Andor
First Post
Back in the old days, when we hewed our dice out of dinosaur bones and the rules were printed on clay tablets, there was a convention that where the rules did not contradict specifically, things worked just like they do in reality.
You can read it on the old Dragon magazine articles: About how fireballs should incinerate all the flammable treasure, and do you know how low the melting point of gold is? Kobolds using flaming barricades and murder holes. The party using a bell and some fireballs over the course of a week to use Pavlovian conditioning to train an ochre jelly that the bell meant it was time to run so they didn't have to fight the damn thing.
Now the pendulum drifted away from this idea over the years, to the point where in 4e it was pretty explicit that you could not "power stunt" your abilities in unexpected ways, nor need you fear a fireball destroying the 1,000 origami cranes that was the McGuffin.
Now the old school way could and did lead to problems. If you've ever watched a group of engineering students try to explain their plan for dealing with the orcs using a mobile seige tower to a Poly-sci major GM, you know what I mean.
What do you guys think, is it a good idea to bring back that sense of freedom/verisimilitude? The up-side is player and GM creativity, and the 'remember that time' stories. The down-side is having to listen to "But how was I supposed to know using burning hands in the middle of an ancient and dry rope bridge over a thousand foot chasm was a bad idea? You're a mean GM!"
You can read it on the old Dragon magazine articles: About how fireballs should incinerate all the flammable treasure, and do you know how low the melting point of gold is? Kobolds using flaming barricades and murder holes. The party using a bell and some fireballs over the course of a week to use Pavlovian conditioning to train an ochre jelly that the bell meant it was time to run so they didn't have to fight the damn thing.
Now the pendulum drifted away from this idea over the years, to the point where in 4e it was pretty explicit that you could not "power stunt" your abilities in unexpected ways, nor need you fear a fireball destroying the 1,000 origami cranes that was the McGuffin.
Now the old school way could and did lead to problems. If you've ever watched a group of engineering students try to explain their plan for dealing with the orcs using a mobile seige tower to a Poly-sci major GM, you know what I mean.
What do you guys think, is it a good idea to bring back that sense of freedom/verisimilitude? The up-side is player and GM creativity, and the 'remember that time' stories. The down-side is having to listen to "But how was I supposed to know using burning hands in the middle of an ancient and dry rope bridge over a thousand foot chasm was a bad idea? You're a mean GM!"