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Message: <blockquote data-quote="smerwin29" data-source="post: 5189988" data-attributes="member: 15050">I guess it all depends on the conversation, eh?  Here is the situation I often find myself in: as an administrator for several organized play campaigns and freelancers, I have been responsible (as a designer, developer, editor, producers, and playtester) for literally hundreds of adventures played by tens of thousands of players since 2001.  I really, really tried to take that responsibility seriously, and part of that responsibility is studying feedback and distilling good practices, culling out writers that were lacking, promoting the work of the talented ones, offering advice, looking at how format and other restrictions affect adventure play, etc.So I would receive feedback from players and DMs on a regular basis.  If I had to put a percentage on it, I would say that 60% of the complaints about aspects of different adventures were at least partially, if not totally, the responsibility of the DM.  Now most of that was along the lines of "This adventure/encounter was too easy/too difficult."  As anyone who has played/DMed for more than a few sessions knows, encounter difficulty is so much dependent on so many factors, including dumb luck, player choices, DM tactics, ad infinitum.Removing those complaints, an unsettling number of complaints are like this: "I think it was so lame that the PCs had to fight both a dragon and a demon in the final combat with all the fiery terrain."  To which I would naturally reply: "I completely understand your frustration with the situation.  If there had been a dragon, a demon, or fiery terrain in that encounter, you can be sure I would have done something about it."  After dealing with countless situations like that, you are naturally going to learn to think about DMs in the process while making these judgments.Of course, discussion of adventures and discussion of rules are two different animals.  The adventure is projected through the filter of the DM, whereas the rules are transparent for everyone to see.Good discussion!</blockquote>

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