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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7680902" data-attributes="member: 4937">The point of the document is explained in the first two paragraphs explicitly.  I'm sure by stating a different point than what the document actually states, and by applying various generous interpretations of what he really meant as opposed to what he said, you can make the whole thing seem more reasonable, but the document itself says, "These are areas where your most basic assumptions about gaming probably need to be reversed, if you want to experience what real 0e playing is all about." (emphasis added)I hope you can see how one might be confused by then by calling it "old school primer", talking to old school GMs, and telling you that this is what "real" old school play is all about.  I agree that it isn't a description of how people played.  Nor it is a description of what the rules intended.  But the document doesn't make clear that it is describing a new way to play old games, and contradicts such a description implicitly and explicitly.Let me be honest with you; there isn't any difference between a rule and a ruling except that the later might not yet be written down.  One is a statutory rule and the other is a common or judicial rule, but they are both equally rules.  So the real irony here is that Zen #1, contradictorily indicates that the solution to the lack of rules is.... more rules.   The idea that the rules need continual rulings is the attitude of patching the rules with more rules.The fact that the document isn't even reflective on what it is saying and advocating for is to me pretty darn damning.  A discussion of how running a game based on statutory or 'constitutional' rules versus a game run primarily by common law or judicial rules differs, and the advantages and drawbacks of both might be interesting, but the document doesn't go there and instead blindly rushes off into snarky territory without actually realizing what the consequences of what it is advocating for actually are - almost as if the person writing the document has only theoretical and not practical experience with the two approaches.The actual word he uses is "real", and not "practical".  In point of fact those, what he outlines is neither real nor practical.  I know, because I've played these games extensively, used 'rulings' more than 'rules' at times, and then spent years or even decades on multiple occasions trying to reconcile my common law or house rules with the rules.You keep acting like the only problem here is the tone taken toward modern mechanics.  But the problem is the tone taken toward older games and even the tone taken toward the game he's weirdly advocating for.  His examples of play are rude and argumentative, with players continually challenging the DM and the DM responding with, "I'm the DM."  Now it is certainly true that old school play generally accepted that the DM was above the rules and had authority over the rules as opposed to be the servant of the rules and bound by them, but that doesn't mean that groups generally expected the DM to ignore the rules or rule by fiat.  Nor does it mean that skilled DMs weren't expected to be fair, reasonable, and predictable.  The DM was expected to fill in all the gaps and judge whenever interpretation was required, to toss out rules that were senseless, and smith up solutions to new problems.  They weren't expected to arbitrarily decide that a '2' was a bad enough roll so the PC just fell down, or that a '20' was a good enough roll that got another attack.  I played with more than a half-dozen groups back in the day, and none played like that.  That's not even functional way to play within the framework of 0e's generally gamist aspirations.  Players need reasonable expectations regarding what may happen when they propose to do something.  I need to know whether if I try to attack something, and I roll a '4' whether my sword is going to randomly break or go skittering out of my hands just because the DM thought it would be cool.   Incidentally, there is nothing 'old school' about that approach.  That approach is actually very new school Indy gaming techniques of upping the stakes that someone is pretending is the "real" approach 0e gaming.   And the document is just dripping with "say yes and roll the dice", "rule of cool", "no myth", and lots of other modern concepts and its trying to pretend that this very new way of playing is someone exactly the same as the old forgotten "real" way of playing.   At best, that's viewing the past through distorted glasses that makes me want to ask, "Were you actually playing back then?  I know this is about 0e, but did you play more than a few times in the '70s?  Did you play through the '80s?  Are you actually a reliable authority on how to play these games?"  Or did you maybe just talk to a few old school DMs, color what they said through biases and perspectives informed by your exposure to modern gaming ideas, and write a document about the one true way of gaming that was "forgotten" and which you wanted to write about in the first place irrespective of how the original games were intended to be played or were actually played in fact?Err... sandbox campaigns and even hexcrawls never really went away.  They were deemphasized in published material because the cost of printing such settings is relatively high, and frankly the demand is pretty low because most DMs that want to run a sandbox want to run their own sandbox.  But for a good example of a setting that has succeeded because it ultimately supports a sandbox style, see the Forgotten Realms, which other than its sand box overview of 'what's out there' to give a frame work to a DM's creation, is a relatively uninspired setting with dull and poorly written modules that most people complain about - even the ones that played them.   But the sandbox aspect, keeps people coming back, because you can go anywhere and the material gives an outline and framework for the DM to paint and fill in the details.In other words, they made up rules.  Or maybe more to the point, they invented new processes of play, some of which may have involved explicit rules and some of which may have been simply adjudication, and then those processes of play became standardized at the table into a body of common law and conventional rulings which players understood and relied on in order to offer up propositions.  Once the process of play became formalized, once they had in mind, "If I behave this way, then these are the likely outcomes", then the players could begin to approach those situations in directed goal-oriented manner.  The alternative is a sort of Gonzo referring style typified by what was advocated by Paranoia with the intention of being humorous.  But the "Primer" document is so unreflective that it's hard to tell if it is actually advocating for Gonzo referring as being the "real" way to play 0e, or if it just completely fails to understand that rulings are rules and take on the character of rules once they consistently shape the process of play.I wouldn't mind being in a conversation about how GMing 0e and 1e evolved, and about how processes of play evolved, and about how rulings matured and became more elegant and more supportive of mature play.  That process of evolving play informed the design of later editions, and some times we found our solutions had unanticipated problems that required further reflection.   Because that's the process I experienced DMing D&D across multiple editions of play for decades.   But I've got no interest is someone hammering a one true way to play a game that in my opinion isn't even the intended way to play the game, bears little or no reflection on how I saw older GMs with roots in 0e run their games (and who in turn mentored me as a young would be DM), and appears to be unreflected upon self-contradictory nonsense half the time.</blockquote>

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