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Message: <blockquote data-quote="shoak1" data-source="post: 7157153" data-attributes="member: 54380">For many reasons.  One is that it is unprovable - would he have chosen to put a Remove Poison potion in the room if he had not known their was poison there?  Maybe.....To us and many other gamers, each DM ruling increases the taint on the scenario - increases the chances that the final outcome is different than that which "would have happened."  Believe it or not, many MANY people would scoff at the idea of a fair and impartial human being getting to largely decide the results of the other players actions.The earlier the better up to a point - making them too early increases the chance something major storyline might have changed prior to the encounter's use and require modification of the scene.  The world is not a static place.The best way I can explain it is to give you an analogy:  Someone plays a game of Monopoly.  They don't mind that someone designed the game, and it doesn't affect their willingness to play the game.  They can understand and appreciate that the designer made the game to be balanced and fair.  If they want, they can even examine and analyze the components of the game to see if they believe it to be balanced (I usually allow interested players to examine my write-ups after the encounter session if they are interested).But very few people would enjoy a game of Monopoly where someone (even the game designer), no matter how "unbiased," "fair," or "benevolent" he is, to decide whether Boardwalk, or Baltic Street, or some other property (like Go To Jail), is in the space he lands on each time he lands on a space.RPGers on the other hand, CAN enjoy playing such a game style - in fact, they often cannot conceive of playing any other way and even have difficulties understanding other game styles......Really?  (Steve begins to feel Harzel is more interested in attacking Steve's play style than he is in understanding it.....)No, it is not static, of course it can be affected.  The goal in this play style is to REDUCE - not ELIMINATE - the need for the DM to make decisions on the fly.  Typically I have contingencies written in ("Jorge's cronies will flee to their bosses room as soon as their morale hits 7"), but if something unexpected happens I have to wing it.</blockquote>

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