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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aldarc" data-source="post: 9007812" data-attributes="member: 5142">Point of Discussion: We've established in the prior discussion in this thread that this isn't the case, whether we subscribe to Rule 0 or not. Game rules can always be removed or altered. If you also believe that the GM has no constraints, that also extends to their ability to remove game rules. The game may suffer as a result of those changes, but that's a different matter than the rote point of whether the rules can be changed.You know that you are reading a book and watching a TV show. You have not lost your sense of being a meatbag. Likewise, you as a meatbag player see and hear your GM make a roll or two as they open the Monster Manual behind the screen while your characters are delving a dungeon. Do you choose to ignore what the GM is doing? Does having an awareness of what the GM could be doing interfere with your immersion? Why or why not?Likewise, even if you know that rolls and moves constrain the GM, would you be able to tell in the case of <a href="https://www.latorra.org/2012/05/15/a-16-hp-dragon/" target="_blank">the 16 HP Dragon</a>? Maybe you would; however, in my own experience, I was too engrossed in the game fiction of similar situations to notice anything other than what my character was doing and what was going on in the surrounding fiction. As the PbtA adage goes, "to do it, do it," and I was too busy "doing it" by engaging myself with the fiction.Why are you not equally concerned when people in this thread state that a lack of controls on the GM is a universal good with no explanation and asserted as truth?B/X (and OSE) provide a fair amount of constraints on the GM as does OSR for that matter. Even if the GM is hypothetically sans contraintes, the GM has some pretty tight expectations for how they should run the game, because B/X is honestly a fairly focused game.The OSR community does acknowledge that nothing technically binds the GM's authority. The OSR community also eschews balanced encounters. On the other hand, the OSR community does value things like "skilled play," which does require the GM to respect and honor when the players' skilled gameplay overcomes their prep. The GM is expected to restrain themselves there and not just streamroll the PCs because the players "ruined" the GM's prepped ideas and encounters. OSR also tries to put in safeguards that constrains the GM's ability to railroad the PCs or to force GM pre-authored story on them: e.g., random tables, non-linear dungeons, wandering monster checks, etc.More condescension.<img class="smilie smilie--emoji" alt="👆" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f446.png" title="Backhand index pointing up    :point_up_2:" data-shortname=":point_up_2:" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" />If you would like, I or others could either tell you more about some of these games or point you in the direction of threads, videos, or articles where these are discussed in greater detail. I can share now that my own experience of going from GMing more traditionally-structured games like D&D or CoC to games like Dungeon World/Stonetop or Blades in the Dark was that it demanded a lot of me as a GM in the moment since you don't necessarily have the same sort of prep to fall back on since you are reacting to the PCs from moment to moment and scenario to scenario.</blockquote>

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