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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 5121578" data-attributes="member: 18280">How easy a game is to "wing" is a function of how much material the GM must remember and mentally juggle without prep work.  When winging 1e, 2e, or 3e, I would keep a list of predetermined statistics for various monsters.  Obviously, all gaming systems have some creatures that are easier or harder to run well, and this is directly dependent on the number of options the creature has on a round-to-round basis.  The inclusion of feats makes 3e monsters harder to play well, especially at higher levels, essentially making all monsters slightly more difficult to run than they were in older systems.Wealth by Level guidelines, where they exist, factor into the difficulty of placing "winged" treasures.  In all systems, it is a wise GM who minimizes "winged" treasures (so that he can consider the impact before placing better items), but if the system is based around the idea that characters have X treasure minimum, too much stingy winging can leave them underpowered, and too generous winging can leave them overpowered.Complex rules can also make winging it difficult; the more the GM must remember rules-wise, the harder it is to wing.  How difficult is it to open that door?  To pick that lock?  The less you have to memorize to set those sorts of values, the easier a system is to wing.The complexity of options that are the same in a pre-planned or a winged scenario (clerics turning undead, for example) have nothing to do with how hard winging it is; only with how difficult the system is to run whether prepped or not.Of course, the GM is well within his rights in any system to simply "make it up".  But doing so has, again, little to do with how difficult it is to "wing it" within any given system.  That just demonstrates that it is easier to ignore the system when winging it, and for some systems you will ignore the rules more often than with others.RCEDIT:  BTW, in 1e, the saving throws of a character could be marked on his character sheet -- there was a place for this -- as well as his attack matrix.  The DM screen had both the attack matrixes and saving throws printed on it for ease of reference.  I never knew anyone who found this difficult at all when playing earlier editions of D&D.</blockquote>

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