Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="steeldragons" data-source="post: 5744691" data-attributes="member: 92511">Call me Goldilocks.I don't want my rules too hot (so loose/undefined that I don't have some point of reference to look up for a particular situation, if I need one) or too cold (so rigid that my players feel "jilted" if I can change anything). I want rules that are juuust right.To the above quote, I would say the latter. Adjudication IS the rule of/for the DM. It is what the DM is there for. Whether a particular DM makes that Path A or Path B is a matter of personal preference and playstyle...hopefully with the intent to do whatever makes the most fun for the table. Which letter Plan it may be, it is still (as I've seen it called here often) "Rule 0".If a DM just created a world or storyline or threw a pre-made adventure on the table and said "Go!" to the players...to follow whatever the rule books say...there really is no need  for a DM.  Do what the books say. Read the text. Roll the dice. Move your pieces X places. You [the players] "win" or you "lose."That, to my mind, is not an RPG. A war game, perhaps. A boardgame, certainly. A videogame, sure. Not an RP game.It goes back to the dawning of Dungeons & Dragons. From Moldvay's quote that "Dungeons and Dragons doesn't have rules, just rule suggestions" to Gary Gygax's assertions in several texts (though a particular reference doesn't come to mind...I'm pretty sure it's somewhere in the 1e DMG at least once) that the role of the DM is to adjudicate and use the rules as they see fit and necessary, again, to create a FUN gaming experience for the players (and themselves). Did this leave the door open for DMs to "take advantage"? Absolutely. Did it leave room for even the "best" DMs with the best intentions to make a "bad/unfun" ruling? Of course it did. We are humans playing this game, after all. You live, you play, you learn.But the DM was never once told "These are the rules. You cannot change this! If you do, you're doing it wrong!"The beginning adventures of the genre were FILLED with traps, spell effects, situations and scenarios that did not follow (or simply did not have) rules in the book or, at least, did not follow the rules as set down for players to use. They were made up, for that particular instance, to generate a creative/deadly/interesting/challenging scenario for the game. But you couldn't look into the rule books to find out "How do I go about creating a big devil face that will utterly destroy beyond redemption anything that passes through it?" "Well it's not in here, so guess I can't do it." OR "AH! There is it. Page 254." No.It wasn't in the rules. It simply wasn't necessary. D&D was, again as stated many places in the original texts, a game of creativity and imagination. Not a game of stats and figures and immobile rules...It is a game of Fantasy Role-Playing...or, at least, it was. Can you RP with lots of rules that are unalterable? Sure. I guess you can. But did/should you have to? If it didn't make things fun for your table, absolutely not!  The DM has/is given by their very position a responsibility (to themselves and their players) to utilize the rules...as makes sense...enough to maintain the structure of the game...Where "game"=whatever it has to to be FUN for the table...and to alter the rules, as necessary, for the same end.So...there's my thoughts on that. If you'll excuse me, I'm going to enjoy my "just right" porridge now. <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=":)" />--Steel "Goldi" Dragons</blockquote>

Verification