I don’t need to know their exact stats, but I like (for example) having a system where you know a human’s health ranges from 6 to 10, and a gun does at least 3 damage, so you can be pretty sure if you shoot him four times he’s down. None of this, “Well, he’s a 12th level accountant so he has 78 hp”.
Maybe I mostly just dislike how vague HP is in D&D.
But it was probably mostly a GM issue.
I’m here to roleplay, not be told immediately whether or not I can take the dude.
I find it hard to roleplay when I don’t know what is in the world. Things that are very different (high level stuff, low level stuff) getting basically the same description is distracting. In real life, you get a lot of information looking at someone.
Maybe I’m still just annoyed at that game where we were all 10th level and so were the basic ass soldiers.
There’s a spectrum of play that runs from strict rules-as-written to complete calvinball. Calvinball can be fun, but it’s not really a transferrable game. It’s very particular to that moment and that group.
Sometimes people post wacky calvinball moments (eg: rolling damage against the floor, a free action to eat tiles, a +2 bonus to hit) as if that’s baseline RAW DND. It is not. Many tables would be like “wtf, that’s not how this game works”. So it can be kind of weird when it’s presented as obvious, as if it’s raw, when it’s just make pretend.
Imagine if the post was “we were playing basketball and I missed the shot, so I got in my car and drove up close so I could jump off the roof and dunk”. Like, wacky story but not how you’re supposed to play the game.
Furthermore, DND specifically is kind of bad at creativity. It’s very precariously balanced, with specific rules in odd places and no rules in others. Compare with, for example, Fate, which has “this thing in the scene works to my advantage” rules built in. DND is almost entirely in the hands of the DM.