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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ahnehnois" data-source="post: 6302974" data-attributes="member: 17106">Ah, but the hidden truth is that D&D is a democracy. Even democratic countries generally don't have voters directly making policy, we have representative democracies. That is, we elect people to be in charge.The reason we do that is that direct democracy is cumbersome and fickle. Some really wacky things get done through direct voting (typically on ballot initiatives), but by and large very little gets done. Appointing someone to make decisions for us allows that person to have the top-down perspective and widespread authority of a monarch, but accountability to the masses (and typically limitations based on pre-established rules).How many DMs do you know that aren't chosen or accepted by their players to be such?It sounds elitist and possibly arrogant when you put it that way. However, the reality is that not all people have equal capacities. With regards to actual democracies, there's often a philosophical question of whether you want to elect the most average person (to be representative of the most people) or the smartest/wisest/best person (to make good decisions for everyone). I come down firmly on the latter with regards to D&D.In my case, I did not start as a DM, and had no aspirations to it. I started DMing because we enjoyed aspects of the game, but there were problems with our DM. We traded around spots, and more and more the group asked for me to run games, to the point where I became the primary DM and others either abdicated or left. To this day, whenever I want a break and try to trade around DMing responsibilities, the people in the group look at is as a chore. I'm the best DM and I run the best games, and they want me. They've been quite explicit about all of this.I'm the DM because they (democratically) decided that they trusted be to be so. In part, it's because I know the rules better and have various intellectual and creative talents, but it's also in large part due to how open I've been about the process and how actively I've incorporated the players into it. It's certainly a positive evaluation I'm giving myself, but it would be disingenuous to do otherwise. With great power comes great responsibility. If I'm getting four hours of people's time to run a game of make-believe, I'd better be good at it. I'd better be better than most. Again, DMing is leadership.There could be such a system. It could work. To my mind, it's a challenge because too many cooks spoil the pot. What happens when players go rogue or start conflicting with each other? It's hard to affirmatively move the game forward and hard to resolve disagreements if everyone has that kind of authority. Crowdsourcing is not necessarily a good thing.Here, we're in a D&D forum, which is a game that has multiple players and one Dungeon Master. The "master" is meant to be taken literally. There's a reason this game concentrates power. It provides a fast-moving and cohesive game. It's not the only way to do things, but it is the way this particular game has decided they should be done, and it is a good way.</blockquote>

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