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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 8143646" data-attributes="member: 6785785">Well, I wouldn’t say it went just fine, exactly. We had fun, which is the main goal of course, so in that sense, yes. But our play was largely driven by the GM and their pre-written material, whether published or of their own design. The DM had “final say” and all that. They were very much the “author of the story”. Personally, I found that lingering but incomplete elements of 1e that we carried over into our 2e games just created a weird combination for the GM. The idea from 1E of challenging the players combined with the unlimited authority of the role from 2E....well, it did not always make for a fun gaming experience. I didn’t really come to understand this until later on. Sure. It worked in the sense that we all still enjoy the hobby after all these years. But if someone was to ask me how to play these days, that’s not how I’d suggest they go about it. Our understanding was incomplete, and there were a lot of things we were doing wrong. I don’t think mechanics need to replace role playing, which seems to be your concern here. As I said, rules should be there to enhance and inspire role play. In your scenario above, how does the discussion become heated? How is that determined? What does it mean? Can it be changed? If the answer to all of this is ultimately “the GM gets to decide” then that may be fine, but it puts the players’ agency entirely in the GM’s hands.....which says what about their agency?Now, I agree with you about judgment being needed in almost any game (even GMless games still shift such judgment to the players). What I prefer is that a game has clear instruction to the GM on how to use their judgment and when and where to apply it. Not simply grant them unlimited authority to use their judgment toward some vague notion of “make the game fun”.</blockquote>

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