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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Drifter Bob" data-source="post: 1535526" data-attributes="member: 17723">The point, to me, is that it's just a waste of time to even get that far into the rules for most players.  The DM needs to know the rules, and a good party should have at least one or two players who are savvy enough to keep the DM on his toes, but really, most players basically only need to know what their characters can and cannot do.  Think about it.  Was D&D more or less fun when you first played and didn't know every damn rule?The fact is, the D&D rules simply aren't that internally consistent or logical, so a lot of pepole feel like it is an unecessary chore to get some meticulously into them.  Why can't a 5th level NPC fighter have some kind of bounty hunter background within the core rules that can give him 8 spot ?  Why can't he have played hide and seek so much as a child that he heas it (within the core rules)?  Because the rules aren't that flexible.  Maybe one day they will be.  In the meantime, let the DM make it up if it's going to further the plot (if the DM is trying to 'screw over' the players, why not just place dragons and demons in their path instead?)Until then, lighten up for chrissakes.  Use the rules when you need to, the rest of the time, make up your story, role play, adventure, have fun.  I really think this is a major issue of game expansion.  A lot of the people I turn on to role playing games enjoy playing but really don't want to bother learning hundreds of pages of rules any more than they want to do other peoples taxes for free.  I remember I had this shocking experience one time when a guy I thought of as an intelligent and sensitive fellow, who happened to be an experienced gamer, started screaming and sneering and insulting my girlfriend and her friend because they didn't know the rules during their first ever time playing an RPG... it was postively freaky. If you are that deeply into the rules, play some war game like advanced squad leader.  Hell, even if I want complicated rules in a role playing game, I will play something like Riddle of Steel which at least has the payoff of combat being realistic to compensate for having to delve that deep into technicalities.Another funny thing I've noticed, is that one of the reasons people used to play D&D instead of other games is that it was less complicated than the other more specialized games out there.  Now it's very complicated, IMO, compared to games like say, Dying Earth RPG.  I think this is more due to the culture of the players (I think very influened these days by CRPG's) than the core rules, but I also do think they should revisit the idea of have some kind of sliding scale of complexity, even though they weren't successful at implementing it before (from basic to advanced anyone?)  I'd like to at least have a realistic option of letting fairly inexpereineced players roll characters without computer software again...It's also interesting to consider the old players and the old game designers were more influenced by what you might call the original "core literature" (Tolkein, Vance, Leiber, Zealazny, Moorcock, Lovecraft, Howard) while today, I think Neverwinter Nights, Diablo, Everquest, Icewind Dale etc. are far more of an influence...JR</blockquote>

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