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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SteveC" data-source="post: 9476030" data-attributes="member: 9053">I don't know how much of this is a semantic argument, and how much is about the actual rules, but the DM or GM or almost anyone running a game in a traditional sense, does indeed have the power to just up and kill the group and end the game. I remember the t-shirts from the 70s with "rocks fall, everyone dies."Now is this a good idea? No. Should the GM listen to and respect player input? Of course. I have managed to make it through almost 50 years of gaming and have never done anything like it as a GM. But I have seen it done, usually by someone wearing the Viking Helmet.What happens after that? Usually the game ends. The players can certainly just pick up their characters (although there was this horrible thing in the 70s and early 80s where the DM held onto the characters, again not something I did) and elect someone else to run the game and give the GM the boot. That's the risk you take when you pull nonsense on your group.But the notion that the group has significant control over the story? That's a much more modern concept. I'm reading Fabula Ultima right now, and it's a game that explicitly tells the GM to mix authority. And it's an unusual game that skims the borders of traditional RPG.Of course players chime in when the GM makes a rules mistake, or forgets something that happens in a previous session, but actual authority over "nope, don't like this storyline, try again," isn't the same thing.All of the stuff you're talking about in terms of giving the players agency is a very real thing and a very good idea, but that's not really what D&D is about. And it's why I enjoy playing other games. If my GM pulled a "your patron says X, so you must do Y," and it made the game unpleasant for me, I'd vote with my feet. Or, as it is today, I'd sign off of Discord. But the GM gets to do those things in games like D&D. As I've said several times, the question is if they should. I don't. DMs I continue to play with don't. But making what I'd call bad DM calls isn't against the rules. And, of course, if that's not how you want to play, hey, you do you. I do me, and we're not that far off in the kind of game we want to play in.Edited: math is hard.</blockquote>

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