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

[AbdulAlhazred]

That is what I am arguing against. Stridently advocating for a structure regardless of any practical design consequences it has, on the basis that its aesthetics, whatever those aesthetics may be, are superior. My concerns would apply just as much to a stridently pro-keyword approach, if anyone were actually advocating that, as it does to a stridently pro-centralization approach, which is commonly advocated both here and elsewhere. (Seriously, every single thread anyone ever starts about making a 4e heartbreaker, you're gonna get a third or more of the responses advocating for either all powers from a given source being condensed into a single pile, or all powers in the whole game condensed into a single pile, not because that would be more effective to play nor because it would be easier to design, but because single piles are presumed to be self-evidently "better" than separate piles. When one naturally points out that build differences would become extremely difficult to implement in such a system--e.g. every power could easily have 4 or more build-specific clauses in it, making them incredibly bloated--these concerns are flatly dismissed as unimportant compared to the importance of collecting all plausibly-similar options together in a single list.)

LOL, since my own personal rules could effectively be called this "heartbreaker" I have to interject here. The 4e approach, which resulted in the existence of NORTH OF FIFTY THOUSAND POWERS (literally, no exaggeration) is clearly neither elegant nor practically beneficial. Our game, were it to be commercialized, would probably contain on the order of 500 powers. Yet it contains virtually all of the flexibility of the original. Call it 'elegance', call it anything you want, but 100x decrease in the necessary number of powers to achieve the same level of expressiveness, that is what I call A HUGE WIN.
And make no mistake, I did NOT set out with some sort of 'aesthetic' goal. I felt from the beginning that the 4e approach was flawed, but I had no special axe to grind beyond making it better. I DO feel it is more elegant to have basically a unified list, but I base that entirely on observation of the improvements gained! Frankly there is simply no way I could possibly design thousands of powers anyway, and there were goals I had in mind which didn't allow for simply making everything compatible with 4e's specific detailed structure. Honestly, at this point our game has diverged a lot from 4e anyway, but my advice to anyone who wants to make a game with the core 'power' concept is, don't make the mistake of putting them in too many niches. Its fine to say "you can only do this if you have met certain requirements", but in our case we shifted those to the narrative side, and then made the narrative construct a very solid part of the game. So, your fighter could have a fireball, but there would be a darned good reason, in narrative terms, for why, and there's probably a wizard someplace who will cast a better one.

 

[Campbell]

Here's the thing - it is not my place to play backseat designer or worry about a company's bottom line when making a creative critique. As someone who plays roleplaying games their business needs are immaterial to me when evaluating the quality of the game. I am making subjective aesthetic and technical judgements based on what I think makes for better game design, not trying to rewrite history.

I am also not interested in getting into meta analysis of any particular game in this discussion because I believe it obscures the fundamental issues. You got locked into discussing the vagaries of a given game rather than the principles at work. You also end up continually fighting yesterday's battles instead of expecting better.

I think as consumers of the medium we often expect far too little from our games. We accept purchasing hundreds of pages of material that at best get out of the way. That is no where near acceptable value in my view. If I spend my money on something I expect it to provide value rather than just not have a negative impact. We can have evocative games with clear rules that impact the play experience in a positive way. We should all expect more. It's not one or the other.

 

[Undrave]

The problem I'm talking about is that SOME of each rule is in the PHB, and the REST is in the DMG. Gygax totally avoided this, he simply decreed that rules are the business of the DM and they are ALL in the DMG. You literally, in 1e, have no information on how combat actually works until you read the DMG. This works.
However, I'm not really advocating that stance, just that rules should be in one place. Otherwise they inevitably become unclear and usually subject to different interpretations depending on which version you read. If everything is duplicated in EACH BOOK, well, that obviously is wasteful.
What seems to be happening in modern D&Ds is that the PHB is intended to be the 'rule book' so the players can play. The DMG then becomes more of a 'resource' and 'advice', but inevitably that steers into making statements that are interpreted as rules or effectively ARE rules. I'm fine with there being some stuff in each place, but it should be carefully looked at so that there isn't duplication. Also I think the terms 'PHB' and 'DMG' are probably not good choices. They made sense to Gygax in terms of 1e when he literally hid the rules from the players, but a game like 5e does NOT have that goal! Calling them 'rules' and 'resources' might be better.

