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

[AbdulAlhazred]

This is hyperbole. No one is suggesting that the GM just decides what happens in any conflict. The concept of a GM making rulings does not at all facilitate this situation. The concept of GM rulings is to make fair judgements when the rules do not cover a situation.



Again with the bucket brigade. I would suspect that the number of D&D games in the world that include an orc bucket brigade is probably in the low 1 to 2%.

The bucket brigade thing is just a strawman. Which came from your post: Here. So the only person suggesting that D&D has anything to do with firefighters is you.

If a bucket brigade of orcs becomes an important part of my next game session, I'll reach out to you for guidance on how I should run it.

Well D&D is not about any of these things. If you want these things to be important to your game then fine... use whatever framework makes you happy. But I really don't care about any of this. None of these things are an important part of any game I run and if they do come up, I'll make a ruling and move on. Easy peasy. Cooking competitions, high jump competitions, races are small stuff compared to dungeon delvng and exploration. They don't need any time to adjudicate beyond a quick ruling.

Another strawman argument, by the way. Since no one in this thread is at all talking about cooking competitions.

I'm not expecting a system to cope with firefighting. That is again the same strawman argument. You are creating a completely unlikely and insignificant situation to make a point. Firefighting orcs is not something that is expected to be within the scope of the Dungeons & Dragons game.

Stop using that as an example of why one version of D&D fails against another version or another game.

I think you have me mistaken. I have never 'decryed limits and corner cases'. I simply have stated that corner cases not covered by the rules are well within the rights of the GM to adjudicate by way of GM rulings.

And again another mark for the same firefighting strawman argument.

I think you might be missing the point. Again this feels a bit like the old "complete rules unicorn" coming to visit. I'm not playing games with uniform mechanics, and touting the advantages, BECAUSE they handle absolutely any situation (maybe some don't, and often they don't do something well). I am playing those systems because they get out of my way and let me worry about fiction and not rules, and not "what way will the GM judge THAT!"
So, the orc fire brigade is just a metaphor for all the 'stuff' that can happen. IN PARTICULAR I would note that it is tied to a conflict. This is important. Mechanics deal with narrative points of tension, where things change, and checks mediate the direction of the transition, do things get better or worse. The PC sets a fire, the orcs try to put it out, this could be almost any situation where there are opposing forces.

 

[Lanefan]

D&D can't do races, either, or cooking competitions, or even high jump competitions (every thief acrobat ties with every other thief acrobat of the same level, every time).

Sure it can, provided one accepts that there's going to be some natural variance in someone's best attempt each time. (i.e. no re-rolls)

And races can in fact be handled using pursuit rules*, except the parties start side by side rather than with one having a head start.

So while a thief-acrobat of x level might be rated to jump a 9-foot high obstacle, you can still have a high-jump competition between numerous t-a's of that level, starting the bar at 8'9" and slowly raising it each time, with each t-a rolling once for success at each successive height until a fail occurs. Or, and much easier, you just do a roll-off between the competitors to see who's best that day.

* - though I admit the pursuit rules haven't always been brilliant either.

 

[Lanefan]

You cannot, by design, 'break' Dungeon World, for example

To quote a well-known Prime Minister of ours from 50 years ago: "Just watch me."

(it and Apocalypse World are both PbtA games, so the core concept is the same). The whole game simply works as a self-contained process. The GM 'colors in a piece of the map', that is a scene is framed in which the PCs are present, and then makes a move. GM moves can be either "hard" (IE something attacks you) or "soft" such as "Reveal an Unpleasant Truth". The PCs now have something to deal with, and it must certainly engage them as characters (this is a part of the principles of GMing in DW). The game provides a bunch of hooks, each character is THE <classname>, and has several 'bonds' which are things they value, abhor, people they owe, whatever. So it is not hard for the GM to engage at least one PC with a given move.

Once the GM makes his move, it is up to the players to make their own in response. There is a short list of moves you can make, with many of them requiring certain fictional positioning (IE you can only 'Carouse' when you reach a suitable location and no immediate action is in progress). In some cases a player may not really have a choice, some overwhelming danger appears, they are going to make a 'Defy Danger' move, the only question being what fiction (and thus ability score) will they choose? Usually though there are choices. The GM says "some orcs appear a bit down the corridor", you could choose to Spout Lore about orcs "look, those orcs are marked with the red eye, we are friendly with their chief", or "Fire Missiles", or "Hack and Slash", or "Parley", etc. Individual characters might have unique moves, "Cast Charm Monster", or whatever.
So, you could try to do something that "isn't covered by the rules" but it must be, because it is SOME sort of 'move'. If the wizard say's he's "Hiding in Shadows" he doesn't have a move for that. He can declare that fictional action, but it either has no mechanical consequence, or perhaps it could be cast in terms of "Defy Danger" or something like that, depending on the situation. There is always some kind of check made, and since the DW moves are defined more in terms of what they accomplish vs HOW, or in terms of a general process, you can't really get "outside the rules."

