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The Rules: Who cares?
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<blockquote data-quote="Dykstrav" data-source="post: 4875946" data-attributes="member: 40522"><p>There are indeed times where you can ignore the rules with creativity and flair. In fact, the old World of Darkness games were usually much better when you <em>did</em> ignore or change a large portion of the rules (the setting and its core "truths" were either so vague or obfuscated that it gave many simulationists a migrane).</p><p></p><p>I personally like having the rules in place, where everyone can see them or check on them as they'd like, and the players know that the rules are applied evenly and fairly. The reason for this is because DM fiat is only as good as the DM in question. </p><p></p><p>In my experience, many DMs who don't use the rules usually either a) don't really understand the rules, or b) are poor at designing a narrative within the framework of the rules. Either situation is extremely frustrating when I go in to a game without some sort of notice about house rules or the like, I've left campaigns over such issues.</p><p></p><p>A prime example of this is the last 3.5 game I played, where the DM had a group of thugs cast <em>sleep</em> on our elven druid when she got seperated from the party. When two players pointed out that elves are specifically immune to <em>sleep</em>, he told us that we were wrong and proceeded to describe the druid's plight. We showed him the elf's racial entry in the <em>Player's Handbook</em>, he looked it over, and then flatly told us that he never knew that elves were immune to <em>sleep</em> before then and the campaign's story hinged on the use of <em>sleep</em> spells. Therefore, elves aren't immune to <em>sleep</em> in his setting.</p><p></p><p>In this same campaign, we were tasked with tracking down an orc camp in the wilderness. So I told him that I would scan the horizon in the day time for smoke. He didn't really understand why, so I explained to him that campfires give off smoke, so if the orcs had a campfire, we could find them that way. So he told me that my cleric character wasn't smart enough to think of something like that (with an Intelligence of 13, for what it's worth), Spot doesn't appear on the cleric's class skill list so I wouldn't think of doing something like that, and the <em>only possible way</em> for us to find the orc camp was to go through this whole Track thing. We didn't have a ranger either, so our barbarian had to blow a feat to find this orc camp. To top it all off, there were six blazing campfires when we found this orc camp.</p><p></p><p>I could relate several such anecdotes from several games. Suffice to say that many veterans of the hobby have similar experiences. "Common sense" and "judgement calls" are unfortunately not universal, and in the hands of an inept DM, are frustrating enough to make you leave a group.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Dykstrav, post: 4875946, member: 40522"] There are indeed times where you can ignore the rules with creativity and flair. In fact, the old World of Darkness games were usually much better when you [I]did[/I] ignore or change a large portion of the rules (the setting and its core "truths" were either so vague or obfuscated that it gave many simulationists a migrane). I personally like having the rules in place, where everyone can see them or check on them as they'd like, and the players know that the rules are applied evenly and fairly. The reason for this is because DM fiat is only as good as the DM in question. In my experience, many DMs who don't use the rules usually either a) don't really understand the rules, or b) are poor at designing a narrative within the framework of the rules. Either situation is extremely frustrating when I go in to a game without some sort of notice about house rules or the like, I've left campaigns over such issues. A prime example of this is the last 3.5 game I played, where the DM had a group of thugs cast [I]sleep[/I] on our elven druid when she got seperated from the party. When two players pointed out that elves are specifically immune to [I]sleep[/I], he told us that we were wrong and proceeded to describe the druid's plight. We showed him the elf's racial entry in the [I]Player's Handbook[/I], he looked it over, and then flatly told us that he never knew that elves were immune to [I]sleep[/I] before then and the campaign's story hinged on the use of [I]sleep[/I] spells. Therefore, elves aren't immune to [I]sleep[/I] in his setting. In this same campaign, we were tasked with tracking down an orc camp in the wilderness. So I told him that I would scan the horizon in the day time for smoke. He didn't really understand why, so I explained to him that campfires give off smoke, so if the orcs had a campfire, we could find them that way. So he told me that my cleric character wasn't smart enough to think of something like that (with an Intelligence of 13, for what it's worth), Spot doesn't appear on the cleric's class skill list so I wouldn't think of doing something like that, and the [I]only possible way[/I] for us to find the orc camp was to go through this whole Track thing. We didn't have a ranger either, so our barbarian had to blow a feat to find this orc camp. To top it all off, there were six blazing campfires when we found this orc camp. I could relate several such anecdotes from several games. Suffice to say that many veterans of the hobby have similar experiences. "Common sense" and "judgement calls" are unfortunately not universal, and in the hands of an inept DM, are frustrating enough to make you leave a group. [/QUOTE]
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