Duplicating the rules makes it so the DM doesn't need multiple books to have all the information they need at their fingertip. They don't need to check the PHB for the rules of surprise if they're also in the DMG verbatim. They can keep a single book behind the screen as reference.

I disagree. I can show you mathematically that 4e's Beastmaster is barely, if at all, inferior in combat to a BA build Ranger. The ACTUAL problem with BM is that people were absolutely determined that it had to work in one certain way (IE the beast had to be able to make super potent attacks) and any other possibility was simply rejected without any real analysis.
This is an example of where the rules simply don't match up with what people expect and anticipate. One option would be to simply flavor things differently. The real issue was that I agree with you, a 'beastmaster' where the beast is an overwhelming combatant WILL NOT work, particularly in 4e. So this was not an option for whomever designed the MP1 BM option. They had to come up with a solution, which was to make the BM ranger a secondary controller and allow their combat potency to be about 5-10% less in order to compensate. The Beast is actually fine, but its main uses are as a blocker, and as a tool outside of combat (which is an aspect that 4e has trouble factoring into its balance equation).

I think you're right. We had a 4e Beastmaster and it had some neat abilities (it didn't work so well in a certain module that LOVED to stick you in 5 feet wide corridors, mind you... that was a bad adventure) but people didn't 'GET' it.

I think the 5e Beastmaster doesn't have enough of a control aspect (because there's not a bunch of special attack you can make with your beast) compared to how weaker it is, and it has that clunky "go look in the Monster Manual/Appendix for the stat" thing going on instead of just giving you a set of generic stats right there in the class section.

The Beastmaster companion can't be a generic animal, it shouldn't be a generic animal. People like the idea of keeping the same fateful companion for a long time.

Just building a beast companion as a PC would also allow the opportunity to give the companion to multiple classes instead of just the Ranger (everybody is always whining about the Druid's animal companion or the Fighter with war dogs or the Paladin with steed) AND build them for different roles. It might be more complicated, but that's the sort of buy-in you'd have to be willing to accept in exchange for that 'cool concept' you want to make... and it would bee easier to balance.

 

[pemerton]

I think as consumers of the medium we often expect far too little from our games. We accept purchasing hundreds of pages of material that at best get out of the way. That is no where near acceptable value in my view. If I spend my money on something I expect it to provide value rather than just not have a negative impact. We can have evocative games with clear rules that impact the play experience in a positive way. We should all expect more. It's not one or the other.

This is why I'm still being impressed by my (rediscovered) Classic Traveller. And loved 4e. And am looking forward to Orbital, a no-dice no-master game that (to me, at least) looks heavily derived from Apocalypse World (allowing for the fact that it has no dice and no MC!)

In all these game the rules are (or for, Orbital, will be) clear, and their impact on play is readily felt. (I don't want to say there are no rough edges. Classic Traveller needs a better resource management system - eg maybe like Burning Wheel's - rather than maintaining tallies of credits varying from single digits to millions; and 4e would benefit from better integration of its combat with its non-combat mechanical systems. But these systems certainly do more than "get out of the way".)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I reject your assertion that this style of play is as you state in the bold text.

This style of play supports a core construct where the GM is a fair and neutral arbiter of the rules. In the early days of D&D and in some modern clones the GM is often referred to as a referee or judge. This implies an impartial approach. Listen to the intentions of the player and make a fair ruling based on the context of the situation in the game.

There are of course bad referees and even more awful judges out there, but that is an individual issue, not a condemnation of the construct as a whole.

This approach supports the idea of "a more 'narrative' fashion" where the player presents an idea based on the narrative of the game and the GM presents a choice (sets the stakes of a potential action, if you will) based more on the narrative situation in the game as opposed to the direction of a hard-coded rule.

Your assertion that 'GM rulings' is tantamount to oppositional play is false.

I will grant that GM rulings may result in situations where the ruling overrides the rules of the game. But there is a clear direction in this case as every role-playing game I have ever read or played (including 4e) clearly puts overriding the rules within the scope of duties of the GM.


I don't understand the issue with framing and related mechanisms.

The player asks "Can I attempt an action?"
The GM responds "Yes, but if you succeed <some 'thing' will happen> but if you fail <some other 'thing' will happen>. What do you want to do?"
The player then considers the options and if needed asks more questions.

This is a very clear framing mechanism and is one that is utilized in many modern 'story-based' games and concepts (the concept of "Yes, and" or "Yes, but", etc). This is a perfectly valid method of framing game-play as an alternative to a more heavily ruled / qualified system.

