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Message: <blockquote data-quote="barsoomcore" data-source="post: 1478135" data-attributes="member: 812">Okay, this completely baffles me. And now you're talking personally about ME. You're saying things about me and my players that I find rather offensive.You're saying that the players in my Barsoom campaign are "kowtowing" to my authority, because I came up with a campaign setting that had lots of homebrew rules and invited them to play in it. That's a pretty unpleasant thing to say about a bunch of people you've never met.My campaign settings NEVER use all the rules in the Player's Handbook. They NEVER use all the monsters in the Monster Manual. They NEVER provide all the options in the DM's Guide. And I have NEVER offered any explanation for ANY of my many, many campaign settings other than, "I don't want to do it that way this time," or, "That just doesn't fit for my concept."Is that me insisting that people kowtow to my authority because I'm the DM? Or is that me coming up with keen ideas I'm excited to use to tell stories, and then finding players who are just as excited as I am?I'm sorry, I'm trying to understand your point of view, but look at what you're calling me.You seem obsessed with this idea that there's a struggle for power necessarily present in role-playing games between the players and the DM -- that somebody has to "be in charge" and that everyone else has to "submit" to their will. Poppycock.Every time you join ANY campaign you accept the authority of the DM (over the campaign setting) -- just as the DM accepts your authority (over your character). Obviously a degree of trust is implied in that relationship -- you trust each other not to cheat or change the conditions arbitrarily. But that does not imply any sort of power struggle, nor does it apply any less to a campaign run strictly by the books than to one chock-full of zany houserules.Joining a campaign full of zany houserules does not require any more "submission" on the part of the players than playing in a Living Greyhawk campaign. A player doesn't "win" some contest because they get to impose their idea on the DM's setting, any more than the DM "loses" in the same situation. Games are cooperative ventures in which everyone contributes, and where the DM and the players have different spheres of authority. The DM defines the setting and the players decide the actions and personalities of the heroes. Together they determine the nature of the story. Since the heroes necessarily EMERGE from the setting, things will usually go much smoother if the players make an effort to understand the setting and come up with characters who do in fact emerge from it and belong to it. Hopefully we all agree on all this -- the corollary is that there is no question of anyone going beyond the norm in such a situation as the DM defining houserules for the setting -- or the players coming up with characters who fit into that setting. Nobody's kowtowing in such a scenario -- they're just playing the game the way it's meant to be played. To suggest otherwise is offensive.If you prefer games where you have access to all the "standard" rules, that's perfectly fine. I have no complaint with that point of view. If you prefer a DM to explain their houserules, that's fine, too. But don't cast aspersions on people who like to play in a different style than you. Don't insult people you've never met just because they hold different opinions on what is appropriate game play.</blockquote>

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