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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7247086" data-attributes="member: 996">Initially, I suppose, 2e, with the bizzare-sounding-at-the-time "Player's Option" series.  ("What!?!  Players don't have Options!  DMs have Options!  what cheek! what unabashed insolence!")... but, really, with 3e and the tremendous increase in such options, and the generally more consistent (there was a lot of room to be more consistent!) design and more open presentation of the rules.  AD&D had had a polite 'DM's eyes only' fiction going with much of the rules, 1e even had different rules in the DMG than in the PH, so the players were litterally learning and making decisions based on the wrong rules.  3e put almost all the character building rules ('cept magic items & wealth/level) and combat rules right in the PH.  4e finished the job.  5e has returned to DM Empowerment, but, catering as it does to a very experienced fan base, makes no pretense of keeping the rules secret, instead the rules, at their most basic core, rely on continuous DM rulings. Can't say I ever noticed that.  Yes, 3e was very player-focused in terms of the sheer resources marketed to them (it had worked for 2e for a while, and Battletech and WoD had been very successful with publishing vast quantities of 'splatbooks'), and there was the RAW-uber-alles zietgiest that built up around that.  Players were able to uncover lavish rewards for system mastery and were unwilling to lose them to an off-hand DM ruling.  But that only made running 3.x that much more of a challenge, and a good (indeed excellent) DM that much more needful.  I suppose that 'protected' you from an inexperienced DM, as they'd either give up in short order, and painfully gain the needed experience... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />In a way, though, 3.x was good for the style of adversarial DMing (not that that's necessarily 'bad' or 'jerk,' if everyone on board with it).  The DM also had a lot of build tools to use with his monsters - and could use all the players' toys with his NPCs - so the DM sets some parameters for character creation and pegs monster CR and NPC levels to that, and you have a nominally 'fair' contest.  By the same token it was ideal for PvP. Certainly.</blockquote>

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