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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RyanD" data-source="post: 2393588" data-attributes="member: 3312">Answer to Question #1:No:  The mission was not to alter the power balance between DM and Player - the mission was to make D&D more fun to play.  The power balance shifted as a result of that design goal.  (Is that a tautology?  Perhaps my answer should be "yes" - it is a bit of chicken & egg here I think.)Let me give you an example:  We (the designers, and myself as a fly on the wall) had a discussion with Peter Adkison one day about what combat modifiers should appear in the PHB vs the DMG.  There had been a subconscious assumption in D&D since AD&D was created that there were some things that the DM was supposed to know and the players were not.  (This is obviously silly, as most players who care enough buy DMGs even if they don't run games, but "hidden knowledge" was a philosophy that permeated the AD&D franchise).  Peter gave clear direction as a result of that debate, which informed a whole host of other design decisions for 3E. He said (paraphrasing):  "I want to know exactly what modifiers are applied to my PC so I can game out the best decision for my action.  If standing on the table, flanking, striking two handed with a two handed weapon is the best tactical scenario, then I want to know that and I want to be able to work to put my PC in that situation.  If I feel that my PC, for roleplaying reasons would not make that detailed tactical analysis, that is my decision to make, not the DM's."That's a shift to make the game "more fun" by empowering players to maximize the impact of their choices.  If the player doesn't know (or isn't reasonably sure) that standing on the table, or flanking, or fighting two-handed is going to translate to a benefit, they're less likely to choose to do those things (which means that the space in the rulebooks allocated to explaining the rules required to adjudicate such actions becomes less valuable).  Sure, there's always a "roleplaying" or "dramatic" narrative cause that might put a character in that situation because the player thinks it sounds cool or is a part of the PC's idiom, but the observed relationship between actually using a rule and the player's knowledge of that rule and how it will be applied is very, very strong.  That is, "fun value of rule" correlates directly with "player believes rule will be enforced".And so combat modifiers came out of the DMG, and moved into the PHB, and now the players have a basis for asserting that they're gaining such and such a bonus to their attacks "because the book says so".  The DM now has to vary from the written rules if they want to change that modification.  A DM who varies to excess, or who varies arbitrarily, will often find the willingness of the players to continue playing with that DM decreasing.  If those modifiers were hidden from the players, or the rules stipulated that the modifiers would be assigned that the DM's discretion, the players would likely not respond as strongly to those variances.  But they'd be having less fun, too, because they'd be less likely to have their PCs do interesting things.  Combat would be, in most cases, typified by PCs standing toe to toe with monsters and making unmodified attack rolls until one or both combatants fled, died, or were removed from combat by other effects.  In my opinion, "not fun".  I think a lot of players share my opinion.That philosophical decision to empower players to make tactical choices based on the rules created a shift in power, but shifting the power was not the objective.Answer to Question #2:Yes:  I believe strong GM power is a key to the attraction of most rules lite game systems.I tend to believe that the most staunch defenders of "rules lite" design philosophies are those people who either are exceptionally good at on the fly game design, or those who often play with others who are.The "rules lite" design approaches I am familiar with (and my RPG library includes well over 100 different game systems) almost all rely on GM fiat as the fallback position for covering aspects of play that the game doesn't have a rule for.  That empowers GMs tremendously.For some GMs, I'm sure that's a subconscious attraction.  (I doubt very many people overtly think: "I play Game X because when I run Game X the players have to give in to my whims.")  But even subconsciously, I suspect it's a powerful motivating force for choosing a rules lite system.</blockquote>

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