Spider Queen

I think it would be a good thing if more players were high maintenance players. I'm a high maintenance player. What does that mean? Well, there's something to be said for thinking of being high maintenance as engaging with the story outside of "office hours", i.e.: sending reams of character backstory, fanfiction etc to the GM. If my players are that engaged, I regard it as a huge bonus, and a vote of confidence. But that's not what I mean here. What I mean is this: I pipe up and talk to my GM about things that don't work for me or that I don't like. Obviously I do this out of session time, not at the table. But I frequently take a while to get my thoughts in order and compose a message explaining what rubbed me the wrong way and why. Bonus points if it comes with a list of potential fixes or other helpful suggestions. Is this a slightly overbearing way of letting your GM know about your preferences? Sure. It helps if you're good friends, or at least h...

Just a quick one today. Here's a phrase you see a lot on D&D Reddit: "No D&D is better than bad D&D." Now this is another one of those phrases where I'm pretty sure the effect of the phrase - its pragmatic or utility value, if you will - outweighs the value of its strict truth. That is to say, I'm not sure whether it's exactly strictly true (I think that would depend on your tolerance for bad D&D, or your RPG of choice), but it doesn't matter overly much whether it is or not - what matters is that if you treat it as true, good things happen. And, conversely, bad things happen if you don't treat it as true. We're already being slightly pretentious, so lets talk about the "social contract". The social contract in a game is the unwritten rules that hold it together. You could more or less sum it up as "don't be a dick at the table" - although I think that's more because breaking the contract is perceived as ...