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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 9509607" data-attributes="member: 6785785">First, it's kind of hard to accept that you barely understand it after it's been explained to you over and over again. I mean, I can understand not liking it... that's preference, as you say. But to continue to frame it as things it's not? Second, there are plenty of others who have said they don't understand it at all. I didn't attribute any of those views to you specifically, I responded to your post where you said no one had said them and that this was merely preference. That's not the case... plenty have said that such games cannot work, that they don't understand how they could possibly work, or that DM's who allow players to have input are not worthwhile.  Case in point: Is it really that hard to parse? I mean, Isle is clearly a person. The meaning of "visiting grief" is pretty obvious, I think. Marie wants Isle to suffer and sets out to make it so. That you consider this a bad soap opera is, I think, more a failure on your part to imagine a greater context for such a scene. Clearly there's a personal motivation on Marie's part that we don't know, but we can infer from the example. That you need this explained to you is more on your side of things then on the example itself. I don't think there are two sides to this discussion. Or maybe not only two sides. There are a variety of opinions. Most of this came from the sentiment... clearly and overtly expressed by several folks in this thread... that the DM must maintain absolute control of everything beyond the PCs. If you don't think that's true, then cool. You can proceed with the understanding that people are not pushing back against you. There has been little, if any, actual criticism of more traditional modes of play in this thread. It seems to me that you're leaping to the defense of trad play and that's putting you on the same side of folks who are saying that only a trad authority structure can function. When people criticize that idea, you're taking offense. That's fine. Your personal assessment of existing settings aside, I think it's probably best to approach play as if the DM probably isn't coming up with the next Star Wars. I've made several settings myself, and played in many homebrew settings of others, along with many published settings. In most cases (not all, but most) what I remember about play is the characters and what they do, and not just the setting. Yes, all of which is almost entirely independent of setting. It's like one of the least important things when it comes to D&D, and it's treated as such a vital thing. DMs spend months on creating things when enough can be accomplished in an afternoon to do what the setting is supposed to do... facilitate play. Okay, then you're not actually disagreeing with me. My responses in this thread have been to the sentiment... again, overtly said... that games cannot function any other way. Just like with [USER=6747251]@Micah Sweet[/USER] if you disagree with that, then you're not in disagreement with me. It's an interesting sentiment to express about rule zero now that it seems to have changed, when for so many years rule zero was cited as vital.</blockquote>

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