Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 6550050" data-attributes="member: 6775031">Yes. The DM is necessary because no ruleset is perfect, and sometimes you need a real person there to govern unforeseen circumstance. The players can do anything, and no finite amount of rules can take that into account. That's why you have an arbiter to determine such things honestly and fairly.Of course, the DM is also the one to play all of the NPCs and narrate any sort of plot elements, but he or she would still be able to do that, even with a perfect ruleset that didn't require the DM to also act as arbiter.The way in which rules serve us is by guaranteeing that everyone understands how things work, without having to stop so one person can explain it at every step along the way. When you ignore the rule, or when the DM changes a rule on-the-fly, you defeat the purpose of having rules in the first place.I don't consider the stakes to be that important to the situation at hand. You can certainly RP your way into a bad situation, but that's in line with expectations; if you lie to the king, and fail on the Deception check, then that's your own fault.The situation with this rule is that you make a check, and the player expects one of two outcomes, but the DM says something unexpected happens due to a marginal success. I don't know that it's something that could really happen with a social interaction, though, because success on a social interaction is nebulously defined. There aren't exactly two outcomes that the player could expect.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="The Crimson Binome, post: 6550050, member: 6775031"] Yes. The DM is necessary because no ruleset is perfect, and sometimes you need a real person there to govern unforeseen circumstance. The players can do [I]anything[/I], and no finite amount of rules can take that into account. That's why you have an arbiter to determine such things honestly and fairly. Of course, the DM is also the one to play all of the NPCs and narrate any sort of plot elements, but he or she would still be able to do that, even with a perfect ruleset that didn't require the DM to also act as arbiter. The way in which rules serve us is by guaranteeing that everyone understands how things work, without having to stop so one person can explain it at every step along the way. When you ignore the rule, or when the DM changes a rule on-the-fly, you defeat the purpose of having rules in the first place. I don't consider the stakes to be [I]that[/I] important to the situation at hand. You can certainly RP your way into a bad situation, but that's in line with expectations; if you lie to the king, and fail on the Deception check, then that's your own fault. The situation with this rule is that you make a check, and the player expects one of two outcomes, but the DM says something unexpected happens due to a marginal success. I don't know that it's something that could really happen with a social interaction, though, because success on a social interaction is nebulously defined. There aren't exactly two outcomes that the player could expect. [/QUOTE]

Verification