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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Snarf Zagyg" data-source="post: 9128352" data-attributes="member: 7023840">So, to answer this, I would say that I wrote that the ideas of fairness are necessarily context-dependent. To use an example-Child: You said that all the kids should get treated equally.Parent: Yes, I did.Child: Well, why does Alicia get to borrow the family car, and I don't? That's not fair!Parent: Because Alicia is 17 and has a driver's license, and you're 15 and don't have one yet.That said, the common thread through the various conversations about fairness is that there is a rational relation between the facts (whether it's the fiction, or the other rules, or the prior rulings, or other things that have been established) and the eventual decision. To use the two examples cited-In the first, there is an element of unfairness because the DM's decisions were arbitrary and capricious and unrelated to the choices made by the player in making their character. Every roll, regardless of bonuses or skills or armor class or choices (such as flanking) or whatever, was just eyeballed as "high" or "low." In the second, the unfairness is system-dependent. In one system, the idea of exclusionary rules is widespread; you don't really question the one exclusion (druids and metal armor) because such exclusions were part and parcel of the entire class system. In another system (5e) that almost completely lacks those exclusions, the rule suddenly becomes "unfair," as an arbitrary and capricious restriction on druids that doesn't seem to have any relation to the facts otherwise established in the rules (that classes could acquire the ability to do other things, such as by adding feats or racial proficiencies or whatever). But because it's necessarily context-dependent (like, um, due process ...), there isn't a one-size fits all description. Instead, it's best used as a frame in which to view other conversations. For example, take the quantum ogre (PLEASE!). Thought of in the context of fairness, isn't it just an example of how the DM's decision to place an ogre regardless of the facts is arbitrary and capricious ... aka, unfair?</blockquote>

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