.

Third, I hate recapping. It’s a waste of time. It basically amounts to repeating whole chunks of the game for people who were literally at the table while it happened. So, when Bob goes off alone to get information from the sage, I don’t want to have to tell everyone what he discovered when the party reunites. I want to be able to say, “Bob fills you in on what he learned; now what do you do?”

So, f$&%ing pay attention.

Metagame for F$&%’s Sake

Way, way up above, about 3500 words ago, I said that you — the player — must bring your own brain to the table. Turns out, you can’t bring just part of it. The human brain cannot pretend it doesn’t know something. It can’t. If you think your brain can, shut up. You’re wrong. It can’t.

I will tell you everything your character knows. Everything they know factually, unerringly, and reliably. Everything that is common knowledge and every piece of esoteric trivia they’ve got as a result of their skills, training, background, race, die rolls, and so on. If I tell you your character knows something, you can count on that information. It’s the most accurate information available in the world.

It might not be correct, of course, because sometimes the world gets it wrong. But that’s another story.

But your character also knows a lot of stuff that isn’t absolute, certain facts based on knowledge and experience and training and blah blah blah. They’ve also got a lot of crap in their head from stories they’ve heard, rumors they’ve heard, books they’ve read, games they’ve played, plays they’ve seen, and war stories they’ve traded in taverns. Your character knows a hell of a lot more than what’s written on your character sheet. If you know a thing or two about fantasy or mythology or whatever, you don’t have to bleach that part of your brain to play my game. Bring in whatever outside knowledge you’ve got. I’m not just giving you permission, I’m demanding you do it. I’ll yell at you if you try to talk around something you know but your character doesn’t. You’re ruining my f$&%ing game.

Players win games, characters don’t. Use what you’ve got. I’m ready for it. And if I’m not, well, you won this round. We’ll meet again.

The thing is, though? The information you bring from outside the game world? It’s risky. It could be right; it could be wrong. It’s the equivalent of the character in the world making a guess based on s$&% they’ve heard. And maybe s$&% they only half remember. It could be right or it could be wrong.

That said, I’m not a dick. I know, that’s surprising. But it’s true. I’m never going to turn outside information against you. I will never say, “actually in my world, vampires are empowered by garlic” or “trolls aren’t vulnerable to fire; fire turns trolls into pyrotrolls! Surprise!” And to make sure of that, if you spout out some conjecture that is flagrantly, dangerously wrong — information that any other character in the world would consider a ridiculous, crackpot, insane thing to believe — or information with absolutely no basis in anything, I will tell you you’re totally wrong. I won’t tell you what’s right, but I won’t let you hold ridiculously wrong or stupidly dangerous false beliefs.

For example, if you didn’t know anything about gargoyles but guessed they were protector spirits, fine. And if you tried to convince them you were devotees of a fallen temple and got yourself ripped to shreds, also fine. But if you told everyone to aim for their magma-spleens because everyone knows that gargoyles have lava-based circulatory systems, I would say, “that is absurd and there is no reason to think that’s true.”

And that brings me to my shocking final rule…

I’ve Got Your Back

I’m on your side. You can trust me. I take my job as a GM really seriously. I’m scrupulously fair and honorable. If there was some kind of Chivalric Code of Game Mastery, I’d be the f$&%ing Sir Gawain of GMs. We might not always agree and you might not like how I do things, but I will never act with malice, I will never try to screw you, I will never act arbitrarily, I will never act without a good reason, and I will give you that reason when asked politely.

I also will never let you screw yourself. I will not let you accidentally offend some noble when your character should have known better. I will not let your character blunder into an opportunity attack that you, the player, failed to see coming. You might miss a fair warning — which is why you should pay attention — but I deal fair. And I will warn you when you do something dangerous or stupid or likely to cause a disaster.

In short: on the day I kill your character, you will be awake, you will be facing me, and you will be armed.

Otherwise, there’s just no honor in the kill.