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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 2587303" data-attributes="member: 18280">All social contracts include If/Then statements.  If you want to play, you must play a game that is available.  The available game may be one in which the DM is willing to compromise, or it may not.  It may be that you have to make the game yourself in order to make it available.  This is tautologically true, and no amount of wishing it were not so is going to change that.If the DM wants you to play, then s/he must provide a game which you will want to play.  This may, or may not, require a certain amount of compromise on the DM's part.  If the only game you will play in is one in which everyone has to tell you how clever you are every five minutes, and the DM wants you to play, that is the condition.  This is also tautologically true, and no amount of wishing it were not so is going to change that.However, if you want to play, and if the DM isn't particularly concerned if you in particular are a player, then you -- not the DM -- are going to have to compromise.  For example, say I am playing in a group so large that the table almost isn't big enough, and there are people circling around hoping that one of the players drops out so that they can get a crack at my campaign world.  Well, good luck convincing me I have to change.  What I am doing is certainly working well enough from where I'm sitting.But let us say instead that it is just you and I sitting at the table, and there isn't another potential player within 100 miles.  You want me to run Game X, but I hate running game X.  Yet Game X is the only game you want to play.  Suddenly, I have to decide whether my distaste for Game X outweighs my desire to run a game.If this sounds familiar, it should.  This is exactly the situation described by Jackalope King, only in this case the player is singular in his desires.You know what?  The player is not selfish for being singular in his desires.Yes.Better to say, "It is everyone's right to choose not to play if they are not having fun" or even "It is everyone's right to try to have fun playing a game."Your statement carries within it the expectation that others are obligated to do something (play the game, make it fun for you) and assumes that there is some magical formula that makes any Activity X equally fun for all involved.  After all, if the game is not solitaire, then someone else must be playing.  Even in the case of a computer game, someone must program it, and you have no inherent right to expect that it is programmed to your tastes.  Certainly, you may read reviews and examine advertising to attempt to determine whether or not it meets your tastes.  Hopefully you will have fun.  You do not, however, have a right to have fun.The Declaration of Independence (<a href="http://www.law.indiana.edu/uslawdocs/declaration.html" target="_blank">http://www.law.indiana.edu/uslawdocs/declaration.html</a>) says, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."Note, please, that what is self-evident is a right to the pursuit of happiness, not its attainment.  Also, as an aside, anyone interested in the DM/Player question would do well to take a look at the Declaration of Independence.  Much of it could have been written to a DM by some disgruntled players.   <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> You do not have a right to have fun; you have a right to try to have fun.  There is also the issue of the magical formula that makes everyone have equal fun.  In Narnia, or in Oz, such a thing might exist.  It does not exist in the real world.It is not difficult to have a campaign in which, overall, most of the people are having fun all of the time.  It is not difficult to have all of the players having fun most of the time.  All the players having fun all of the time?  In a general sense, perhaps, if you open up the parameters of "fun" far enough and make the units of time large enough to prevent the occasional glitches to which human nature is prone from registering.  Realistically, though, this is just using semantics to make a claim that cannot possibly be actualized.Nothing is fun for everyone all the time.  If it were, there would be even more potential players circling around our table, cash in hand, ready to make us wealthy if we would just game full time.Most of the people having fun all of the time and all of the players having fun most of the time is about as good as it gets, imho.Of course, there is no objective method to measure "fun".  Largely, one has to go by the expressions on people's faces, body language, lively chatter, and what they say at the end of (and between) sessions.  And if they come back.  People don't come back because they are being tortured.  People come back because they are enjoying the experience....even if it is not the maximum enjoyment they could receive.  People who are not having fun demostrate this fact by doing something else.Me, I look at the number of players I'm juggling.  I look at the number of people who want in based on what those players have told them.  I listen to my players.  Then I say, "Heck, gotta be doing something right."  And I am, as I have already admitted, the Worst DM Ever.RC</blockquote>

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