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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9000522" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Implicit agreement is not agreement at all. Period. Especially when it involves signing over nigh-absolute power. I completely agree that it should be a session zero discussion--a very big one, given its importance. I just find that a lot of people don't actually DO that.You're missing the forest for the trees.The point isn't that, necessarily, any single specific thing instantly and inherently does it. It's that, at the point where you-as-DM are invoking Rule Zero to tell someone why they need to agree with you...you've already lost their trust. That's literally why you'd be invoking Rule Zero to them. You'd have no other reason to do so--because if they're going along with it (even if they're grumbling), it's because the trust is still there.Until the trust is lost, there's no need to invoke Rule Zero. Once it is lost, invoking it is useless--you must rebuild that trust. At which point, you no longer need to invoke Rule Zero! So...what exactly is Rule Zero doing?What if it's only a few choices? What if it's a single choice that will keep coming up repeatedly? What if I believe the DM is doing it because they think it's for the benefit of the group, but I think that thing is detrimental to the group? Fudging is a great example here. I don't want to launch into a huge discussion about it so please for the love of God don't, but I bring it up because it is, at the very least, intensely controversial with some players....and something that many DMs will straight-up lie to their players about whether they do it. Even otherwise excellent DMs, like Matt Colville do this. He literally put out a video about fudging wherein he explicitly says that he has pre-rolled dice so that, if his players question him, he can lift the DM screen and show players that he "really did" roll whatever he says he rolled. Etc.I can like and agree with someone on 95% of the choices they make, but if the 5% of choices I disagree with are really really REALLY important choices, it can easily be a serious problem. "Majority" is not enough in this context.Sure it is. That's why there's this obsession with having a single, central, Hobbesian authority--so that one person can tell everyone else what they're going to do, and if they don't like that, they can leave. As you yourself just said! Rule Zero straight-up says, "The rules are the DM's plaything." Can't say that that puts me in a trusting mood any more than someone saying, "You trust me to make all of the food for you while you're at my house, right? You won't try to make anything yourself?"Many reasons. E.g. fudging, as noted above. Or the DM actually playing favorites (seen that one, it's a hoot.) Or the DM failing to understand how probability works and thus screwing over players. Could be any number of things. Could be, as I said, I almost always DO agree with them--that the majority of their decisions are for the benefit of the group--but in that slim minority, they make such significant, important, impactful changes that I must dissent.Of course, I usually avoid this by not playing with DMs who are so stridently insistent on being the one absolute authority and demanding deference via Rule Zero. That helps quite a bit in earning my trust in the first place.I had a more...antagonistic response here originally. Having thought better of it, all I will say is, an insistence on Rule Zero is, in fact, one of the things that weakens my trust in someone's use of authority. Being circumspect, not declaring absolute authority, not emphasizing that the rules are just suggestions, etc.--that's what earns my trust, if I don't know the DM personally."Compromise" implies at least one person is giving things up. That's why I didn't use that word. I look for consensus-building. Helping everyone walk away happy. That's the whole point.And to me, this says that you've already presumed absolutely every game MUST, always, have one single central authority, and thus you'll find one, no matter how much twisting it requires.There isn't a central authority at my games. I serve at my players' pleasure. My players listen to my requests and respond with their own. No single voice is dominant. Edit: If there is any central authority, it's the DW rules. Because I follow them.</blockquote>

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