D&D 5E Resting and the frikkin' Elephant in the Room

[Lanefan]

If you've been reading this thread from the beginning, take this post as an opportunity to rest and restore your HP. Here's a video of kittens to help you out with that...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmjlMgDSYFo

But - but - but - but ...

where's the Elephant?

 

[shoak1]

Strange. Most people I play with recognize that D&D isn't a board game, and don't expect it to be run like one.

I'm sure you mean well, but to be fair, it seems here like you are roping D and D off from board games, slapping the RPG-only label on it, ignoring the other aspects of D and D and its history of intermixing with other genres (are you going to tell me its not part miniatures game? and what would you consider 4e to be?), and basically fencing out me, the guy in the quote, and most of the people I have ever played with.

As for why people have trouble understanding why you would want to play D&D as if it were little more than a tactical board game with the encounters loosely connected...that's because for a lot of people that seems to be missing the entire point of playing a roleplaying game. It's also a cooperative storytelling game, as well as being a fantasy combat simulator.

Here again your choice of words betrays your lack of appreciation and respect of my style. You claim I am "play[ing] D and D as little more than a boardgame". Perhaps instead I am "Boldly infusing D and D with tactical challenges to bring purpose to and enrich an otherwise inconsequential story."

If the DM can't adjust things on the fly to react to events within the game, they may feel that it robs the DM of their creative freedom, and sucks the life out of the story.

So my play style "robs DMs of their creative freedom and sucks the life out of the story" ? Really? What if I see it as "Breathing life and vibrancy into the tactical challenge aspect of the game heretofore left languishing under the boot of Big DM and Big Story."

Or you may feel that the DM adjusting things on the fly gives them an "unfair advantage" because you are playing a more adversarial style of D&D where the story takes a backseat to the tactical aspects.

I'm gonna instead go with "Making space in the car for other crucial aspects of the game including Big Challenge, a feature which has been routinely and methodically crushed under the oppressive weight of Big Story and Big DM."

 

[shoak1]

Which highlights one of several very fundamental differences between what's defined as a boardgame and what's defined as an RPG. RPGs, almost without exception, have within their structure some sort of referee or GM or DM or whatever other term you give it, whose roles are to oversee the game, provide the backdrop, make rulings, and in one way or another keep it going smoothly. In this way...but only in this way...it's closer to many types of sports, where these functions are filled by some combination of an organized league and the in-game officials.

Most boardgamers, maybe. However, you've here highlighted a second major difference between (almost all) boardgames and RPGs: in a boardgame you're playing as an individual, and playing to win against the other players. In an RPG you're most often playing as part of a group and not trying to win against the other players. You could be said to collectively be trying to win against the game world, except for yet another major difference:

A boardgame (almost always) has a clearly defined win condition - you reach home first, you destroy all the other armies, you checkmate the king - and the game ends when a player (or a predefined number of players) reaches this point. An RPG never has such a thing: there is no predetermined win condition, and no defined end point - you can't "win" D&D. The best you can do is survive through the campaign, which probably equates to a tie. And in some RPGs e.g. CoC you can't even hope for that much; the game dictates that you are going to lose, and the only questions are how long will it take and what can you achieve in the meantime.

Sure, in an all-out PvP game you could knock off all the other PCs - but that still doesn't mean you've won, because the game world is still out there waiting for you...

If in "most of us gamers" you're including boardgamers and card gamers and so on, you're likely right; if only because those games work as you say and have more players overall. But if you limit "gamers" to only RPG players then I'd say you're flat wrong, once you get beyond your own gaming community which does, I must say, seem rather unusual.

Lan-"the rest of the post I quoted here didn't make sense - did you miss a quote tag somewhere?"-efan

D and D is not solely an RPG - sorry, I did not put on the black-and-white-one-label-only-per-game-glasses you seem to be pushing. There are many, many loyal D and D enthusiasts that are gamers first and RPGers second. And we don't like being told Big DM or Big Story is the True way, or that DM Light and Big Challenge are not equally valid options.

 

[Caliban]

So my play style "robs DMs of their creative freedom and sucks the life out of the story" ? Really?

You asked why people seem to have trouble understanding your playstyle. I gave you a possible answer.

What if I see it as "Breathing life and vibrancy into the tactical challenge aspect of the game heretofore left languishing under the boot of Big DM and Big Story."

