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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5818070" data-attributes="member: 82106">This is exactly my point though. The DM probably WON'T be "a terrible antagonistic crap DM." Instead he'll say "nah, picking the guy off when he goes to the loo is just too low and nobody can possibly expect to be on the lookout every second, that's where I draw the line." OTOH if you were to go read the news every day you find that your average Mexican drug cartel or garden variety terrorists are up to EXACTLY that sort of thing, because it works. When you have a powerful opponent with significant resources and no compunctions there really IS NOWHERE where you're safe. Why do you think the US DOJ has an elaborate witness protection program? Now factor in magic. If you think the nasty old lich in my game is going to be LESS MEAN AND MORE SPORTING than a mob boss IRL, well, that's surely pulling punches big time.Eh, it is a pretty reasonable point. I think there are still limitations and bounds there. I mean I'm old school enough to be quite familiar with rolling dice for all sorts of things. I'm far from believing that erases any bias or eradicates the DM's desire/need to make things more interesting and in some sense fair at the expense of taking a lot of nasty options off the table.IME the other aspect of this is just DM load. I have a lot of things to think about both at the table and in prep and design of adventures and whatnot. Of course I'm going to create motivations and backstory and define some different things that bad guys can do. I may well use dice as you say at times, but even my personal deviousness has limits. Very often I find it expedient not to worry too much about what the bad guy is up to, or have bad guys initiate some action against PCs in a fairly controlled fashion simply because it is a pretty big chunk of work to spend trying to think up all the nasty stuff some highly capable NPC MIGHT come up with. I'm more after using what the NPC does as a way of telling the story of that NPC than as a set of constant challenges for the players. I'm perfectly willing to throw whatever at them now and then, but all-out dirty war between highly capable factions (PCs and NPCs) just isn't something i have the time and energy to focus on all the time. So, a lot of bad guys are just going to make their obligatory moves that fit into the story and make it fun. I don't know what sort of style you call that, but it seems to fall somewhere between 'sandboxy all out war' and 'sport'.</blockquote>

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