DM honourable conduct?
I have come to realise through talking to a friend that we have very different ideas of what a DM should do. My friend will often say that the DM is god and can do whatever they want such as disregarding rules, rolls, or hit points etc… I can understand the need to bend rules to maintain a storyline and not have people break things etc, or to make encounters more interesting, but completely disregarding whatever and “doing what they like” doesn’t seem like a good attitude for a DM. I don’t have much experience with DnD, but I feel like having some faith in the integrity of the DM is important. My friend said that it’s not even really necessary to keep track of a monster’s hit points and DMs might just decide when a monster dies when they feel it’s the right time. I’m having a problem with this idea. If damage and hit points means nothing then neither does gear, class… I know there are some people who play in different ways such as “theatre of the mind” or whatever where nothing is really tracked strictly, but if you are playing with characters sheets and combat maps and rolling dice, then surely there needs to be some kind of rules that should be followed by the GM. I’m just kinda interested to see everyone’s opinions and stuff on this topic. My friend keeps saying that I’m not looking at things properly and I don’t know what I’m talking about when I talk about DM stuff. But I feel like I know what integrity and honour are, and I feel like being a god who does what they feel like is not what a DM should be @_@