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<blockquote data-quote="Balesir" data-source="post: 6235556" data-attributes="member: 27160">Responding to the OP, I absolutely do understand your friend &quot;Billy&quot;'s concerns/objections and I think that &quot;Billy&quot; puts it very well when he says &quot;I don't like the idea that the GM that can arbitrarily change the rules of the game&quot;.I have highlighted what I consider the key points, there. If I was being picky I might add &quot;during play&quot; to the end of the sentence. Many folks responding seem to have taken this to mean &quot;the GM should not make anything up&quot;; I strongly disagree with this interpretation.Making up dungeons, encounters, settlement details or even creatures and characters for the game world does not constitute &quot;changing the rules of the game&quot;, IMO. Making a judgement call or impromptu rule to cover something that the rules simply don't cover is not &quot;changing the rules of the game&quot; - the rules did not exist to be changed!The reason I would add &quot;during play&quot; is that I don't think &quot;house rules&quot; are really a problem - unless they are added mid-session and without warning.The reason - at least, one major reason - for this is that rules are the shared model of the world's &quot;physics&quot;. They stand in for the characters' implicit understanding of how the world works - what they expect to happen based on living and growing up in the world since birth - in the minds of the players. To change that without a darned good reason in mid game is about as destructive a thing to the equilibrium of play as I can imagine a thing to be.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Balesir, post: 6235556, member: 27160"] Responding to the OP, I absolutely do understand your friend "Billy"'s concerns/objections and I think that "Billy" puts it very well when he says "I don't like the idea that the GM that can [B][U]arbitrarily change the rules[/U][/B] of the game". I have highlighted what I consider the key points, there. If I was being picky I might add "during play" to the end of the sentence. Many folks responding seem to have taken this to mean "the GM should not make anything up"; I strongly disagree with this interpretation. Making up dungeons, encounters, settlement details or even creatures and characters for the game world does not constitute "changing the rules of the game", IMO. Making a judgement call or impromptu rule to cover something that the rules simply don't cover is not "changing the rules of the game" - the rules did not exist to be changed! The reason I would add "during play" is that I don't think "house rules" are really a problem - unless they are added mid-session and without warning. The reason - at least, one major reason - for this is that rules are the shared model of the world's "physics". They stand in for the characters' implicit understanding of how the world works - what they expect to happen based on living and growing up in the world since birth - in the minds of the players. To change that without a darned good reason in mid game is about as destructive a thing to the equilibrium of play as I can imagine a thing to be. [/QUOTE]

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