If you feel that leads to 'political' gaming of the DM or mercy of the DM or pressure to limit players by the DM, that is more of a personal bias than an objective fact. It is fine if that is your bias, but it should be framed as such.

In which games is it the case where the arbitration of the rules in unclear and inconsistent, yet this sort of pattern of play exists? Because IME games which play in this 'scene framing' kind of pattern INVARIABLY provide a universalized set of mechanics! I mean, I'm sure someone can point out a game which doesn't, but is this because it is a good idea or because that game is flawed in that respect?
When you talk about GM arbitration you are talking about decisions made IN NARRATIVE TERMS, not in terms of the mechanics of the rules. I don't contend that all games allocate narrative authority to players, or that they must do so in order to qualify as 'properly designed'. How, and by whom, narrative decisions are made is quite varied in this type of game. It may be, often is, entirely the GM's purview, but it may also be entirely the player's purview. Either way, or in between, the mechanics of the game provide the process by which this happens, and often define the attributes of PCs, etc.
Again, look at Dungeon World, since it thematically addresses the same landscape as D&D. The rules are entirely comprehensive, and quite simple. Narrative authority largely rests with the GMs hard and soft move making function. However, a number of the moves shift some of this explicitly to the players, like 'Spout Lore', which lets a player 'say stuff' about some game element (the GM and the dice have some say in exactly what it means). DW is actually pretty strongly in the "GM directs the narrative", but obviously the mere fact that players can make moves with clear narrative connotations gives them some leverage (though obviously almost all RPGs in use today do that).
Most FATE games (another system which has, generally, a pretty universal set of mechanics) provide for players to invoke attributes of their character in order to introduce elements into a scene. These are usually games which more evenly share story between all participants. There are even some in which only the players make up the story (There's an example of such a game I believe in one of the more recent FATE books, though I haven't really looked at it in a few years).
Notice how 4e did both of these things, making the rules fairly universal, AND providing for SCs, or even just general play, where the DM is intended to "say yes." It also makes clear that the game is ABOUT these decision points ("skip to the exciting parts").

 

[pemerton]

I'm sorry I'm not following you.

In both B/X and in 5E I can use the charm person spell to charm and ogre and have it behave as if it is in inclined be a friend.

Likewise I can set fire to all kinds of things in both of those games.

I don’t need a general resolution framework to do any of those things. I don’t need a skill challenge to set a shed on fire.

You are talking here about what happens in the fiction.. But I am talking about the process used at the table.

You posted about there being two possible situations in which the table would end up - either "You have very clear but limiting rules that state what you can and can't use the spell on: or "You have the official rules expand to further cover more and more corner cases and more and more specific details."

But in fact it is possible to combine keyword or "hardcoded" rules with no limiting rules and no rules that cover more and more corner cases and specific details. And I explained how, with examples of such systems.

B/X is not an example of such a system: if I'm blasting my fire at the shed, while the trio of orcs has a bucket brigade going, there is no resolution framework for working out what happens to the shed. I don't think 5e really has much of a framework for that either.

The systems I was referring to do. Without needing limits (about what can be done with fire, or with buckets) and without needing rules for corner cases and details and "litres per bucket per second" charts of the sort one might find in some Rolemaster variants.

 

[Dausuul]

So... I'm just wondering, does anybody know what this thread is about any more? (Or, for that matter, what it was about in the first place? At first I thought I sorta understood what the OP was getting at, but I have become less and less certain of that.)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Duplicating the rules makes it so the DM doesn't need multiple books to have all the information they need at their fingertip. They don't need to check the PHB for the rules of surprise if they're also in the DMG verbatim. They can keep a single book behind the screen as reference.

Verbatim duplication would avoid any interpretation/consistency issues. If that's needed in some places, so be it. IIRC 4e duplicated a very few subsystem-like rules, like the Stealth rules, in a couple places. There was also one place where it restated a part of the combat rules (mostly about cover and such). That actually wasn't good, it turned out to be confusing and contradictory!

I think you're right. We had a 4e Beastmaster and it had some neat abilities (it didn't work so well in a certain module that LOVED to stick you in 5 feet wide corridors, mind you... that was a bad adventure) but people didn't 'GET' it.

