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Rules, Rules, Rules: Thoughts on the Past, Present, and Future of D&D
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<blockquote data-quote="Bedrockgames" data-source="post: 8848968" data-attributes="member: 85555"><p>I tend to agree with a lot of your points. I think one is especially important to me: I evaluate D&D differently than I would other systems because of its place in the hobby and its history (and how tricky preserving "D&Dness" over time and change seems to be (i.e. the difficult balance of updating and modernizing the game while retaining the features that make it what is). </p><p></p><p>I think I agree with you largely on point 3. I did like 3E, but I do remember becoming frustrated with elements of it, and I had particular trouble running certain types of settings. For example my Ravenloft settings felt off. They just felt way, way off in 3E, and I could never put my finger on it. Doubly so under 3.5. When pulled out my 2E books and ran it with that system, the setting suddenly popped for me again and felt as I had remembered. There were a lot of reasons to do with the mechanics, but certainly, now that you bring up this point, I think the avoidance of mother-may-I type mechanics were a part of that. I'm not a fan of the term either. At the same time we've had endless discussions about it here, so I don't think debating it is going to get anyone anywhere. But I share your wariness when I see that quoted text and a reference to a desire to avoid MMI. </p><p></p><p>All that said, I never adopted 5E even though that seemed more my speed than 4E (I think having a full edition break from current editions of D&D made me realize I was more comfortable with older editions anyways, and for the most part I play games other than D&D). </p><p></p><p>I do want to also discuss this paragraph in particular: </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>While I was somewhat on the other side of you in the thread referenced (I agreed in part but didn't share the OP's reaction), in this instance I think the above is quite true and I agree with it. RAW really wasn't something I saw people get particularly zealous about until 3E (and even then it took a few years for there to be a culture change in many of the groups I was in because we initially approached 3E as we did previous editions). Again I've been going back to 2nd edition a lot lately. I just ran a short campaign in October, and there are so many rules in that system we didn't use at all. Many of the rules were already highlighted as optional in the rulebook (I think because they understood adherence to the written rules varied a lot from table to table). One thing I enjoyed this time around was engaging rules we didn't use or used very little to see which ones might have more to them than I thought. But you are right, just looking at the books to get a sense of the history of the game can be quite misleading. One could, for example, look at the 2E era with its complete books, and compare that to the 3E era with its complete books, and think the splat and optimization were the same. But the fact was in 2E it was standard for the GM to disallow tons of the complete material (any kit you wanted to bring in was vetted and if a GM didn't like the look of it, it wasn't allowed). That is a sharp contrast to how the Complete books were handled in 3E (I know because I remember players had an expectation that if they bought the book, they could use the prestige class or feat from the book). </p><p></p><p>Also the rules lawyer is an interesting point. I recently picked up the campaign source book and catacomb guide in PDF (one of my favorite 2E era books) and it has this wonderful illustration of player types, which includes my favorite 'rules lawyer' image: </p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]268801[/ATTACH]</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Bedrockgames, post: 8848968, member: 85555"] I tend to agree with a lot of your points. I think one is especially important to me: I evaluate D&D differently than I would other systems because of its place in the hobby and its history (and how tricky preserving "D&Dness" over time and change seems to be (i.e. the difficult balance of updating and modernizing the game while retaining the features that make it what is). I think I agree with you largely on point 3. I did like 3E, but I do remember becoming frustrated with elements of it, and I had particular trouble running certain types of settings. For example my Ravenloft settings felt off. They just felt way, way off in 3E, and I could never put my finger on it. Doubly so under 3.5. When pulled out my 2E books and ran it with that system, the setting suddenly popped for me again and felt as I had remembered. There were a lot of reasons to do with the mechanics, but certainly, now that you bring up this point, I think the avoidance of mother-may-I type mechanics were a part of that. I'm not a fan of the term either. At the same time we've had endless discussions about it here, so I don't think debating it is going to get anyone anywhere. But I share your wariness when I see that quoted text and a reference to a desire to avoid MMI. All that said, I never adopted 5E even though that seemed more my speed than 4E (I think having a full edition break from current editions of D&D made me realize I was more comfortable with older editions anyways, and for the most part I play games other than D&D). I do want to also discuss this paragraph in particular: While I was somewhat on the other side of you in the thread referenced (I agreed in part but didn't share the OP's reaction), in this instance I think the above is quite true and I agree with it. RAW really wasn't something I saw people get particularly zealous about until 3E (and even then it took a few years for there to be a culture change in many of the groups I was in because we initially approached 3E as we did previous editions). Again I've been going back to 2nd edition a lot lately. I just ran a short campaign in October, and there are so many rules in that system we didn't use at all. Many of the rules were already highlighted as optional in the rulebook (I think because they understood adherence to the written rules varied a lot from table to table). One thing I enjoyed this time around was engaging rules we didn't use or used very little to see which ones might have more to them than I thought. But you are right, just looking at the books to get a sense of the history of the game can be quite misleading. One could, for example, look at the 2E era with its complete books, and compare that to the 3E era with its complete books, and think the splat and optimization were the same. But the fact was in 2E it was standard for the GM to disallow tons of the complete material (any kit you wanted to bring in was vetted and if a GM didn't like the look of it, it wasn't allowed). That is a sharp contrast to how the Complete books were handled in 3E (I know because I remember players had an expectation that if they bought the book, they could use the prestige class or feat from the book). Also the rules lawyer is an interesting point. I recently picked up the campaign source book and catacomb guide in PDF (one of my favorite 2E era books) and it has this wonderful illustration of player types, which includes my favorite 'rules lawyer' image: [ATTACH type="full" width="689px"]268801[/ATTACH] [/QUOTE]
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