D&D General "Hot" take: Aesthetically-pleasing rules are highly overvalued

[Monayuris]

The one 5e example I have of where natural language caused me trouble is the Charm Person spell. We were having a discussion on another thread about what a "friendly acquaintance" would do.

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Could a friendly acquaintance use a sleep spell on you if you were acting out of control and looked like you were going to do something illegal or might hurt yourself?

The conversation really changed when we realized charmed is a condition...

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[Even with that, am I doing something "harmful to it" if I attack its friends? steal from it? make it disobey the commandsit was given by its employer?]

Would italicizing or bolding or capitalizing charmed in the description have been that big of a violation of the asthetic? Or putting those bullet points in again? Or parenthetically saying "see Charmed, pg. #"?

I don't see any problem with the spell. I'd rather have this natural language than a more precise keywording system, because you are talking about edge cases that aren't covered by the rules.

The best way to handle these edge cases is to allow the DM to make specific rulings based on the context of the situation at hand. Let the DM have the ability to examine the situation and make a judgement call.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Or to put it another way, trusting the DM and acknowledging that if players didn't trust the DM, the game was probably doomed no matter how precise the rules were.

There are other reasons, it isn't all about 'trust' and 'dm power'. It is also about player enablement and creating a participatory story. So, if the player has no idea what will happen (that is from a general perspective of what the costs and benefits are, and likelihood of success) then it isn't possible to establish the 'setting of stakes' and 'taking of risks' which is part of the process used to generate narrative in that way. This creates instead a different sort of process, which isn't objectively better or worse, but is not necessarily what is wanted. Clear rules, such as 4e's rules (assuming they were written well, which they weren't always) means you, as a player, KNOW how a certain move or gambit will play out. Certainly you know as well as the GM does. Also, because there is already an agreed-upon mechanism, you aren't 'playing the GM', you're playing your character in the story.
I constantly find with 5e games that I am assessing the GM's mindset and figuring out how they are going to apply the rules. Now, 5e is a lot more clear than, say, 1e, where the rules are kind of pea soup and GMs could potentially throw anything at all out there. So I am not entirely condemning 5e, but its rules ambiguity works heavily against some styles of play. I also found there was a 'work load' aspect to 4e GMing, because I never had to think much about how to 'make a ruling' about something purely mechanical, I could think at the story level most of the time. 4e has some issues too, but I could fix those, I can't really fix the issues I have with 5e. I don't run 5e as a result, it is just not something I like to run.
So, while some people might see rules precision as some sort of "Munchkin Repellent" or shield against jerks, I don't see it that way at all, and I don't think that is what game designers in general see in that approach.

 

[Undrave]

Not really? I don't think it has much of anything to do with simulationism. Another example that is completely unrelated to simulationism, which I mentioned in the first post, is the people who insist that a single "one stop shopping" place for character options, is better than individual class lists. In fact, that's what inspired me to write this up in the first place. People in the A5E threads were asking for a single, comprehensive repository of all Knacks, and that similar Knacks from different classes should just be collapsed down into a single Knack that each of those classes is permitted to choose. That's a purely aesthetic desire--"don't make two similar options, when you could make one generic option"--that is completely unrelated to simulation.

I admit, though, that most of my examples tied to 3e will be simulationist, because it is such a deeply simulationist game. But "natural language" isn't simulationist--at least, not as far as I'm concerned. What is "the rules need no explanation" simulating in the world?

Well, when it comes to the Knacks, I think they should be treated like Fighting style. It makes way more sense if there's a short list to simply put it with the Class, but that if two Knacks do the same thing, they should be named the same thing.

"Don't make two identical option when you could make one generic option' is actually a gamist concern.

I think your Meta-aesthetic just include all three aesthetics: gamist, simulationist, narrativist. Those are meta aesthetic and have different goals and different individuals value them differently.

Bleah! Keywords on Magic cards are tolerable if only because there isn't much space to write everything out. But D&D books/modules/etc. have the space, so bang goes that excuse.

Keywords can be pretty important if something happens all the time. I think Yu-gi-oh! might actually be a good exemple because it's 'keywords' system was developed over multiple sets as rule concepts became more and more prevalent. For exemple, early cards would say something like "target 1 card in your opponent's graveyard and remove it from play". These cards were very rare in the early days but became more and more common (and more and more important as the graveyard became like a second hand) until eventually "remove from play" was shortened to "banish".

Another one is the concept of piercing damage where older cards would say "During battle between (???) and a Defense Position monster whose DEF is lower than the ATK of this card, inflict the difference as Battle Damage to your opponent." which was eventually shortened to "If (???) attacks a Defense Position monster, inflict piercing battle damage to your opponent.".

Piercing or 'trample' had been a fairly common jargon amongst fans to begin with.

They also developed problem solving text which made this much more uniformed. For exemple, the cost to activate a card is ALWAYS placed before a colon, and effect of the card afterward. Costs and effect have different timing and interaction with rules so that these are always worded and presented the same way avoids complication.

D&D already has keywords, such as 'saving throw' and 'ability check' and 'melee attack' or 'grapple' or 'fire damage'.

 

[Umbran]

Dude. DUDE.

I told you that I wasn't going to play this game!

I told you loads of people swear blind that they're completely clear and then give summaries or descriptions that do not much up with the rules (no comment on whether yours is this way). Worse, a lot of alternative understandings arguably work better than the actual rules (in that they are more naturalistic and/or playable).

If we aren't going to discuss the particulars of you example... your assertion becomes non-falsifiable.

 

[Oofta]

Dude. DUDE.

I told you that I wasn't going to play this game!