Yay! Go you! Fight the Power! Don't let those guys tell you what to do! When their jackbooted thugs come around to force you to tell a story and have a DM who does more than play referee, you stand up for your right to play D&D like a watered down wargame!

I'm gonna instead go with "Making space in the car for other crucial aspects of the game including Big Challenge, a feature which has been routinely and methodically crushed under the oppressive weight of Big Story and Big DM."

In response, I'd say it sounds like you are choosing to mostly ignore 2/3rds of the game. And being rather melodramatic about it.
You are also implying that the way everyone else plays the game ignores the tactical aspect of it, which is patently false.

Look, I don't particularly care about how you play D&D - I'm not involved in your game. You asked a question, I gave a possible answer.

D&D is based on a table-top wargame (Chainmail, etc) and grew into a roleplaying game. Sounds like you want to get back to its roots and focus on the tactical aspect. No biggie.

 

[Corwin]

D and D is not solely an RPG - sorry...

What does that even mean? I'm going to ask that you stop butchering the term "RPG", twisting it to your narrow purposes. I think you may be better served by a more accurate term, like "thespian exercise" or something. Because D&D is not only "solely an RPG", it is the definitive one, by definition of being the one to create the term. Everythng you've been saying has me convinced you are mistakenly using "RPG" as "players taking in funny voices". You are using it wrong.

It's like you keep trying to convince people Coke is not a cola.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

Does Monopoly have a referee? Does Battlestar Galactica? Does Life? It is MUCH MUCH more common for people to play games without referees !!! Why? Because most gamers don't like having someone decide things for them - they like to play in a predetermined world and BEAT IT. So it confounds me that you cant see why some people would want to minimize the referee's role in D and D, interjecting themselves in between player cause and effect. I GET that you like the DM to do so - I REALLY REALLY do.....But I'm really baffled that you don't see how it runs counter to the way most of us gamers think.

See, this is really where you're running into problems. You say that people aren't willing to accept your way of playing. I don't think that's the case at all from what I've seen here. Yes, there's been a lot of "I certainly wouldn't want to play like that" and as I noted before, you're pushing the boundaries of what many people would consider D&D.

Does Monopoly or Life have a referee? The reality is that they do - the rules, and the other players. But you're referring to a person whose job is specifically that. And the obvious answer is no. Does it need it? Of course not.

But the fact that more people play games without referees doesn't prove your point at all. The fact that more people play Monopoly than D&D doesn't tell you why that's true. Your assertion that more people play games like that is because they don't have referees is the same as saying that more people play Monopoly because it doesn't have flumphs.

So let's look at it another way. Why don't we add a DM to Monopoly and play it like D&D. Is it still Monopoly? I certainly don't think so. It's not a question of liking the DM to do so. It's a defining feature of an RPG. And D&D not only is and RPG, it created and defined the genre.

So you like board games better. But D&D gives you more flexibility to create a really cool board game. Great for you. That's probably not a problem for almost anybody.

I'm kind of lost at this stage at what you're trying to accomplish. You can claim that most gamers, and really we're talking about RPG gamers, prefer to not have a DM in charge. Guess what, there's a few subgenres for that. The one that comes to mind is the Story Telling games that became somewhat popular in the '90s. Most gamers didn't like them.

The millions of gamers playing with the PHB and an AP? Playing with a DM. The way the books tell them to. Making decisions, improvising, and such.

One of the defining features of D&D from the beginning is that it's not a competitive game, and you aren't trying to "win." Another is that nearly anything is possible, and part of what makes that happen is a live DM that can make decisions on the fly. That maybe I'm suspicious of the dude in Barovia and decide it's not a good idea to go to Valaki. I don't want to be forced to wander the whole castle that you put together. I'm a "get in and get out" kind of guy, rather than a "clear the level" sort. Whatever. I don't want the DM taking away my free will under most circumstances.

Under the banner of "board game" then a railroad like that is no problem whatsoever. Under the banner of D&D/RPG, as a player my one and only part in the game is to play my character. And anything that specifically limits my ability to play that character better have a good reason. "Because the DM designed a cool castle and wants you to see all of it" isn't.

That's OK, though. You have different priorities. I do too. I tweak the rules a lot. Not to fundamentally change the game like you do, but to make it work better for my campaign and lore. And I have no illusions that the majority of players would ever play the game the way I do. I'm happy to share, but that's all I can do, just share. I think it's a great way to play, and my players not only love it, but when they go out to other groups they either perpetuate it, or at least try to incorporate our play style there. And the reality is, the play style is nothing new, nothing groundbreaking. It's pretty much modeled after what little I understand about how Ed Greenwood runs his games.

