Edition Fatigue

[Coldwyn]

I would say most emphatically NO. I want my core to cover general rules including non-combat travel and exploration. I want my core rules to be a tool kit that extends beyond the encounter and beyond combat. Setting books should cover specific concerns about their settings, sure. Perhaps with more sophisticated detail when it's important like the desert setting rules of Al-Qadim.
But what if I want to build my own setting? Shouldn't the core offer me some support? And shouldn't that support be shared as part of the core rules so that the general rules for my campaign world are similar to my friend Brian's, or Rob's, or Stephen's, particularly if we are all trying to play the same basic game?
No, general rules for all sorts of things I may want in the core. Specific overrides, extensions, or gloss-overs can be put in the settings.

There are two view-points here, prefab and diy. Also, I may be a bit biased because I tend to travel around the world a lot and enjoy the challange of overcoming the cultural barrier.

From the prefab (or specific) pov, having all the rules to emulate a specific culture in one place beats generic rules by several magnitudes, like with Al´Qadim.
From a diy pov, having a group of generic rules to adopt to a culture may be neat, but you need to know the culture you want to create or emulate, else it´s an intellectual waste of time.

To draw a real world analogy, for me as a german it´s as difficult to be in Mumbai, India as it is to visit New York, USA. My "generic" social rules I know by heart don´t mean in both cases. So when I take that analogy to RPG terms, I need social rules in my India-based setting as well as in my USA-based setting because both are alien to me and both differ from the core in meaningful ways.

 

[Hussar]

The issue, I suppose, with including setting based rules - overland travel, what cities look like, heck the whole "shopping for magic items" thing in 3e - is that you have to make a lot of assumptions about someone else's setting. Particularly if the setting based rules have any impact on adventure design, which, in my mind, they inevitably will.

I can see the point of removing almost all setting based material from the core books. Savage Worlds does this rather well. You'll find almost no setting stuff in the Savage Worlds core book, other than really, really generic "pulp" stuff like. SW does what Coldwyn suggests and moves 99% of the setting material into the setting books

GURPS does the same thing as well. The basic GURPS book (at least from my rather fuzzy memory) doesn't really include a whole lot of specifics on setting design. That's left to supplements.

At the end of the day, I suppose it depends on whether you see D&D as a generic fantasy game vehicle or a rather specific one strongly based on a specific branch of genre fiction. I think the problem becomes that you can make arguements for D&D in any edition that it could go either way.

Taking 3e for example, all you have to do is look at the SRD to see D&D without setting material. The SRD strips out pretty much all the flavour (such as it is) from the books. And, I think there are a number of 3e players who stick to the SRD as their base book, so, it certainly can be done.

There's advantages and disadvantages to both approaches.

 

[Harlekin]

Two points.

1) Roleplaying is more than just having characters talk in a tavern. You need rules and tables for overland travel, acquiring resources, hiring services, and all the other non-combat activity that is prevelant in any story-based game.

Those are rules for accounting, not for role-playing. D&D never had any rules to support role playing except alignments.

I think you are mixing up role-playing with non-combat activity. Moreover, you focus on non-combat activities that usually happen between adventures and thus are of minor importance in most games. For the things you mention, my handwaving is as good as the handwaving of the guy that wrote the rulebook (Or do you think and edition of D&D ever had realistic prices for goods and services?).

Rules for non-combat activity are much more important for actions that happens during the adventure, when the life of the PCs is on the line. Here the rules support has steadily increased with the editions. D&D and AD&D 1 (core) had next to no support for non-thieves, during the move to 2nd ed non-weapon proficiencies were added, 3.x added a full skill system and 4.0 provided a general resolution mechanic based on the skill system. Evolution in action.

 

[Wiseblood]

It ani't that simple and it is definitely no fact, it is your opinion. Now I cannot speak for 1E or 2e, I never owned the rulebooks, I just rolled the dice my DM told me to role. I just had a quick look at the Basic Red Box rule books, the whole players handbook is 64 pages. There is 8 pages of games concepts explained via an adventure narrative, followed by 5 or so pages on the character. There is a page on town business and a solo adventure that goes from page 14 to page 22. Page 23 to 47 is character classes and a couple pages of charts, sample character sheets, sample characters and a sheet of graph paper. Page 48 to 52 is how to create a character and the remaining pages are about mappers, callers, order of march, alignement, dividing treasdure, combat encounters, hirelings and a glossery and 2 pages of ads.

The DM book has 2 pages of introduction, 9 of sample adventure and the reat monsters, treasure and charts.
Aside from the couple of paragraphs on ability checks and the retainer ruls there is nothing in the Basic books I would call non combat rules.

Now the 3.0 phb 286 pages including glossery and credits and the 4e phb1 317 pages so we are clearly is completely different territory in terms of rules complexity. interestingly the combat chapters are about the same length on both.

I'm back. Y'all have been busy. It's funny you should mention BECM. If you have 40 pages of combat rules and 2 of noncombat and you have 9 pages of combat rules and 0 noncombat. That 0 might seem larger. In fact you say 52-62 sounds like it has a fair amount of noncombat stuff. It might not be the now ubiquitous skill list, but it is noncombat, none the less. It has combat, time keping, what might be called etiquette, vision and light assorted info and rules. None of these rules are individually complex. This allows for air in the conversation.


It was then that I was looking at PF's character sheet
A third of the front covers skills a third of the back covers spells. There is a slightlly larger section for feats and specal abilities.

