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Blog Post by Robert J. Schwalb
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<blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 6325265" data-attributes="member: 18"><p>Interesting piece, but I'm kind of confused as to how this "using mechanics to win" deal is supposed to be a <em>new</em> thing, beyond that adults are way better at it than children, and people who've played a hundred sessions are way better at it than people who've played ten.</p><p></p><p>I saw people find ways to break D&D and similar games from the days I started playing. They got better at it with time, and it got more common, but it was never uncommon. He says "the seeds were always there". I'll go further - this mode of play was always there once we assumed the rules were the rules, and where the rules allowed this sort of thing to happen by having this complexity and lack of relativity.</p><p></p><p>I'm also deeply unconvinced 5E will somehow prevent this - nothing about it's design makes this seem likely. Plenty of RPGs do manage to do it, because, by design, they simply <em>cannot</em> be broken in the fashion Bruce describes - FATE, for example, or Dungeon World. Yet 5E <em>can</em> be broken in this way, and the only question is when it is, and how badly it is, not whether it will be.</p><p></p><p>I mean, if we have a continuum with 4E on one end, the other end is absolutely not 2E or 1E, it's something like FATE (probably something even more abstract). 1E/2E would be, at best, in the middle, and mostly because only SOME of the classes can break the game this way.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ruin Explorer, post: 6325265, member: 18"] Interesting piece, but I'm kind of confused as to how this "using mechanics to win" deal is supposed to be a [I]new[/I] thing, beyond that adults are way better at it than children, and people who've played a hundred sessions are way better at it than people who've played ten. I saw people find ways to break D&D and similar games from the days I started playing. They got better at it with time, and it got more common, but it was never uncommon. He says "the seeds were always there". I'll go further - this mode of play was always there once we assumed the rules were the rules, and where the rules allowed this sort of thing to happen by having this complexity and lack of relativity. I'm also deeply unconvinced 5E will somehow prevent this - nothing about it's design makes this seem likely. Plenty of RPGs do manage to do it, because, by design, they simply [I]cannot[/I] be broken in the fashion Bruce describes - FATE, for example, or Dungeon World. Yet 5E [I]can[/I] be broken in this way, and the only question is when it is, and how badly it is, not whether it will be. I mean, if we have a continuum with 4E on one end, the other end is absolutely not 2E or 1E, it's something like FATE (probably something even more abstract). 1E/2E would be, at best, in the middle, and mostly because only SOME of the classes can break the game this way. [/QUOTE]
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