But I'm just a guy running a game for those that want to join in. I can't even claim that most gamers in my town would want to play this way, much less MOST gamers everywhere.

Good idea. Maybe that will help us communicate better. I'll go first, then maybe u could reciprocate.

First I figured out how much time we had and therefore how many encounters I could do (as I recall about 8 aside from the castle). I cherry picked the best material and the places I thought would make the best 3D settings, i think i used the fortuneteller thing, the 3 villages, and both hag places. I got rid of all the ridiculous super high and low level stuff in the module.

Secondly I constructed my adventure path and the seatbelts for it. Nothing too fancy - the dude in barovia village says go to valaki, there's a legendary vampire hunter they need to get with there if they have any hope of beating strahd. Then enroute to vallaki they get fortune read, then in vallaki rictavio tells them to get 3 items , 1 each in 2 hag places and in other village to west?, then they bring them to ricctavio, he tells them there are two more located in different parts of the castle (just to make sure they explore the whole castle I painstakingly put together).

I then tied in some elements from our current campaign (zombie apocolypse) into the Strahd storyline.

Then I made a simplified version of wandering monster chart (1 roll per journey leg, modded by survival/perception skills, with level appropriate baddies not the crap on the published chart).

I then examined all the encounters to get a rough idea of how many long rests would be needed in total, calced travel time, and created my time crunch mechanism. In x days Strahd was gonna finish some huge project. Then I went back and tweaked the encounter difficulties to be right for the budget, including details of what monsters to add/subtract based on the number of players.

Then came my detailing of the encounters. I consolidated the village (Barovia, Vallaki, and the other one) stuff into 5-7 step "town sequences" where they rolled a skill challenge to gather info, got to buy/sell via skill challenge, had one or two encounters - sort of a mini-game. I made DCs for everything, contingency plans, tactics/strategy write-ups for baddies, made stat sheets, distributed of treasure based on DMG guidelines (not the crazy crap in module). I added some chrome like cool traps, some gadgets, magic items, etc. Found a printable 3D pipe organ.....

Finally I built all the sets in 3D, picked out the figures and got everything ready.

And you redesigned D&D as an amazingly cool board game, and I'm sure the players loved it. To some degree you're a board/video game designer that likes to see how well your design works when you plug people through it.

The reality is, I think that your desire to not allow the DM to make changes during the game probably has a lot to do with your game design. If you build elaborate 3D sets, then it's way more time and effort than even the most diligent DM. For the DM to allow the players to skip past that becomes a problem. It extends beyond just the 3D sets. You have a carefully orchestrated adventure from start to finish. You've narrowed the adventure down to the parts that you think are important, and tweaked everything to run smoothly for the whole adventure, all to fit in an allotted time for gameplay. I think going outside of that ruins the adventure for you.

Most DMs don't have the time (nor the skills) to do all that. I think it's awesome that you do. And I think it provides a unique and different approach to gaming, when presented like that, most everybody here would love to try at some point.

There is no need for you to start claiming that most gamers do that, or want to do that, because clearly they can't, and don't. That doesn't diminish the value of what you do one little bit. You are way on the fringe of how D&D is played, in part because you're doing something that can't easily be replicated.

On the other hand, I can tell you that as cool as it sounds, it's not the way I would want to play all of the time. To start with, you've put so many limitations on the game and the world that once I get past the cool 3D stuff, I'd feel like I was playing a computer game. And guess what? I would be, with a human computer. It's far too limiting, and it gives the designer/DM way too much control over the direction of the game. You don't need the DM to make decisions during the game because you've made them all before the game. As much as I'd love to really get into video game RPGs, I just can't. Your approach has the benefit of human contact and interaction. It's a very cool thing. But it's quite different from how most people play D&D, and even from how it was designed.

You're right. Most gamers don't play with a DM. Because most "gamers" play video games. And really, that's the experience you're recreating in 3D, an elaborate video game. For most gamers, it's easy to grasp, and doesn't require a lot of new skills or gaming perspectives. But it's far from what most tabletop RPG gamers do. So no matter how you put it, D&D players, or RPG players aren't going to agree with that assertion.