I told you loads of people swear blind that they're completely clear and then give summaries or descriptions that do not much up with the rules (no comment on whether yours is this way). Worse, a lot of alternative understandings arguably work better than the actual rules (in that they are more naturalistic and/or playable).

Point is, if it was so obvious, there wouldn't be so many misunderstandings of how it works, nor so much debate over how it works (particularly when you get to corner-case situations).

In my experience the only people who have problems with it have a problem with it because of baggage from previous editions. I honestly don't know how much clearer it could be if you don't have any pre-conceived notions.

Besides, just because I think it's clear doesn't mean a whole heck of a lot. Just that different styles and systems work better for some people than others. The natural language, for the most part, works for me. YMMV.

 

[Cadence]

I don't see any problem with the spell. I'd rather have this natural language than a more precise keywording system, because you are talking about edge cases that aren't covered by the rules.

The best way to handle these edge cases is to allow the DM to make specific rulings based on the context of the situation at hand. Let the DM have the ability to examine the situation and make a judgement call.

The mechanical effect of the spell gives the creature a named condition that specifically forbids it from attacking and gives the caster advantage on social rolls with them. But reading the spell doesn't tell you that, because it doesn't let you know its a condition instead of just an adjective that means they treat you as a "friendly acquaintance". That doesn't seem like edge cases to me, it seems like a huge mechanical part of the spell.

What if magic missile said the target is hit by darts of magical force but didn't say what the damage was. Does it even do damage? Does it do d4 because that's what normal darts do? (Well, if you think to look up magical effects in the back you'd see it was d4+1).

The part about what harmful means, sure. You can't cover everything and those might be edge cases.

 

[Undrave]

And that matters because when you change a rule significantly from how it functioned in previous editions, I think you need to make it really obvious both that it has been changed in a significant way, and how it functions now. This is particularly true for games which have gone for multiple editions with more similar rules on a subject. I don't remember surprise ever really confusing people in previous editions. In 5E though thousand+ reply reddit threads with some very dramatic up and down voting show that is no longer the case.

If you change it significantly, it's a good idea to change its name or reword it. Like how 3e it was 'Attack of Opportunity' and 4e and 5e is 'Opportunity Attack', or the difference between '5 ft step' and 'shift'. 'Surprise' should have been reworded.

5e removed the concept of 'skill check' but does a TERRIBLE job of explaining that it did and how the use of them SHOULD be handled.

Funny thing is I think the surprise rules are perfectly clear. Seems pretty simple to me: if you didn't notice the enemy until combat starts you can't do anything until the end of your first turn. How is that hard?

Then again I really like the stealth rules (previous editions led to head scratching immersion breaking scenarios) so there's no accounting for taste.

Yeah I'm not sure I see the confusion exactly? I will admit a lot of the particulars of surprise don't come up very often and it's a very forgettable rule. I can see the 'end of that turn' being the confusion? But round and turn are well defined?

Not that I want to go into details about how it may or may not work, what is the sticking point with confusion anyway beyond being used to how things work?

Would italicizing or bolding or capitalizing charmed in the description have been that big of a violation of the asthetic? Or putting those bullet points in again? Or parenthetically saying "see Charmed, pg. #"?

All the conditions should be easier to notice in text. Probably capitalization since it's a proper game term would be the best. Maybe add a modifier to type face like italics or bold. Surprised and Charmed are conditions, for exemple. And there should be a condition that prevents you from taking reactions (Addled? Startled?) since it comes up often enough.

 

[Teemu]

I think the topic is about rules that play well vs. rules that read well.

A lot of people read the rules instead of playing games with the rules. I think this is something that'll always happen because it's a lot easier to find time to read books than to organize a game. I'm pretty sure WotC purposefully writes some of their material for 5e with this reader market in mind. The layout of the 5e adventures is one of these: they're not organized so as to facilitate referencing but instead to make it more natural to read through. A fairly sizable portion of the market will buy the books just for reading, not playing.

Things like 3e's player-monster parity reads well because it makes sense on paper, but it causes a massive prep load on the DM. Or how fun it's to read through 9th-level spells, but in play they can sometimes be a nightmare. Or even keywords -- they make sense when you read through them, everything being so logical and rational, but if done wrong, they don't facilitate play.

 

[Mistwell]

I think they failed! Gygax was, above all, ORGANIZED. Somehow, though it isn't always apparent, his text flows, educates, and reveals. When you go back later you can remember what you read, and you can find a specific reference again, usually under a well-named subheading. Nor is any topic covered in more than one place. In all of 1e each element of the game is discussed ONE TIME, at least in mechanical terms (there is some duplication of reference between the DMG and PHB, but in all cases the actual rules language is deferred to the DMG, with the PHB simply providing a general statement about how something works).
5e OTOH is a referential nightmare. Rules are declared, referenced, modified, applied in different ways, etc. throughout the text. So to know how 2-weapon fighting works, there are at least 5 different things you would want/need to read. This is covered entirely in one paragraph in 1e (and I note that 2e starts to slip in this regard).

And I disagree. In my opinion, the 1e AD&D books are not well organized and Gygax was not, above all, organized. I don't think he ever claimed to be well organized, and you're the first person in over 40 years I've heard describe him or the AD&D 1e books that way. They are so disorganized that modern OSR reprints are primarily about re-organizing them so you can find all the rules which relate to one concept in one place.

I would refer you, for example, to the excellent AD&D 1e Combat Flowchart. Which is, frankly, insane. Rules are pulled from all over the place in the PHB and DMG and even elsewhere.

 

[Guest 6801328]

WTF is OP talking about?