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<blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 7727452" data-attributes="member: 29398"><p>Looking over all this, a few thoughts:</p><p></p><p>As a player one needs to be able to trust one's DM to consistently do two things: </p><p></p><p>1. Play in good faith via giving both the PCs and the opponents an even break and fairly adjudicating and narrating the results of dice rolls and-or PC actions</p><p>2. Present an internally and mechanically consistent game world that will, if care is not taken by the PCs during their adventures, kill them dead.</p><p></p><p>This issue of trust clouds these discussions, as some prominent posters have shown in the past a fairly serious unwillingness or inability to trust their DMs; either through prior bad experiences or through projecting their own inability to be a trustworthy DM onto all other DMs.</p><p></p><p>As for making things up on the fly as a DM, sometimes it happens. Not everything is (or even can be, in some circumstances) prepared in advance; and "winging it" is a feature of every decent DM's toolbox. Where winging it falls apart is when it intentionally or otherwise violates either of my points 1 and 2 above, and this is unfortunately easy to do if a DM doesn't pay close attention to her p's and q's. But I don't in the least subscribe to the Burning Wheel style, which amounts in essence to Schroedinger's Gameworld; as both player and DM I assume/expect most things to be set in place beforehand and that winging it will be at most an occasional exception.</p><p></p><p>I don't like meta-gaming on the whole; and though I realize there's a certain degree of it baked right into the game and its assumptions (e.g. vaguely level-appropriate challenges and-or adventures, characters somehow knowing when they've levelled up, etc.) I prefer meta-gaming be reduced or eliminated wherever there's reasonable means to do so. Character knowledge = player knowledge. Where the DM is deciding what adventures to run such decision is made without reference to projected party makeup, other than vague level. DM secretly rolls whenever there's uncertainy as to why a character's declared action might have failed (e.g. did you not find the secret door due to a bad roll or due to looking in the wrong place - this should not be player-side info). And so on, at considerable length.</p><p></p><p>And I don't want to feel strait-jacketed by the rules, and nor (I think) does anyone else I game with. I far prefer the 0-1-2e - and 5e to some extent - unwritten ethos of <em>you can try it unless a rule says you can't</em> (this plays into combat-as-war, where potentially anything goes and to hell with the Geneva convention) over the 3-4e unwritten ethos of <em>you can't try it unless a rule says you can</em> (which makes it combat-as-sport in which both you and your opponents have to fight fair).</p><p></p><p>Lan-"but also note that trying something doesn't automatically mean succeding at it"-efan</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Lanefan, post: 7727452, member: 29398"] Looking over all this, a few thoughts: As a player one needs to be able to trust one's DM to consistently do two things: 1. Play in good faith via giving both the PCs and the opponents an even break and fairly adjudicating and narrating the results of dice rolls and-or PC actions 2. Present an internally and mechanically consistent game world that will, if care is not taken by the PCs during their adventures, kill them dead. This issue of trust clouds these discussions, as some prominent posters have shown in the past a fairly serious unwillingness or inability to trust their DMs; either through prior bad experiences or through projecting their own inability to be a trustworthy DM onto all other DMs. As for making things up on the fly as a DM, sometimes it happens. Not everything is (or even can be, in some circumstances) prepared in advance; and "winging it" is a feature of every decent DM's toolbox. Where winging it falls apart is when it intentionally or otherwise violates either of my points 1 and 2 above, and this is unfortunately easy to do if a DM doesn't pay close attention to her p's and q's. But I don't in the least subscribe to the Burning Wheel style, which amounts in essence to Schroedinger's Gameworld; as both player and DM I assume/expect most things to be set in place beforehand and that winging it will be at most an occasional exception. I don't like meta-gaming on the whole; and though I realize there's a certain degree of it baked right into the game and its assumptions (e.g. vaguely level-appropriate challenges and-or adventures, characters somehow knowing when they've levelled up, etc.) I prefer meta-gaming be reduced or eliminated wherever there's reasonable means to do so. Character knowledge = player knowledge. Where the DM is deciding what adventures to run such decision is made without reference to projected party makeup, other than vague level. DM secretly rolls whenever there's uncertainy as to why a character's declared action might have failed (e.g. did you not find the secret door due to a bad roll or due to looking in the wrong place - this should not be player-side info). And so on, at considerable length. And I don't want to feel strait-jacketed by the rules, and nor (I think) does anyone else I game with. I far prefer the 0-1-2e - and 5e to some extent - unwritten ethos of [I]you can try it unless a rule says you can't[/I] (this plays into combat-as-war, where potentially anything goes and to hell with the Geneva convention) over the 3-4e unwritten ethos of [I]you can't try it unless a rule says you can[/I] (which makes it combat-as-sport in which both you and your opponents have to fight fair). Lan-"but also note that trying something doesn't automatically mean succeding at it"-efan [/QUOTE]
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