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<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7858066" data-attributes="member: 996">In the sense that most editions of D&amp;D punt to the DM a lot, sure, tautologically so.In the broader case that, regardless of how neat &amp; complete a system may seem, the GM is inevitably free to override or change it, sure, it's always present, just varying in degree.&nbsp; The less prevalent, the less of an impetus there may be for players to tolerate or leverage the GM's judgement, too.&quot;Like a board game&quot; in this case would just mean &quot;without function of DM being necessary&quot; - a complex enough boardgame might well benefit from a 'judge' with similar function.&nbsp; I point that out just because there's a strain of elitism in our hobby that uncritically paints boardgames (and CRPGS, MMORPGS, etc) as essentially inferior to TTRPGs in some sense.However, even in that case you can have house rules (it's an older term than TTRPGs), table rules, and consensus judgements changing over overriding rules.&nbsp; People are people - whether a system is functional enough to require such intervention infrequently, or builds such intervention into its basic functions.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 7858066, member: 996"] In the sense that most editions of D&D punt to the DM a lot, sure, tautologically so. In the broader case that, regardless of how neat & complete a system may seem, the GM is inevitably free to override or change it, sure, it's always present, just varying in degree. The less prevalent, the less of an impetus there may be for players to tolerate or leverage the GM's judgement, too. "Like a board game" in this case would just mean "without function of DM being necessary" - a complex enough boardgame might well benefit from a 'judge' with similar function. I point that out just because there's a strain of elitism in our hobby that uncritically paints boardgames (and CRPGS, MMORPGS, etc) as essentially inferior to TTRPGs in some sense. However, even in that case you can have house rules (it's an older term than TTRPGs), table rules, and consensus judgements changing over overriding rules. People are people - whether a system is functional enough to require such intervention infrequently, or builds such intervention into its basic functions. [/QUOTE]

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