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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Stormtower" data-source="post: 3824514" data-attributes="member: 43631">Thanks, Reynard.  I enjoyed reading your essay.Your final point about the social contract at a given D&D table is quite accurate, but it only tells half the story IMO.  The players too have a responsibility to their DM - that being to remain within the accepted, negotiated framework of the DM's milieu.  DM's have all the power they need to "break" a party of PCs at any moment.  Conversely, players can easily sabotage a DM's prep work and sense of fairness by exploiting/excessively arguing rules, making broken PrC combos, or simply by intentionally derailing a campaign by ignoring plot hooks.DMs need players and players need DMs, so this sort of adversarial relationship is rarely made manifest since everyone is there (ostensibly) to have a good time playing D&D.  In my 20+ years of D&D I've noticed that the campaigns which last the longest and provide the most fun for players and DMs alike are those where the table culture/social contract is explicitly pre-negotiated at the start of the campaign.  To provide an example: my homebrew tends towards deep immersion, heavy RP, political intrigue and detailed resource management.  However, this January I made a conscious decision to integrate the Shattered Gates of Slaughtergarde and Red Hand of Doom into my latest campaign arc.  When I advertised this arc to my roster of players, I explicitly stated that it would be faster paced, more hack-n-slash, and would largely adhere to the modules' plotlines.  The players who favored that style opted in, and those who prefer the deep immersion opted out (they have their own campaign branch to explore which is more my usual style).So off we go into the modules as written - and my players all dutifully allowed their PCs to get snagged by every plot hook I dangled.  They consciously chose NOT to break the modules because we had explicitly agreed beforehand that we were going to experience WotC's creations more or less as written.  And we've had a blast with a very different play style than I am accustomed to as a DM.  It's challenged me as a DM, and it's challenged my less combat-happy players to learn the game more thoroughly and optimize their PCs more efficiently.So the delicate balance of power between players and DMs that you describe seems more easily maintained when everyone's expectations and desires for what's fun are laid out before a given campaign begins.  What do you think?I look forward to the next essay.</blockquote>

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