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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 3763462" data-attributes="member: 22779">You've never been to a little league game have you?  <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=":)" />To me, playing by the rules was important.  Why have rules if you were just going to chuck them out.  And, having consistent rules made the game more fun for us.  I highly doubt I was alone in having rotating DM's, so the "line that shouldn't be crossed" never existed for us.  Viking hat DMing is one way to play, but, it's not the "One True Way".Our games were about cooperation.  No one ruled on high.  We played through consensus building rather than having people dictate the "way it SHALL BE" from on high.  Defective and sick?  Maybe.  But, then again, we were not that worried about sharing responsibilities.  Bob knew about this, I knew about that.  Together, we made a pretty good team.  Much better than each would be alone.Immersion for me comes when DM's calls don't suddenly jar my expectations of what should be happening.  When the DM starts flailing about and making stuff at at random, that completely destroys immersion for me.Take a "common knowledge" thing for a second.  In the 80's, it was pretty "common knowledge" that a knight in full plate was a turtle and if he fell off his horse, he needed a crane to pick him back up.  Now, "common knowledge" in this case was 100% wrong.  This was simply not the case and we all know that, now.  But, try proving that to a Viking Hat DM who expects his every word to be taken as gospel.  How is that not jarring to your immersion when the DM tells you that because you're wearing plate mail, you cannot stand up after you fall in a pit?He's absolutely right, based on the information he has.  "Everyone" knew that knights in plate mail needed cranes to get on their horses.  So, a flaming row starts around the table because the DM is absolutely convinced he's right and the player is absolutely convinced he's wrong.To me, that's what happened most of the time.  1e or 2e, didn't really matter.  I had one DM tell me that her world had chain mail, but no plate.  Not because iron was hard to get or anything like that, but, because plate mail hadn't been invented.  When I pointed out to her that plate mail predates chain by centuries, she simply ignored me and went on.  Her "knowledge" of medieval matters told her that plate mail was more advanced than chain mail, so, plate hadn't been invented yet.People keep talking about the "player mystery".  Fine, if that worked for you.  Then again, how many games do you play where it is better for most of the people at the table not to know the rules?  People don't argue about the rules in baseball, they argue about the application.  In D&D, we actually argue about the rules, mostly because the rules are vague.  The more vague the rules are, the more arguments you have.I'd MUCH rather play with people who know the rules.  It's far more jarring to me to have a player say, "Umm, which die should I roll again?" than to have them simply tell me "I hit AC 15".  Adversarial gaming is boring.  I can kill PC's with the best of them.  Heck, I can do it without cheating as well.But, if you think that playing without knowing the rules works better, hey, more power to you.  I've got this new game called Calvinball that we can play for money.  <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=":)" /></blockquote>

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