embee
Lawyer by day. Rules lawyer by night.
Next time, don't play the part.
Just be the DM.
Do or do not. There is no try.
Next time, don't play the part.
Just be the DM.
As just a brief response to the OP @Snarf Zagyg ...
You say "we use different words for DM than we do for player," and then immediately undermine your own point by referencing another common-use term: "DMPC." How can there be a "Dungeon Master player character" if the DM isn't--indeed, cannot be--a "player"?
That's true, I hadn't considered that. Overall, I don't often enjoying taking the role of the DM in the game. I'd much rather run a PC. So, given that I enjoy it less and, generally, consider it work, it might affect how I describe DMing to others.Or whether you're talking to another gamer.
so clever.
I was simply telling you how I answer the question of 'what did you do last night' when I was the dm. It was an observation. Then you made up a fictional conversation for some odd reason. I'm not sure if it was to insult the observation I was making? I didn't understand the point you were trying to make.
Anyways,
Everyone plays roles in a game. Without the DM there is no game and without the Heroic Characters, there is no game. If there's no game, there's no players.
So, to me, the DM is playing the game. Unless they are running the game as a job or dislike doing it and/or find it a huge chore. Then they're not playing, they're working.
As just a brief response to the OP @Snarf Zagyg ...
You say "we use different words for DM than we do for player," and then immediately undermine your own point by referencing another common-use term: "DMPC." How can there be a "Dungeon Master player character" if the DM isn't--indeed, cannot be--a "player"?
Whether or not that is true, leaning on "common usage" as a key point of your argument....and then immediately invoking another point of common usage that opposes the first? Not a good argument. Whether or not the rest of the argument is sound, I haven't gotten to yet. Common usage arguments are already perilous things*; to then directly follow one with a different argument that shows exactly the opposite usage is not merely shaky, it's pretty obviously flawed.There are also NPCs.
Non Player Characters.
And yet Non has never been in my group.
A DM is in no way analogous to a neutral arbiter. A neutral arbiter is hired to settle a contractual dispute. The neutral arbiter, had no hand in drafting the language of the contract. The neutral arbiter played no part in the actions that lead to the dispute.No analogy is perfect. But the idea of a neutral arbiter is why we often analogize the DM to a referee (in fact, the first DMs were called referees, from wargaming).
I don't know why they call this stuff hamburger helper. It does just fine by itself!