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Message: <blockquote data-quote="seskis281" data-source="post: 3031702" data-attributes="member: 41593">I don't think there's any hard and fast rule to answer this question - the best solution is to say that a DM manages the flow of a game to both challenge and reward the expectations of the players.That said, I like a game with a good bit of menace. Which, in agreeing with Treebore, doesn't mean I'm out to kill the party. But I surely want them to feel the presence of danger - it is sword and sorcery and if my characters never blinked at some creepy undead I'd be doing something wrong. It's like the difference between a good action movie and a bad one. A bad one may have all the effects, explosions and bang but if the audience sits there going "well duh, (insert generic action star) is just gonna kick ass and win" it doesn't really have a lot of staying power. Then there are films like Die Hard, where Bruce Willis got the crap kicked out of him, had to pull shards of glass from his feet, and even though deep down you probably know he'll come out on top there is a good sense of "human" struggle there to keep the audience locked in to the tension.Above all, the last thing a DM should do is swing either way too far on the scales - simply give players open-ended ways to kick ass and always "win" or by constantly trying to kill them. The same thing is true for "story." I think it's bad to railroad a party along a narrative path, but it's also the DM's job to establish some frame and story path that the characters can get into, help create and ultimately feel that it is as much their story as the DM's. So in essence the DM is the ultimate negotiator and improvisor, working to keep a good happy medium between the above tuggs and pulls of play. The one last codicile is that the DM should have the final say on rules... someone has to make decisions on what's appropriate or not, and without a "ref" to make those calls you could easily have 5 people with rulebooks spending hours arguing rather than have one person who has the authority to say - nope you can't flank here. Well, that's my two cents.... and after reactions I've gotten on other threads let me just say again - it's JUST my HUMBLE opinion... nothing more.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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