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D&D as a Curated, DIY Game or "By the Book": Examining DM and Player Agency, and the DM as Game Designer
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<blockquote data-quote="Ancalagon" data-source="post: 8150112" data-attributes="member: 23"><p>I had an answer for this thread based on the title, not the body of the OP. But I'll post it anyway.</p><p></p><p>I thought we were talking about rules vs ruling. The thing with any game, is that rules have to be <strong>remembered</strong>. You want to do X. It doesn't matter what X is - are you trying to hit a goblin? Are you trying to travel to the past in an alternate material plane where you will elevate cows into a race of intelligent, warlike beings that will worship you as their creator, so you can come back to the present and Gate in an army of minotaur fanatics? What matters is "is there a rule for X, what is the rule, if there is no rule what ruling shall I (the GM) make?"</p><p></p><p>These examples of X are a bit ridiculous. Of course everyone knows how to do an attack roll vs the goblin, and of course there is no rule for my insta army plan. But there are going to be a lot of cases where there is a rule, you remember there is a rule, but you don't remember the details of the rule (grappling anyone?). This is especially true if you have played several editions of D&D. It's a lot easier to remember that a rule exist than remembering the rule!</p><p></p><p>So you have to look it up... and that slows down the game! So what do you do? stop and look up the rule or... make a ruling? And what I find is that 5e is a system that works well with rulings. "You want to jump over the guard and stab him in the back? Uh... this is pretty challenging (GM mentally sets the DC at 20) but he is drunk so I'll give you advantage - do an acrobatics check!" Player goes "yeeeaaah!!!" and the game moves on.</p><p></p><p>In other systems you could have issues like "do I get +1 because I have higher grounds?" or "you need a feat to do that".... but not in 5e <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ancalagon, post: 8150112, member: 23"] I had an answer for this thread based on the title, not the body of the OP. But I'll post it anyway. I thought we were talking about rules vs ruling. The thing with any game, is that rules have to be [B]remembered[/B]. You want to do X. It doesn't matter what X is - are you trying to hit a goblin? Are you trying to travel to the past in an alternate material plane where you will elevate cows into a race of intelligent, warlike beings that will worship you as their creator, so you can come back to the present and Gate in an army of minotaur fanatics? What matters is "is there a rule for X, what is the rule, if there is no rule what ruling shall I (the GM) make?" These examples of X are a bit ridiculous. Of course everyone knows how to do an attack roll vs the goblin, and of course there is no rule for my insta army plan. But there are going to be a lot of cases where there is a rule, you remember there is a rule, but you don't remember the details of the rule (grappling anyone?). This is especially true if you have played several editions of D&D. It's a lot easier to remember that a rule exist than remembering the rule! So you have to look it up... and that slows down the game! So what do you do? stop and look up the rule or... make a ruling? And what I find is that 5e is a system that works well with rulings. "You want to jump over the guard and stab him in the back? Uh... this is pretty challenging (GM mentally sets the DC at 20) but he is drunk so I'll give you advantage - do an acrobatics check!" Player goes "yeeeaaah!!!" and the game moves on. In other systems you could have issues like "do I get +1 because I have higher grounds?" or "you need a feat to do that".... but not in 5e :) [/QUOTE]
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