Don't demean or minimize what you do by trying to claim superiority over the way most D&D players play. You're not really playing D&D, at least not as designed. Any more than if I started a game of Monopoly with a DM. But that's not a bad thing, and it's not a diss. Anymore than saying Dungeon World is not D&D, even though it evolved out of a particular way of playing OD&D. The only difference is that instead of writing a new ruleset, you're taking and modifying what you want for your game.

You do bring a lot to the table that other D&D player will grab onto and celebrate. This part of it isn't one of those. You're not going to convince most D&D players/DMs that you have improved D&D by removing much of the DM from it.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Does Monopoly have a referee? Does Battlestar Galactica? Does Life? It is MUCH MUCH more common for people to play games without referees !!! Why? Because most gamers don't like having someone decide things for them - they like to play in a predetermined world and BEAT IT. So it confounds me that you cant see why some people would want to minimize the referee's role in D and D, interjecting themselves in between player cause and effect. I GET that you like the DM to do so - I REALLY REALLY do.....But I'm really baffled that you don't see how it runs counter to the way most of us gamers think.

As [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] said, one of the fundamental differences between D&D and a boardgame is the presence of a referee. If one does not like referees, then it seems odd to play a game that requires one. I can understand it....it seems more like a tactical combat game like Warhammer or something similar, with a story serving only to provide a bit of context to the battles, and perhaps a bit of decision-making on the part of the players in between the combats. Which is fine....I can understand the appeal of that just like I can understand the appeal of Warhammer or Malifaux or Dust or any other miniatures game. Perhaps it's that it seems like D&D would be an odd choice instead of a game that is designed to deliver exactly that experience.

So I like referees in games....let's say I wanted to add one to Monopoly....I wouldn't be surprised when people questioned that decision.

Several players I have played with over the years have told me the same thing - that they have a DM that thinks his improv is invisible to them...

It's not always, that is true. Sometimes, it's hard to pull off and players know what's happening. Mine don't have a problem with that. I expect that this is just because we're going for different experiences from play. You have a kin of adversarial role to the players (in that you seem to focus on running their adversaries more than any other DM role) and you show them your work afterward. I almost never show my players anything from my notes.....but they would never ask.

Other times, it may be obvious because the PCs have clearly gone off the rails, and I have to adapt and adjust on the fly. In instances like that, it's understood that's what the DM has to do.

But other than those instances, there's no reason at all why anyone would ever be able to know when a DC was determined, or at what point I decided that the reinforcements from the other room show up to help the bad guys.

I would even say that preparing too much ahead of time locks you in to certain paths, which then may interfere with acknowledging how the game world may be affected by the players. It's deciding things ahead of time before all the information is known. Thats not to say it's bad to have a plan.....I always have a plan in place....but you have to be ready to change the plan. It's like taking a long road trip....printing the directions ahead of time is definitely a good idea, but when you hit an accident that closes the highway, you have to be ready to adapt and change the plan.

Good idea. Maybe that will help us communicate better. I'll go first, then maybe u could reciprocate.

First I figured out how much time we had and therefore how many encounters I could do (as I recall about 8 aside from the castle). I cherry picked the best material and the places I thought would make the best 3D settings, i think i used the fortuneteller thing, the 3 villages, and both hag places. I got rid of all the ridiculous super high and low level stuff in the module.

Secondly I constructed my adventure path and the seatbelts for it. Nothing too fancy - the dude in barovia village says go to valaki, there's a legendary vampire hunter they need to get with there if they have any hope of beating strahd. Then enroute to vallaki they get fortune read, then in vallaki rictavio tells them to get 3 items , 1 each in 2 hag places and in other village to west?, then they bring them to ricctavio, he tells them there are two more located in different parts of the castle (just to make sure they explore the whole castle I painstakingly put together).

I then tied in some elements from our current campaign (zombie apocolypse) into the Strahd storyline.

Then I made a simplified version of wandering monster chart (1 roll per journey leg, modded by survival/perception skills, with level appropriate baddies not the crap on the published chart).

I then examined all the encounters to get a rough idea of how many long rests would be needed in total, calced travel time, and created my time crunch mechanism. In x days Strahd was gonna finish some huge project. Then I went back and tweaked the encounter difficulties to be right for the budget, including details of what monsters to add/subtract based on the number of players.

