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DM Sadism 101 rule
(thelemmy.club)
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/71856456
DM Sadism 101
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this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2026
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I really dig the PBTA model.
The door is not trapped.
The player is suspicious of the door.
The player rolls to determine if the door is trapped.
On a failure, it turns out the door was trapped and now there are interesting consequences.
On a success, it turns out that the door was trapped and the player feels good about avoiding the consequences.
Every outcome is inherently more interesting.
The only risk to this is players catch on pretty fast, they're not stupid. It makes the world feel more silly or videogame-y, which can be fine, but it's a design choice. For more realistic games or settings, it's better for things to be as they are, the players uncover what was already there (or not).
Another core philosophy is to paint with a broad stroke, and to leave holes.
If a player is looking at an object and thinks "this should do something", they're right.
I only gave one example of something that might go wrong. Here are a few more:
All of these lead to more interesting story and play, and most importantly, bring the players into what was always meant to be collaborative storytelling.
Throw out the book. Nothing is meant to be anything, unless it is interesting and engaging.
There's nothing more boring than "yep, nothing there" or "haha sucker, that'll teach you for not rolling on every single door and cobblestone".
That's what passive perception and hidden rolls are for, but I don't remember if DnD still has that. I mostly play Pathfinder. So in this example, the rouge forgets to check the door. But as a DM, I asked the player beforehand how thorough their character is, and if they automatically check every door in exchange for a time penalty. If there's no "pressure" like chasing or being chased, I assume they check every door if that's the kind of thing they usually do, and roll for them if they forget and there's something there. Obviously a careless rogue wouldn't do this, and maybe they wouldn't check somewhere they don't expect traps like a manor party, so it depends on the character and situation. Like if they seem nervous and alert they would probably check for traps everywhere.
My players trust me to be fair in this regard and it really made the whole thing a lot smoother.
That kinda just seems like you're playing the game for them.
It worked for us. We had a few moments like "you didn't check for traps so now you take damage" and they said "well obviously my character would have" and I was like "y'know what you're right. You're playing your character, and if you were actually in that world you probably would have checked for traps because you did so the last 100 times."
Similar how in real life you're not conscious of every little thing you do, most of it is muscle memory.