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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ydars" data-source="post: 4435291" data-attributes="member: 62992">I have been roleplaying since the early 1980s but had a ten year break from 1990-2000. I DMed in both the 1984-1990 period and the 2000-2008 period and there has been a sea-change in the way players now play RPGs. I think alot of it IS to do with money; in the 1980s very few of my players owned any rules unless they also happened to be DMs. People forget how poor the average teenager was back then; at least I and all my friends were. Now almost all my players have PHBs and many "buy into" the rules in a way that was unusual when I first gamed. Indeed "power-gaming" and "min-maxing" were very dirty words back in the day but now 3.5E subtly encourages this because there are so many ways to buff your character and this is actually required at higher levels to keep up with the power curve. I think the marketing has changed to try and aim products at players and not just DMs and this has resulted in shift of DM vs player "power" and a consequent change in attitude. It is a very subtle, but entirely deliberate message in the PHB and many splat books because every player who owns the rules is a potential DM and more DMs means gaming groups last longer and proliferate and also results in many more sales. So in answer to the OP; the reason 3.5E is hard to DM sometimes is because the players are MUCH more educated about the rules now.</blockquote>