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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 8154426" data-attributes="member: 71699">If you were to argue the finer point of who counts as being a player, I suggest reading the arguments between Richard Royce and A J Kreider, and looking into formalism versus non-formalism. I suspect one could conjure up cases where a DM is not formally a player, while still carrying out functions normally associated with being a DM. More importantly, I think you can argue that those functions can be divided and shared: they're not welded to one participant.A position one might then adopt that it is those functions - and not the person - of the DM, that are all that matters, so far as differences between them and other participants are concerned. One could then propose that were those functions to be shared around the table, then the justifications they putatively offer in support of special DM'ly prerogatives, must evaporate. On this theory, different choices about the functions themselves would also justify different levels of special rights.I might well work from that theory, were I arguing the other side of this: I would deny appeal to DM'ly functions as a justification for special rights. Those who want to argue for special rights then need to resist the possibility of separating the functions - which seems futile, as we can very well see that some groups do exactly that - or come up with something else about the DM that justifies them.On my side I would then suggest that a possible function is "decides how game rules work, whenever the group discerns more than one way that they could work" and that for groups with that function, whoever holds it does indeed have special rights: just those necessary to carry out the given function. Another group might replace that function with "a simple majority by vote decides how game rules work, etc". We could then agree on the theory, while still having DMs with/without special rights as suited our table.</blockquote>

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