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<blockquote data-quote="Man in the Funny Hat" data-source="post: 7614612" data-attributes="member: 32740">Another anecdote just occurred to me that may also help explain my attitude about, &quot;everybody learns the rules.&quot;&nbsp; The guy who actually introduced me to D&amp;D back in '75 was someone who definitely read rules.&nbsp; Any game that he played he KNEW the rules.&nbsp; D&amp;D was no exception.&nbsp; It probably is no surprise that one of the big reasons he was so keen to master the rules of any game was to simply use them against other players.&nbsp; Also no surprise then that he was the DM in the group, and he understood &quot;gotcha&quot; DM'ing - which is how I would describe the style of gameplay that Gygax understood and more or less wrote into his rules even into 1E:As DM your position is to take advantage of the fact that players don't know what you know - about monsters, spells, information about the game world, even PLAYER character classes that players actually weren't yet familiar with.Now, I personally state quite often that nobody plays the game that way anymore and &quot;gotcha&quot; gaming just doesn't fly when players invest so much time and effort into creating and developing their characters.&nbsp; It just isn't much fun or very sociable to hinge enjoyable gameplay on misleading other participants into mistakes whose consequences you can gleefully blow out of proportion, and then revel in their misery and disappointment.&nbsp; Unless you're into that sort of thing...&nbsp; But as much as approaches to RPG gameplay have evolved, for D&amp;D there IS still a certain element built into the game of, &quot;Players are responsible for ensuring the safety and survival of their characters, NOT the DM.&nbsp; Characters have to be reasoned, cautious, knowledgeable, and NOT take things for granted.&quot;&nbsp; You don't have to play an assassin PC to understand that it is in your best interests as a player to know what an assassin character can do and how they do it.&nbsp; At some point players who don't expand their working knowledge of all aspects of the game will be responsible for their own characters suffering because of that lack of knowledge.D&amp;D isn't entirely alone in retaining that element.&nbsp; So, at least part of that attitude of mine was handed down from the way the original RPG was written and intended to be played and the guy who used ME as his guinea pig as we both learned together what D&amp;D, or any RPG, really was, how it was originally intended to be played, and how it actually could and should be played.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Man in the Funny Hat, post: 7614612, member: 32740"] Another anecdote just occurred to me that may also help explain my attitude about, "everybody learns the rules." The guy who actually introduced me to D&D back in '75 was someone who definitely read rules. Any game that he played he KNEW the rules. D&D was no exception. It probably is no surprise that one of the big reasons he was so keen to master the rules of any game was to simply use them against other players. Also no surprise then that he was the DM in the group, and he understood "gotcha" DM'ing - which is how I would describe the style of gameplay that Gygax understood and more or less wrote into his rules even into 1E: As DM your position is to take advantage of the fact that players [I]don't[/I] know what you know - about monsters, spells, information about the game world, even PLAYER character classes that players actually weren't yet familiar with. Now, I personally state quite often that nobody plays the game that way anymore and "gotcha" gaming just doesn't fly when players invest so much time and effort into creating and developing their characters. It just isn't much fun or very sociable to hinge enjoyable gameplay on misleading other participants into mistakes whose consequences you can gleefully blow out of proportion, and then revel in their misery and disappointment. Unless you're into that sort of thing... But as much as approaches to RPG gameplay have evolved, for D&D there IS still a certain element built into the game of, "[I]Players[/I] are responsible for ensuring the safety and survival of their characters, NOT the DM. [U]Characters[/U] have to be reasoned, cautious, knowledgeable, and NOT take things for granted." You don't have to play an assassin PC to understand that it is in your best interests as a [I]player[/I] to know what an assassin character can do and how they do it. At some point players who don't expand their working knowledge of all aspects of the game will be responsible for their own characters suffering because of that lack of knowledge. D&D isn't entirely alone in retaining that element. So, at least part of that attitude of mine was handed down from the way the original RPG was written and intended to be played and the guy who used ME as his guinea pig as we both learned together what D&D, or any RPG, really was, how it was originally intended to be played, and how it actually [I]could[/I] and [I]should[/I] be played. [/QUOTE]

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