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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 5399084" data-attributes="member: 22779">Well, at the risk of being guilty of a logical fallacy here, there's about a couple of thousand years of political thinkers that would disagree with you.You insist that any power relationship must be negative and that's entirely on you.Look, break it down.A DM, at any point in time, may declare any element in the game to be true.  If he decides that there is a dragon behind that door, then there's a dragon behind that door.  If he decides that the party is attacked by assassins while they're resting at the inn, then they get attacked.  If he decides that the mayor wants to be helpful, then the mayor is helpful.A player may not at any point in time declare any element in the game, beyond his own character, to be true.  YOU add the cult member.  Not the player.  The player suggests it, but, you are under no obligation to do so.  The authority rests solely behind the DM's screen.  That authority is placed there by the fact that only the DM may, to use your language, change the code in the game.The players cannot take any action, beyond simply self contained ones, without the tacit approval of the DM.You assume that the DM leaves.That's often not the case.  The DM can simply say, "I don't want to run this campaign anymore, I'm not liking it, I want to run this other campaign now."  And, that's what happens.Whether you as a player no longer participate in the campaign or not has no bearing on whether the campaign continues.  While it is possible for a campaign to switch DM's, it's pretty rare.I'm still rather bewildered by all this sudden defense of players though.  This is just bizarre.  Normally, I'm the one talking about restricting DM powers, yet, suddenly, everyone is coming out of the woodwork to tell me that DM's are just another player at the table, with no more authority or power than anyone else at the table.This is weird.Heck, not that long ago, I argued in favor of the idea that if a DM's only criteria for disallowing a player choice during chargen was that he didn't like the idea, not that there was any other reason, but that he simply didn't like the idea, that he should let the player have his way.  I was resoundly dogpiled for that.  How DARE I suggest that a DM doesn't have absolute authority over his campaign?!?!  Yet, now, apparently, every time a player leaves the table, my campaigns end.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f615.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":confused:" title="Confused    :confused:"  data-smilie="5"data-shortname=":confused:" />Love the idea.  I love giving the players more authorial control at the table.  It engages the players to a degree that I find simple reaction doesn't.  The old James Bond 007 game let you burn something similar to Action Points to add elements to scenes so long as they fit within the general idea of a Bond movie.  So, during a chase scene, a player could have a little old lady walk out into the street to delay the pursuit, or something like that.  I like these ideas.  I wish D&D allowed more of them as a baseline.  But then, everyone would bitch how D&D is becoming a story game.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /></blockquote>

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