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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6503889" data-attributes="member: 4937">Well, some megatherium's were 20 tall and could achieve an upright stance.  While it's true that a giant of such height couldn't have the proportions of an ordinary human, I think 'crush itself' might be going a bit far.  Besides which, this is something informed by setting.  It is a conceit of the setting that, giants being descendants of the gods, that they have proportionally higher strength.  Conceits of the setting are specific exemptions from reality, and in many cases in a typical consensus fantasy world are well known to the players.  Of course there are giants, it's fantasy.While its true that a human GM is superior to a computer on many grounds, not the least of which is their ability to go beyond the rules - going beyond the rules and breaking the rules according to the situation are not the same things.  All GMs must go beyond the rules because no rules set can be comprehensive.  Breaking the rules according to your take on what would be good for the story, even if it is to save the life of a PC or to allow for what you consider to be an especially dramatic scene, tends to deprive a player of agency.  It's functionally equivalent to fudging the dice, altering the hit points or abilities of NPCs and so forth.  You're basically deciding when and how to let the players win, and conversely, when and how to let them lose.And yet, I have these stories of PC's risking their lives to save comrades.  They happen organically.  I never know how an encounter will play out.  I of course on some level prefer the PC's will win and their story continue, but I'm not here in my capacity as GM to ensure that preference is met.   Quite often, I breathe as big of a sigh of relief as the players when they pull off something unexpected, and join in the cheering and high fives.  Sometimes though, so as to not ruin their fun, I do it secretly - grumbling about how I won't be able to run up my body count today, while smiling on the inside.  Sometimes it's good to be the dastardly villain, or at least his proxy.  Trusting your DM to not be grossly unfair is a fairly low standard of trust.  You have it very much backwards.  If you can trust your DM to be fair in small matters, how much more can you therefore trust him not to be grossly unfair also.  But if you can only trust your DM to not be grossly unfair, then we can say nothing about whether he'll be fair or not in smaller matters.My preferences come out in the particular themes and design I give to a setting, and the particular goals I give to the NPCs (and therefore conflicts they represent, although I can't really choose which NPCs are to be seen as antagonists and therefore can't really choose which themes the story will certainly explore).  This is more than sufficient power and creative freedom and ought to satisfy anyone in my opinion.  But to suggest that my preferences for the story ought also in addition to that exert themselves is to give myself undo influence over the story.   I can hint or suggest through the structure of play, but I can't or perhaps rather ought not impose.  The desire to shape the story is a player stance, and poorly suited to being a GM.  Few things get a GM in as much trouble as fanaticizing about how the story is going to play out - what player's will do, what player's will say, how they'll be awed, how they'll be frighten by your monster, how the ambush will play out - rather than brainstorming as to how it might fork or diverge.   Some DMs plan out ages and ages along a single path, never questioning whether the PC's will stay on it.On the contrary, that's not what I'm saying.  Railroading is, done artfully and for the right reasons, just another tool in the DM's toolbag.  Railroading is bad solely because too often you see GM's use it improperly and precisely for the 'sin' we are here discussing - desiring to be in control of the story and decide what will happen.   But railroading can even be used as a tool of increasing player agency in certain situations.  I've got an essay around here somewhere on that topic.No doubt.  If the GM isn't having fun, there is no game.  However, the source of a GM's enjoyment is different than a player's enjoyment.  Many a bad GM is just a frustrated player whose desires for story went unmet, and now he thinks that the fix to his troubles is to get on the other side of the screen.Yes, but part of what a player often wants is to not have their victories stolen from them, or their agency removed from them.  We seem to have a bit of a disagreement over where to draw the line though.  You seem to be willing to allow things I'd consider plot protection in the name of a good game, and yet simultaneously denounce plot protection as leading to a boring game.Well sure, but in doing so, they still will not exert control over the game and presumably there own goals are now equally thwarted.  A great many players will sit through all sorts of crap to avoid that result.   Again, it's not a very high standard to hold a GM to that their players haven't fled their table.This is just saying you as the GM have power over the setting.  Absolutely, I agree.  But whether you want the characters to be heroes or not is irrelevant.  You can't make them be heroes.  Believe me, on some level I really wish I had more players who could play characters in a heroic mode instead of as cutthroat mercenaries always foremost looking out for their own interest.   Opportunities for heroism abound, but are often left on the wayside in exchange for expediency, security, and personal power.  You occasionally see heroics sometimes.  But I think a DM wishing for and predicating their happiness on how the player's behave is just asking for heart ache.This is all well and good and uncontroversial, but doesn't address the point here.   If at the end of the game I do unite the warring lands, and I know that you've been metagaming like crazy to make it happen, and fudging dice rolls to keep it alive, it better be a really darn good novelizable story we've created, because everything else about it will be ashes on my tongue.  And even then, my suspicion is that if you step back from the story it will have as many plot holes as a screen door.  If it's not realistic in terms of the geopolitics, then it's probably not going to be a very believable story either.   Just because I want to do something, doesn't mean I expect you to put me on rails to that destination.</blockquote>

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