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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 7957133" data-attributes="member: 29398">I guess I see a difference between story-telling, where the DM more or less takes the role of an author telling a story, and story-recording, where the DM's job is more one of recording what story occurred and-or trying to make sense of it.Many DMs end up doing some of both.I don't see some adversariality as being a bad thing at all.In D&D the world is out to get you, and it's the DM's job to run it that way.  It's the players' job to, through their characters, fight through and overcome this.  Which means that yes, it's the DM against the players in some ways.OK, I think we're closer on this than I realized. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Where I'd rather they stand out from the norm only after they've done enough to deserve it - which might not be much, maybe just a few levels worth of adventuring - rather than already stand out before they start.Part of this comes from my enjoyment of very low level play and of watching these neophytes either grow into bigshots or die in the attempt.And nothing against your friend but my response would be to wish him well and show him the door.That said, it's made very clear to anyone coming in to my games that bad things can and inevitably will happen to your characters, so get used to it.Then how did the hobby survive for so long, when the default back in the day was much more difficult than today?Again, it's easier to remove things than add them in.We whacked a bunch of stuff from 1e RAW to, in my eyes, improve it: weapon speed, weapon-vs-armour-type, most race-class level limits, and so on.  We also redesigned many other things from the ground up: initiative, some classes, most spells, etc., in a still-ongoing process that's been underway for about 40 years now.My general philosophy is more or less "no benefit without penalty, and no penalty without benefit"; this to avoid power creep and-or power dropoff.  As an example: removing the race-class level limits for demi-humans gave them a benefit, which was somewhat negated by their losing some inherent racial abilities.Ah, now this is enlightening and perhaps explains our differences: I've come to very much dislike character optimizing and the associated mechanical game-bending, both in terms of doing it myself and of playing with others who do it.I'd far rather the character just be what it is.  I don't care if it's mechanically exactly the same as every other member of its class, I'll make it stand out as different by how I play it.I don't want system mastery to mean nearly as much as it did in 3e; 4e wasn't quite as bad and 5e not quite as bad again particularly with feats and skills filed off.Should I offer condolences? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I prefer the rules get out of the way whenever they can, while acknowledging it's not always possible for them to do so.</blockquote>

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