Quote from: Bill;651014Most players get up to speed fairly quickly in play, but I have seen a few players that cant add up to hit bonuses after a solid year too

One of my friends has been playing D&D on and off for over 30 years, and probably made up over 50 characters in that time, and he still doesn't know the HP bonus for a 16 Con, or the AC bonus for 17 Dex. To him, that kind of information is just boring, annoying shit that unfortunately someone (usually me) has to know in order to run the game.

Quote from: Benoist;651021At an actual game table, you'd be the idiot because you would be a dick to everybody else stopping the game to a crawl engaging in arguments with the DM. Don't be a dick. After it's clear the DM has his ruling and won't budge, just roll with it. Play the game. If you think you can run the game better, you can take a shot at it yourself afterwards.

Apparently not allowing players to automatically succeed at any crazy action they want to attempt makes one an asshole DM.  So that begs the question: At what point did DMs lose their balls and allow themselves to be bullied by players who have an overinflated sense of entitlement?

Quote from: Sacrosanct;651025Apparently not allowing players to automatically succeed at any crazy action they want to attempt makes one an asshole DM.  So that begs the question: At what point did DMs lose their balls and allow themselves to be bullied by players who have an overinflated sense of entitlement?

3E or perhaps 3.5

Quote from: Sacrosanct;651025Apparently not allowing players to automatically succeed at any crazy action they want to attempt makes one an asshole DM.  So that begs the question: At what point did DMs lose their balls and allow themselves to be bullied by players who have an overinflated sense of entitlement?

Fuck if I know. Bill's answer is kinda obvious, but at the same time, these kinds of dickish players were there before: we knew them as "rules lawyers" and "munchkins" and other more-or-less interchangeable stereotypes, before that. There had to be an incentive for the post-2000 school of design to cater to this audience, and I feel the answer might be much more complicated than we'd expect (not to mention, way off-topic for this forum).

Quote from: Haffrung;651023One of my friends has been playing D&D on and off for over 30 years, and probably made up over 50 characters in that time, and he still doesn't know the HP bonus for a 16 Con, or the AC bonus for 17 Dex. To him, that kind of information is just boring, annoying shit that unfortunately someone (usually me) has to know in order to run the game.

It can be painful to watch a player spend five minutes every round of combat adding hit bonuses. During the full length of a year long weekly game.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;650996But from the new player's perspective, it's not as much fun to go through the whole session just being told 'Just attack him' or 'Just charge'.  Taken to an extreme, the 'new player' is really just an auxillary of an experienced player - and I've seen that happen.  I've even seen experienced players get angry with a new player for doing something 'stupid' - which if they knew the rules they might not have wanted to do.

That's a problem due to a disconnect between the model and the phenomenon being modelled. If you know how to drive a car, then a good car simulation should pose no such problem. It's when you must deal with a poor simulation that you need to know about the peculiarities of the model rather than about real driving!

QuoteAgain, this matters most when effectiveness is an important part of play.

It matters when "effectiveness" -- defined as winning the scenario -- is THE MOST important part of play. Maybe optimum effectiveness of a Grant tank gunner would come from having perfect knowledge of the complete physical system, but in reality that's not the condition under which real Grant tank gunners operated. Neither did they get to "hit the pause button" in combat to spend several minutes working out each shot in detail.

So, when role-playing is more important, less than optimum performance is not merely acceptable but DESIRED.

QuoteBut certainly for the game to work, players need to have general ideas of how actions will work.  There are things that I would do in real life that I won't do in a game - the way they work out in the game just don't reflect reality very well.

See the problem?

But of course to the competitor this is not a problem but rather a solution: you get a perfect closed system to manipulate.

Quote from: Haffrung;651023One of my friends has been playing D&D on and off for over 30 years, and probably made up over 50 characters in that time, and he still doesn't know the HP bonus for a 16 Con, or the AC bonus for 17 Dex. To him, that kind of information is just boring, annoying shit that unfortunately someone (usually me) has to know in order to run the game.

Ditto. I know guys like this too.

This quote, which expresses my opinion on the matter rather succinctly,  seems relevant to this discussion:

"The problem with 'gaming geeks' - is that they see the game as being the alpha and omega of the gaming experience. It is the system that matters, the stats of the character and so on rather than the experience of the game itself...I don't know how to create a meaningful dialogue with these kinds of people. There is a mental block as they can only understand roleplaying to be the tangible - books, rules , dice, (grids) - and I understand roleplaying to be the intangible "

-Robert Rees

Quote from: TristramEvans;651041This quote, which expresses my opinion on the matter rather succinctly,  seems relevant to this discussion:

"The problem with 'gaming geeks' - is that they see the game as being the alpha and omega of the gaming experience. It is the system that matters, the stats of the character and so on rather than the experience of the game itself...I don't know how to create a meaningful dialogue with these kinds of people. There is a mental block as they can only understand roleplaying to be the tangible - books, rules , dice, (grids) - and I understand roleplaying to be the intangible "

-Robert Rees

That's a great quote. I would agree.

Quote from: TristramEvans;651041This quote, which expresses my opinion on the matter rather succinctly,  seems relevant to this discussion:

"The problem with 'gaming geeks' - is that they see the game as being the alpha and omega of the gaming experience. It is the system that matters, the stats of the character and so on rather than the experience of the game itself...I don't know how to create a meaningful dialogue with these kinds of people. There is a mental block as they can only understand roleplaying to be the tangible - books, rules , dice, (grids) - and I understand roleplaying to be the intangible "

-Robert Rees

I like that, and I would add that I feel game mechanics should be an unobtrusive aid to the game, and not the focus.

I don't want to roleplay my +3 Greataxe with optimal feat chain X.

