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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 6864416" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Well, you took a much more congenial tack than I usually see, but it still hinged on two things: games have somehow lost their way, falling away from the "proper" role of the DM, while 5e is finally returning the DM to that "proper" place; and that player-facing options are innately game-breaking and detract from a campaign, and thus need a DM to say "no" unless they're just never provided in the first place.Yes, you specifically did say that DMs need to "earn" the "trust" offered to them. I'm just not sure how that can be done, when the "trust" needs to be there from the moment pencil hits character sheet. Particularly when, at least from my exposure to them here and on RPG.net, 5e DMs aren't really interested in "us[ing] the rules to help the players do what they want," and quite interested in "using them to tell the players why they can't do it." (Edit: To clarify, this is my experience of other people describing what they do, have done, or would do with 5e--I have only had two 5e DMs, the first a 4e DM giving the mid-playtest rules a shot, the second a friend who bought the books and offered to run whatever we wanted. But I've seen many more people than that who hail 5e as the return of their ability to ban anything and everything they don't like, from the core book, without so much as a conversation with the players.) Because, having attempted to discuss that topic with others before, I have found it is a waste of time. Views on the "purpose" of the DM tend to be well-entrenched...and I feel that goes doubly for those who think the DM's proper role is dictatorial (whether benevolent, as you do, or more imperious, as others have said here and elsewhere.) I was simply noting that I had hoped the other poster's argument, which could be (uncharitably) summarized as "people think 3e and 4e prevented DMs from being real DMs, and that 5e has fixed that," was mostly exaggeration. I then saw, in different words, essentially that same argument, and felt dismayed.However, if it's a discussion you want: What, exactly, is the difference between a sufficiently "benevolent" DM--one who, as you said, earns the trust 5e forces its players to give them--and one that articulates a vision for their campaign, clearly and with purpose, even though it differs from a general policy found in the books? What, really, is the difference between 5e and other editions in terms of player-facing content, particularly for spellcasters (who have continually received new content with the adventure books, while non-spellcasters have gotten very, very little)? Isn't that still content players can come to the table with, that you have to refuse or accept?I'm honestly not sure what you're referring to. I provided a quotation for a reason: this is not just something happening in some nebulous corner of the internet, nor something I'm speculating about. It's a thing actually happening, right now, with real people directly telling me I should put up and shut up because hey, I got rules of some kind, even if I can expect to rarely get to use them.</blockquote>

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