I think the 5e Beastmaster doesn't have enough of a control aspect (because there's not a bunch of special attack you can make with your beast) compared to how weaker it is, and it has that clunky "go look in the Monster Manual/Appendix for the stat" thing going on instead of just giving you a set of generic stats right there in the class section.

The Beastmaster companion can't be a generic animal, it shouldn't be a generic animal. People like the idea of keeping the same fateful companion for a long time.

Just building a beast companion as a PC would also allow the opportunity to give the companion to multiple classes instead of just the Ranger (everybody is always whining about the Druid's animal companion or the Fighter with war dogs or the Paladin with steed) AND build them for different roles. It might be more complicated, but that's the sort of buy-in you'd have to be willing to accept in exchange for that 'cool concept' you want to make... and it would bee easier to balance.

There are generally a few hurdles that D&D has here. There is a long expectation from the established player base that rules will be "realistic" in some sense, as in 3e's approach, such that "an animal" has a single representation in the game regardless of its actual function within the mechanics or fiction. 4e ignored this, and a lot of angst was generated, although at least 4e companions do have stat blocks (albeit they are not identical to those of monster versions of similar animals).
The other hurdles of course just revolve around the disconnected nature of combat vs 'exploration' or 'general play' and how anything which operates in one of these areas can vary hugely in game impact depending on how a given game is run. So, the BM Ranger in 4e is actually almost TOO strong in a game with little combat, since the beast has almost limitless potential applications in other modes of play.
Other types of game should handle these things better. One cure would be to have a truly unified system of resolution that was identical for combat and other things. Obviously D&D will never do that!

 

[Monayuris]

You are talking here about what happens in the fiction.. But I am talking about the process used at the table.

You posted about there being two possible situations in which the table would end up - either "You have very clear but limiting rules that state what you can and can't use the spell on: or "You have the official rules expand to further cover more and more corner cases and more and more specific details."

But in fact it is possible to combine keyword or "hardcoded" rules with no limiting rules and no rules that cover more and more corner cases and specific details. And I explained how, with examples of such systems.

B/X is not an example of such a system: if I'm blasting my fire at the shed, while the trio of orcs has a bucket brigade going, there is no resolution framework for working out what happens to the shed. I don't think 5e really has much of a framework for that either.

The systems I was referring to do. Without needing limits (about what can be done with fire, or with buckets) and without needing rules for corner cases and details and "litres per bucket per second" charts of the sort one might find in some Rolemaster variants.

I suppose if you want or need such frameworks.

I find them unnecessary and an over complication of something I can do more quickly and effectively by making a ruling.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

You are talking here about what happens in the fiction.. But I am talking about the process used at the table.

You posted about there being two possible situations in which the table would end up - either "You have very clear but limiting rules that state what you can and can't use the spell on: or "You have the official rules expand to further cover more and more corner cases and more and more specific details."

But in fact it is possible to combine keyword or "hardcoded" rules with no limiting rules and no rules that cover more and more corner cases and specific details. And I explained how, with examples of such systems.

B/X is not an example of such a system: if I'm blasting my fire at the shed, while the trio of orcs has a bucket brigade going, there is no resolution framework for working out what happens to the shed. I don't think 5e really has much of a framework for that either.

The systems I was referring to do. Without needing limits (about what can be done with fire, or with buckets) and without needing rules for corner cases and details and "litres per bucket per second" charts of the sort one might find in some Rolemaster variants.

Right, just to clarify, this is the function of the SC in 4e. Sadly 5e eschews this, and thus there simply are no rules for these types of situations. The DM simply decides which sorts of checks and how many will produce what fictional and mechanical result. What I contend is that this leads to a situation where the player MUST be entirely a "Character advocate" and the DM is inevitably cast into the role of saying what the player is 'allowed' to get (and if dice are used, it is entirely the DM who decides if enough have been tossed, he can ask for one more check at any point, so in effect the outcome is his to decide, the dice are just a fig leaf outside of combat).

In something like Dungeon World, by contrast, there is a fictional position, the player makes a 'move', and that has a rules-designated effect, almost like a chess move, in which the positioning changes. There's a lot of leeway on the part of the DM here, but in effect all his leeway is boxed up in his options to make moves of his own (hard or soft depending on the result of the check associated with the player's move, or some other well-defined considerations). The DM in that game also has a very explicit agenda and set of resources, etc. which are available. While he can 'draw the map' so to speak, he doesn't really have a LOT of say in how the PCs decide to traverse it.