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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 8275097" data-attributes="member: 71699">For some styles of DMing, that is true. Other styles play it straight: the DM chooses their tools - as it were - and refrains from both dropping in more tools, and from failing to use all of the tools that they chose.Players then survive because they made choices and applied mechanics that were most likely to overcome the DM's chosen tools. One might counter that all games are designed for players to win. There are a couple of interesting ways to look at that. One way is to observe that the DM is a player... at the table along with everyone else. Another is to suggest that there can be a lose condition... a TPK being the obvious example. What a DM does after a TPK reveals where they stand.A great DM might set the challenge (chooses their tools, as I put it above) at just the right level, so that players can probably win, but not certainly. They can beat the game... but might not. Of course, what most carries a game are all the things that happen alongside that crunch. The motives and behaviours of NPCs, principally.</blockquote>