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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 8143574" data-attributes="member: 6785785">I feel like you may be missing the point about rules; they're what gives everyone the common ground of the game. This works like this, and that works like that. With these in place, participants can reasonably understand their chances for success and so on. They can then make informed decisions about what they'd like to try.If the game boils down to a player declaring an action for their PC, and then the actual procedure is for the GM to decide if that works or not, then how does a player know their chances? How can they make informed decisions?Removing the encounter tables from old versions of D&D removed a module of the game around which other modules were designed. They no longer functioned the same as they were intended. Now, I will admit that my group and I often did this in favor of a more cinematic approach to play......but that did render dungeon delving far different than it had been intended to be. Now, if you have a GM who is consistent, and makes principled calls of some sort, and you also have players who understand this, the kind of play you're describing may be perfectly fine. But I don't think that means that rules aren't beneficial.</blockquote>