I don't doubt that the vast majority of people would still be decent, but that has nothing to do with the point. The point is that some people would stop acting decently. You say laws don't prevent crimes, and yet to a degree they do. Speed Limit signs don't prevent everyone from speeding, but they do prevent most people from speeding, and there are a few that wouldn't go 30 miles per hour through a residential section if the sign wasn't there. In fact, they didn't, which is why the sign exists.
It's the entire point. Without it, there are no speeders and the vast majority drive safely anyway. With it, the reckless drivers still go well beyond the speed limit and can be punished. Those signs serve no purpose other than to punish the reckless drivers.
Without limits the vast majority of DMs do not act the way you are talking about, and none of bad DMs will stop being bad because rules that you want to implement.
So, it isn't part of how the game works because most DMs don't take their authority as far as they are "legally" allowed to in most games? If that is the case, what would be the issue with putting a sign post up at those extreme edges where you don't see it in typical game play and saying "You are reaching the limits of your authority"? In typical game play, you wouldn't even notice the difference. It would be a purely hypothetical limit on your power as a DM.
Did you miss the example above where I did one time this campaign appropriately make a ruling opposite to what the players wanted? The power is there for judicious and appropriate use. It's only the rare DMs who will abuse it, the same ones who won't stop because you wrote some rule, that are a problem.
If there is no expectation about either of us lying, why did you feel the need to specifiy THREE TIMES that you will not lie, and therefore you must say yadda yadda yadda. No one was bringing up lying.
Three times you either asked or wondered why I was doing what I was doing. I gave you the answer about why
I wasn't. The rest is you once again reading something that wasn't said or implied into my words. Especially since I went out of my way to say why I thought you were arguing what you are arguing, and it wasn't lying.
Right, and DnD is an anomaly in this respect. Holding onto these out-dated notions of needing absolute control over the game held by one person. Looking to other games that run in similar fashions, there is no issue brought up by balancing the power more between players and DMs. And I think it leads to a far healthier game, because it makes it more true that the game is about a group of people telling a story together, rather than one person telling a story and a group of people trying to conform to that story.
I didn't say it was an anomaly. I said I don't know if there are other games out there like it. There may well be. I haven't read all RPGs.
Yes, it does matter. Because you have played in games where people were unhappy, where the game was bad. And since you have, by your own admission, never once played a game without DM ultimate authority, you have no idea if those bad games had been held in a different context, if they'd have turned out differently.
Yes I do, because I know why they were bad. The games were bad, because of bad DMs. The kind of DM that isn't going to stop because Chaosmancer wrote in the book that they shouldn't do stuff like that.
And considering the sheer number of stories I have heard of terrible DMs who make up rules on the spot to enforce the story they want to tell... I think there is some evidence that there are bad games created by this rampant idea of unlimited and unquestioned DM authority.
You do know that people are many times more likely to complain than to compliment, right? It's human nature. It's especially true now that the internet lets people come together to complain in misery together that you see a very, VERY disproportionate number of complainers vs. happy players, even though DMs like that are pretty rare.
Okay, I'm not playing this game yet again Max. Evidence of a trend does not need to be identical in every way to a proposed situation. Not having identical situations is not a False Equivalence.
Presenting a very different situation as equivalent is, though. Stop using the fallacy.
And, again, I don't think setting up conversations that start with the premise that one-side is nearly always in the right, barring extreme abuses, is a healthy way forward.
The truth isn't a healthy way to go forward? That's an odd sentiment.
People began posting about how this player was entitled, this player was a problem, this player ect ect ect. And yet, looking at the rules of the game, a PC is supposed to know when a spell is cast. And reading their actual questions, none of them were distrusting the DM or seeking to undermine them, it was all just analysis.
The PC is not supposed to know what spell was cast, or if a spell was cast and not on him. You get to know if it's cast on you, and even then you don't get to know what spell it is unless it's Charm Person or a similar spell that tells you.
I agree with you though, that calling that player entitled wasn't cool. He sounds from the OP like maybe he might be on the spectrum and has difficulty with not knowing why something is happening. It seems more of a mild mental(not crazy) issue of some sort.
Not what I said. I'm not talking about occassionally rolling the die, then deciding that you didn't want to roll the die. I'm talking about for an entire session, rolling the die, then declaring the numbers you want to see, instead of what the die says.
Why bring up a situation only a bad DM would do like it's an AHA! moment that proves your point?