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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 2236053" data-attributes="member: 4937">No, your not.  You're operating on what you think I've presented, but you aren't listening.  You keep thinking you are making strong objections, but really you are just setting fire to scare crows.  In brief, because I've no desire for a flame war.  Content and rules are not completely equatable.  The relative power levels of the various ages of middle earth have little real effect on themselves and are only important if you want to run a coherent campaign over lapping all three, and in any event that debate has nothing really to do with my point.   I still don't need to explain to you the Ravenloft system in order to for you to play the game, so please don't pretend that I do.   We both reasonably expect that I would use those rules and not just discard them when it suits me, so obviously you're argument is with someone elses opinion and not with mine.  I don't assume people will understand anything.  I've played with too many new players that not only have never played an RPG, but have never read a fantasy novel.   The basic gist of your argument seems to be that the more expansively I explain the setting, the clearer that I'm being.  What an amazing observation you've made.  It seems to me that you are arguing that anything outside the SRD or not published by TSR isn't D&D.  Ok, fine.  So I'm playing D20 with alot of D&D related material available under the OGL.  Happier? What's your point?  This yet another of your amazing observations.  I'm wondering who you are disagreeing with.  Whoever this guy is I guess.   I note that changing the system so as to avoid routinely altering the rules is precisely what I'm advocating that DM's have the right to do.I'm sorry you've had some bad experiences with Storyteller's.  I might well have been sympathetic with 'Storyteller games are deadly pretentious, no matter who is narrating them', but on 'dull' you lost me.  Yeah, me too.  I agree.  Please move past that point.I suppose so.   But I woudl like to point out that this statement doesn't contridict the previous one.   Rules are both there for a reason and they are a hinderance.Errr..  again you lose me.   Fudge, Amber, LARP, heck 'let's pretend'... you can do alot of role-playing without anything like a rules system.You know, some might say that the person who says role playing isn't role playing unless its played his way is being hyper-pretentious.   Some might say that the person who claims that the role playing that lots of people do isn't role playing - even though it meets the dictionary definition of role playing - because he doesn't like that sort of role-play is being hyper pretentious.   Some might claim that the person denouncing whole role playing communities for not role playing in his manner as pretentious, is being a little pretentious.   All I'm claiming though is that the person that thinks role playing is defined by rules and not by well, role playing might not know what role playing is - whatever he may know about games.  And furthermore, I'm claiming that RPG's are distinct from other sorts of games in that the size of thier rules sets is inifinite, because no RPG can have rules expressedly for every possible situation and that if you approach the game backwards 'game' first, role playing second, that you are likely to see the whole of the game as what is contained within the pages of the rules.  And when you sit down to the table, you are probably thinking in terms of what the rules let you do and not being your character.  You may well enjoy that, and you are free to and I've even enjoy that on occassion, but my personal preference is not for that.   The old adage goes that a role player can take off his RP hat and put on his gamer hat, but generally speaking the gamer has a harder time putting on the RP hat.   Maybe you can, but I find in general that the adage is true.UPDATE: I just thought of a question.  I've played eight hour sessions of 1st edition D&D in which no dice where thrown and no rules where referenced.   What role did the rules system actually have in the game?  Would it have really mattered what the rules system was?  Was I actually playing D&D?  Was I actually playing a role playing game?</blockquote>

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