I want to roleplay Gonad the Axe Master of the Ironblade clan.

Quote from: Bill;651046I like that, and I would add that I feel game mechanics should be an unobtrusive aid to the game, and not the focus.

Nod. That's what I had dubbed the "rules are the game, and game are the rules" mentality. That quote is much better worded, and extended to, indeed, the "tangibles" in general, of which the RATG;TGTR is just an aspect.

Quote from: Benoist;651021At an actual game table, you'd be the idiot because you would be a dick to everybody else stopping the game to a crawl engaging in arguments with the DM. Don't be a dick. After it's clear the DM has his ruling and won't budge, just roll with it. Play the game. If you think you can run the game better, you can take a shot at it yourself afterwards.

One of the reasons I think "rules as a resource for the referee, not the players" and the related "rulings over rules" stir up so much controversy is because there are some other issues people habitually link to the ideas of rules. One, of course, is the desire of some players to "game the system"; they object to games where the GM de-emphasizes knowing the rules because it thwarts their particular idea of "fun". Another is the dick who has to be right and will bring the game to a screeching halt unless everyone agrees that he knows more about metallurgy and acrobatics than they do and should be allowed to do whatever he wants.

Another on the GM side of things is the occasional dick GM who likes to arbitrarily forbid various actions. If you're trying to focus on making decisions based on the fictional world instead of numbers and math, the GM who says "you can't swing from a chandelier" or "you get a -10 penalty because you don't have the Chandelier Swinging feat" is screwing things up.

I think that dick GM attitude comes out of an extreme adversarial interpretation of the GM's roll, and it's not really compatible with the kind of rules-loose approach we're talking about in this thread. I personally don't believe in putting a stop to players trying new things, either by forbidding a lot of arbitrary stuff or by stacking up tons of penalties. It's not my job as the GM to stop the players from doing anything; it's my job to tell them what happens when they do something.

I've settled on a couple simple rules-for-rulings:

• I rarely apply bonuses or penalties more than +/-2, and most modifiers don't stack;
• Occasionally, ability scores may provide a minor modifier or act as a threshold for other effects (roll to hit person with stew, victim distracted if Wisdom and Dex are both below 13)
• If something shouldn't work automatically, but I have no rule for it, PCs can do it on 5+ on 1d6;
• If something can go wrong, it does on 5+ on 1d6;
• If I don't know if something applies (does salt harm black puddings?) then it works on 5+ on 1d6.

With that in place, just about any time a player tries something, I tell them to either make an attack roll or roll a d6. If it's not critical, I just let them do it automatically. In rare cases, I tell them "You can't do that because no one could do that. It's impossible." Most of my GMing is just deciding what will or won't work automatically and what the consequences of an action would be. I see no reason to be a hard-ass and fight the players every step of the way.

Rules will not save you from a Dick GM.

Your feet, however, can take care of that.

Quote from: talysman;651048One of the reasons I think "rules as a resource for the referee, not the players" and the related "rulings over rules" stir up so much controversy is because there are some other issues people habitually link to the ideas of rules. One, of course, is the desire of some players to "game the system"; they object to games where the GM de-emphasizes knowing the rules because it thwarts their particular idea of "fun". Another is the dick who has to be right and will bring the game to a screeching halt unless everyone agrees that he knows more about metallurgy and acrobatics than they do and should be allowed to do whatever he wants.

Another on the GM side of things is the occasional dick GM who likes to arbitrarily forbid various actions. If you're trying to focus on making decisions based on the fictional world instead of numbers and math, the GM who says "you can't swing from a chandelier" or "you get a -10 penalty because you don't have the Chandelier Swinging feat" is screwing things up.

I think that dick GM attitude comes out of an extreme adversarial interpretation of the GM's roll, and it's not really compatible with the kind of rules-loose approach we're talking about in this thread. I personally don't believe in putting a stop to players trying new things, either by forbidding a lot of arbitrary stuff or by stacking up tons of penalties. It's not my job as the GM to stop the players from doing anything; it's my job to tell them what happens when they do something.

I agree.

Quote from: talysman;651048I've settled on a couple simple rules-for-rulings:

• I rarely apply bonuses or penalties more than +/-2, and most modifiers don't stack;
• Occasionally, ability scores may provide a minor modifier or act as a threshold for other effects (roll to hit person with stew, victim distracted if Wisdom and Dex are both below 13)
• If something shouldn't work automatically, but I have no rule for it, PCs can do it on 5+ on 1d6;
• If something can go wrong, it does on 5+ on 1d6;
• If I don't know if something applies (does salt harm black puddings?) then it works on 5+ on 1d6.

With that in place, just about any time a player tries something, I tell them to either make an attack roll or roll a d6. If it's not critical, I just let them do it automatically. In rare cases, I tell them "You can't do that because no one could do that. It's impossible." Most of my GMing is just deciding what will or won't work automatically and what the consequences of an action would be. I see no reason to be a hard-ass and fight the players every step of the way.

Sounds like a sensible approach to me.

Quote from: Bill;651049Rules will not save you from a Dick GM.

Your feet, however, can take care of that.

Yes.

Quote from: Bill;651046I like that, and I would add that I feel game mechanics should be an unobtrusive aid to the game, and not the focus.

I don't want to roleplay my +3 Greataxe with optimal feat chain X.

I want to roleplay Gonad the Axe Master of the Ironblade clan.

Quote from: Benoist;651047Nod. That's what I had dubbed the "rules are the game, and game are the rules" mentality. That quote is much better worded, and extended to, indeed, the "tangibles" in general, of which the RATG;TGTR is just an aspect.

What do you think about the concept that some game systems are a bit on the complex side for a GM to take the whole burden of running them? Would that automatically qualify a game as 'bad' for you?