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Message: <blockquote data-quote="billd91" data-source="post: 6126881" data-attributes="member: 3400">Apparently you guys weren't very active on the internet over the last 10 or so years in which we witnessed lots of players complaining about GMs not following the RAW, disputes over what the RAW meant, dismissals of people who adhere to Rules as Interpreted as "house rules", as well as players complaining bitterly about GMs violating encounter creation guidelines, not upholding wealth by level limits, destroying their stuff with rust monsters setting them back on their WBL permanently, creating campaigns that disallow certain character concepts, enforcing paladin code violations, and otherwise saying no to them when they want to do something "cool".Of course Mearls's theory isn't going to apply to every single game being played. He's not trying to say that games in which the players and GMs have a functional rather than dysfunctional relationship don't exist. He's trying to describe the zeitgeist of D&D with respect to rules vs rulings, rules vs GM authority. The pendulum has swung when you compare the 1e days to the 2e days to the 3e days to now (in fact, it's probably fair to say there are multiple pendulums all swinging around at once). And in some ways, that's deliberate. Part of 3e's philosophy, thanks to Skip Williams, was to put more of the rules in the players' hands so know what to expect out of the actions they choose to take. And while that may be reasonable, one of the blessings of turning things over to the general public is that you get people and groups who push reasonable to the point of unreasonableness. And that gets reflected here on the discussion boards where discussions serve to amplify differences more often than promote commonality.</blockquote>

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