How Visible To players Should The Rules Be?

[hawkeyefan]

So we can talk about D&D specifically, but any other RPG we have to translate into D&Disms.

Screw that.

 

[Maxperson]

So we can talk about D&D specifically, but any other RPG we have to translate into D&Disms.

Screw that.

Yes! Absolutely! Absolutely nobody said that, that is. C'mon man. Can you at least start responding to what it is that we are saying, rather than making stuff up like this? It's getting old. Nobody said that you have translate other RPGs into D&D jargon.

 

[Thomas Shey]

A blacksmith is an expert. Hardly the SFHP I was describing. Heck, the other NPC classes aren't exactly special snowflakes either.

With the ranks of skill involved, a blacksmith is probably more capable than 95% of the people around him. Probably not bad in a fight either.

And if you don't like having this discussion with me, just don't respond. No need to be rude.

So its only okay when you are? Suggesting someone is disinguous because he forgot one of a set of classes he hasn't had cause to look at in more than two decades isn't exactly the soul of politeness.

 

[Campbell]

Say we followed the advice that is being offered here. Does anyone think that you could have a meaningful dialogue wherein every time someone wanted to refer to a soft move they had to instead say a telegraphed threat or danger presented to the player characters that the GM presents to elicit direct action (and will result in irrevocable changes to the setting if they do not act upon it). Do you really think that particular find and replace would actually make it easier for folks to understand than (in the context of a particular thread) defining/explaining what a soft move is so we can talk about how it relates to hard moves and basic moves? There's a lot encompassed in this stuff and it's not easily translatable to D&D terminology. Sometimes there might be similar elements, but even then, there are substantive differences that need to be captured.

It's hard to see this as anything but an attempt to make it too exhausting to talk about the stuff we want to talk about (particularly when people are willing to do the work on a thread-by-thread basis to explain their working definitions).

 

[hawkeyefan]

Yes! Absolutely! Absolutely nobody said that, that is. C'mon man. Can you at least start responding to what it is that we are saying, rather than making stuff up like this? It's getting old. Nobody said that you have translate other RPGs into D&D jargon.

You didn’t come right out and say it, no. But I inferred it from the things you did say. And if you don’t see why, I don’t know what to tell you.

I’ll just reiterate that I’m going to speak about these games in the way that makes sense to me. If anyone is uncertain of what I’m saying, I’ll happily clarify. But any attempt to get rid of specific phrases, technical terms, jargon, or design elements, I’m going to call out.

 

[aramis erak]

Well here's my response: if someone tells me that the fighter is only 5% better against the armoured knight than the guard, that will likewise lead some (many?) to make erroneous judgements. Because, in fact, the fighter is twice as good, and the normal way to convey "twice as good" using percentages is 100% better, not 5% better.

that's still deceptive statistics. It's still ignoring the key variables: class, level, and AC.
The correct (according to Kanapathi "Sam" Thiru, PhD) method is along the lines of A Normal man has 5% vs AC 0 while First level fighter has 10% vs that same AC0... because it includes the key variables.

 

[Maxperson]

You didn’t come right out and say it, no. But I inferred it from the things you did say. And if you don’t see why, I don’t know what to tell you.

Don't do that. You are not good at inferring and got that "inference" completely wrong. It didn't exist. Just respond to what I say and nothing more and you will be fine. You've invented fiction no less than a dozen times in your responses to me in this thread, attributing your fictions to me each and every time. Stop it.

 

[aramis erak]

Even if a 1st level Fighter is only 5% better at fighting than a 0-level guard, that's still better. It's the exact same for a 2nd-level Fighter vs. a 1st-level one. But we shouldn't look at just hit points or attack rolls.

Note that in the D&D Basic line, the second and third level fighters have no difference in to hit numbers from first; the same to hits are also used by 1st to 4th level Clerics and Theives, and 1st to 5th level Wizards.
AD&D1 had clerics advancing in 3 level brackets, wizards in 5 level brackets, theives in 4 level brackets, and fighters in 2 level brackets... most being 2 per bracket, but wizards higher brackets drop 3 points...
AD&D2 advanced faster (fighters 1 per level, clerics 2 per 3 levels, rogues 1 per 2 levels, wizards 1 per 3 levels).
D&D3, fighters BAB is 1 per level, clerics 2 per 3 levels.. and I'm too lazy to look up the others.

There is no singular D&D advancement rate that applies to all D&D brand games.

 

[Maxperson]

Well here's my response: if someone tells me that the fighter is only 5% better against the armoured knight than the guard, that will likewise lead some (many?) to make erroneous judgements. Because, in fact, the fighter is twice as good, and the normal way to convey "twice as good" using percentages is 100% better, not 5% better.

So what you are saying is that using specific numbers is very confusing and imprecise as it leads to many different views?

You're "twice as good" by the way is completely false. At best you can say he's twice as good at hitting AC 1. That's it. The other 19 AC numbers that's not true of. Someone who is twice as good as someone else is twice as good across the board, not just at hitting 1 number out of 20.

 

[aramis erak]

My point is that D&D makes use of some highly specific terminology and then it turns out that when everyone is used to this language they don't even notice that it is unusual.

QFT.
The same is true of almost all games. Even Chess: check, en passant, castling, two different methods of identification of board squares....

This reads like a threat.

It reads like a moderator giving a clear yet subtle warning that his patience is running out for the nature of the discourse violating the rules.
If you think he crossed the line, either PM him or hit report on the offending post. The software lets all the mods for that area know.