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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 1340789" data-attributes="member: 172">Two notes on this thread.1 - Generally, a lot of the dispute here seems to be that of "too many rules" or "not enough imagination in the rules."The latter has me going "huh", but more generally, I think this dispute revolves around the nature of the "rules power balance" between GM and player.Of RPGs, d20/D&D tends to be on the "lots of power in the player's hand" end of the spectrum. Play is more driven as a result of the player's actions as translated by the rules than strictly a GM narration or interperetation.Now, what the debate comes down to is really: do you like the "player empowered" approach to play, or do you not. Personally, I prefer it. To me, if I wanted heavy GM control, I'd be better off writing a novel. Gaming creates a different experience than literature to me and it does not disappoint me that it is so. I feel that I have more than enough control at the situation level so I don't feel I need a lot of extra control at the resolution level. Further, if I were a PC in such a game, I feel as if extra GM control at that level robs me of some "control."Further, I think that offloading some decision making to the rules adds consistency and gives the players more of a feel of verisimilitude in teh game world, and gives me time to worry about plot and NPCs instead of hemming and hawing on how to run something.But these are just my feelings. If your feelings are different, it just means that d20 might not be the best system for you, not that d20 is necessarily "wrong" for coming at it from this angle.2 - re: creation time. Yes, if you feel the need to obsessively follow the letter of the rules in real time, you will find yourself severely limited in game. But IMO/E, you don't really have to do that. Though some monster and character rules are rather exacting, they are built around some general principles that are very easily winged. Most important of these are:- Commoners have average scores of 10-11 (+0 modifiers), experts will have correspondingly better modifiers in their better honed stats (I usually assume +2, but +1 to +3 is good.)- All characters and creatures can have at best skill ranks = level/HD + 3 in a given skills.- Number of feats are fairly predictable at 1 + 1/3 levels.With that, it's very easy for me to wing monsters and characters and end up pretty close to the mark; if an exact accounting is needed later, I can pretty easily back the figures in. If there are some innacuracies, it's not usually very significant, considering that players are never directly exposed to the actual numbers, they will rarely notice if you are +/- 1-3 points off on some modifier, or if your NPC ends up a level higher or lower than anticipated.IOW, don't sweat the small stuff, but do try to get in the ballpark. <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=";)" /></blockquote>

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