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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 2549017" data-attributes="member: 22779">Woot, my first ever props on EnWorld.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Again, I think it's a fundamental difference of opinion over what the role of a DM is.  I gave up the idea of "DM as storyteller" a long time ago when I realized that the stories in my head never lived up to what happened at the table.  I stepped back and let the players tell the story.  I set the stage, create the starting point, but, after that, it's up to the players to develop things.  Then again, I have very, very little interest in creating entire campaign world's anymore.  Again, I find that the fantastic ideas in my head, well, to put it bluntly, suck.  While the concepts may seem brilliant to me, when it comes time to game, I find that it just isn't as great as I hoped.Add to that a VERY long string of piss poor DM's that I've had over the years, I would FAR prefer that the DM's STOP MESSING WITH THE RULES.  Now this is entirely my personal experience, but, I find that a rather large percentage of house rules stem not from an actual need for change, but because the DM is too lazy or stupid to actually read the book and learn the rules.  Again, this is only my experience, but, time after time, I've seen DM's house rule this or that only to open the book, look for the rule and find that the bloody rule makes far more sense than the DM.  And this was hardly limited to 3e.  Time after time, my 2e and 1e experiences were identical.  Sorry, but screwing over the character the DM knew (because I had told him at the outset) was going to start creating new spells, not because the spells I was creating were bad or overpowered but because he thought that it should be more difficult to create new spells is stupid.  At the very least, that little gem of a rule should have been mentioned BEFORE I made the character.  I started DMing, not really because I wanted to overly much, but because I got sick and tired of being screwed over by powerhungry DM's who figured that they could use their every whim to punish their players for having the temerity for trying something new.  I've been fortunate to have had a couple of good DM's that I could learn from, but, those experiences have forever soured me on the idea of constantly reworking the rules.  I have house rules in my game.  That's true.  I had to come up with naval combat rules because the naval combat rules out there blow chunks.  They simply didn't work for me.  So, I took the d20 modern vehicle rules, tweaked and changed and came up with a decent set of naval combat rules.  But, the only reason I did that was because I had actually tried to make the other rules work first and found that they didn't.  I would much rather work with existing rules that everyone has access to than try to come up with rules on my own.  Like I said, DM as referee, not as storyteller.  When you referee, you don't need to change the rules very much, since the "setting" and the "story" don't matter to you.  The only thing that matters during game play is the game.  Setting and story is what I do outside of gameplay, behind the curtain so to speak.  The recent discussion in the Leiber and Howard thread shows the fundamental difference of opinion quite nicely.</blockquote>

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