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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Shaman" data-source="post: 2551580" data-attributes="member: 26473">Why indeed?Because IMX gaming complex tasks is more exciting and more interesting than simple ones.The rules serve the game, and if I can make an encounter more gripping, if I can up the stakes by extending a rule to cover an action not explicitly addressed (or addressed in such a way that it takes away from the action), then that's an easy choice for me. I'm more interested in making action memorable than I am in strictly applying the rules as written where those rules make for a dull game.In my Modern games, a discovering a booby trap may involve separate Search checks to locate the trip and the device and two or three Demolitions checks to disarm the device - a strict interpretation of the RAW would tend to make it one Search check and one Demolitions check. The DCs vary, the consequences for failure vary, and I tend to add circumstace bonuses and/or reduce DCs for players thinking through and describing exactly what their characters do in handling the device. IMX it takes what could be a routine roll of a die and makes it a significant happening for that player and character.As I mentioned, the Jump check for hopping over the wall did appear in one of my games. The Tumble off the table scenario was just something I made up to encourage different reactions - I've never actually ajudicated that one in 3e/d20, and simply argued the point to play devil's advocate. I have ruled on it in 1e AD&D - it was a Dex check with a -3 modifier.I haven't played 1e in something like sixteen years, but I still remember that because I used a consistent system of ability checks to cover things not specifically addressed in 1e rules. The idea that GMs make a different ruling each time is simply foreign to me - different GMs might vary from one another to some degree, but IMX a GM usually had a pretty consistent approach, such that if it varied it was usually for a good reason and set the new standard for future situations of the same kind. The idea that exhaustively detailed rules prevent inconsistency just doesn't jibe with my personal experience of playing pre-3e/d20 - I've never seen more vituperative arguments over rules interpretations as I have with the current game.To me 3e attempts to solve a problem that I didn't have in the first place, as a player or a GM. I don't think rulebook after rulebook prevent bad GMing and that the idea of "player control" is illusory - from my own experience I don't believe that a dense rules system makes mediocre GMs better.No, that's what you're arguing - at this point you're focused on the candlestick while I'm looking at the two faces in the picture, so there's really no point in dragging this out any further.</blockquote>

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