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<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8694313" data-attributes="member: 6790260">The DM lying to the players is bad. Characters portrayed by the DM lying to characters portrayed by the players? Perfectly reasonable.And using your imagination and inventing fictional things isn't lying.You can also just choose to, y'know, not do that. No good DMing exists that can be achieved with manipulation but cannot be achieved without manipulation.Abso-friggin-lutely not! That's....no. Your definition of &quot;manipulation&quot; is so skewed as to become meaningless. Unless you are willing to specify what you mean by &quot;manipulation,&quot; it's going to be hard or even impossible to discuss this. Your use of the word is so alien to me I literally don't even know what you mean by it anymore.&quot;Directing focus&quot; is not manipulation. I am deeply confused about your reasoning here; what made you think such things were &quot;manipulative&quot;?I hesitate to think I am in any way special when it comes to DMing, and I have never needed any &quot;manipulative glue&quot; as you put it to achieve these things. Learning to improvise is an incredibly important skill, doubly so for me because I like to plan things to the Nth degree and thus I knew I would need to force myself to improvise. I would further argue that being able to just straight-up say, &quot;Hey guys, can I take 15 minutes to prepare something?&quot; is the third-most-important DM skill one can acquire, after &quot;always be ready to improvise&quot; and &quot;always be more fair to the players' characters than to yourself-as-DM.&quot; (The close 4th would be &quot;say yes or roll the dice.&quot;)Several times, things the players wanted to do--that would have ended up being simple one-note dungeons under your scheme--have naturally evolved into some of the most important and interesting components of the story thus far. Things I would never have considered. That, perhaps more than anything else, cements my opposition to these tools. You cut yourself off from the absolute best possible source of awesome developments: the players.Again, I disagree: there is no problem that can be solved with them that cannot be solved without them. Hence, they are risks without need.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 8694313, member: 6790260"] The DM lying [I]to the players[/I] is bad. Characters portrayed by the DM lying to characters portrayed by the players? Perfectly reasonable. And using your imagination and inventing fictional things [I]isn't lying[/I]. You can also just choose to, y'know, [I]not[/I] do that. No good DMing exists that can be achieved with manipulation but cannot be achieved without manipulation. Abso-friggin-lutely not! That's....no. Your definition of "manipulation" is so skewed as to become meaningless. Unless you are willing to specify what you mean by "manipulation," it's going to be hard or even impossible to discuss this. Your use of the word is so alien to me I literally don't even know what you mean by it anymore. "Directing focus" is not manipulation. I am deeply confused about your reasoning here; what made you think such things were "manipulative"? I hesitate to think I am in any way [I]special[/I] when it comes to DMing, and I have never needed any "manipulative glue" as you put it to achieve these things. Learning to improvise is an incredibly important skill, doubly so for [I]me[/I] because I like to plan things to the Nth degree and thus I [I]knew[/I] I would need to force myself to improvise. I would further argue that being able to just straight-up say, "Hey guys, can I take 15 minutes to prepare something?" is the third-most-important DM skill one can acquire, after "always be ready to improvise" and "always be more fair to the players' characters than to yourself-as-DM." (The close 4th would be "say yes or roll the dice.") Several times, things the [I]players[/I] wanted to do--that would have ended up being simple one-note dungeons under your scheme--have naturally evolved into some of the most important and interesting components of the story thus far. Things I would never have considered. That, perhaps more than anything else, cements my opposition to these tools. You cut yourself off from the absolute best possible source of awesome developments: the players. Again, I disagree: there is no problem that can be solved with them that cannot be solved without them. Hence, they are risks without need. [/QUOTE]

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