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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4981548" data-attributes="member: 4937">Fine, I agree too.  I can keep agreeing that is the DM's job to entertain while still agreeing that it is the DM's job to lose.  Stating that it is the DM's job to entertain doesn't address the point.  I stated that it was the DM's job to lose to contrast the DM's role in the game to that of the usual stance of a game player.  Normally, a game player is trying to win.  For a DM though, winning is not a challenge at all.  The DM can always win.  The DM is omnipotent.   As a DM, you are in almost all cases designing a challenge such that the forces at your command are less than what you think you can win with.  Please, if you disagree, publish a module which is not designed according to this principle and see how well the editors and playtesters recieve it.That's a misquote, and if you quote the full statement the answer to your question is clear.  When a DM designs a dungeon, or an adventure, or anything else, one of the things the DM is guided by is that there is some worthwhile goal which is achievable as the expected result.  There might be encounters which are beyond the characters ability.  The players might set goals for themselves that are beyond the character's ability to achieve, but there exists some worthwhile pursuit where the expected result is 'the player's win'.  I say this in constrast to the alternative, which is, "The expected result is that players are going to lose."  It's quite easy to create a setting, dungeon or adventure where the players cannot win.  Such is not really the perogative of the DM, and if the players discover that the DM has done so, the DM will likely have a revolt on their hands.  Instead, the players enter the game with the implicit expectation that they can accomplish something and that they aren't there just to be abused by the DM.  (I've seen some CoC scenarioes that potentially violate this construction, but then again, most players know when sitting down to a session of CoC that 'we win' isn't necessarily an achievable outcome.)So, the DM designs the scenario to be 'won', but by no means does that mean that the PC's victory is certain.  They could be beset with bad luck or poor choices.  Whatever victory the player's achieve is certainly their own.  The DM is not yanking the players through hoops, because the DM has deliberately diminished the power of his forces such that the players have a chance and have freedom of action, and usually (though not always), can take the initiative.But they haven't 'beaten' the DM because the DM isn't trying to set up a balanced game where the odds of victory are equal on each side (do this, and the game will never last more than a couple of sessions before a TPK).  At most, the DM tries to give the players the feeling that they've triumphed against long odds, but pretty much every player knows at some level that they were supposed to win the game just as every player of a video game knows that the game was designed by the game maker to be 'winnable' as opposed to 'impossible'.  All I'm saying is that the DM just tries not to diminish the players justified sense of accomplishment by continually reminding them of this fact.Really.  Whereas, when my players survive a combat encounter in my games, it's because they earned it.  However, they are likely to know if they reflect on the matter that I could have easily added a few more ogres, given the monsters just a few more advantages, added another encounter or two and they would certainly have lost.   They know that I didn't do those things because I wasn't trying to win.  I was trying very hard to leave open a path of victory for the players.  I was in effect, trying to lose and at some level everyone knows it.  That, once armed with my inadequate forces I try to push the players to their limit rather than handing them a victory is certainly true, but I take no satisfaction at all in 'winning', and generally get really bummed out if I do.  Now, if in your games as DM you aren't doing that, I should be very very surprised.  In fact, I know you are doing that, because if you weren't, you wouldn't have players.  If you set the odds in your favor, if you TPK the players in every combat, if you try to 'win', then there is no game and the players will quickly refuse to play it.The irony of this is you just attacked me for being too soft on my players because I was trying to lose.  Now, with no apparant cognitive dissonance, you attack me of being too hard on my players and enjoying defeating the players.  So what is it, am I too hard or too soft?  For the record, I was the one that said I take no pleasure in player deaths, and I was the one disagreeing with you when you implied that players deaths could be really fun.  In theory, I suppose that they could be fun, but in practice I've never seen one that is.  I'm not the one who implied killing PC's is fun.</blockquote>

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