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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Shaman" data-source="post: 2550290" data-attributes="member: 26473">This is just as true with OD&D as it is with 3e - that's not a strength of the current iteration, just a recapitulation of the status quo.My character is standing on a table and wants to tumble past an opponent standing on the floor to assume a flanking position and attack. Is this a Tumble check, two Tumble checks, or a Jump check and a Tumble check? Can my character attack in the same round that he tumbles past the opponent?Later in the same encounter my character is running and wants to hop over a four-foot wall, placing his hands on top of the wall for extra leverage as he boosts himself over. Is this a Climb check, a Jump check, or another Tumble check? What's the DC?Now you seem to be backing away for your earlier position that the rules are an "independent third-party" to the game by suggesting that in fact interpretation is necessary, that the rules need to be stretched to cover actions either not covered or inadequately covered, and the ultimately the rules more like guidelines, actually, regardless of edition.The current iteration certainly details a wider range of options then earlier editions, but the idea that the rules can handle a huge chunk of managing the game without adjudication by the GM simply isn't true, IMHO, unless you limit options to those covered explicitly by the rules.How is this not a control issue? As a player you wanted to control what does and doesn't work and the GM disagreed, so you favor a system that minimizes the GM's input into making these calls. That seems like a control issue to me.(BTW, any chance that the GM didn't lack imagination, but rather that your ideas were truly unworkable and the GM made a common sense call?)There's also the issue of things in the game-world that don't conform to how the rules dictate they should, such as magic. Is it possible, for example, that the way magic functions in the game-world at the time of the game is different from the way magic operated at a different time in the continuity of the game-world, such that dispel magic may not work against certain kinds of spells as effectively (if at all)? Is there no room in a fantasy roleplaying game for the fantastic and the mysterious, that which works by forces unknown to the mages and sages of the present?For me, the key to this questions is, is the GM using this as a feature of the game-world that reflects the history and cosmology and metaphysics of the universe, or just trying to hose the characters? If it's the latter, that's just poor GMing, and no set of rules or differing editions will change that. If the former, then being frustrated by it is just petulance that the world doesn't work the way the player thinks it should, in which case my suggestion to that player is to GM and not play, to avoid being disappointed.It seems to me that a focus on teaching GMs how to be better arbiters, rather than loading down the system with more and more rules, would handle many of the problems that players cite with respect to RPGs. However, as noted, a book on GMing has a smaller audience than a book of "player options," so the fact that shelves are weighted down by the latter is no great surprise.</blockquote>

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