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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 7918160" data-attributes="member: 6696971">Haven't read anymore of the thread yet (and likely won't be able to this evening...which may portend my getting behind and losing interest in the thread).But come on man.  I don't want to make this thread take a left turn, so I won't belabor this too much.  But you had to know the point of my post wasn't about whether White Wolf co-opted AD&D 2e or AD&D 2e co-opted White Wolf.  Its completely irrelevant to the point.  The point is, these two systems came out 30 years ago at roughly the same time (which is why I can't recall the exact year that they came out without looking it up).The point is, roughly 30 years ago, a textual analysis shows that Zeb Cook's DMG had a marked departure from the disposition of fair and neutral refereeing (with consistent rulings and extreme care in consistent mediation and adjudication and certainly care and openness in changing rules) that came before it...to an ethos that coincides markedly with White Wolf's Golden Rule; GM as storyteller and entertainer and changing/reinterpreting the rules at any time and/or fudging your application of them for the sake of (the GM's perception of) compelling storytelling and entertainment is a virtue.  And canonical modules during that period (specifically the Dragonlance modules) presuppose this GMing ethos.The point was simple; a TTRPGing culture accreted around these things in the late 80s early 90s...and that culture has become a major (the major?) orthodoxy of TTRPGing culture, though it is a clear departure from an ethos of neutral, fair, consistent refereeing, following the rules, making neutral/consistent/fair/transparent rulings of corner cases (not rulings in the interest of promoting specific outcomes that produce the type of storytelling and entertainment that the GM is mandated to push toward), and integrity of outcomes as a byproduct of all of the former.  Mentzer's guidance goes so far as to tell GMs its not fair to change the rules until everyone agrees with the change (putting the GM in a first among equals environment)!89 vs 91, who co-opted whom...it doesn't matter.  Storytelling and entertainment suddenly have primacy over fairness and neutrality...and that shift has implications on play.</blockquote>

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