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<blockquote data-quote="Aaron L" data-source="post: 7757651" data-attributes="member: 926">Seriously?&nbsp; The idea of the king being at an inn incognito with an assassin after him, and the PCs &quot;happening&quot; to be there to rescue him, is coincidence so bad as to call it &quot;DM Cheating?&quot; To most other people that's called &quot;running a D&amp;D game.&quot;&nbsp; Do you prefer games that are all random chance, mundane events, and uninteresting happenstance like real life?&nbsp; I imagine my PCs get their clothes washed and go to the bathroom but I don't roleplay it.Leaving aside the question of whether or not it's even possible for the DM to &quot;cheat&quot; (it isn't; they could be a bad DM but they aren't &quot;cheating&quot;) you can realize that the game is a story with the PCs as the main characters; stories focus on the main characters because the main characters survive (mostly) to the end, and vice versa.&nbsp; Imagine a unit in a grueling war that starts out with 100 people; at the end of war there are only 6 of them who have survived, becoming grizzled veterans on the process.&nbsp; These are the main characters.&nbsp; Telling a story is about focusing on these characters from the beginning.&nbsp; You could make a story that focused instead on random grunt #12 who dies on the second day, but that would be a short, boring, pointless story. Calling that &quot;cheating&quot; is an epistemological misunderstanding of how narrative storytelling works.Some advice: being &quot;constantly on the lookout for GMs trying to cheat&quot; is going to seriously suck the fun out of the game for you, and possibly for the people playing alongside you.&nbsp; The DM's job is to craft an interesting and entertaining narrative and make sure the players are having fun, not to abide by the same rules as the players nor make sure events follow chains of real world logic.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Aaron L, post: 7757651, member: 926"] Seriously? The idea of the king being at an inn incognito with an assassin after him, and the PCs "happening" to be there to rescue him, is coincidence so bad as to call it "DM Cheating?" To most other people that's called "running a D&D game." Do you prefer games that are all random chance, mundane events, and uninteresting happenstance like real life? I imagine my PCs get their clothes washed and go to the bathroom but I don't roleplay it. Leaving aside the question of whether or not it's even possible for the DM to "cheat" (it isn't; they could be a bad DM but they aren't "cheating") you can realize that the game is a story with the PCs as the main characters; stories focus on the main characters because the main characters survive (mostly) to the end, and vice versa. Imagine a unit in a grueling war that starts out with 100 people; at the end of war there are only 6 of them who have survived, becoming grizzled veterans on the process. These are the main characters. Telling a story is about focusing on these characters from the beginning. You could make a story that focused instead on random grunt #12 who dies on the second day, but that would be a short, boring, pointless story. Calling that "cheating" is an epistemological misunderstanding of how narrative storytelling works. Some advice: being "constantly on the lookout for GMs trying to cheat" is going to seriously suck the fun out of the game for you, and possibly for the people playing alongside you. The DM's job is to craft an interesting and entertaining narrative and make sure the players are having fun, not to abide by the same rules as the players nor make sure events follow chains of real world logic. [/QUOTE]

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