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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Malhost Zormaeril" data-source="post: 3336161" data-attributes="member: 49669">Funny, that's sort of like a description I've heard for the difference between a school teacher and a university professor.  The school teacher is supposed to be this figure of authority who hands down the knowledge to the students, who absorb it unquestioningly.  On the other hand, the professor is supposed to treat his students more like peers who can discover things for themselves and just need a nudge in the right direction; sometimes, they can even teach the professor something.TX, You are most comfortable when the roleplaying experience is a top-down one: The DM delivers the adventure to the players, who submit to his superior knowledge of what is going on.  It is very much the DM's game, and the players are expected to abstract their knowledge of "the system" and merely state their intents in reaction to what the DM lays out before them.  The DM by his part adjudicates the action based on what he thinks would play out.  That's a particular stance very much in line with what I heard was Gygax's position in the 70s/80s.It's also more untenable when the position of DM rotates regularly.  When everyone is a DM one time or another, this kind of position breaks down, because everyone will adjudicate differently and parts of one DM's rulings will inevitably intrude upon another's play.  That's why the judges (the DMs) agree to follow a constitution (the rules).  Eh, this metaphor makes more sense in countries with Roman law, so I hope you catch my drift.  This is the position of the Second Edition, very much refined by the Third.Full disclosure: I know there are teachers who don't handle teaching in a top-down fashion, and professors who do so; and also that the transition from delivering knowledge "from on high" to instigating the process of discovery by the student should be a gradual one, such that there should be several middle stages throughout junior high, high school and early university years.  Those are just the two ideal extremes between alphabetisation and graduation.</blockquote>

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