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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5315382" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think the pargraphs I've excerpted show it actually matters quite a bit who is "in charge". Are the players equally active? Or is the GM who gets to decide?My practical experience - and I don't think it's particularly atypical - is that rules like "Rule Zero" or WW's "Golden Rule" are in practice reserved to the GM. That is, the GM gets to decide when and how to suspend or vary the action resolution rules from situation to situation, and the players are expected to go along with it. The players, typically, are not conferred a corresponding privilege.No doubt many groups of players are happy with a game where the GM is the principal arbiter of action resolution - after all, you see a lot of affirming references to Rule Zero on these boards - but I personally don't like it at all. I also wonder about the GM being "uniquely in the position to know what game elements are likely to be important" - it is certainly possible to play a game in which the players, through their character build choices, through the backstory they build into their PCs, and through the relationships they develop over the course of play, determine to a significant extent what game elements are important.If I as a GM get not only to build and play the adversaries, but also get to determine at a fundamental level what game elements they will consist in, and also get to determine, from moment to moment, what resources and capacity the players have, via their PCs, to deal with those adversaries, then what exactly is the role of the players?Maybe, although I've had experiences which bear out the concerns that Aegeri and I are expressing. And, as Aegeri said, "There are lots of ways to do something for an hour (the rough time of one encounter in 4E) and not enjoy yourself - DnD shouldn't be one of them."I therefore prefer not to start down the slope at all.</blockquote>

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