In fairness, that extends all the way back into Greek myth. Sometimes "drakones" were depicted as legless, sometimes not. Some could fly, some could not. Most did not breathe fire, but instead breathed poison. And some of them were people! Hercules was persuaded to produce offspring with one...
Extremely well-said.
For me?
It's because people identify the experience they had when they were new D&D players as "the" D&D experience. Anything which pulls in a different--even if parallel--direction is thus "Not D&D". To pollute D&D with what is "Not D&D" (even though, as you rightly point...
Speaking as a dragonborn fan, there are three advantages dragonborn have over both half-dragons and draconians.
They are draconic without being literally made by/of dragons. Half-dragons literally have a dragon parent, with all the stuff that entails. Draconians are created from corrupted...
I was (perhaps incorrectly) drawing a distinction between sources in general and physical artifacts, which may not be actually something real historians do, but as that seems to be something you are reasonably comfortable with, I'll stick with treating "sources" as documents or expressions of...
But you have insisted: absolute power. Absolute power does not discuss. It declares. That's, again, what MAKES it absolute.
What odds?
By your own insistence, there IS no odds. The GM does what they like. Period. Not even "end of discussion", because there isn't any. Only absolute power and...
I was under the impression that secondary sources were always considered to be suspect and not acceptable as the only basis of theories of history. That's why I said "secondhand" sources. Primary sources are held in much higher regard, and a mixture of primary and secondary is (AIUI) considered...
And "agree to disagree" is useful when we are, for example, talking on a forum. (Though I fail to see how that is at all comparable to an "invisible rulebook" type thing? That's an explicit statement of, or request for, action.) "Agree to disagree" doesn't work when we are playing a game...
I completely agree!
But when I asked for discussion for HOW one does this, for how one should go about trying to fix a smaller breakdown of the table's function, you know what I was told, repeatedly, by several different people?
Some variation of "you just HAVE to trust me[/the GM]." Which, as...
Have we read the same thread? Seriously?
You and others have presented opinions far more strident than mine. Often, folks have done so while explicitly recognizing that they haven't even read the text in question!
Well, while this would very much not be my cup of tea, you have at least made it clear and gotten your players' explicit consent to occasionally deceive them, which removes a significant part of the sting. It wouldn't be for me, but that's irrelevant.
That is not my base complaint. It does...
One of my greatest frustrations with the "traditional GM" role as described by several people here and elsewhere (meaning both in other threads on this forum, and in other places on the internet, e.g. links people give me about "FKR" stuff) is that this is not only not mentioned, I see things...