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<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7604776" data-attributes="member: 996">That's a slightly different statement, since it makes the leap from speculating about design assumptions - to taking a specific position on game-design theory (which may or may not have informed the assumption). I do, however, think it's fair to say that no rule can stop the GM from just changing the rules (Rule 0 in 3e wasn't so much a rule, as an acknowledgement of fact).&nbsp; So, a bad (malevolent) DM could simply change any rule that got in his way.&nbsp; The closest a system could get to protecting players from their own DMs' malevolence would be to have many rules that might get in the way of malicious DMing, and encourage a culture of suspicion towards DMs who change/override rules.&nbsp; You can see how that could never fly with 5e's DM-Empowerment mandate.&nbsp; So, it &quot;assumes perfect DMing&quot; - or rather, makes no provision for imperfect DMing. Once you make that leap of faith, though, the system can fall back on the DM as much as needed to keep it simple/intuitive/light/natural/flexible/etc as desired, without worrying so much about the mechanical nitty-gritty debates that drove us crazy earlier in the WotC era.(Instead we get this kind of discussion to drive us crazy!&nbsp; Progress!)&nbsp;Sure, use an analogy, you don't have to assume perfect drivers to build safer cars, quite the contrary, you start by assuming there'll be accidents.&nbsp; Thus &quot;rules can't fix poor GMing&quot; is akin to &quot;seat belts can't prevent accidents&quot; - and it's not like no one said that back when there was debate on the issue, there really was a school of thought that safety features would make drivers careless and /cause/ more accidents.Of course, an analogy with one very important difference:&nbsp; fatal D&amp;D accidents are exceedingly rare. The worst that can happen is an un-fun session.Perspective.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 7604776, member: 996"] That's a slightly different statement, since it makes the leap from speculating about design assumptions - to taking a specific position on game-design theory (which may or may not have informed the assumption). I do, however, think it's fair to say that no rule can stop the GM from just changing the rules (Rule 0 in 3e wasn't so much a rule, as an acknowledgement of fact). So, a bad (malevolent) DM could simply change any rule that got in his way. The closest a system could get to protecting players from their own DMs' malevolence would be to have many rules that might get in the way of malicious DMing, and encourage a culture of suspicion towards DMs who change/override rules. You can see how that could never fly with 5e's DM-Empowerment mandate. So, it "assumes perfect DMing" - or rather, makes no provision for imperfect DMing. Once you make that leap of faith, though, the system can fall back on the DM as much as needed to keep it simple/intuitive/light/natural/flexible/etc as desired, without worrying so much about the mechanical nitty-gritty debates that drove us crazy earlier in the WotC era. (Instead we get this kind of discussion to drive us crazy! Progress!) Sure, use an analogy, you don't have to assume perfect drivers to build safer cars, quite the contrary, you start by assuming there'll be accidents. Thus "rules can't fix poor GMing" is akin to "seat belts can't prevent accidents" - and it's not like no one said that back when there was debate on the issue, there really was a school of thought that safety features would make drivers careless and /cause/ more accidents. Of course, an analogy with one very important difference: fatal D&D accidents are exceedingly rare. The worst that can happen is an un-fun session. Perspective. [/QUOTE]

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