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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6651390" data-attributes="member: 82106">Right, in the context of D&amp;D, early versions were intended to be almost entirely a puzzle-solving type of challenge game. The PCs were almost wargame-like units and you moved around and explored a dungeon according to some pretty all-encompassing and specific rules, with the GM's only rules job being to 'fill in the blanks' when inevitably there was some detail that the rules couldn't cover. So the game was pretty 'coherent', the GM determined all the fiction, and the players simply stated their intentions, and perhaps RPed. Later, during the later parts of 1e, say post-1985, the idea of telling a story with a game began to gain some real traction. Games like Gangster! began to break down the original OD&amp;D paradigm. D&amp;Ders began to do more than dungeon crawl or hexcrawl. There had always of course been 'high level play' where the rules got fuzzy and players did things outside of 'crawl mode', but 2e tried to embrace that for the first time. The result was VERY incoherent. The 2e mechanics are 1e mechanics, designed to deal with the minutia of dungeon-style adventure. Much of what 2e advocated simply didn't worth within the rules, and there were no generalized mechanics. It was a mess, and GMs responded with GM force. They kept the game working by fiat, and it sucked. 3e was a response in 2 senses. First they said &quot;Back to the dungeon!&quot; which literally meant &quot;This didn't really work, better to concentrate on dungeon crawls&quot;, and secondly, they rewrote the game around a coherent d20 resolution system that can be generalized and thus at least suggests that anything you want to attempt can be handled by the rules to some degree.Now, 5e is coming back and saying essentially, &quot;yeah, that wasn't such a great idea, we're going to leave the d20 in place, but were going to encourage the DM to rule by fiat.&quot; At least that's what I'm hearing in this thread, that only some very narrow envisaged set of things is actually handled by the d20, and the rest is totally DM whim. I certainly don't want to play that way at all.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 6651390, member: 82106"] Right, in the context of D&D, early versions were intended to be almost entirely a puzzle-solving type of challenge game. The PCs were almost wargame-like units and you moved around and explored a dungeon according to some pretty all-encompassing and specific rules, with the GM's only rules job being to 'fill in the blanks' when inevitably there was some detail that the rules couldn't cover. So the game was pretty 'coherent', the GM determined all the fiction, and the players simply stated their intentions, and perhaps RPed. Later, during the later parts of 1e, say post-1985, the idea of telling a story with a game began to gain some real traction. Games like Gangster! began to break down the original OD&D paradigm. D&Ders began to do more than dungeon crawl or hexcrawl. There had always of course been 'high level play' where the rules got fuzzy and players did things outside of 'crawl mode', but 2e tried to embrace that for the first time. The result was VERY incoherent. The 2e mechanics are 1e mechanics, designed to deal with the minutia of dungeon-style adventure. Much of what 2e advocated simply didn't worth within the rules, and there were no generalized mechanics. It was a mess, and GMs responded with GM force. They kept the game working by fiat, and it sucked. 3e was a response in 2 senses. First they said "Back to the dungeon!" which literally meant "This didn't really work, better to concentrate on dungeon crawls", and secondly, they rewrote the game around a coherent d20 resolution system that can be generalized and thus at least suggests that anything you want to attempt can be handled by the rules to some degree. Now, 5e is coming back and saying essentially, "yeah, that wasn't such a great idea, we're going to leave the d20 in place, but were going to encourage the DM to rule by fiat." At least that's what I'm hearing in this thread, that only some very narrow envisaged set of things is actually handled by the d20, and the rest is totally DM whim. I certainly don't want to play that way at all. [/QUOTE]

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