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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 2582466" data-attributes="member: 18280">Obviously.  And, equally obviously, I'm splitting hairs.  However, I think that there's a world of difference in those hairs.  KM giveth and KM taketh away.  On one hand, sure the DM ought to be having fun.  On the other hand, the DM "exists for the fun of the players".  If the DM has spent two weeks designing a starting area intended to provide excellent risks and rewards to a party of 2nd level PCs, but the players wants to play 22nd level characters, the DM should compromise:"Well, it doesn't need to be second level....does everybody think starting at level 22 is a bad idea?" Of course, it is the DM who gets stuck with another X weeks of design work, so everyone is happy, right?KM presents "fun" as the be-all and end-all of gaming, but also as a moving target whose definition is whatever is convenient at the moment.How can you equate "Does the DM have more important things to do than grant everyone's wishes? No." with anything other than "the DM is entirely subservient to the player's wishes"?  By throwing in the word "entirely"?  That works if, and only if, you can tell me when KM is saying that the DM is not subservient to the player's wishes.  From what I am reading, this is only when the game becomes so un-fun for the DM that he quits.It should be fairly obvious that if the DM is not enjoying the game, neither will anyone else.This will be the third time I have asked this, and I imagine that it will remain just as unanswered:You say:No, the "bad" DM allows the players to pick any ECL +1 race list on the handout.  There are only humans on the handout.  This does not mean that all of the humans on the handout are PHB vanilla humans.  I have over a dozen human types IMC.  Even if not, the DM's rules only specifically INCLUDE any ECL +1 race in the handout as choices.  If there are no ECL +1 races in the handoug, this is not a change in the rules.  It is perhaps just a pointed way of saying that there are no ECL +1 races allowed.  Perhaps the DM's experience with these players specifically suggests that he not allow ECL +1 races if anyone is to have fun, and perhaps also his experience with these players suggests that he needs to make this a pointed fact or three of them will make troll characters, one will make some sort of fey character, etc., without even looking at the handout.Which RAW are we discussing here?  The core books?  Expansions?Playing Q would give a high ECL, sure.  Okay, I never gain levels.  I'm happy with that.  How exactly is disallowing Q different than disallowing that dragon PC?  How much ECL is too much?I could envision a situation where a klingon could be aboard Kirk's Enterprise.  In fact, I have seen an episode where a Klingon party was aboard Kirk's Enterprise facing a hate-inducing mind parasite.  It could work.  Now you're just being a lazy DM and nerfing my fun character idea.Playing a kender is in the RAW (DragonLance campaign setting).  Playing a spellcaster in D&D using the rules in suppliment X is in the RAW (suppliment X is Unearthed Arcana).  Playing a new class from suppliment Y is in the RAW (suppliment Y is Sandstorm).  Playing a warforged is in the RAW (Eberron campaign setting), and you are once again being a lazy DM for not finding a way to work my KEWL character concept into your Medieval Japanese campaign setting...Perhaps it does not have to be Medieval Japan?  Notice that only the kender race doesn't come from a WotC product.  I don't have to invent new rules for any of it.  It's all RAW, if not core RAW.Playing a series of characters, all of whom are designed to not fit into the campaign world as it is presented can certainly be done using even the core RAW.  The only ways a DM can prevent it, in fact, is either by having the most generic, plain-vanilla campaign world possible, or by saying "No."Despite your claims to the contrary, the RAW does not, anywhere, prevent a rain of +2 swords.  Nor does the RAW, anywhere, prevent a player from playing the Tarrasque.  The RAW do not particularly support either idea, but neither do they deny them as possibilities.  Savage Species doesn't limit monster classes only to those monsters that it selects.  The DMG has some suggestions for selecting an appropriate ECL if you're not sure you want to go the monster class route.  As for raining swords, well, the character wealth guidelines are just that....guidelines.  The RAW doesn't state that DM's can't give the PCs more.Heck, maybe it would even be fun.It amazes me to think that KM could write this:when describing risk/reward ratios for players, but fails to see the obvious corollary that what the DM does is a lot more like trying to churn out a successful novel than character generation is.I can't say it any better than I did before, so once more with feeling:In KM's philosophy, there is no way for the DM to win. He "serves the player's needs" and is forbidden from putting "his own pleasures in the game first, ahead of the player's, rather than equal to them." In other words, the DM serves the players by doing 90% or more of the work involved in the game, does not get to experience the game as a player, and if more than half the players say one day "It would be fun if magic items started raining from the sky...and we mean real, long-term fun" the DM is supposed to shrug and start dropping +2 swords.This isn't an interesting point.This is a desire to have the DM's work somehow subservient to the player's efforts at rolling up characters.</blockquote>

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