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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bedrockgames" data-source="post: 8999846" data-attributes="member: 85555">I find rulings to be the most flexible way to play RPGs for me personally. I am sure others find them not so, or feel it puts too much control in GM hands (and therefore it is very one sided flexibility). I don't think this is something that necessarily has an objective answer. It partly depends on your personality and what you want a system to do for you. If it is just 'rulings over rules in spirit' it can be just like any other game. Though some types of rules will interfere with rulings over rules, so that will impact things. If the game is designed with rulings over rules in mind, as a lot of OSR games are, as some of my own games are (to be clear not d20 or OSR systems), then you are asking the GM to make rulings. I don't think that means they are designing a system from the ground up (you aren't expecting them to take notes and apply the same exact rulings over time----though you might expect certain well received rulings will naturally linger in a group). Again this comes down to personality. I like taking rules in a system and applying them in creative ways to fit what the players are trying to do. Some people feel that interferes with the player's ability to predict the probability of their actions, leads to inconsistent rulings, and, as you point out, leads to the GM having to do some design work. I would quibble with the latter, but I do see part of the appeal of GMing is liking how mechanics can be adapted on the fly. I would argue 3E didn't. In large part because it was being consistent and systematic. At the very least, the culture of play around 3E was not friendly to a rulings over rules approach. I found in most 3E groups I played in and GM'd for, a GM either changing rules to fit a situation or coming up with new ones, was frowned upon (and the expectation was to find the rule that fit and apply it, even if a particular corner case made less sense). But I do think most editions of D&D strive for this. Some do it better than others (I think the simpler versions work best, like B/X, and personally I like using 2E that way because that was the edition I started GMing on and it is very easy for me to hack the ins and outs of the system). I can't speak much on 5E except that I think it appeared to be a compromise to being new and older players back to system. It seems to have worked. But I don't know what its overarching design philosophy is (I know I saw a lot of things that instantly made sense to me as a more old school minded player in a lot of their design discussions)</blockquote>

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