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Message: <blockquote data-quote="boredgremlin" data-source="post: 2245353" data-attributes="member: 31646">Wow i have been reading this thread for like an hour and i am still not done. Anyway i felt the need to weigh in before finishing. I agree with both storm raven (in some ways) and with celebrim (in some ways). They both took thier viewpoint to the extreme in this debate though, somehow i doudt either one of them actually plays the way it might look like they do.      Anyway for me its like this.  I have DMed for about 9 years now, AD&D, 3.0,3.5, gurps, starwars, spycraft and one totally homebrewed game that ran for 2 campaigns.   I just started a new heavily house ruled 3.5 game. We use the grim and gritty rules variant and quite a few of my own variants and house rules as well. Right off the bat i told my players that this game is a mix of a several systems and my own ideas. I printed out the grim and gritties variant and gave it to them. Altered to reflect some of my changes. And i changed the weapon and armor table on excel, printed that out and gave it to them when they were buying thier gear in the first session. It stays on the game table the whole time. Some skills were changed and new ones added. I havent finished writing those up the way i want to yet but i explained most of the changes. Spell casters can allways sense magic. Arcane casters can sense the basic location of spells, thier school and relative strength. Divine casters can sense energies like light/dark/holy/demonic magic and emotional resonances (sadness, rage, loss, joy etc). Psychics can sense powerfull emotional resonances and even see visions of what caused them sometimes. All totally non core, but i like the feel. Warriors can get a general idea of how good a martial opponent is (rookie, experianced, veteran, master etc).     All other things are basically unknown to them. 1) Feats// Feats are specail skills resulting from specialized practice. Players dont know exactly how they work until they take them. Then i explain the feat, let them edit it some and maybe swap it out if they dont like it. But that does not mean they know how it works for other PC's or NPC's. One mans endurance isnt necesarily another mans endurance. As long as the power is balanced out thats why all that matters. 2) combat//  Work like spycraft. 2 actions. move and attack, move and move. attack and attack ect. I explain this in the start but all the ramifications usually dont become clear until a few battles into the game. 3) totally different masterwork system. Too much to go into here but the players get a handout of options. 4) magic// players dont know jack. Even wizards have no clue how specific spells are gonna work for someone else. In my game magic is highly personalized, each wizards spells are slightly different even if they have the same name. This means i let my players tinker with thier spells some but so can the enemies.     The wizard wouldnt know how the others guys blink would work and so has no reasonable expectation of anything in particular happening. And has no right at all to throw any spell description at me. Thats like a player thinking he has a pretty good chance to hit an orc and then whining when that orc turns out to have a ring of protection and an 18 DEX. So you expected something to happen? So what. Sometimes **** doesnt work out the way we think it will, deal and move on. 5) Logic trumps all//  If something makes sense in the real world then it makes sense in game and it works. I like heavy reality in my fantasy. The players know that and they know that waiving a book at me does nothing for them. But a logical argument as to why it should work might get me to change my mind. 6) nothing is more important then a good story// But we all share in that story. I am happy to bend rules, make up new ones, change interpretions and fudge dice rolls to move the story forward. I tell the players that too.    So in closing they know the hard and fast rules of basic combat. Eg thier attack bonus is this #a+#b+#c+ random #'s for different situations (elevation, flanking, visibility etc). They know what the weapons damage is what the armors soak is, everytime.    However they do not know how specail situations will work. Like charging around a corner, down a hill, missile weapons in the rain or dark etc. This stuff is too situational to have any hard and fast rules. The RAW has a few, but to be honest i feel about half the rules in the raw are either stupid, unrealistic or just dont blend together well.      Here we go then, i sort of aggree with both styles? Lol so am i "stalinist dictator DM", a "rules lawyer DM" or anything else offensive you guys can think up?</blockquote>

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