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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 7279604" data-attributes="member: 6775031">For a long time, that was just a part of the game, and it might even have been a big part of the appeal for some GMs. Some people enjoy hiding behind their cardboard screen and laughing maniacally whenever they roll dice, even if they ignored what the dice actually told them. I was reading a book recently - Blood Dawn, a game from 1996 that may have influenced the Fallout series - which was entirely written with the expectation that the GM would be messing with the players at every opportunity. It's just the way things were.Since then, the hobby has gone back and forth, and different groups from different eras with different gameplay philosophies have merged (to mixed success). There are still some of the old-school adversarial GMs who like messing with players, but they're mixed with the newer-school GMs who treat the game like an exercise in collaborative storytelling, and the true role-playing GMs who try their best to arbitrate impartially.So it's not as easy as just calling out an adversarial GM as being a jerk, or a storytelling GM as being manipulative, because they may be doing everything right by their understanding. Even if you actually have that discussion and explain that you don't want to play that kind of game, and assuming they agree to change, old habits die hard and they may not be entirely aware of when they are doing those things. An orphan PC removes that temptation for them to mess with you; it removes the opportunity for them to fail as the GM. Or, if you have a mixed group where some players may actually want that sort of engagement, it tells the GM that you specifically do not wish to be treated in such a fashion; it's an easy way of opting out from that.</blockquote>

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