So does this mean the wizard can't even try to hide? 'Cause that's exactly the sort of thing I mean: I'd be trying to do reasonable things that aren't on my list of moves if doing so made sense in the fiction. Being me, I'd almost certainly at some point try gonzo or irrational things as well, 'cause that's just how I roll.

Obviously, if what I'm trying requires some special skill and I don't have it my attempts are much more likely to fail. I'm referring to things I - as a real person and not a skilled adventurer - can try (which by default means my character in the fiction can try, assuming my character isn't disabled in some way), such as hiding when someone's looking for me.

 

[Monayuris]

I suck at being succinct, but I will try. Reusing Umbran's useful physics/elegance analogy.

Pretend some new phenomenon is discovered, driving a search for new theory. Two alternative theories are proposed. One of those theories is "ugly" or "inelegant"--its equations are cumbersome, complicated (e.g. several parts/functions), or reliant on new constants of nature that can only be measured by observation, not calculated mathematically (the way pi is, for instance). The other theory is meaningfully more elegant--simple and sweet, coming from first principles, etc. The "ugly" theory, however, is demonstrably superior at predicting the actual behavior of this new phenomenon: let's say, 10% of the time, the elegant theory predicts something is almost certain to happen but doesn't, or almost certainly won't happen but does, while the "ugly" theory has such problems only 0.1% of the time.

It would be entirely valid to say, "The fact that this elegant theory is close but still suspiciously erroneous indicates we need to do more study. We can reasonably expect that an elegant solution exists, we just haven't found it yet." It would also be entirely valid to admit that the elegant theory doesn't work as well, but is a sufficiently good approximation much of the time--that's how Newton's laws work, they're good approximations of both quantum theory and Einstein's equations as long as certain parameters aren't too big (e.g. speed) or too small (e.g. amount of things). It can even be valid to argue that the elegant theory is an easier place to start so you get a handle on what phenomena are involved, before grappling with all the moving parts of the "ugly" theory.

I am asserting that it is NOT valid to say, "We should still use the elegant theory, and presume it is closest to the correct understanding of this phenomenon, despite knowing it makes wrong predictions, because it is more elegant; further, this choice should be intuitively obvious." In other words, I am arguing against "elegance is the best metric of utility, and this is self-evident." Likewise, meta-aesthetics--ANY meta-aesthetics, whether or not I personally care for them--are NOT the best metric of game design. They absolutely can be a wonderful metric, and designers ignore meta-aesthetics at their peril! Again, just so this is EXTREMELY EXPLICITLY said: Good game designers should care about meta-aesthetics. Period. But just because something is too important to ignore, does not imply that it is therefore more important than any other consideration, to say nothing of that implication being self-evident.

From a purely abstract concept, I agree with you. If an 'ugly' theory is more effective than either the nature of what is theorized is too complex to be covered in an elegant manner, or that we have not yet discovered how to reduce the 'ugly' to something elegant.

In terms of game designers... I think the aesthetics of their rules should be something personal and be a part of the concept of the rules that are provided. In other words, a game designer should decide for themselves how elegant or ugly their rules are to be based on their own desires.

I will try to discuss it in more concrete terms because I'm more wired that way. Take the aesthetics of two wildly different game systems...

Dungeon World:
The primary aesthetics of Dungeon World is the concept of making moves. Maybe this is an elegant theory (I don't know if elegant or ugly are absolutes -- like do you intend for ALL elegant methods to be considered ineffective?). Make a move, roll the dice, have the GM respond with a soft move, hard move, or success. This is elegant. Whether it is considered ineffective is in the eye of the beholder. But this elegance is expressed in the universality of the resolution mechanic. The mechanic is the same, it is elegant, and its effectiveness is up to the beholder.