Then came my detailing of the encounters. I consolidated the village (Barovia, Vallaki, and the other one) stuff into 5-7 step "town sequences" where they rolled a skill challenge to gather info, got to buy/sell via skill challenge, had one or two encounters - sort of a mini-game. I made DCs for everything, contingency plans, tactics/strategy write-ups for baddies, made stat sheets, distributed of treasure based on DMG guidelines (not the crazy crap in module). I added some chrome like cool traps, some gadgets, magic items, etc. Found a printable 3D pipe organ.....

Finally I built all the sets in 3D, picked out the figures and got everything ready.

Okay, cool, thanks.

What I did to prepare my game was to read through the book, and then I pre-selected the results of the fortune reading. I picked the areas I thought would be the most interesting and placed the quest items in those places. I think leaving it up to chance can be fun, but I preferred to decide ahead of time. This also allowed me to tailor things to the ongoing story from our campaign. There were a couple of areas that I decided not to focus on all that much (mostly the haunted keep of Arghynvostholdt, just didn't appeal all that much to me). I didn't worry about wandering monsters and the like...I tend to decide those kinds of things during the game. I did decide that no long rests would be possible in the wilds of Barovia; anytime the players camped, thw wolves and other creatures would harry them all night to the point that they could not benefit from a rest.

So when we started play, things began as expected with the encounter in Barovia with Donovich and his vampire son locked in the cellar, and in meeting Ireena and her brother. I also had the PCs encounter one of the hags from the Old Bonegrinder selling dream cakes, setting that up for them. They were specifically seeking a witch due to the campaign story, and so they were very suspicious of that. So Barovia led them to a choice between seeking refuge at Vallaki or to go further to Kresk, far to the west.

So the PCs went to Vallaki first. I find Vallaki to be a dynamic environment, so we wound up spending a lot of time there. The PCs were looking for Rictavio and other clues based on the card reading. They ran afoul of Izek Strazni and the Baron's other men. I set up the whole Bones of St. Andral subplot. I made it so that the bones actually protected the whole town from vampire infestation, but only the priest knew that. The bones being stolen, and the vampires in the coffin shop was something the PCs wound up having to deal with.

Vallaki is a prime example of the kind of environment where the players can go a lot of different directions. Lady Wachter and her sons, loyal to Strahd, wanted to overthrow the Baron and take over in Strahd's name. So the PCs were kind of caught in the middle of this struggle, and had to decide how to handle that, while still trying to find Rictavio and follow up on other leads. I did not dictate how they went about this, or which side they would choose in the power struggle...that was all up to them. They wound up eventually killing Izek, which weakened the Baron enough that the Wachters easily overthrew him.

The players could just as easily have decided to simply get the hell out of town and not get involved, or they could have decided that the Wachters needed to be taken out...any number of options. So when I say "improv" or "making things up on the fly" I usually don't mean making things up whole cloth right in the moment. Instead, I mean taking an existing environment, and deciding how the PCs' actions cause things to change, and how the inhabitants of that environment react, and how that causes more change. Using my judgement to decide how things play out.

To me, that's one of the great strengths of D&D. And despite my understanding the approach you are taking and the experience you are going for, it does seem a bit of an odd choice.

 

[shoak1]

And here is why it seems impossible to help you and many of you others on these forums understand why large segments of people have always and continue to play D and D in a fundamentally different way than you:

1) You steadfastly refuse such a fundamentally obvious point as people preferring to play games without referees:

Does Monopoly or Life have a referee? The reality is that they do - the rules, and the other players. But you're referring to a person whose job is specifically that. And the obvious answer is no. Does it need it? Of course not. But the fact that more people play games without referees doesn't prove your point at all. The fact that more people play Monopoly than D&D doesn't tell you why that's true. Your assertion that more people play games like that is because they don't have referees is the same as saying that more people play Monopoly because it doesn't have flumphs.

Not seeing that gamers in general naturally eschew referees precludes you from being able to see WHY they don't - they don't like referees because they don't like someone (lets call him "Big DM") adjudicating their actions. Because you can't see THAT, you don't have an appreciation for the many D and D players who desire to minimize his in-game involvement (lets call this kind of DM "DM Light").

2) You narrowly see an RPG focused on improvisation and roleplaying (lets call this "Big Story"). You rope yourself off in RPG Label Land (ignoring most of D and D's history) using labels and rhetoric and call those trying to get the full traditional D and D experience out of the game (an experience that includes balance and a significant tactical challenge - aka "Big Challenge") as guys trying to "twist" D and D into a video/wargame.