Here's what struck me. The equipment section is small. If you think back in older editions you payed more attention to your equipment. Chalk, fish hooks, rope, hammers and pitons.

D&D's MacGuyver stuff.

You would find creative uses for this when you might need to save vs. death in the next few minutes.

There wasn't much in the way of noncombat skills. It was ingenuity and creativity. Nowadays it's is all too often nab a d20 and roll a check. Granted, I like the skill system with a few exceptions. It increases continuity. That same continuity can bite us in the arse if we forget to be creative. When rules make it easy for us we might lean on them too much.

 

[rounser]

Those are rules for accounting, not for role-playing. D&D never had any rules to support role playing except alignments.

I disagree - what are class archetypes but cliches to hang your roleplaying on?
And I find the idea that D&D doesn't default to a western Europe pseudo-medieval setting with it's implied setting, therefore DIY because every setting is a blank slate culturally kind of ridiculous.

Here's a reasonable assumption for you that D&D feels confident in making: standard settings in line with the implied setting contain castles. And peasants. Etcetera. Pretending the implied setting is a blank slate is disingenuous, because everyone knows that it's a default to build from. Assume it's a non-cultural-specific void containing combat and you'll get predictable results, because people default to the implied setting by default.

It's D&D, not GURPS. Or at least, it's supposed to be. On the other hand, the dragonborn and tiefling empire stuff in the core is IMO the wrong way to build an implied setting, and a IMO worse than nothing.

 

[Coldwyn]

I disagree - what are class archetypes but cliches to hang your roleplaying on?
And I find the idea that D&D doesn't default to a western Europe pseudo-medieval setting with it's implied setting, therefore DIY because every setting is a blank slate culturally kind of ridiculous.

Here's a reasonable assumption for you that D&D feels confident in making: standard settings in line with the implied setting contain castles. And peasants. Etcetera. Pretending the implied setting is a blank slate is disingenuous, because everyone knows that it's a default to build from. Assume it's a non-cultural-specific void containing combat and you'll get predictable results, because people default to the implied setting by default.

It's D&D, not GURPS. Or at least, it's supposed to be. On the other hand, the dragonborn and tiefling empire stuff in the core is IMO the wrong way to build an implied setting, and a IMO worse than nothing.

Then be invited to find it rediculous.

D&D is a lot of things but not western Europe pseudo-medieval and never has been. It´s rather some fantasy-version of a western with a light touch of medieval.

 

[Argyle King]

Then be invited to find it rediculous.

D&D is a lot of things but not western Europe pseudo-medieval and never has been. It´s rather some fantasy-version of a western with a light touch of medieval.

I've heard it argued that the current version is more like super heroes with a fantasy paint job.

 

[Coldwyn]

I've heard it argued that the current version is more like super heroes with a fantasy paint job.

You mean because of the flashy powers and stuff?
Nah. It´s still got the same old trappings: fringe of civilization, outlaw vs sheriff mentality, evil natives, and so on.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I'm back. Y'all have been busy. It's funny you should mention BECM. If you have 40 pages of combat rules and 2 of noncombat and you have 9 pages of combat rules and 0 noncombat. That 0 might seem larger. In fact you say 52-62 sounds like it has a fair amount of noncombat stuff. It might not be the now ubiquitous skill list, but it is noncombat, none the less. It has combat, time keping, what might be called etiquette, vision and light assorted info and rules. None of these rules are individually complex. This allows for air in the conversation.


It was then that I was looking at PF's character sheet
A third of the front covers skills a third of the back covers spells. There is a slightlly larger section for feats and specal abilities.

Here's what struck me. The equipment section is small. If you think back in older editions you payed more attention to your equipment. Chalk, fish hooks, rope, hammers and pitons.

D&D's MacGuyver stuff.

You would find creative uses for this when you might need to save vs. death in the next few minutes.

There wasn't much in the way of noncombat skills. It was ingenuity and creativity. Nowadays it's is all too often nab a d20 and roll a check. Granted, I like the skill system with a few exceptions. It increases continuity. That same continuity can bite us in the arse if we forget to be creative. When rules make it easy for us we might lean on them too much.

most of the non combat stuff covers either exploration and what would now be called the social contract and some tips on the creative use of equipment.

On the latter, well all the equipment is still there but the skill system will give consistiency across tables where as the old way depended on a shared view of what was practical and possible with the tools on hand.

How does a pressure plate trap actually work mechanically or a swinging blade trap.

IMO in thre 3.x era there was something of a backlash against DM fiat decisions and this lead to more of an emphasis on using skills and rules to resolve such thing and a less on using tools and equipment which depended on DM fiat to make it work.

 

[Argyle King]

I think one of the issues with 3.5 was that it was trying to serve two masters. I loved 3.5; quite honestly, it's what brought me into D&D full swing. However, now that I have more experience with how other games work, I look back and 3.5 sometimes feels as though it was trying to split its identity between being both D&D and a universal system. It somehow managed to put D&D style level based design into the same package as a physics engine (not sure what else to call it) that seems better suited to something like GURPS or Hero. (As odd as it may sound, I actually had a really easy time learning GURPS when I first picked it up because some of the rules looked similar to what I was accustomed to.)

With the many complaints I have about 4E and 4E.E, one thing I can give WoTC credit for is deciding upon an identity for the game. I may not agree with the identity, and there may be times when I'm not thrilled by their customer service skills, but there's been a pretty solid identity given to the product.