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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celtavian" data-source="post: 6629526" data-attributes="member: 5834">Dave Dash has stated he is what is known as a "rules lawyer." No other type of player believes in "RAW mastery."  That is a term that goes with a different play-style where the group agrees to abide by the letter of the rules. I don't enjoy it. I don't think it accomplishes what Dave thinks it accomplishes in terms of player accomplishments. It changes how the DM goes about doing things to prevent easy defeat of his encounters. Even in a 3E style system, a DM can create enemies using the rules to defeat nearly every strategy including writing up unique abilities for individual monsters. I did this all the time to deal with RAW. Even in a 3E style system, the DM has the capacity to create RAW as long as he clearly defines it when creating creatures. Pathfinder did not discourage creativity such as monster or magic item creation, it just required that you spell it out in advance. I surprised players all the time with made up abilities that ensured the players would be challenged. Even in 3E the DM controls what the players can accomplish. I don't understand the thinking that playing by RAW somehow allows a player to "own" their accomplishments. I do understand the psychology of players that go off "feel" rather than logic. To Dave "RAW mastery" gives him the feeling of mastering the game and having greater control over the game world, even if logically he has no more control than the DM allows. The DM can create the same situations Dave is afraid of by writing up unique monsters or designing enemy NPCs with RAW abilities that defeat what the players can do thus exerting control over the world.That's why DM trust is far more important than the rules or game system. A DM can always screw the players over. A DM can always create an environment where the players have no agency. The rule system changes absolutely nothing. The real limit on DM power in any system is not the rules, but the agency of the people playing the characters. They can leave or create an unpleasant environment for the DM in other ways. That keeps most DMs from acting in a fashion that ruins the play experience. I can only surmise Dave Dash has had some very unpleasant experiences with DMs that play TotM. I can understand some of his apprehension as I don't like playing pure TotM. I like using battle mats, minis, or graph paper. We played 1E with graph paper. I like some consistent physical representation of the game world. That being said I'm far more concerned with a quality play experience than RAW or TotM. The best DMs are the ones that can keep up the illusion that your player is having an effect on the world in some real way regardless of how they go about it.</blockquote>

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