Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="DinoInDisguise" data-source="post: 9438100" data-attributes="member: 7045806">When is a problem a rules problem? I think this question plagues this community, on this forum and beyond. Many issues are misintrepreted as being rules issues when they are not. An example would be a background that gives a feature, one with no hard mechanical benefit, being ignored or made useless by a DM. This could be attributed to a rules shortfall, a balance issue per say. But in reality this is a DM issue, one where the severity varies by player expectation.In this case we have a spell with a open ended spell description. If that spell causes a prolonged rules debate, is that an issue with the spell? Or is that a DM issue as the prior example was?My inclination is that both of these are DM issues. I think hyper-specificity on rules hems in games with good DMing to prop up those with bad. Removing options from players in an ill-fated attempt to &quot;fix&quot; bad DMing. My biggest fear in this hobby is that we &quot;rule&quot; our way out of dungeon masters and into a video game, and sadly this is a small step in that direction.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="DinoInDisguise, post: 9438100, member: 7045806"] When is a problem a rules problem? I think this question plagues this community, on this forum and beyond. Many issues are misintrepreted as being rules issues when they are not. An example would be a background that gives a feature, one with no hard mechanical benefit, being ignored or made useless by a DM. This could be attributed to a rules shortfall, a balance issue per say. But in reality this is a DM issue, one where the severity varies by player expectation. In this case we have a spell with a open ended spell description. If that spell causes a prolonged rules debate, is that an issue with the spell? Or is that a DM issue as the prior example was? My inclination is that both of these are DM issues. I think hyper-specificity on rules hems in games with good DMing to prop up those with bad. Removing options from players in an ill-fated attempt to "fix" bad DMing. My biggest fear in this hobby is that we "rule" our way out of dungeon masters and into a video game, and sadly this is a small step in that direction. [/QUOTE]

Verification