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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Edena_of_Neith" data-source="post: 4731072" data-attributes="member: 2020">Good morning, Runestar.  Hey there!  <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=":)" />  Remember when we were all starting off?  And nobody (including the DM) knew the rules?  Everything was exciting, messy, lethal, and you-learned-as-you-went?  (In short, sheer chaos, but hopefully everyone had a good time anyways ... I realize this was not always the case!)  3rd Edition's choices represented a return to this situation, for all of us.  I mean, they kept inventing new feats, and throwing them at us (us, meaning us experienced gamers and DMs) as food for thought.  And new skills.  And new PrCs.  And a whole lot of new ideas, period.  It put us all back into the position of being Beginning Gamers.  We learned the rules, way back then, through using them (hopefully ... obviously, we had many arguments over them (remembers those illusion spells))  We can do it again, with 3.0.  Or 3.5.  Or the hybrid of both, if the players desire.  (Or, with any edition of D&D, obviously.  Or Pathfinder.  Or Castles and Crusades.  We are always learners.)  -  What does the above philosophy boil down to, for me?    As DM, there is no way I am going to know everything my players have available to throw at me.  I cannot memorize it all.  I do not necessarily have access to it on a computer (and I certainly don't have the books.)  Likewise, my players do not have access to everything I have - although as DM I would do everything in my power to grant them that access, this being only reasonable.  I would apologize to my players and explain that I was doing my best to give them all the information I had, so they could use it also.  Furthermore, my players - obviously - might not understand what they were reading.  They might badly misunderstand or misinterpret things.  Same with me.  But if I - the DM - stop and check everytime there is a question, the game will get nowhere.  If I stop and check the player's PCs abilities everytime there is a question, we will get nowhere.  We will *ALL* start gagging on all that candy!  It would be too much.  It would completely overwhelm and ruin our game!!  My answer?  Just keep going.  Don't stop.  If it's not clear, just wing it.  (And look up the rules after the game.)  If it's in question, rule in the player's favor (the player will like that, and one can always look it up after the game.)  If the player thinks it's like X, then let him have it his way (he'll like that, and we can always look it up after the game.)  In return ... I would ask my players (BEFORE the game) to allow me leeway, not to stop me and question me with everything I do, with what my monsters can do, with whether my NPCs and foes and whatever can or cannot do what they are doing.  I would ask my players not to question my rulings on DCs, challenges, obstacles, terrain, and other calls.  Because, after all, we will never get anywhere in the game, if they are doing this!  (It isn't so much a matter of 'I am the DM' as it is a matter of 'let's just *play*, and have fun ... and discuss and fix problems after the game.  I'm the DM, your *friend* ' )  Heck, I wouldn't even use the hex grid unless the players requested it to clarify things.  Just wing it (the opponent is 50 feet away from you, on the path!) and let the player's imagination take over.  (Obviously, the players must want to do this, or we can't do this by default.)  In short, we must play a very flawed game.  Until everyone is clear on the rules (which will take a long time) we must play a flawed game where we can only guess at the rules, and do our best to have fun with what we know, and keep the pace of the game up (so that it is fun, not tedious and boring.)  I couldn't run a module like S1 The Tomb of Horrors under such circumstances, since precise knowledge of the rules is required for that module (it is a tournament module, as it were.)  But I could run a lot of low level adventures in this way, in a laisse faire manner.  In time, I think we would all memorize the relevant rules simply through endless usage.  And thus, we would not gag on the candy.  If everyone wanted precision, then yes, the candy would make everyone sick to their stomach, the game would fail, combat would grind to a halt, and tedious would be the byword of the session.  We'd have to let go, and let mistakes happen, and extrapolate as best we could, and simply try to have fun - crazy, chaotic, and slipping on the rules like slipping on a floor covered with grease - in our gaming session.  It is the only way we could stomach all that candy.  And I am saying that we should have the candy ... I just don't see any other way of trying to stomach eating it all that fast!  We can only do our best.</blockquote>

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