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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SweeneyTodd" data-source="post: 2410940" data-attributes="member: 9391">I think that experience is coloring your opinion. Because I haven't read a single post that sounded to me like "GM declares any difficulty at random, his word is law." Yes, we were talking about assigning difficulties on the fly, but not in a way that someone has to make a near-impossible climb check to walk up a staircase. (To be fair, 90% of the examples discussed are things I'd let the player narrate, and not roll for.) Heck, if the way I've described something doesn't seem to match the assigned difficulty, my players chime in and we make sure we're in agreement before we roll.To the extent that we were using "arbitrary rat b*stard DM" in the examples, it was to point out that if someone wants to screw you over, they can do so regardless of the rules if they've been given unlimited rights to create the environment. Which most rules-heavy games assign exclusively to the GM. One of our points has been that if you've got a GM who thinks they know everything and doesn't listen to the player's input, then yes a comprehensive rules system is going to help the symptoms -- but it won't solve the core problem. It's fine if you like D&D 3.x, but as far as curbing GM abuse, it's just aspirin. No game works very well if the people at the table aren't on the same page.Now as for your point that the rules-heavy games require less GM work if you want detailed tactical situations, yes, I agree with you. What you described with AD&D 2e was a situation when the rules didn't provide the level of detail and clarity you wanted to do that. I think it's important to note that most of us who are playing rules-light games aren't spending much time in detailed tactical combat. For instance, the combat in my last few campaigns has been more like a wuxia or John Woo movie. We provide a lot of detail because we like the detail, but it's not tactical.</blockquote>

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