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What Alignment Is Your Dungeon Master?

Dungeon Masters GuideSitting at the end of the table the Dungeon Master planned his next move. If the party burst through the door as was their habit he had a nasty surprise in store for them. Without fail Braddoc the Fighter pushed Ethan the Rogue aside, kicked the door down, and charged into the room.

“Braddoc,” the DM explains, “as you enter the room you are assaulted by the smell of sulphur! Rising out of the gloomy room a large Red Dragon belches out hot flame at you!” The DM was waiting for this moment all night! Grabbing his d20 he rolled his lucky die, come on he thought. Looking down at the die he was dismayed to see a 1 come up. Good thing I roll behind a screen he thought, “Natural 20! That’s max damage Braddoc, this is going to hurt!”

Dungeon Masters are an interesting lot. At times they lead you through an enchanting story of great heroics and daring deeds. However, at times DMs can become fickle, vindictive and down right mean if their well intentioned plans don’t come to fruition. While not all DMs should be cast in the same light it is interesting to examine the different archetypes that exist and what better way than determining their alignment.

  • Lawful Good – Your DM knows all the rules and applies them fairly in all situations. While this can be annoying as you aren’t able to slide a fast one past the DM, at least you know he isn’t going to bend the rules for monsters or NPCs either.
  • Lawful Neutral – Your DM is a rules lawyer. If a question of clarification comes up your DM must find the answer before play can continue, assuming he doesn’t already know the answer. What’s worse the DM won’t accept anyone else’s opinion; if a PC disagrees with the DM they’re wrong.
  • Lawful Evil – The rules were designed to be exploited by the DM and only the DM. You can’t get a word in edgewise, if you are too persistent blue lighting strikes your character dead!
  • Neutral Good – Rules have their place, but they shouldn’t ruin an enjoyable role playing experience. Your DMs maxim is “if we can’t find a rule to adjudicate for this situation we’ll just make one up.”
  • True Neutral – Your DM uses the rules as required to strike a balance in the game. After all, it’s only fair that the DM gets to kill off some players too.
  • Neutral Evil – If a rule doesn’t work in your DMs favour then the rule as written is incorrect. A new house rule which suits whatever evil scheme he has planned.
  • Chaotic Good – Your DM is into LARP.
  • Chaotic Neutral – This game has rules?
  • Chaotic Evil – Just as your DM shifts the layers of the Abyss to suit his needs, so too does he change the rules. Your DM always roles dice behind the screen and always roles the maximum. He delights in the meaningless slaughter of PCs and then raises them as undead minions.

So what Alignment is your DM?
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10 replies on “What Alignment Is Your Dungeon Master?”

I’m pretty sure the main GM in my group at this point is Neutral good. He’s constantly rolling percentile to figure out NPC decisions and to determine what they will do based on certain situations. I find that the other players in our group (who are Lawful Neutral or Lawful Evil DM’s) do enough rules lawyering (sometimes to the detriment of the players and party) for everyone else at the table.

I am a Neutral Good DM. but personally, my DM (his nick name is Melon) is probably Neutral Evil. he makes most of his NPCs stronger and more important than the player characters. this ticks me off! oh well…

One of my previous DMs was most certainly Neutral Evil. Important NPCs were untouchable (literally, we couldn’t hit them or negatively affect them in anyway) and no main villian could die without taking at least one of us with him.

Also don’t even think you where going to deviate from the plot or leave a quest unfinished, lest you find your-self half-dead, exhausted of your powers, and missing gear standing in the middle of the plot important area with no memory of how you got there.

Jamesks, that’s like how my DM is. the untouchable NPCs, the going off the story line, everything!
most people (Dungeon Masters) hate it when players go off the beaten path, the main story or quest. personally, my Campaign is very fun and inventive. my world in itself is free-roaming. originally i did this because it really worked well in the video game ELDER SCROLLS 4: OBLIVION. there is a quest, but there are so many optional and side quest that the players never seem to get bored. nothing is truely set, and i allow my NPCs to be killed. And because of the player’s actions, the story changes in alot of ways.
For example, i gave the PCs a choice: to let the king die or live. I explained to them that if the king died what would happen (don’t worry, the world would keep spinning), and if he lived what would happen. the choice was theirs (although i cared for the king, it was not my decision.) 🙂

@ Jamesks & Dungeon
It sounds like your DM should be writing a novel, not running a D&D session. If the NPCs are more important than the PCs in a gaming session something is wrong.

I agree Wimwick. He actually thought about using our D&D sessions to write a novel and he wanted ME to write it for him! go figure. 😛

@ Dungeon
LOL. I suppose I should be careful in saying don’t write a novel based on gaming sessions, after all the Dragonlance Chronicles series was born from the game table. However, if you are the DM you need to allow the player’s to control their own destiny.

I’m pretty sure the other GM in our group is Chaotic Neutral. To the point where he admits to just doing random things off the top of his head, either completely screwing us over or making us royalty…

I like to think I’m the Neutral Good one, veering Lawful sometimes. My games are serious (mostly) to contrast with my friend’s… thing. It’s not D&D; it’s a sci-fi setting. I have a sneaking suspicion that his rules vary from nanosecond to nanosecond.

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