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Do You Use Your RPG Rules as Written?
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7377222" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>We've had some pretty notorious arguments over your distrust of the DM and distrust of the motives of DMs, but I think underneath all that, we are tying to accomplish the same thing at the table in very different ways.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I totally get that, for several reasons. First, one of the reasons I typically have 100's of pages of house rules is precisely to keep players from feeling like they are being blindsided, or feeling like they are trying to negotiate a reality that is slippery and ever changing and subjective. This is pretty darn essential if you are running a competitive game like Bloodbowl or Necromunda, but its in my opinion still very important even if the game is nominally cooperative like D&D. I am a very vocal opponent of the idea of "rulings not rules" not only because I consider it incoherent nonsense, not only because I think suggests the speaker has no concept of the importance of procedures of play, but also because I think often as not it is an excuse for DM authoritarian behavior.</p><p></p><p>Unlike you though, I don't necessarily think that adhering to RAW actually in and of itself guarantees that. I do think that there might be some correspondence between RAW adhering DMs and DMs that see one of their primary roles as being a referee and neutral arbiter, but I've also seen plenty of RAW adhering GMs when I ask questions about methodology, encourage me to resolve all the scenario problems with illusionism as if it was trivially obvious and of course the GM should use his power in that manner. Any GM that thinks illusionism is the one size fits all solution to everything does not believe his job is to be a neutral arbiter, and any GM that doesn't believe his job description includes neutral arbiter fundamentally has as much distrust of his players as you have of your GMs.</p><p></p><p>I also don't believe that the RAW is ever complete, and invariably each table will generate different rulings and procedures of play that extend the rules where the rules are silent. They'll often do this while claiming that they are playing strictly by the RAW, even though if you compare two tables doing that, you'll see that the game that they've produced is often radically different. This is especially true of older game systems where the procedures of play were assumed by the writer but rarely if ever actually stated, or in 'rules light' games that typically leave almost everything but the fortune mechanic up to the GM.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Back when ENWorld had a dedicated house rules forum, most of my interaction with EnWorld was through that forum. And one thing that was immediately obvious was that the vast majority of people smithing out house rules, lacked the skill and understanding to actually do that successfully. They either had really vague ideas about what they wanted to achieve with the rule change, or else if they had an idea about what they wanted to achieve the rules change that they were proposing rarely achieved that. Some where the equivalent of Monte Haul GMs that were handing out treasure in the form of broken rules, and others where the equivalent of death dungeon DMs that wanted to change the rules to "keep players in their place". Most of my posts from that era consisted of me trying to explain to some young DM why they probably shouldn't change the rules until they had a bit more experience and a very concrete reason why they wanted to change something and what they hoped to achieve by that change.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7377222, member: 4937"] We've had some pretty notorious arguments over your distrust of the DM and distrust of the motives of DMs, but I think underneath all that, we are tying to accomplish the same thing at the table in very different ways. I totally get that, for several reasons. First, one of the reasons I typically have 100's of pages of house rules is precisely to keep players from feeling like they are being blindsided, or feeling like they are trying to negotiate a reality that is slippery and ever changing and subjective. This is pretty darn essential if you are running a competitive game like Bloodbowl or Necromunda, but its in my opinion still very important even if the game is nominally cooperative like D&D. I am a very vocal opponent of the idea of "rulings not rules" not only because I consider it incoherent nonsense, not only because I think suggests the speaker has no concept of the importance of procedures of play, but also because I think often as not it is an excuse for DM authoritarian behavior. Unlike you though, I don't necessarily think that adhering to RAW actually in and of itself guarantees that. I do think that there might be some correspondence between RAW adhering DMs and DMs that see one of their primary roles as being a referee and neutral arbiter, but I've also seen plenty of RAW adhering GMs when I ask questions about methodology, encourage me to resolve all the scenario problems with illusionism as if it was trivially obvious and of course the GM should use his power in that manner. Any GM that thinks illusionism is the one size fits all solution to everything does not believe his job is to be a neutral arbiter, and any GM that doesn't believe his job description includes neutral arbiter fundamentally has as much distrust of his players as you have of your GMs. I also don't believe that the RAW is ever complete, and invariably each table will generate different rulings and procedures of play that extend the rules where the rules are silent. They'll often do this while claiming that they are playing strictly by the RAW, even though if you compare two tables doing that, you'll see that the game that they've produced is often radically different. This is especially true of older game systems where the procedures of play were assumed by the writer but rarely if ever actually stated, or in 'rules light' games that typically leave almost everything but the fortune mechanic up to the GM. Back when ENWorld had a dedicated house rules forum, most of my interaction with EnWorld was through that forum. And one thing that was immediately obvious was that the vast majority of people smithing out house rules, lacked the skill and understanding to actually do that successfully. They either had really vague ideas about what they wanted to achieve with the rule change, or else if they had an idea about what they wanted to achieve the rules change that they were proposing rarely achieved that. Some where the equivalent of Monte Haul GMs that were handing out treasure in the form of broken rules, and others where the equivalent of death dungeon DMs that wanted to change the rules to "keep players in their place". Most of my posts from that era consisted of me trying to explain to some young DM why they probably shouldn't change the rules until they had a bit more experience and a very concrete reason why they wanted to change something and what they hoped to achieve by that change. [/QUOTE]
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