Quote from: Sandepande;598913What can I say, we're old and slow!

Fortunately; Old Age and Treachery defeats Youth and Strength.

Quote from: Bill;598914Fortunately; Old Age and Treachery defeats Youth and Strength.

Indeed. Still, I occasionally wish I was young, firm and supple, and had the time and energy to run five sessions every week. So many interesting systems and settings, so little time...

Quote from: Blackhand;598905Every "year or two"?

We change on an average of 15 weeks.

See, I'd be more forgiving if we switched games that often and players had trouble remembering the rules. But my campaigns last 2-5 YEARS.

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Quote from: RPGPundit;599150See, I'd be more forgiving if we switched games that often and players had trouble remembering the rules. But my campaigns last 2-5 YEARS.

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Yeah, I've been preparing an article for the blog thanking my players for keeping up with all the wargames and rpgs going on.  In the course of a year, we have 8 wargames campaigns and on average, 4 GM'd RPG games.

I never seem to get around to finishing it though.  Maybe I'll do that this week.

It should be said that not every player keeps up with every rule, but there are enough of us that they don't have to ask me how to resolve every.  Single.  Thing.

I'm always very helpful and pretty much know each rulebook by heart.  All day long people are pestering me with rules about this game and about that one.  I give long form answers since I'm more than a little loquacious and I'm always happy to answer questions.  

While I'm pretty forgiving in this respect...it does start to irk me if I have to explain the exact same rule three or more times in a given day.

Quote from: RPGPundit;598894I find this hard to believe.

OK a bit exaggeration there.  He asked on two occasions, months after being in the game.

Also happened in the middle of my Eclipse Phase campaign.

He's a nice guy but he has priorities elsewhere.

Quote from: Arturick;597152OH HELL NO!

*snip*

Jim the Ninja:  You don't get points for being a virgin with Asperger's and a stack of books telling you how to fuck an elf.  Protip:  In the butt.

*snip*

Jim the Ninja:  Well, you're gonna have to dig through the DM's book, "Cooking: the Virgining."  Look, asshole, you said do what your character would do, so Bob fireballed the ogre onto it's ass, I cut it's head off, and Sue is cooking it.  Except for the cock...  I'm cutting off the cock and wearing it as a hat.

DM:  I'm the DM!  You don't get to tell me what happens!

Jim the Ninja:  Yeah... you see Altar Boy on my character sheet?  No?  That's because I didn't sign up to get fucked by a dude pretending to be God.  By the way, *belches and blows in DM's face* that's what pussy smells like, gym sock fucker.  I'm outta here.

This is fucking magical. Seriously I know you were trying to illustrate a point here, but Jim the Ninja can play with my gaming group ANYTIME. Funniest fucking thing I've read all week

I insist that my players have good enough knowledge of the rules surrounding their PC so that they can make intelligent decisions and contribute to the action - rules matter, and my players need to know their shit and know what to roll and use when their turns come up. On the flip side, I also keep a foot on the necks of rules lawyers and over optimizers who seek to warp the game by the vehicle of the game rules.

At the very least, I expect my players to know what the shit on their sheets mean, and to be able to intelligently pick stuff when they advance.  Aside from that, they don't need an exhaustive knowledge of things, that's my job.

Quote from: Kaiu Keiichi;610799I insist that my players have good enough knowledge of the rules surrounding their PC so that they can make intelligent decisions and contribute to the action - rules matter, and my players need to know their shit and know what to roll and use when their turns come up. On the flip side, I also keep a foot on the necks of rules lawyers and over optimizers who seek to warp the game by the vehicle of the game rules.

At the very least, I expect my players to know what the shit on their sheets mean, and to be able to intelligently pick stuff when they advance.  Aside from that, they don't need an exhaustive knowledge of things, that's my job.

I generally agree.

RPGPundit

I just ran two short games with 11-12 year-olds today with Holes Basic D&D (more or less). I didn't bother teaching them any rules besides explain what the words dexterity and charisma mean and how many hit points they have and that it's bad if they run out. They never heard the terms armor class or saving throw and have no idea how much damage their weapons do or what the rules for hitting things are (I didn't have enough dice for everyone so I just used a dice rolling program on my laptop). For spells I gave five word (or so) descriptions on their sheets.

Worked just fine. The players took to old school tactics amazingly quickly without any prompting for me (the very first bit of equipment a player asked for was a "hunting dog").

I think there's a lot to be said for that kind of DM as black box in which the players have not a clue what any of the rules are but just say what they're doing in world terms, especially when running for kids, newbies or drunk people. I was able to run things really fast since I didn't have to explain anything. I had a three kid group kill skeletons, march around a lot of tunnels, avoid carrion crawlers, get hit by a trap, loot stuff, kill an animated statue and feed their pony to ghoul and escape in exactly an hour (plus a bit of time to hand out pregens, pick some equipment and explain basic stuff) which I think was pretty damn good.

Going forward, I think a good litmus test for 5ed is that if I can't run it for a group of people who know nothing about the rules besides what hit points are it get tossed.

I expect a varying knowledge of the rules depending on the class the character opts to play.

A player who is playing a fighter or thief can usually get by with minimal knowledge of the rules because the behavior in-game is easy to understand outside of a rules context ("I charge!")

A player who is playing a cleric or mage must have a deeper understanding of the rules. Otherwises they can't begin to grasp how to cast spells, what their spells do, and so on. A mage who doesn't understand the rules can get his party killed. ("How was I supposed to know that the fireball would hit you?"...)

Obviously my comments above are specific to ACKS. I hear some other games have made all the classes the same... :-|

You don't need to know the rules, but if you cast spells know the spell description.

Quote from: Planet Algol;611293You don't need to know the rules, but if you cast spells know the spell description.

This, this and this.

Quote from: Planet Algol;611293You don't need to know the rules, but if you cast spells know the spell description.

I agree that whatever problems there are with not knowing the rules are seriously compounded if the player in question is a spellcaster.

One thing I really dislike is when someone is playing a spellcaster and they repeatedly and willfully refuse to jot down the basic stats for their spells, causing us to have to stop every time they want to cast it to know the range/durations etc.

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