gimme back my narration

[Lord Mhoram]

p.s. Is your name from the Chronicles of Thomas Covenent the Unbeliever?

Yep.

Way back when I first got onto the internet (back when it was still primarily a text based medium) I was working graveyard and my social outlet were MUDs and MOOs. And the very first one I got into (which was my first internet experience) you had to have a character - so I used the name of my favorite character from my favorite fantasy books.

It's been my internet handle now for something like 17 years.

And my avatar is my longest played character - Black Cat a Champions character that has been running on and off for 15 years.

 

[Glyfair]

While my own experience shows this to be true, my own experience also shows it to have been more prevalent in 3E than in prior editions.

I will argue that this was originally largely based on the fact that 3E drew that sort of player to the game. Earlier versions of D&D tended to have those player move away because it was very difficult to play strictly according to the rules either because of a very skeletal system (OD&D) or a system that was a melange of many sub-systems that were hard to keep track of, and often didn't mesh well (1E AD&D).

However, once these players were drawn in, the fact their presence tended to shift the "uncommitted" and new players in that direction.

Oddly enough, the "the rules are to be played as is" approach was one of Gygax's goals with AD&D. He stated at the time that he wanted to make it easier for players to move from D&D campaign to D&D campaign without having to learn large amounts of house rules (that often consisted of extensive sub-systems in OD&D). He felt it was important to D&D's growth. He wanted players who played with changes to the AD&D rules to call their games something else ("Variant AD&D" being most common at conventions).

 

[Cadfan]

I found that 3e had more of a "must play the rules as written" attitude. This was due, in part, to the fact that the game had rules for all kinds of things that previously it didn't, and the rules mostly worked.

In any case,

1. Even if its technically easier to add fluff than to change it (even when the fluff is neatly isolated in readily ignored italicized lines), the degree of difference in difficulty doesn't strike me as meaningful. Remember the Geico commercial where the dude is all like, "Man, I'd buy Geico, except I have to go to a website! That's so hard!" and then the gecko makes fun of him? Yeah.

2. The complaint that the fluff sometimes implies consequences that the rules don't support is a fair one. Does the Rune of Peace give off light? It says it does, so can you see by it? Who knows.

3. A game system where the fluff never implies consequences that the rules don't support isn't possible. Even if those little italicized lines were removed, there'd still be the same problem. Fireball does fire damage in a area of effect. Fire gives off light. Can I use Fireball to light up a room momentarily? You get the idea. The moment the rules start trying to describe "things happening," which is of course what rules do in an RPG, you're going to run into the basic problem of the way that a small amount of text (even the text of an entire book) cannot completely model the entirety of human fantasy experience, even within a single genre.

4. Effects based games are not a counterexample to point 3. They just change how the discontinuity is adjudicated. In D&D, questions like "does Rune of Peace give off light?" are adjudicated by ad hoc, on the spot decisions by the Dungeon Master. In an effects based game where a player is designing an ability called Rune of Peace, he's making the decision in advance. The thing is, you still end up with the same problem as before- you can't possibly plan for every contingency. So when you come up against a situation that you hadn't thought of when you were designing your power (how much light does my Rune of Peace give off? If I said that the rune appears on the enemy's head, does it work on a headless zombie? Etc.), you have to use another means of adjudication. Typically that's GM judgment.

 

[Psion]

You know what they call it when you have to repeatedly move weights around?

Work.

 

[Delta]

I will argue that this was originally largely based on the fact that 3E drew that sort of player to the game. Earlier versions of D&D tended to have those player move away because it was very difficult to play strictly according to the rules either because of a very skeletal system (OD&D) or a system that was a melange of many sub-systems that were hard to keep track of, and often didn't mesh well (1E AD&D).

However, once these players were drawn in, the fact their presence tended to shift the "uncommitted" and new players in that direction.

Oddly enough, the "the rules are to be played as is" approach was one of Gygax's goals with AD&D. He stated at the time that he wanted to make it easier for players to move from D&D campaign to D&D campaign without having to learn large amounts of house rules (that often consisted of extensive sub-systems in OD&D). He felt it was important to D&D's growth. He wanted players who played with changes to the AD&D rules to call their games something else ("Variant AD&D" being most common at conventions).

