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Rules, Rulings and Second Order Design: D&D and AD&D Examined
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<blockquote data-quote="Pedantic" data-source="post: 9043434" data-attributes="member: 6690965"><p>I feel like I'm missing something about the "second-order" design principle that's being brought up here regularly. Is there something unique about it conceptually aside from when and where it occurs that makes it different from designing rules?</p><p></p><p>My immediate view of not designing a system, and then making decisions about it as an individual in the moment, is just that you're moving the design task to a different place/time and setting some constraints on the tools and time available to the designer (they must come up with a solution rapidly, they can't test their solution before deploying it, etc.), but I feel like I'm missing something unique that proponents are seeing in that.</p><p></p><p>The obvious benefit I'm seeing is that when you build the plane as you're flying it, you can ensure the design covers the exact situations/needs of the game as they arise, but I don't necessarily believe that's unique, particularly given that you can also use design as a tool to shape what will come up at a table to begin with.</p><p></p><p>The thing about rules is that they are descriptive as much as proscriptive. You can go from a transcript of play to writing a set of rules that would have (or are likely to have) produced that transcript. I'm struggling to conceptualize how not to do design work; it's a bit like being asked to look at a text and see the letters without reading it.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Pedantic, post: 9043434, member: 6690965"] I feel like I'm missing something about the "second-order" design principle that's being brought up here regularly. Is there something unique about it conceptually aside from when and where it occurs that makes it different from designing rules? My immediate view of not designing a system, and then making decisions about it as an individual in the moment, is just that you're moving the design task to a different place/time and setting some constraints on the tools and time available to the designer (they must come up with a solution rapidly, they can't test their solution before deploying it, etc.), but I feel like I'm missing something unique that proponents are seeing in that. The obvious benefit I'm seeing is that when you build the plane as you're flying it, you can ensure the design covers the exact situations/needs of the game as they arise, but I don't necessarily believe that's unique, particularly given that you can also use design as a tool to shape what will come up at a table to begin with. The thing about rules is that they are descriptive as much as proscriptive. You can go from a transcript of play to writing a set of rules that would have (or are likely to have) produced that transcript. I'm struggling to conceptualize how not to do design work; it's a bit like being asked to look at a text and see the letters without reading it. [/QUOTE]
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