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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3774195" data-attributes="member: 4937">In my experience introducing people to the game, if you teach them the rules first, they learn to play the rules and not thier characters.  Almost every novice player I've ever met that knows the game rules is a terrible player from my perspective as a DM who wants to be entertained by the players (just as they want to be entertained by me).  Conversely, some of the most enjoyable experiences I've ever had as a DM is with groups of completely novice players that know none of the rules because they don't metagame at all.  There RP is natural, and regardless of thier age tends to have an unaffected childlike quality and tends to be obviously in thier imagination first person perspecitve rather than the third person puppeteer perspective encouraged by the 3rd edition game IME.  Players trained from this perspective IME invariably become better players faster, than those who are taught to think they must learn all the rules before they can play the game well.I've played both ways, both as a player who knew almost the rules of the system, and as a player playing blindly, and the latter fashion is far more enjoyable and liberating.  Frankly, if you haven't played blindly, then I think you don't know what you like, you just like what you know.The main quibble I'd have with your view is that its possible for all the players to be in the stance of View #1, while the DM is completely in the stance of View #2.  The DM doesn't have to be emersed.  Behind the screen, he can be adhering completely to the rules and running the game like an engineer while at the same time trying to create the immersion experience for his players.  The real problem combination is players in the stance of View #2 and a DM who is in the stance of View #1 or at the least who wants his players to be in the stance of View #1.  IME, this is a extremely frustrating adversarial relationship with the players.  Speaking as a view #1 player, I can readily adopt to view #2 if a DM insists on forcing me to view #2.  It forces me to change how I view the game, and essentially from my perspective forces me to an analytical DM-like stance when I was wanting a break from that.  It is not my preferred play style, and is a stance that normally I would only take as a player in one shot/tournament style play, but I can do.  Speaking as a DM, I've never found a View #2 player who can shrug and except View #1 as a fun, albiet less preferred style of play.  In fact, with View #2 players there tends to be an adversarial position if I take an steps as a DM to satisfy my desire to have players in View #1 or any View #1 players who happen to be at the table - even though when I DM, largely I am in the stance of View #2, and I am just trying to conceal that from the player so that they don't have to worry about it and it won't interfere with thier game.As for the rest, I think you are off on a red herring if you think that the point being made is about rules light or rules heavy systems.  It's quite possible that a View #2 player would prefer a rules light system as the easiest to 'just win' in, even if the tactics he employs to do would be very different.  He'd still get upset if the DM altered the rules as he understood them or concealed the rules from him.</blockquote>

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