NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 8150067" data-attributes="member: 87792">Like most things it's a balance. The clearer and more consistent the world the better the players can interact with it. The more rulings the more you can make things your own. When you say "Rulings not rules" you are making the quite explicit statement that you don't care about any such balance - and that everything is DM fiat. Roleplaying requires being able to visualise yourself as being in a given world. Knowing what the rules of that world are and the likely outcomes of your actions make it far, far easier to roleplay. A "Rulings not rules" - in other words an attitude that the players can't actually know about the setting other than through what the DM condescends to drip-feed them and setting constants might not be is actively inimical to roleplaying.So is being utterly rulebound and trying to use the rules as a physics mode. I'm not saying "Rules not rulings" is better than "Rulings not rules". I'm saying if you want to play freeform go and play freeform and discard all the advantages that rules give you and stop weighing people down with rulebooks. Or if you want rules light go rules light (and leave any version of D&D with a PHB at home).First, I'd say that if player expectations have changed then so has dungeon mastering. A big part of the role of the dungeon master is table dynamics.Second it depends what you mean by "Dungeon mastering". I don't run 4e the way I run Rules Cyclopaedia D&D (I refer to RC as "Dungeons" D&D and 4e as "Dragons" D&D with other editions being in many ways somewhere in between, although oddly enough it's at these two extremes where skill is most important the way I run it). And I certainly don't run either the way I run Apocalypse World; the role of the MC is very different.Possibly, although I've a wide range of preferences.Are you thinking Fate or Fudge? Fate 1e was published in 2003; floppies had almost disappeared even by then. Fudge (from which it borrowed the dice and the ranges) was developed on Usenet and published in the early 90s and will have been when the ranges and the ladder was talked about. The big tech in Fate isn't the Fudge dice and ladder, it's the aspects.I don't find Dungeon World anywhere near as good as its Apocalypse World progenitor, so if you liked Dungeon World I'd recommend giving it a look (although Vincent Baker's prose can be overwrought). And the way I run 4e it's faster and looser than any other version of D&D that either has a DMG or uses a battlemap. I don't honestly think we're as far apart as you think in many ways. I just consider the "Rulings not rules" mantra to be toxic and at best a response to poor game design where the rules are not fit for purpose - whether because the game is rulebound or the rules themselves are broken.</blockquote>

Verification