It's not a question of liking the DM to do so. It's a defining feature of an RPG. And D&D not only is and RPG, it created and defined the genre......it's [your style is] quite different from how most people play D&D, and even from how it was designed.

The millions of gamers playing with the PHB and an AP? Playing with a DM. The way the books tell them to. Making decisions, improvising, and such.

Under the banner of "board game" then a railroad like that is no problem whatsoever. Under the banner of D&D/RPG, as a player my one and only part in the game is to play my character.

You're not really playing D&D, at least not as designed. Any more than if I started a game of Monopoly with a DM. But that's not a bad thing, and it's not a diss. Anymore than saying Dungeon World is not D&D, even though it evolved out of a particular way of playing OD&D. The only difference is that instead of writing a new ruleset, you're taking and modifying what you want for your game.

3) You use Big DM and Big Story's dominance in these forums as a bully club to stifle, trivialize, and belittle opposition to Big DM and Big Story:

So you like board games better. ..... you're a board/video game designer that likes to see how well your design works when you plug people through it.....You are way on the fringe of how D&D is played......I'd feel like I was playing a computer game. And guess what? I would be, with a human computer. It's far too limiting, and it gives the designer/DM way too much control over the direction of the game.

And really, that's the experience you're recreating in 3D, an elaborate video game. For most gamers, it's easy to grasp, and doesn't require a lot of new skills or gaming perspectives. But it's far from what most tabletop RPG gamers do. So no matter how you put it, D&D players, or RPG players aren't going to agree with that assertion.....You're not going to convince most D&D players/DMs that you have improved D&D by removing much of the DM from it.

That's OK, though. You have different priorities. I do too. I tweak the rules a lot. Not to fundamentally change the game like you do, but to make it work better for my campaign and lore.

3) And then in the end you flip the whole thing around and say I am the one who is demeaning other playstyles...OK, then, if I'm gonna do the time, may as well have fun doing the crime, here goes:

"OMG that guy in the quote was just soooo ridiculous right ?!?!?"

"Balance, oh that's nothing to be worried about - Big DM can just wave his wand and change everything anyway. Besides, remember you are playing an RPG and that means you should be focused on Big Story not Big Challenge - if you want Big Challenge go play a wargame silly!"

 

[OB1]

[MENTION=54380]shoak1[/MENTION] - I have seen nothing but compliments from [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] and many others for your innovative design and creativity in adapting D&D to your style of play. No one is saying that you can't or shouldn't play that way.

The argument they are making, and I agree with, is that D&D 5e is designed to be an RPG, not a board game, and so it's rules are designed to appeal to people who prefer that style of play. That's not to say it can't be adapted to other styles, just that it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that the content WOTC puts out for the game is designed reinforce that style. WOTC produces quite excellent board games in the D&D style like Castle Ravenloft, Wrath of Ashardelon, Temple of Elemental Evil etc, specifically to those looking for more of a board game.

You can disagree with WOTC's decision to emphasize this particular rule set, and you can change it to fit your style, but I'm fairly certain that WOTC knows exactly what segment of the gaming market they are looking to create D&D 5e for, and they have been enormously successful in doing so.

 

[billd91]

It's not that people think improvisation is acceptable-and-desirable, it's generally something that's required of a DM. It's part of what defines the game, and also differentiates it from things like computer games, video games, card games, board games, you name it. That's kind of the point of the game, is that it's much more than a board game. Of all of the players of D&D, the DM typically puts in the most work, and then you're hamstringing them by taking away one of their primary responsibilities and a big part of what makes being a DM fun. I still have an issue with your terminology too, because not only are you saying that the DM can't do a big part of their job (and potentially the most enjoyable part), but you're also using a negative term to describe what the DM does.

Don't think of it as being the point of the game. RPGs have referees pretty much because they need to have them. Unlike board games that define everything a unit in the game can do (in this, they're much like computer RPGs because programming is necessary to enable the player's avatar to do anything), RPGs can't really encode all of the possibilities that may spring from a player's brain. Some form of adjudication will inevitably be necessary that will require someone to play the role of arbiter/referee/judge and some form of improvisation will be necessary. Trying to do away with that in an RPG, particularly when there may be interpersonal interactions involved, would only make the rule set too cumbersome to use. This is why computer RPGs have pick lists of statements to select when interacting with the NPCs. They can't account for everything a player might try to say so they limit the choices available to the player to a manageable set of relevant statements.