NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 5401869" data-attributes="member: 29398">To put this in programming terms, if I'm reading you right you're saying a DM writes the code and then a referee processes it.Yet when I sit behind the screen I'm both at once.4e has page 42.Also, just because a designer wrote something in a book doesn't make it true, or correct, or anything other than one person's idea as to how something should work.  You as DM have the power to change what's written to suit your own sensibilities, and you as referee have the power to process it any old way you like.And as both you have the power to do either of these things at any time - including on the fly in mid-session - provided you keep in mind that with power comes responsibility, in this case being to make sure your changes are for the betterment of the game you're playing and have been thought through far enough to forsee and correct any potential headaches they may cause. In other news, you said this......immediately after saying this:The irony is not lost on me.D+D is not Mastermind, and in D+D the "referee" can in many ways take actions; either through non-party NPCs, in-party NPCs, game-world events, or whatever.  In D+D the hidden information *can* change as you go along, sometimes as a direct result of player actions whether intentional or not.  And the players can sometimes change the rules or parameters - to continue the Mastermind analogy, they could force 5 pegs into 4 holes - and the DM has to be able to roll with it.A computer - which is what your idea of a referee reminds me of - can't do that.Lanefan</blockquote>

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