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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 2182187" data-attributes="member: 4937">I think that that is what I said.  I said that having a detailed set of rules made me more efficient as a DM.mhacdebhandia: Let's be very clear about what I'm arguing.   There are essentially two sides in this debate.   There are those that say that it is more true that it is necessary for the players to know the rules to some degree, and those that say that it is more true that it is not necessary for players to know the rules.   On the extreme have those who say, "The players absolutely must know the rules", and on the other extreme those who say, "It is absolutely not neccessary for the players to know the rules."I'm in the second camp.  But, I voted for #3 "I don't make the player's learn the rules, but its nice when they do." as the closest to my beliefs.I could fisk your responce line by line, but all your objections come into two categories.   First, you make the objection that you can't see how having a detailed rules system is helpful, and then go on to contridict yourself by agreeing with Amy on the virtue of having a detailed rules system.  Great, I agree with Amy too.  Second, you make the objection that its possible to play well and know the rules, which objects to something I never said.  What I am NOT saying - and what you keep putting into my mouth - is that it is absolutely neccessary for the players to not know the rules.   I can see why you might be confused, but one doesn't imply the other.  Just because I strongly believe that its not absolutely necessary for the players to know the rules, does not mean that I believe that its absolutely necessary for them not to know them.   As I said in my responce, I would never choose to hide the rules from the player's in the long term, and would never go out of my way to prevent the player's from learning the rules.   It's _nice_ when the players both know the rules and can roleplay, but of the two being able to roleplay is far more important than knowing the rules, and not knowing the rules is no hinderance to a player's ability to role play.   But knowing the rules is not necesssarily a hinderance either; I myself know the rules to a dozen or more game systems, but that doesn't mean that I'm necessarily a bad player.   I did not mean to imply that everyone that knew the rules was a bad role player, only that again knowing the rules wasn't important.   My experience with players is that those that learn the rules first before they have learned to role play tend to  become poor role players, and once they have practiced extensively in gamism it then becomes very very difficult to break them of thier bad habits.  The example provided to me that provoked criticism in the first place is an example of what I think is very bad habits on the part of both the players and the referee.   I don't think that there is anyone who would read the two examples, and not think that I had better control over my table and over the flow of the game - and I did it without appeals to the rules.   For a player, IMO neither ignorance of the rules nor mastery of the rules is in and of itself a virtue.   A person who is ignorant of the rules, and who is so concerned that he's going to do something 'wrong', and who is therefore too timid to actually stretch thier imagination and actually participate is a problem.   But the problem is NOT in my opinion his ignorance of the rules, but his concern about his ignorance of the rules which basically boils down to not only a lack of trust in himself but a lack of trust in his referee.  Fixing the problem is not primarily solved by teaching the player the rules, but by increasing his confidence.  I was fortunate to learn that from a very good DM back when I was in Jr. High.  Likewise, a player who has mastered the rules is in no way better than a player who has no knowledge of the rules, if the player's interaction in the game is with the rule book and not with the shared imaginative construct that the people at the table are helping to create.  We could probably name several types of gamers who are rules masters but which represent a type of social disfunctionality. Again, I have several times been a PC in a game in which I didn't know the rules at all (even after many sessions) and it did nothing to hinder my enjoyment of the game or my ability to play the game.   And again, I have taught alot of players how to game, and over the years I've found that the ones that don't know the rules initially are more entertaining players and mature much more rapidly than those that learn the rules and then try to learn how to play.And as far as technical proficiency goes, my former long time RP group was a two time consecutive 2nd place finisher in the annual DragonCon D&D tournament.   I dare say that when we have to, we can min/max with the best of them.</blockquote>

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