Recent content by Maxperson

That's not true. Absolute power just means you have the ability to do anything you want, not that you will do anything you want, or that you won't listen to others without that power. The only thing that makes it absolute is that nothing can stop it if it is exercised. Nothing about absolute...

Don't all vehicles accelerate from stationary to their current speeds? I know when I press the gas pedal and my car is stationary, it goes to its current speed of 1mph, then 2, then 3, all the way up to 70ish on the freeways(when there's not traffic).

The bolded portion is the only place I disagree with you. Players almost always have a goal or goals, whether self-set or the recue the princess adventure hook the players chose.

It hasn't been in any thread I've seen where that has come up. @pemerton's statement is so far outside of the ballpark, it's not even in the same city.

Wow. Talk about a misunderstanding of huge proportions. If that's what you get out of it, you really need to go back and re-read the arguments.

I don't agree with that. When I was in school, I never, ever showed my work. I have a mental chalkboard where I can stick numbers until I need them, so I just did the process there and put the correct answer on the test. Not once did I ever receive a talking to by the teacher about showing...

I have never said I use illusionism and have railed against it many times. I have also not said that I create secret rules. I have said that I will once every three or so years of real time fudge rolls when extreme bad luck hits the players while they have made no strategic/tactical mistakes...

And I fail to understand how you fail to understand. It's a social group. The DM cannot decide the social contract. And assuming the DM isn't an ass, he is going to listen to the players. He may or may not decide their way, but he's going to discuss it. If the players aren't happy, they will...

Whoever that was and I cannot see each other.

The die roll also represents skill. We aren't all at the same level of skill every moment of every day. We can tired, distracted, just not on top of our game, hungry and a host of other variables that impact the skill of the person making the attempt.

Because the DM is human.

Ask all the dictators throughout history. With great power comes great responsibility, and you can abuse that power.

It's abuse of the power and authority granted to him by the D&D rules. Even so, you are probably correct that it's still a violation of the social contract since it runs afoul of "Don't be a jerk."

Words?

It does match what I thought he was saying, though. Perhaps he would have been better served to have said that at some point the DM has to make a final judgment and the group has to give with it or leave, but the tone of it wasn't that nobody could bring anything up. The tone was that...