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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4035219" data-attributes="member: 4937">I tend to agree with your point, but think that it works the other way as well to an extent you aren't really considering.  It is certainly true that a ruleset tends to restrict the imagination, to the extent that the players become blind to anything not covered by the rules.  And it is certainly true that you should struggle to avoid that because adherence to the rules themselves isn't the most important thing.But the fact is that it tends to happen that way because rules are also empowering and imagination inspiring.  If you have players that know the rules system, and know that the rules system doesn't cover grappling (or covers it in a way that discourages you from doing it), then you will tend not to have any grappling because the players won't offer that as a proposition.  It doesn't matter how open the DM is to the prospect of players doing something not covered by the rules, if the players never offer up the proposition then it never becomes a part of the story.  Effectively, the lack of detailed (or sufficient) rules has wrote the event write out of possibility.  I know this from experience.  In 1st edition there was a grappling system.  It's just that none of the (quite experienced) players really knew it.  It wasn't until NPC's started using it that players realized that I would accept 'I grapple X' as a valid proposition or even considered that 'I grapple X' was something that could happen.   In fact, it wasn't even the first time that the NPC's did that the idea 'clicked', because the first couple of times the players just assumed that whatever was happening only applied to NPC's.  I'd go further.  If some sort of grappling system hadn't existed, it might have been a very long time before I thought of it as a valid proposition that NPC's could do.  And even when I did think of it, it might be quite a long time before I realized that it wasn't something special to a particular NPC or class of NPC's - something that they did with special rules that only applied to them - rather than something that applied, generally, universally, 'scientifically' if you will, to the whole game universe.To this extent, even bad rules for something are better than no rules at all - especially if no one at the table is gifted as a rulesmith.  (And I tend to think that gifted 'pull rules out of the air' rulesmiths are pretty rare.)I personally feel that everything that you want to happen in a game world needs some sort of rules set, otherwise the tendency is for it not happen.  For example, I think that in fantasy worlds, young apprentices ought to be able to attempt to cast spells well beyond thier ability - and often then have 'bad things' (tm) happen.  It's a staple of fantasy literature.  But if the rules say you can't, or are silent on the matter, then it just won't happen.  You'll be completely blind to the possibility in the game.  When is the last time your 3rd level wizard tried to cast a 5th level spell, and what's the likelihood that - outside of this current context where I'm bring it up - that anything interesting one way or the other would have happened even if some new player 'that didn't know any better' made the proposition?</blockquote>

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