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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4700715" data-attributes="member: 4937">Hmmm... I tend to prefer to look at this as, "The DM doesn't exist for the players."Now, when I say it that way, the first thing that is going to happen is that someone is going to rightfully jump me, and say, "Of course the DM exists for the players."And they'll be right.But, in the same way that they are right that the DM does exist for the players, the players also exist for the DM.   There is a mutual obligation between the players and the DM to create 'the fun'.  However, neither the player nor the DM is the mere servant of the other.  Thus, neither the players nor the DM fully exist for the other one either.There is a mutuality - a back and forth, a give and take, a communion - between the players and the DM, and between the characters and the world.The players aren't simply toys for the DM's amusement, and the DM isn't simply a toy for the players amusement.  Everyone has a stake at the table, and frankly no one has put a bigger stake in to the game than the DM.   To paraphrase the old saying about mother's, "If the DM isn't happy, then nobody is happy."  The existance of the table depends on the DM more than any one player.  If the DM loses interest in the game, then the campaign collapses and as often as not (in my experience) the group collapses. From my perspective, if a player were to hand me a list of goodies that he wanted, I would find it inherently antagonistic.  I find it to be the same quality of anti-social play inherent in a DM that changes the adventure because the players are winning too easily.  I find it to be the same quality of antagonistic play as a DM who invents strings of unavoidable zany traps to show off, or who has pet NPC's that are effectively his all power, immortal player characters.A player that demanded of me that they be given something, that the world conform to their wishes for power and influence and 'the win', is basically saying to me, "I don't trust you.  I think you are just out to screw me (like all DM's) and so I demand authority over your world.  I'm going to set the terms of the game that you must abide by, and you exist merely to provide me with validation of my awesomeness.  Moreover, if you don't, then I'm going to throw a temper tantrum."  Maybe that isn't how it is intended.  Maybe the player has very good reasons to distrust DM's and think that they are just going to screw him.  But whatever the cause of the demand, it would seem highly antogonistic to me.  It would seem to me as a DM much the same that a DM turning to me and saying, "No, your character doesn't want to do that.", would seem to me as a player.  Basically, for me, the DM never tries to play the player's character for him, and the player never tries to run the world for the DM.  The player is free, and the DM is free.  Neither is the slave of the other.  The DM's responcibility is to the player, but not to grant them any particular preconcieved notions about how the world should work, what they should find, or anything else.  The player's responcibility is to the DM, but not to act out scripted parts, to be puppets in the DM's preimagined narrative, or to do exactly what the DM would do in the same situation.When I see critics of the OP's post, almost always they seem to have this idea that either the DM is the player's whipping boy, or else he's this tyrant that is out to screw them.  I'm not out to screw them.  If anything, the player's are enjoying amazing plot protection, huge destinies, and advantages that are virtually incomparable compared to 99.99% of NPC's in the world.  I want the players to win, to succeed, to become famous, to become powerful, because a story that involves growth and change is more interesting than one that doesn't.  I want the players to have fun.  That's what keeps the game going, and excited involved players are far more entertaining to me than players that are just going through the motions.But none of that implies to me that I have to give the players exactly what they want down to the particular magic item.  A player that feels that they can't have fun without getting precisely that 'perfect' magic item is to me no different than a DM who feels that they can't have fun unless the players are helplessly toiling against the DM's all powerful traps and NPC's with no chance of success except what the DM stoops to give them.</blockquote>

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