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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 8397109" data-attributes="member: 6801228">Okay, but is it utterly impossible to give DMs ultimate authority to abuse? They may abuse no matter what, but abusing limited authority is necessarily less harmful than abusing ultimate and unlimited authority. Again, because obviously I must repeat myself ad nausem, I'm not saying that changing things will remove all abuse ever and make everyone perfect. What I am saying is that the current system combined with this cultural climate of idolizing and lionizing the DM invites more abuse than I think is warranted, and there seems to be no reason not to change things to limit abuse."Only bad people will abuse it" is a terrible design principle. You can't redesign a hammer to allow it to perform its function without including ways to bash people's heads in. Hammers are too simple. But you can redesign table saws to cut wood and metal, but not flesh. You can also redesign DnD to allow for DMs to continue doing their jobs, but without giving them the authority to use weighted dice if they feel like it. And the only recourse player's have, the only tool in their arsenal, is leaving the game and looking for a DM who isn't abusing their powers. Perhaps we can redesign the game to give the players more options. But I think the worst thing is to just shrug and say that we can do nothing to improve. We can always improve.I disagree. It isn't "nothing" it is something. Just saying "only bad people do bad things, so we need to change nothing" is ignoring the problem, sticking your fingers in your ears, and singing loudly. Again, shockingly, no other gaming community I am aware of has this level of problem with DM abuse, where people will tell me that the rules perfectly allow the DM to use weighted dice or anything else they feel like, and if the players don't like it they should just leave. Part of it are these "rules" being too broadly interpretted it, and part of it is this culture where we place all of the expectations of good behavior on the players.But according to your philosophy, he can't be making mistakes. Everything he does is by the rules, and 100% right. No matter what. Sure, maybe he will listen, but he might feel he did nothing wrong. And then come to these forums and be told constantly that he did nothing wrong, that it was the players who are complaining and whining that are wrong. And that leads to an increased likelihood of DM Power Trips and arrogance, because nothing causes arrogance more consistently than the belief that you can do no wrong.  No, I just have a different view on what true rarity is. If I can nearly guarantee that every person will meet 10 people with Down's in their life, then meeting a person with Down's isn't that rare. It is uncommon, but since they are so consistently around, it isn't rare. Most people will likely go their entire lives without meeting someone who is Amish. That is rare. Since most people playing DnD have had at least one Bad DM, I don't consider them to be as rare as you think,.Did he tell me? Or did I misremember? I didn't go sifting through conversations, so I hedged on my memory being potentially poor. Or him saying "rarely" instead of "never". I wasn't expressing doubt at him experiencing what he experienced, I was expressing doubt over if I was correct in claiming what he experienced. Which I suppose was a mistake. I should have just declared myself an expert on his experiences and that my memory is flawless.Oh, I'm sorry, you only claimed that I "implied" he was a liar. While Lyxen just blatantly started accusing me of calling him a liar. Now that that is settled and your honor is restored for only claiming that I called someone a liar when all I did was not claim I knew their life perfectly, how about we focus on the thing you do best, deflecting from my point. Because you still haven't addressed my actual words and the actual thing I said in this post. See, because you are claiming I assumed they were a bad DM. But, yet again, you are wrong. See, for example, when you look at the bolded you will see this line " I'm glad that you ended up feeling like the DM wasn't abusing their power over the game and you two just had different aesthetic tastes" which is me acknowledging that Lyxen feels the person was not a bad DM. I also didn't say that my gut reaction was right, but that it "wasn't too far off." It was off, he didn't have a Bad DM, but he did have a game that he left due to irreconcilable differences leading to an unfun experience. Something I would have guessed from his previous posts he had never experienced. I would have been wrong, which is why I "called him a liar" AKA didn't assume I knew every detail of his gaming career, and hedged that I was likely wrong in my sweeping assumption. All of which you followed up, by claiming I assumed it was a bad DM... which I explicitly did not. So, again, if you can't be bothered to read my posts, then don't respond. I don't feel like wasting time repeating what I actually said while you engage with your strawmen.</blockquote>

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