IMO your second point undercuts your first point. My impression is that 1E AD&D players were specifically "brought back" to the game with 3E having a similar tone and philosophy. I know that was true for my friends. My 1E play was not all slippery-slidey, I put a great deal of effort into following AD&D rules as close to RAW as possible.

For me, it was not until 3E that I even realized so many people changed so many rules so freely.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I suppose this is what Kamikaze Midget is looking for. Pretty much no flavor text to rewrite at all. "A glowing arrow" is the only information we're given. Things like "How much light does it shed, where does it appear? How is it shot? Does it stick around for that full ten minutes (1 turn duration) or what?" are completely absent from the text.

Well, I'm not really looking for that, but that would certainly solve the OP's problem.

I'm a bigger fan of having minor tweaks to powers based on what your flavor is, probably...

 

[Mouseferatu]

I will argue that this was originally largely based on the fact that 3E drew that sort of player to the game.

Not IME. I've seen this behavior and groups that

A) I've been gaming with since 2E, and

B) Groups that I didn't join until 3E, but in which every member has been gaming since at least 2E, if not 1E.

In every group I've gamed with over the past 16 years, which included (as the groups changed mutated) dozens of gamers, I've only ever games with two people who started with 3E, and both of them were too new to RPing to be comfortable trying to rules-lawyer anything even if they'd wanted to.

 

[Glyfair]

In every group I've gamed with over the past 16 years, which included (as the groups changed mutated) dozens of gamers, I've only ever games with two people who started with 3E, and both of them were too new to RPing to be comfortable trying to rules-lawyer anything even if they'd wanted to.

The groups I have gamed with have had a lot with of players who shared my experiences. They started playing with early D&D variations, and drifted away because other games fitted their preferences and styles better (or played many trying to find that game). They came back to D&D with 3E because it "fixed" the many of the things about D&D were pushing them away from D&D.

That isn't everyone by any means. I have gamed with a wide variety of players. I even know some that would have drifted away from D&D like I did, but didn't because their primary group(s) opted to continue to play D&D.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I'll object to that. To my eye, the whole "flavor text vs. rule text" is both recent and unwelcome. In Classic D&D the whole work was just "rules". There may have been parts easier to change and parts harder to change, but there was no "fence" between them, and any description had potential side-effects you could use to your immediate advantage in-game.

Yes, I prefer this sort of game, too. It emphasizes what the rules represent over the letter of the rules, IMHO.


RC

 

[Irda Ranger]

I'm not surprised this is the complaint when Step 2 of the second method is "Completely overthink things."

Would you mull on or otherwise care about that stuff if you narrating the power normally? I can't see doing so.

Ah, the lovely "Don't think about it" argument. I love that one!

Except, no, the opposite.

It's very obvious that some people play D&D like chess or monopoly. The rules "simply are" and you don't question why pawns can only move one square or one move diagonally when attacking. You don't wonder why all houses always cost exactly the same, etc. It's a game; don't think about it. Just play the game.

You're free to play D&D that way if you wish. I wish not to. As a roleplaying game with castles & kingdoms and NPCs I prefer to imagine that the underlying world the game takes place in is a "working" world, just like ours but with elves, magic, dragons, etc. That's the only way that's fun for me.

And for that to be possible the rules must be understood as my "interface" with that world. I have to ask "What does this rule represent in the game world? How to the PCs and NPCs perceive this rule's function?" If the 4E books represent that PCs observe glowing runes and god-lasers, then OK, I get that - but what else? And the complaint is that 4E does not help me do that, and it often goes out of its way to make it harder.

I don't "over think" rules before it's necessary. I don't sit around at work wondering about this stuff. But when unexpected stuff comes out during a gaming sessions the rules and fluff of a game need to "work together" in a coherent manner so that I can extrapolate from them and arrive at new solutions in unexpected situations -the edge, corner and unique cases.

So pardon us if we're trying to work this out as a group here at EN World rather than do it alone at home. If this isn't your cup of tea, there are many other threads here at EN World that may be better suited to your style of game. But don't tell us that our idea of fun is bad or wrong (which is exactly what you did with your condescending comment).