D&D General Arbitrary and Capricious: Unpacking Rules and Rulings in the Context of Fairness

[Tony Vargas]

I know that's the legend, but I think it was just making a virtue of necessity. If D&D had miraculously had clear, fair, balanced, playable rules from the get-go, the RaW cult would be the hallowed Grognard tradition and the cult of DM omnipotence the temporary aberration.

Separately, the role of GM or storyteller is open-ended and creative. The point is not the DM should never make rulings, simply that a bad enough set of rules makes them a necessity for play, rather than an option for extensibility.

 

[Reynard]

I know that's the legend, but I think it was just making a virtue of necessity. If D&D had miraculously had clear, fair, balanced, playable rules from the get-go, the RaW cult would be the hallowed Grognard tradition and the cult of DM omnipotence the temporary aberration.

Separately, the role of GM or storyteller is open-ended and creative. The point is not the DM should never make rulings, simply that a bad enough set of rules makes them a necessity for play, rather than an option for extensibility.

"Legend" is a strange way to refer to historical facts backed up by primary documents from the time. If you haven't read Jon Peterson's various works, you may want to consider it.

 

[Tony Vargas]

That people at the time, were making the case that the necessity of frequently overruling the rules was a virtue doesn't make the rules any better, nor even intentionally bad.

I mean, once the rules were clear & consistent enough to divine a RaW, RaW became the way. 5e intentionally chose to use 'natural language' to make it more "approachable," and thus returned to a level of ambiguity that demanded DM intervention, which draw the curtain on what, up to then, had been emblamatic of the WotC era...

 

[nevin]

Honestly I think you could dedicate an entire forum post to this topic of arbitrary and Capricous to simply spells.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

That people at the time, were making the case that the necessity of frequently overruling the rules was a virtue doesn't make the rules any better, nor even intentionally bad.

I mean, once the rules were clear & consistent enough to divine a RaW, RaW became the way. 5e intentionally chose to use 'natural language' to return to a level of ambiguity (as well as, re-excavating the martial/caster gap) that demanded DM intervention, to draw the curtain on what, up to then, had been emblamatic of the WotC era...

Um… is it possible to not start an edition war in this thread? Thanks!

 

[Voadam]

I know that's the legend, but I think it was just making a virtue of necessity. If D&D had miraculously had clear, fair, balanced, playable rules from the get-go, the RaW cult would be the hallowed Grognard tradition and the cult of DM omnipotence the temporary aberration.

I would say that even in the height of RAW reverence in 3e there was explicit Rule Zero and deference to the DM as making rulings in the moment to run the game.

There were plenty of people who argued RAW in the pre 3e era. Since the rules were baroque and arcane and organizationally challenging to find in 1e this got quite legalistic for a number of people. A number of people tried to figure out the rules from the books as written, so trying to figure out RAW was a big thing for a number of people.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Re-phrased. My intent is merely to examine the history of the game.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I would say that even in the height of RAW reverence in 3e there was explicit Rule Zero and deference to the DM as making rulings in the moment to run the game.

There were plenty of people who argued RAW in the pre 3e era. Since the rules were baroque and arcane and organizationally challenging to find in 1e this got quite legalistic for a number of people.

Rule 0 in 3e was kinda ironic. The edition whose community became most obsessed with RaW, that considered adding 'house rules' mid-campaign a breach of the social contract, etc... Conversely, TSR never explicitly stated a Rule 0, yet it was wholly embraced.

Pre-3e there were certainly rules-lawyers. Not a well-regarded label for a player. But the rules lawyer argued like he was before a high court justice, angling for a favorable ruling, which might or might not be arguably the letter of the law.

 

[MGibster]

In short, high rolls succeeded, low rolls didn't. Immediately, this adventure, and all the prior adventures, became a horrible experience. The reason I like to use this example is because it illustrates a lot of points- here, it illustrates the issue of fairness.

This is the scene from Star Trek: Generations where Kirk refuses Picard's call to adventure, gets on a horse, and rides away. While on this ride, Kirk jumps a dry creek bed, stops, looks a bit puzzled, and turns around to jump the creek again. When Picard finally catches up, Kirk tells him, "I must have jumped that fity times. Scared the hell out of me each time. Except this time. Because it isn't real...nothing here is. Nothing here matters." Wow. I don't usually have it in my to quote bad Star Trek movies. Let's talk about nuclear wessels instead.

While the folks I game with are comfortable telling me when they think I've gotten a rule wrong, they're not rules lawyers angling for an advantage. I've got one player who constantly brings up rules to the detriment of the characters. For the most part, I'm a dice-fall-where-they-may DM. If you fail a roll you failed the roll. It's not a very fun game when I just decided whether something succeeds regardless of the die roll.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Pre-3e there were certainly rules-lawyers. Not a well-regarded label for a player. But the rules lawyer argued like he was before a high court justice, angling for a favorable ruling, which might or might not be arguably the letter of the law.

I feel like the min-maxed and rules lawyer became one during the post TSR era, and before those were two distinct categories of player