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<blockquote data-quote="Ahnehnois" data-source="post: 6306398" data-attributes="member: 17106">Absolutely not. Being helpful does not mean that people will abandon rationality, or break rules, or do obviously foolish things. They're only human.Of course, when I'm a player I notoriously try to subvert NPCs in devious ways and I tend to rack up a high body count, so I'm not excluding myself from it.Again, that's the natural thing to do. It's not a criticism to say that players are selfish or amoral; that's pretty much the D&amp;D default. Killing things and taking their stuff is not moral behavior. The game is built with default expectations on combat encounters and treasure. The game defines alignment in objective terms that make it difficult for good-aligned characters to actually do those things. It's hard to escape this juxtaposition.I'd argue that if you're playing D&amp;D and your characters aren't approaching that &quot;murder hobo&quot; mentality, you're going against the grain. Which is fine for my game personally; I like going against the grain and I DM that way. But again, the game itself leads a certain direction.As I've noted, the DM has accountability; there's no game if the players don't show. But who are the players accountable to? No one. That's why they need to be explicitly reigned in. If you're playing Baldur's Gate, you commit a crime and a seemingly endless stream of arbitrarily powerful guardsmen show up. There's a reason for that.It's not at all typical of what I see these days (though it was once), probably because I enforce a very different standard and perhaps because I have exceptional players. The &quot;limited view&quot; you're referring to is again, the game itself.I suggest that you're seeing what you want to see, rather than what's there. Though, if one takes the same sentence and applies it to this mythical DM-tyrant idea you're so afraid of...</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ahnehnois, post: 6306398, member: 17106"] Absolutely not. Being helpful does not mean that people will abandon rationality, or break rules, or do obviously foolish things. They're only human. Of course, when I'm a player I notoriously try to subvert NPCs in devious ways and I tend to rack up a high body count, so I'm not excluding myself from it. Again, that's the natural thing to do. It's not a criticism to say that players are selfish or amoral; that's pretty much the D&D default. Killing things and taking their stuff is not moral behavior. The game is built with default expectations on combat encounters and treasure. The game defines alignment in objective terms that make it difficult for good-aligned characters to actually do those things. It's hard to escape this juxtaposition. I'd argue that if you're playing D&D and your characters aren't approaching that "murder hobo" mentality, you're going against the grain. Which is fine for my game personally; I like going against the grain and I DM that way. But again, the game itself leads a certain direction. As I've noted, the DM has accountability; there's no game if the players don't show. But who are the players accountable to? No one. That's why they need to be explicitly reigned in. If you're playing Baldur's Gate, you commit a crime and a seemingly endless stream of arbitrarily powerful guardsmen show up. There's a reason for that. It's not at all typical of what I see these days (though it was once), probably because I enforce a very different standard and perhaps because I have exceptional players. The "limited view" you're referring to is again, the game itself. I suggest that you're seeing what you want to see, rather than what's there. Though, if one takes the same sentence and applies it to this mythical DM-tyrant idea you're so afraid of... [/QUOTE]

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