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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5697995" data-attributes="member: 4937">Your poll is too biased for me to answer.House rules are the opposite of DM fiat.  In fact, going by the RAW frequently will require more DM fiat than producing a codified set of house rules because inevitably situations will arise in which the RAW is vague or can be interpretted differently by two different people (or by the same person on two different occassions!).  The house ruler typically will explicitly state what the rule is in those cases and stick with it, often before they come up in play, thereby eshewing DM fiat.Generally speaking, most people don't consider selecting the system or even which optional rules of that system to worth speaking about as 'DM fiat'.  Rather, while no system is entirely free of DM fiat, its generally only when its clear that the outcome of a proposition depends unpredictably on DM fait rather than upon known rules that we speak of DM fiat.  DM fiat is particularly spoken about when we are discussing the DM's role as arbitrator, and not that of the DMs role of game planner. Moreover, most people use terms like 'using RAW' and 'using splatbooks' and 'house rules'.   For example, and DM may (rightly IMO) feel that they are playing RAW and selecting and using splatbooks to include in the campaign.  A stack of books is still RAW even if some of them are third party.  RAW does not mean 'core only' or SRD only.  'House rules' on the other hand may very from the equivalent to a home brewed splatbook to explicitly over turning the RAW.I suspect that a 500 page rulebook will not in fact cover every situation, and in fact will only cover a very tiny number of situations.  It will only appear to cover a large percentage of the situations encountered, if and only if the players of the game treat the rules as a description of the limits of what they are able to accomplish and never offer a proposition not covered by the rules.  This rules bias in the player proposition, that is, the player feels that whatever is not permitted by the rules is prohibited generally lies at the root of the sense that the RAW is situation spanning in even a loose sense.  And typically, what it results in is not player empowerment, but player disempowerment in as much as the DM is effectively prohibiting everything not covered by the rules.  It's the RPG as chess, with a limited set of allowed moves that the player can propose in any circumstance, and anything not one of those rules has either no effect on the game or is met with 'No'.</blockquote>

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