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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 6013676" data-attributes="member: 54877">I don't really disagree with the various answers thus far, but for my part I had something a little more abstract in mind. Namely, consistency in the spirt of the rules. As a practical matter, I've found it easer to communicate that then the details, though obviously a certain amount of consistency in details is required to get overall consistency. So to use your example, I have no problem with running a world where fire elementals can't be hurt by fire (or the opposite or some partial version of either). I may or may not inform the players of this beforehand. I may or may not allow this information to be found by clues, lore checks, roleplaying with sages, or only by experience. But however I do it, you can bet your last copper piece that any ice elementals are going to work in parallel ways. That is, particular instances are taken as parts of the larger pattern, and this is true even if no other particular instances are readily encountered. The pattern is expressed in the spirit, and is used to make my rulings. Now, that leaves the custom monster, who by definition breaks the pattern(s). I might have something like that. However, if I do, it will be an exception with a reason, and most likely that reason is something that the players can discover if it interests them enough. I don't mind having exceptions, as long as they are consciously exceptions, and tracked as such. (I often need notes for this kind of thing, where the patterns I can internalize and keep in my head for months at a time, even if I change them the next campaign.) Finally, as is probably obvious from the above, I do believe that "system" is the rules used plus whatever local/campaign changes one makes, and then modified by the social contract and cues of the participants. So it's the whole thing that I'm concerned with transmitting the spirit of, not necessarily the RAW in the book. For example, it's typically important in my group that obscure NPCs have a name, even though everyone knows that it is made up on the spot by someone at the table, often overtly. That implies a certain spirit about the narrative that is different than, say, a DM who religiously names every minor NPC to some world-specific pattern. My way would seem arbitrary to an outsider, but it has a pattern at our table. Edit: I should also say that I usually pick 2-5 fairly moderate to major things to change, and then proceed to change the heck out of them for a given campaign. But I don't typically change anything else, or at least keep it rather minor and unimportant if I do. Our long-standing group thrives on having such surprises, but if everything changes, we lose all consistency. I think the same thing works within the campaign if you have consistent "elemental resistance" rules across fire, ice, etc. even if the nature of those rules changes in the next campaign. Were I running for a group of experience D&D players that were new to me, I'd either restrain this impulse, or more likely let them know it is a now ingrained tendency, and then ask them what they thought about it. I certainly would not make such a major change that radically changed what certain classes could do or not do, without informing the group ahead of time.</blockquote>

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