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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 4033916" data-attributes="member: 2067">Well, since the rules say 'make up a rule,' I really don't know what else you'd be looking for. Aside from 'do whatever you want', meaning DM fiat, meaning, for me, the DM running roughshod over my believabilitometer and making me feel utterly impotent as a player.And that blows my believability completely out of the water and makes me feel impotent as a player, too.In nothing I can do matters when the DM gets an idea in his head, why am I bothering to do anything?If my high-level knight is only a high-level knight when the DM allows him to be, what is he the rest of the time?You can't honestly see how I can reasonably have issue with this? And you think it's me that has the problem?Hey, if your group's happy, I'm not saying you need to change.I am saying that I wouldn't be happy, and defending my right to be unhappy, and play the game I want to play against your continuous hostility, however. I think it's important to note that what you did there, you made a rule (according to the guidelines in the DMG no less!) and used it. And yeah, pulled out of nowhere, it would bug me, if I played the Heroic Mountaineer, and you just arbitrarily ruled that everybody could scale it just fine. It would also bug me if I played the Heroic Warrior and every combat was an opposed Strength check just because you thought the rules were boring. The way the players interact with the narrative context is the rules via their characters. They make Strength checks to move statues and they make Attack Rolls to damage goblins and they cast spells and have hit points. If the DM just decrees things and the players just decree things, without reference to a shared, mutual middle ground of 'the rules,' I feel robbed of my character's ability to impact the world. I can tell a story with my friends without the need to resort to D&D. D&D lets me do it as part of a game, which needs to be played according to the rules, or why bother playing?"Mother, may I?" play is not rewarding for me, either as a player or as a DM. I don't want my players to ask me if they can do something, I want them to try, and I'll tell them what happens as a consequence. As a player, I don't want to discuss with the GM. I come to D&D to play a game, not to help him craft a story. I want to roll some dice and break down some doors and thwart some evil. If the DM is willing to violate the rules just to tell his little tale, then I have no assurance that he won't do so when my player's turn comes up and I try to do something he doesn't want me to do, something that's not narratively expedient for him, something that ruins his precious story somehow.When I collaborate with my players, I give them the rules with which they can accomplish their goals fairly, with the odds of the game standing against them. I mean, if it boils down to my choice as a DM, why have players? If it's not making a good story for them to loose, I'll let them win, if it's not making a good story for them to win, I'll make them loose, what purpose is the game serving, here?There's plenty of reason to think my character cannot affect the world if you just decide when NPC knights break their necks, rather than creating rules by which people can break their necks and applying them to this specific NPC knight.If the world serves at the DM's whim, so does everything my character does. And this is fundamentally unsatisfying for me as a player and as a DM. If the DM doesn't adhere to the rules, they feel meaningless. The DM can change the laws, but he cannot be above the laws. "NPC" isn't a distinction my character knows. It's an artificial construction of the game, and to have NPC's break their necks randomly at DM decree means, to my character, that people break their necks falling from horses, even when they're powerful knights of the world who should know how to ride horses, and thus I should never ride a horse, because they slay heroes. Which is absurd to me, as a player, and breaks the believability of the world. Which just reminds me that it's the DM's story and I'm just along for the ride. The DM decides what's available and what isn't, not according to a mutually binding set of rules, but according to his own estimation of what makes a good story.If you know what makes a good story, go write one. Leave me to play a good game.</blockquote>

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