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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7247631" data-attributes="member: 4937">"So, one thing I love about 5e is that goes back to the notion of rulings, not rules."I don't think that there is much of a difference between the two, so when ever anyone brings this up like there is... I have to exercise tolerance.The real problem with rulings is that they stop the game even harder than having to look up the answer in the book; because, if anyone actually cares about the answer enough realize there is a question and multiple answers, then they'll stop and work out and maybe discuss all these factors before picking an answer.   But the moment that they do, they've created a rule.It's easy to see why if you think about it.  Imagine a hypothetical table with inexperienced players that are just starting to game and have not yet read the rules.  All they have is propositions and for each proposition they can see that the DM is applying some process to determine the outcome.   They have no real way of knowing whether that process came from a book or was invented on the spur of the moment, and as such every proposition that they make creates the same expectations regardless of whether it was a 'ruling' or a 'rule'.   And since both have the same process of play from the perspective of these players, and both engender the same expectations regarding the process of play and the social contract, there isn't much in the way to distinguish a rule from a ruling once the ruling actually becomes a part of play.   Any "DM empowerment", if that is what it is, last only until the ruling is made, at which point he's just as bound - or not bound - by it as he is any other rule.Fundamentally, what you are actually talking about is an attitude - the ability to see that the game is always larger than the rules and never can be and never is actually constrained by them.  That attitude has nothing to do with "rulings and not rules".   It has to do with realizing that the game actually needs a GM and can't be run by the rules.   The rules exist as an aid to play - a very useful aid, especially if they are well thought out rules - but ultimately the GM is always responsible for the resolution part of the propostion-resolution-outcome cycle.  It's good to notice that rulings require a degree of trust, but so do rules.   If the rules demand resolutions and outcomes that are clearly nonsense, you can't expect players to just go along with it just because the rules say so.   Your players are going to walk away form the table if you enforce unfair poorly thought out rules, regardless of whether someone wrote them down or not.   Pointing at a rulebook and saying that the rules demand this is no defense.PS: Common sense is just things that everyone believes, and which everyone is taught, which the majority of people have never reflected on our questioned.</blockquote>

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