D&D Basic / Expert
There is no real primary aesthetic. Perhaps it may be considered 'ugly' by your metric. Attacks are d20 consulting a 'to-hit' matrix. Performing a thief skill is a percentile roll. Listening at doors or lifting gates is an 'X in 6. chance. Turn Undead is a 2d6 roll. Ability rolls are 1d20 roll under your score. Reactions, Morale, so on, and so on. All different approaches in mechanics. I am a fan of B/X and I would consider this to be 'ugly' under your definition.

But what does it really mean in terms of game design? I don't necessarily agree that elegance in game design is limiting.. sometimes and often it works out. There are games that are elegant and effective. I also don't necessarily agree that 'ugly' is a more effective way.

But there are degrees and there are intangibles.

In my opinion, in Basic/Expert there is an intangible (to use your term) 'meta-aesthetic" to the 'ugly' of differing mechanics in play. This is the feeling that if I choose an action the fact that the mechanic is different creates an aesthetic that I am doing something unique and different.

For example, if a Cleric decides to Turn Undead... the physical act of picking up 2 d6's (instead of a d20) creates an aesthetic that the character is doing something different and unique. The different mechanics kind of lead to an idea that there is a uniqueness in the action taken. Likewise, when a thief tries to disarm a trap, it is a unique experience because the d100 is used instead. The existence of the different mechanics creates a 'meta-aesthetic' that the actions taken are different. The game promotes a 'meta-aesthetic' by enforcing different mechanical resolutions based on different actions.

Now, In my personal experience, I don't see this as much in universal resolution mechanics. It feels more same to me because when I Turn Undead, in more modern games, I reach for the same die and execute the mechanic in the same way that I would an attack or a skill check or a saving throw or so on.

I don't know if this is even close to what you are wanting to discuss. I hope I'm close and you take this as a sincere effort .

 

[Monayuris]

I think you might be missing the point. Again this feels a bit like the old "complete rules unicorn" coming to visit. I'm not playing games with uniform mechanics, and touting the advantages, BECAUSE they handle absolutely any situation (maybe some don't, and often they don't do something well). I am playing those systems because they get out of my way and let me worry about fiction and not rules, and not "what way will the GM judge THAT!"
So, the orc fire brigade is just a metaphor for all the 'stuff' that can happen. IN PARTICULAR I would note that it is tied to a conflict. This is important. Mechanics deal with narrative points of tension, where things change, and checks mediate the direction of the transition, do things get better or worse. The PC sets a fire, the orcs try to put it out, this could be almost any situation where there are opposing forces.

What's your point?

I don't know what you mean by 'complete rules unicorn'.

You make a case that games that require GM rulings result in oppositional play and playing the GM and GM mercy and so on. As such they are inferior.

Your case is based solely on your own personal bias.

So it is ok for you to enjoy games with uniform mechanics such that they eliminate the GM judgment. But that is solely your own personal approach and there is no objective superiority of one way of playing to the other.

I prefer looser games where edge and corner cases are handled by GM rulings. You immediately attack that as being GM bias and pressure on the GM to limit players.

Why would you make such attacks? I have my preferred way of playing the game. You respond by attacking the style of game I prefer.

Here is your post with your attacks: https://www.enworld.org/threads/hot-take-aesthetically-pleasing-rules-are-highly-overvalued.675745/post-8111907

the player can only try to guess what sort of thing the GM will decide it is. They can't chose to select it vs something else, they can't decide to use it vs something else, they won't ride any stakes on it, because it could be worthless for all they know.

The NUT of the motive was to let the GM, in a Gygaxian fashion, squelch 'abuse', which is really just a code word for "I don't like how easy this is to use."

None of these statements are true or fair.

Why do you care how I prefer to run my game? You approach this as if your way is superior. It is not. Stop that.

 

[Undrave]

I think you're missing something here. Spells almost always start and resolve in the same combat round (thus on each "turn" a caster could start a new spell). But in 5e terms how it'd work would be something like this: if your initiative is 15 that's when you start casting. Your spell has a listed casting time (say, 6) which means you won't resolve your spell until initiative count 9 and during the intervening time you're both open to interruption and have no active defenses as all your concentration is going into casting your spell.

Oh I see... I've never played with dynamic iniative like that, and I fear you need a very experienced DM to pull it off well. It's not something I expect newbies to seemlessly slip into without some mechanical aid.

Here I disagree. If you want to get into melee, play a melee character. If you want to get into melee as a caster, you're using such physical weapons as you have because you ain't casting. (unless your specific intent is to get interrupted and hope for some sort of interesting/fun/beneficial wild magic surge; I've seen this done once or twice) And if melee comes to you something's gone wrong somewhere...

