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Message: <blockquote data-quote="shoak1" data-source="post: 7167870" data-attributes="member: 54380">This jives with the history of D and D that I lived through.  Lets go to the quote that I began with here: Now while Pulsipher’s rant was filled with rancor and definitely derogatory to Big DM it does show the split between D and D players very well.I first began playing D and D circa 1976 at the age of 9.  I was fascinated by the three little brown books (which I still have) and was giddy when the Blackmoor, Eldricht Wizardry, and Greyhawk supplements came out.  My first experience playing with people came soon thereafter when the older kid next door invited me to play with him and his friends.  But to my dismay, the DM just started making everything up on the fly.  My decisions seemed small and inconsequential next to Big DM.  What did it matter what I did if the DM could just add monsters as he saw fit?  If he decided what was behind the door I opened when I opened it?Fortunately, within short order modules started coming out.  Wow!  Fixed scenarios rather than a DM just making stuff up!!!  Then Basic D and D came out with B1 and I started learning how to make up my own dungeons.  Soon at school I found new people to play with – and they played the way I envisioned it – with fixed stuff in the world and a DM Light running things.  I was hooked.  I even started playing solitaire lol...Still, D and D was such an infinite world and it didn’t have enough structure – what happened in G1 if the giants became aware of your presence?  How could you survive?  Did the DM have to fudge things to give you a chance?Then 3.5 came out and I was in heaven.  Encounter to Encounter, and minis – thank you God!!!  Now Castle Greyhawk was actually playable !!!!  DM Light was ecstatic !!!But this seemed to take a bit of the roleplaying out of it, which dismayed me.   But 4.0 changed everything.  While I hated the total redesign thing, now there were a wealth of modules, including player made, that included DCs, skill challenges (OMG a way to abstract and actually play with skills in a concrete way?!?!), and again an encounter to encounter format.  This was perfect (except for the complete deviation from the original D and D traditional rule set).Then 5e came along and returned to the core rules (which was refreshing) and fixed many of the old game imbalances (like caster dominance).  But unfortunately for me, along with it came an emphasis on Big DM and Big Story.  Then I go into the forums and find them overwhelmed with those who seem to think Big Story and Big DM are integral to and inseparable from the game…Which brings me to this post:Yes.  Why must it be one or the other?  Why can’t those of us that prefer Big Challenge and DM Light more than Big DM and Big Story get some of what we want ?  Why must Big Dmites always fight us every time we bring up balance issues when they find it so easy to just have Big DM change things for their table?  Why can’t those of us DM Lights have a more rigid and balanced ruleset  that the Big Dmites can then tweak to suit their taste?</blockquote>

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