First of all, to everyone in the thread in general, this is a really good thread with so much great stuff going on I can't barge into every discussion (yet). Thanks
@Snarf Zagyg
I think D&D is a game that generally involves DM adjudication throughout the process and/or in most instances, but some more than others. My sense is that what we're talking about is the degree to which individual players are comfortable with that.
I do wonder if some of this has to do with when one cut one's teeth on D&D. As an "80s boomer," I learned D&D in a context in which the rules were very much a toolset and different groups incorporated different elements and ignored a lot else (e.g. encumbrance, treasure types, etc). By the time 2E rolled out, it was a bit more clear and consistent, but still involved a lot of rulings. 3E and 4E weighed more towards codified rules, and this probably reflected a game developed during the video game era in which there are no rulings. So I'm wondering if those who prefer a more heavily rules-over-rulings style are mostly folks who started with 3E/4E and/or grew up playing video games, whereas maybe those more comfortable with rulings-over-rules started before or after 3E/3E, and/or weren't as imprinted with the video game paradigm.
Not saying this is the only possible factor, but maybe one of the key ones.
I come at this with a little different perspective because say 80% of my gaming career I've been asked to be the GM for the table so when you talk about whether I'm comfortable with GM's adjudicating the process of play I come from it from the perspective of being the one doing it.
And I'm also a product of the 80's, a kid GM on a bike, who started playing back in that era when the rules were vague, incomplete, and often narrow and frequently not optimal. And so I do remember what it was like to have to run the game when the toolset for running the game was maddeningly hard to apply and use in a fair and consistent manner and having all the time to search for house rules to make the game better, without necessarily as a teenage DM having a good idea what those would look like. Like other DMs I knew, I added things to the rules because it seemed cool or vaguely addressed some mental problem I had with the rules (even if often as not it addressed it badly and made new problems).
So when I left D&D it was in part with how hard it was to run the game that I wanted to run, not because I had tired of high fantasy or tired of the setting, but because I had tired of fighting the rules set tooth and nail. And when I came back to 3e, it was because I saw in it an elegant version of the rules set I had been struggling to create that was clear and consistent and had a pattern I could apply to cover almost everything that would come up without having to a do a lot of thought in the middle of the game to figure out how to rule on a situation. It's not that everything was perfect, but the framework was so good that I was sure I was going to be able to fix any problems that came up. And while there was more wrong than I realized at the time, the sense that the framework was going to support me proved true.
As a GM, I come at the "Rulings vs. Rules" question much like I come at a published adventure that has an enormous amount of it left out that I then have to create before I can run the adventure successfully. A system that heavily depends on "Rulings vs. Rules" is objectively a bad system in the same way that a "carefully read this, figure out what I've left out that is going to be important in play, then do all the heavy lifting yourself to fix it" adventure module is a bad adventure. During my 3e tenure I did a one shot in 1e out of nostalgia, and I hated it. I had ran 1e AD&D for like 15 years, and going back to it after getting used to the system supporting me rather than fighting me felt like torture. I was running a scene with a flash flood of water that would have been easy and fair when ran in 3e, where the published guidelines for the scene in 1e were extremely tedious, unfair, and failed to cover even the most basic of play propositions (such as "I try to lend my buddy who might drown a helping hand"). I was once again forced to throw out the system and ad hoc something in the middle of play without even a formal system in place that made ad hocing something easy the way skills and saves in 3e do.
Being heavily codified does not in fact make the rules more complicated. In practice, it makes them simpler. And at worst, the process of looking up a good rule to cover a situation is still quicker than the process of making up a good rule, especially when the rules already are pretty good when covering most situations. It's so much easier to not to have to create rulings, but even more so it's so much easier to create rulings if you already have good rules.
As a GM that grew up with 1e, I have no problems with using a ruling or changing a rule if I feel I need to do so. No one has to tell me or enable me or empower me to do that. But doing so is not an advantage to the system.
And I'm like baffled at the idea that there exists any sort of player that would rather most of the time be issued arbitrary rulings with no real expectation when they make a proposition what sort of stakes and risks might be involved or whether or not their character is remotely good at the test that is likely to be called on or even whether their character's abilities will be considered at all in the resolution. I always try to be the GM I would want to have as a player, and I have to think that no matter what era you are from, that's not great.
That's not to say that there aren't differences between players and GMs of different eras, but let's not dismiss player discomfort of rulings over rules as "them youngsters in the yard".
