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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mishihari Lord" data-source="post: 6374728" data-attributes="member: 128">Your point is true as far as it goes, but it leaves out an important point.  Neither the players nor the DM have full power over the game / world.  They share that power and come to a consensus that everyone can live with as to what happens.  To form this consensus they frequently resort to rules, mechanisms, or systems that define actions and results, and these systems can often seem to take on a life of their own.  As an example, players and DM may agree that an opponent should act according to a set of motivations and goals as if he were a real person within the game.  The DM then is no longer fully in arbitrary control of what the opponent does, as he and the players have agreed that he will operate within a set of constraints.  Thus even if the DM or players feel that it would be fun for the opponent to forgo an opportunity for a TPK, the DM may go ahead with the TPK because he and the players have already agreed that they want the game to operated under the agreed-to constraints.Note that I'm not disagreeing with you here - the DM and players are still fully in control of the game.  But since they have agreed that behaving as if the NPC is an independent agent maximizes their fun, the NPC might as well have a life of his own for their purposes.</blockquote>