Then I guess you have a very rigid vision of what Magic should be used for or what it can do, or what a fight should look like. I mean, why is there spells like Burning Hand and Thunderwave and Acid Spray if it isn't possible to use magic in melee combat? To say nothing of a Paladin's smite style spells and other self buff. Some spells should be just as fast as swinging a weapon.

In fact, why not do a little bit of reverse and apply the casting time concept to crossbows while we're at it? It takes time to prepare your shot. So in exchange for power you get a slight window of vulnerability compared to a bow that's instantaneous. So you'd have this clear dicothomy where 'acting at range' will usually take longer than 'acting in melee'.

 

[Undrave]

Now, In my personal experience, I don't see this as much in universal resolution mechanics. It feels more same to me because when I Turn Undead, in more modern games, I reach for the same die and execute the mechanic in the same way that I would an attack or a skill check or a saving throw or so on.

The weird thing is that Sleep is still using a different mechanic...

 

[Monayuris]

The weird thing is that Sleep is still using a different mechanic...

I wasn't talking about Sleep. I was talking about Turn Undead as a clear example.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

From a purely abstract concept, I agree with you. If an 'ugly' theory is more effective than either the nature of what is theorized is too complex to be covered in an elegant manner, or that we have not yet discovered how to reduce the 'ugly' to something elegant.

In terms of game designers... I think the aesthetics of their rules should be something personal and be a part of the concept of the rules that are provided. In other words, a game designer should decide for themselves how elegant or ugly their rules are to be based on their own desires.

I completely agree that it is good for designers to make informed decisions about what design aesthetics they wish to include in their games. Again, ignoring these things is a bad plan. My problem (and it's mostly directed at fans, and in particular playtesters) is when those decisions are NOT informed, but rather operate pretty much purely off of the expectation that a certain design aesthetic simply IS good design, not even needing to be defended because it is obviously good design.

A D&D game with a keyword-based rule system as labyrinthine as M:TG would be a great example of a design aesthetic that has been pursued to the detriment of play-experience. Likewise, a TTRPG system that legitimately DOES try to have a distinct rule for every possible situation a DM or player might encounter has taken the comprehensiveness aesthetic and turned it into an overweening obsession, rather than one consideration among many. This is why I said, for example, that "gamist"/"simulationist"/etc. doesn't really apply here, because these aesthetics can appear in literally any of those and can bend design out of shape regarless of which thing is being pursued.

I will try to discuss it in more concrete terms because I'm more wired that way. Take the aesthetics of two wildly different game systems...

Dungeon World:
The primary aesthetics of Dungeon World is the concept of making moves. Maybe this is an elegant theory (I don't know if elegant or ugly are absolutes -- like do you intend for ALL elegant methods to be considered ineffective?). Make a move, roll the dice, have the GM respond with a soft move, hard move, or success. This is elegant. Whether it is considered ineffective is in the eye of the beholder. But this elegance is expressed in the universality of the resolution mechanic. The mechanic is the same, it is elegant, and its effectiveness is up to the beholder.

Certainly not all. Like I said, even bolded, design aesthetics--seeking theory elegance, in the physics analogy--will always be an important consideration, and designers(/physicists) ignore it at their peril. But treating elegance as the most important thing seems to come up a LOT, particularly in playtest discussions, and this bothers me. Playtesting is, at least in part, about helping suss out all the questions, like design effectiveness, the game's message or what it communicates to the players, and aesthetics (both "direct" aesthetics like art and descriptive text, and "meta" aesthetics like comprehensiveness, conciseness, and centralization). I see these meta-aesthetics being elevated to the most important concern, bar none.

But yes, I quite like Dungeon World, it's one of the reason I run it despite generally favoring much crunchier games.

D&D Basic / Expert
There is no real primary aesthetic. Perhaps it may be considered 'ugly' by your metric. Attacks are d20 consulting a 'to-hit' matrix. Performing a thief skill is a percentile roll. Listening at doors or lifting gates is an 'X in 6. chance. Turn Undead is a 2d6 roll. Ability rolls are 1d20 roll under your score. Reactions, Morale, so on, and so on. All different approaches in mechanics. I am a fan of B/X and I would consider this to be 'ugly' under your definition. <snip>

For example, if a Cleric decides to Turn Undead... the physical act of picking up 2 d6's (instead of a d20) creates an aesthetic that the character is doing something different and unique. The different mechanics kind of lead to an idea that there is a uniqueness in the action taken. Likewise, when a thief tries to disarm a trap, it is a unique experience because the d100 is used instead. The existence of the different mechanics creates a 'meta-aesthetic' that the actions taken are different. The game promotes a 'meta-aesthetic' by enforcing different mechanical resolutions based on different actions.

