I wonder about the "dependants are snack food for monsters" philosophy, though. Taken to the extreme, this will discourage players from giving you any dependants in their background at all, since they don't want to give you any rope to hang them with. Don't get me wrong, some people WANT the rope, for the drama of the thing, but some people might get discouraged by that.
I also think some GMs take "this is improv, so don't negate" a bit too far. I think it IS acceptable to negate in certain situations, such as pregame ("Can I play a dragon?") or actions in violation of previously established social contract.
As far as, If you don't want them to screw up, don't let them roll, though, I couldn't agree more with this, and can't tell you how many modules I've seen where there's some junk like "players must succeed on a 25 DC perception roll to see the clue for the next segment..."
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I wonder about the "dependants are snack food for monsters" philosophy, though. Taken to the extreme, this will discourage players from giving you any dependants in their background at all, since they don't want to give you any rope to hang them with. Don't get me wrong, some people WANT the rope, for the drama of the thing, but some people might get discouraged by that.
I also think some GMs take "this is improv, so don't negate" a bit too far. I think it IS acceptable to negate in certain situations, such as pregame ("Can I play a dragon?") or actions in violation of previously established social contract.
As far as, If you don't want them to screw up, don't let them roll, though, I couldn't agree more with this, and can't tell you how many modules I've seen where there's some junk like "players must succeed on a 25 DC perception roll to see the clue for the next segment..."