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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FireLance" data-source="post: 1408852" data-attributes="member: 3424">YMMV, and in this case it varies quite a lot from my preferences. From what I hear, many games went wrong simply because too much power was in the hands of the DM. There's another thread on terrible games that alludes to that. Favored players, pet NPCs, railroading, arbitrariness, you name it - all of these were the result of too much DM power.What 3e did was to place more power in the hands of the player.  Players were no longer mindless PC-bots whose actions in the game world were at the whim and fancy of the DM. Players could have expectations now. They could expect a certain amount of equipment for their characters. They could expect that most encounters can be overcome with good tactics and a bit of luck.  They could expect to play characters that made a difference to the game world. They could expect that their actions would be resolved in a particular way, despite what the DM felt to be the preferred outcome. And they could find another DM if they didn't like the current one's style (see below for elaboration).In a way, the 1e and 2e systems tended to DM authoritarianism. It didn't always result in bad games, just as not every authoritarian regime will result in pain and suffering for a country (apologies for the oblique political reference), but the danger is always there, and is more likely than not to happen. 3e was the democratization of role-playing, or at least its Magna Carta.And this sentence sums up why 3e could democratize role-playing. It made it easier for anyone to run games. It made the role of the DM less mystical and esoteric. Not everyone wanted to be a DM in 1e and 2e, perhaps because they didn't think they had the time, energy or imagination to do a good job. The more mechanical and formulaic approach to 3e gave more people the confidence to run games, so if any particular DM had bad habits, someone else can run the game.  It didn't have to be a particularly good game, but once in, he could improve and everyone would be better off as a result.</blockquote>

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