Now, In my personal experience, I don't see this as much in universal resolution mechanics. It feels more same to me because when I Turn Undead, in more modern games, I reach for the same die and execute the mechanic in the same way that I would an attack or a skill check or a saving throw or so on.

I don't know if this is even close to what you are wanting to discuss. I hope I'm close and you take this as a sincere effort .

It's certainly in the same ballpark.

My response would be that you have identified two different, mostly mutually-exclusive meta-aesthetics. I'd call them "unifiedness" and "distinctness." Fate is a game that is almost maximally unified, where there's very close to only one mechanic that really is used for nearly everything. And the thing is? I would completely agree that pursuing unified mechanics purely because one considers them elegant, is a bad idea! Even though I really like unified mechanics, presuming that unified mechanics are better than distinct mechanics is an error. And I'll give you an example of an argument I, myself, have made where I believe the concern I'm highlighting (putting the aesthetic before any question of function or message) doesn't apply.

Even though in some ways 3e moved to "totally" unified mechanics, by having almost all random numbers come from d20s, even that isn't totally unified. Damage dice are still other types, for example...but even the use of the d20 is not totally unified. Attack rolls, skill rolls, initiative rolls...all of these things are unified, they work the same way and benefit from the same kinds of things symmetrically. But one type of d20 roll--a very common one!--sticks out as different. Saving throws. Saving throws make a lot of sense for some people, but they also create some design wrinkles. 4e looked at that and said, "Well...mathematically, there's no difference between the target rolling a save, and the caster rolling to hit. Let's ditch spell saving throws and have all offensive abilities use hit rolls." (It's worth noting, 4e still had things called "saving throws," but they served an entirely different function.)

One might say, "Wait a minute there, Ezekiel. You just said doing things for meta-aesthetic reasons is a problem, yet now you support it?" But that wasn't the reason they chose to slay that particular sacred cow. The reason was that making spells use attack rolls the same way regular attacks do opened new design space. The 4e Warlord or Cleric did not need distinct abilities in order to benefit both their spell-using allies AND their weapon-using allies. A Warlord handing out an attack bonus, or extra damage on successful attacks, is just as beneficial to a Druid/Sorcerer/Warlock/Swordmage party as she is to a Hunter/Rogue/Avenger/Fighter party, because every time someone uses an offensive ability that isn't guaranteed to land, they make an attack roll and do attack damage when they succeed.

Mechanical distinctness can absolutely be valuable. Having different classes feature distinct mechanics, for example, is a pretty uncontroversial form of distinctness. But really high distinctness--where every mechanic works pretty differently--has some serious costs. TTRPGs have to compete with a lot of other leisure activities, which means that many players will make a "time invested vs fun gained" evaluation regularly. That doesn't mean distinctness is now worthless, but very very high distinctiveness may be too much for many modern players. Having thief skills be so different from any other skillful activity, for example, can be a real headache for some players. (I have known multiple players who legitimately couldn't retain their knowledge of how to do basic Dungeon World moves from one week to the next, even after a full year of playing the same character. Having extremely high distinctness, where nearly every name-able action has a unique mechanic, will drive those players away very quickly.)

And all of the above--both your post and my own words--are what I really want to see. Earnest, positive discussions about what "meta-aesthetics" one would like to see pursued and why they should be. What concerns me is people asserting an aesthetic without defense or discussion, and stating or implying that it needs no defense or discussion because it's just obviously Better Design. Whether it's mechanical distinctness, unified mechanics, keywording, centralization, whatever, I far too often see these meta-aesthetics simply assumed as gospel and projected onto all possible rules structures, no matter what consequences may result. I guess you could call it the "other side" of the sacred cow--that is, where a sacred cow is a structure preserved outside its original context, the thing I'm opposing is inserting structures regardless of context. Golden calves, perhaps?

 

[Aldarc]

To quote a well-known Prime Minister of ours from 50 years ago: "Just watch me."

I would love to watch you try breaking the game with an experienced DW GM running you in a game, but trying to play DW like you would 1e D&D would likely break you instead.