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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Remathilis" data-source="post: 5410417" data-attributes="member: 7635">I think the first thing to do is deferenciate what your son did from what you do as a form of "playing".Your son was playing "lets pretend" with action figures. I used to do that when I was a kid. I did it with Star Wars, Transformers, GI Joe, Ninja Turtles, etc. I did it with myself and with friends. He created little scenarios using the "figures" and the "playset" to create a narrative. There was no need for rules, since the decision making point was whatever he wanted. If the fighter could hurl lightning bolts, if the mage came back from the dead, or if the sahuagin baron was going to win, it was up to him. We do something a bit more complicated. We play a role-playing GAME. Key word. As a game, we create rules to foster fair play, as we would in football, Monopoly, or Super Mario Bros. We play within those rules for fairness. What sets D&D apart from the latter is that it incorporates elements of "lets pretend" in it, but at the end of the day is really no different than any other board game when it comes to rules.(A good analogy: Give your son a board game with cool parts, like say Fireball Island. He could play the game "all by himself" without rolling the dice to see what his movement is and creating names and personalities for the playing pieces. But he's no more playing that game than he was playing D&D in your post).Now, the meat of your post is whether Rules get in the way of our "Lets Pretend." On the surface, that is the point. Its so the fighter can't shoot lightning bolts or the mage auto-resurrect because the player "pretends to". We also create a resolution mechanic to decide when things work and don't. But beyond those basics, I think is where the question lies. So to compare your son's playing with the DTs and DDMs to your D&D game is kinda an unfair comparison. We can (and do) argue often about how much is too much when it comes to rule-density, but unless your willing to toss the rule books and pull out the Star Wars figures (including Death Star playset), you're never going to achieve the simple freedom of what your son does.Cheer up though, lots of future gamers get their start doing that. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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