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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8222884" data-attributes="member: 6790260">I really, truly don't think this was special to 3e. I think what actually was the culprit was, as noted, the fact that so many things changed. DMs couldn't necessarily trust their gut, knowing that things had changed. What do DMs do when they don't know the right answer? Stick to the rules as written, avoid creative interpretation, etc. The only real difference is that this attitude stuck around, rather than fading.Because, believe it or not, you see something like this with the 3e to 4e change too. It's part of why many people struggle with it. They see a new set of rules and, all too often, assume they are perfectly ironclad, restrictive, closed-off. Simple example, I've had people straight-up say that, because a power is an attack, it cannot ever be used as anything other than an attack--even though 4e's designers openly talked about allowing (for example) a Sorcerer at-will used to set something on fire if that makes sense. The common response to unfamiliar rules really does seem to be defaulting to RAW arguments--and that leads to a culture of "there is a correct way to play the rules."5e mostly worked around this by (a) making it incredibly front-and-center how ultra-dependent the game is on the DM, and (b) pretty much just copying what 3e did but with numbers tweaks (and a few nerfs to spellcasters). The combo of going incredibly far out of their way to emphasize it, to the point of (quite literally) "the rulebook is a suggestion" being a valid statement, and of sticking to "familiar"/"traditional"/"classic" (which again almost always meant "doing things the 3rd edition way") short-circuited some of the RAW-centric arguments. Of course, this then leads to its own set of....situations, which some would call "normal operating procedure" and others would call "issues."</blockquote>

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