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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mhacdebhandia" data-source="post: 4502640" data-attributes="member: 18832">No, don't be ridiculous.We look at OD&D and see that there are no rules for tripping someone, so we are aware that we'd have to ask the GM how to do it, and (in many cases) we're frustrated that the answer can be different each time, depending on how long it's been since the last time. We're also (in many cases) dissatisfied that the answer we're given is inconsistent with other "special actions". We're also (in many cases) not too happy with the possibility that the GM isn't skilled enough to give an answer which meshes well with the rest of the system, or which represents the specific maneuver we had in mind, or whatever else.The preference for having rules that cover a broad variety of situations is not a preference for being told what we can do - it's a preference for the game having been designed to allow for consistent, appopriate mechanical simulation of what we might want to do.Sure, with a good GM you don't need those consistent, appropriate rules provided to you, but why shouldn't the game help groups with less-gifted GMs out? Why should the game expect the GM to do that work at the table, instead of concentrating on the story elements of the game? People who favour an old school, "the GM makes a call and we go with it" approach moan about players not trusting their GMs, but the fact is that some GMs aren't skilled enough to provide consistent, appropriate mechanical patches on the fly, so why shouldn't the game help them out with rules and guidelines that do that work for them?I mean, Fourth Edition does this really well. It has rules for a bunch of things, and then it has flexible guidelines for anything else you might want to do, scaled to various levels of play and various levels of difficulty. Those rules provide a consistent, appropriate-for-the-general-circumstances way to do something the rules don't cover, with enough built-in flexibility that the GM still has the ability to decide that it's actually quite hard to drop a flaming pot of oil on a hydra's head from your flying carpet.</blockquote>

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