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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 2842561" data-attributes="member: 18280">Well, now that everyone's had a chance to jump on the OP a bit.....Saying that there is a power shift in the game towards players is not evidence of "adversarial DMing".  It is evidence that the person making the statement has taken a look at what is going on with the game.  It is also, of course, evidence that the person hasn't looked at it as intently as some on EnWorld.Somewhere in the last couple of months, someone made the observation that the ruleset is the big winner in the power shift that 3.X represents.  Both DMs and players have less real power in the game (unless they snatch it back); players just have a larger share of what's left than they had previously.  This is, mostly, a good thing (although I have not always been of that opinion).  What is a bad thing is the false implication that the DM has less power -- I believe that, if you are going to DM, you should DM the game you are interested in.  If no one else is interested, though, you're not going to DM.   <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" /> Adversarial?  Nah.The DM is there to have a good time, same as anyone else.  The DM does a heck of a lot of prep work (unless he's just rehashing modules and the last adventure path).  There has to be a reason to do that work.  It has to be fun for the DM.The players are there to have a good time, same as anyone else.  The players have a heck of a lot less responsibility than the DM for making the game work -- and there is no rational system by which responsibility does not entail the rights needed to meet that responsibility.  Frankly, only a group that divides responsibilities equally should divide rights equally.  They exist, and if you're in one of them, that's wonderful.The other thing we've learned on this thread is that if someone can demonstrate that tame lions exist, no one should expect the next lion they meet to take a chunk out of them.   <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:" />  Seriously.  Television might show you someone who can bench press 100 reps at 300 lbs, but how many of those people do you meet in your day to day life?  We might have the grand high meeting of People Who Role-Play Funny Characters To The Hilt here on EnWorld, but that doesn't mean that this is the norm....or the norm in the OP's experience.The norm in my experience of over 25 years of gaming is that people who want to play weird characters do so for the following reasons most frequently (not necessarily in this order):(1)  K3wl powerz.(2)  Expectation that the character will play a central role in the campaign.(3)  The DM kept throwing weird NPCs out there, so why let her have all the fun?(4)  Modules/Dragon/D&D novels kept throwing weird NPCs out there, and they kept doing it for the "Woah!" factor, so why let them have all the fun?(5)  Inability to think of an imaginative way to play a human.(6)  Unwillingness to immerse in the world as presented/desire to change the world to fit a different vision.(7)  It wasn't as though the elf was anything other than a human with k3wl powerz and pointy ears anyway, and that dwarf is just a short surly Scotsman.(8)  Recreation of a character from a movie/novel/video game.(9)  I had a neat idea for an encounter, but I don't want to DM.These aren't the only reasons, and I am sure that there are many cases that intersect between them.  Most of the people I've run into who wanted to pick an unusual species because they wanted to "role play something different" ended up playing a character that, apart from game mechanics and appearance, couldn't be picked out from a lineup of humans.Of course, that's equally true of elves, gnomes, dwarves, and so on.The DM has to attempt to provide the experience of encountering the inhuman, but rarely has to maintain the same non-human interaction every session.  Reallly, seldom does the DM have to maintain the same non-human interaction for the whole of a single session.  It simply isn't the same thing.</blockquote>

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