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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jackelope King" data-source="post: 2549159" data-attributes="member: 31454">I've known players like this. I've also known players in the first 3E campaign I ever read who actually pulled out my handouts while hanging playing Madden and would spend quite awhile pouring over them, trying to figure out how everything fit together. One of my players once called me on my cell phone while I was driving back from my aunt's house and he tells me that he and another player had been looking it over and they thought that another player was someone mentioned in a prophecy, and they didn't think she deserved it. But you know what? They liked the game enough to devote time to it away from the table, telling me that I was doing my job as a DM right. They might not be the norm, but players tend to reciprocate when they see the DM working for the game.Sure there can. The DM can be something other than a bubbling pot of ego and try to make things fun for the group as opposed to fun exclusively for him/herself.3E rules don't take any of that away, they just don't make it necessary. I can play a game where my only arbitration is deciding on how difficult skill checks should be, and I've got a handy difficulty chart for a bunch of skills lying right next to my campaign notes. I don't have to reinvent the wheel every time a player wants to try to climb a tree. And yet in my experience the only ones I've met who complain about 3E taking power from DMs are the tyrant DMs in my area, the ones who loved nothing better than to drop pianos on unruly PCs for no good reason and who wore hats which said "DM = GOD". Now the rules insulate players from bad DMing like this, and the only people who I've heard whine about this are the ones who only like the DM's chair because it gives them the opportunity to stroke their ego by "screwing with players" (to quote one such DM I know). I will not assume that everyone who feels that less power to the DM is a bad thing is like this, but it is tempting at times.But when you get down to it, they are all equal. In spite of all the work the DM does, he is no more important than the players there, since if the player leave, all the DM can do is toss some dice at the cat. Believe it or not, players matter, and if you treat them like they're unimportant, then you'll have a hard time running a good game.</blockquote>

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