D&D 5E On rulings, rules, and Twitter, or: How Sage Advice Changed

[Parmandur]

Point is: the 5E core books are not the best technical manuals in the world, and the Adventure books by Perkins & Co. are not the best novels. But for the purpose intended, toys to play with, they hit the spot.

 

[overgeeked]

It is horrible at being a "good book," which believe me as someone who got a BA in English hurts. But it is very good at hitting the emotional sweet spot for a lot of people. For the intended purpose of the author, Twilight is damn near perfect. Same with it's fan fiction spin-off, Fifty Shades of Grey.

Right. Even things that are objectively bad can be popular. That's my point. Thanks for agreeing.

 

[Parmandur]

Right. Even things that are objectively bad can be popular. That's my point. Thanks for agreeing.

Well, first off, kind of missing the point. Something can be bad in one aspect, but have a high quality in another aspect (Twilght: bad literature, great porn).

A better book analogy would be Harry Potter: mediocre for the one thing (Technical writing : literary quality), but really hitting it out of the park for the important quality (audience enjoyment).

 

[PsyzhranV2]

It is horrible at being a "good book," which believe me as someone who got a BA in English hurts. But it is very good at hitting the emotional sweet spot for a lot of people. For the intended purpose of the author, Twilight is damn near perfect. Same with it's fan fiction spin-off, Fifty Shades of Grey.

And that is something to mourn, not celebrate. This kind of lowest-common-denominator trash making it into the spotlight and sucking up all the air in the room means that actually good works in the same genre go unnoticed, and the whole genre gets stigmatized and devalued artistically due to the spotlight works' faults (and there are many).

 

[Parmandur]

And that is something to mourn, not celebrate. This kind of lowest-common-denominator trash making it into the spotlight and sucking up all the air in the room means that actually good works in the same genre go unnoticed, and the whole genre gets stigmatized and devalued artistically due to the spotlight works' faults (and there are many).

It is what is, neither celebratory or tragic. It is the best fitted to what the audience wanted, survival of the fittest.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

It is what is, neither celebratory or tragic. It is the best fitted to what the audience wanted, survival of the fittest.

It's the eternal lament ... "If only everyone was awesome like me and had the same highfalutin' sense of taste and style, they never would have cancelled the Love Boat!"

 

[Mort]

It's the eternal lament ... "If only everyone was awesome like me and had the same highfalutin' sense of taste and style, they never would have cancelled the Love Boat!"

I remember watching the The Love Boat back in the early, early 80s with my family (parents used it to practice their English comprehension) and having fond memories of the show.

Episodes recently started streaming on TV again, so I tried to watch a couple. And well, wow - nostalgia is a heck of a thing because, now, couldn't even make it through a full episode.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Some children do. Some adults do not. That's not a bar, that's the typically "veiled" insult of "well, kids can understand it, so what's wrong with you?" I know adults who simply cannot comprehend RPGs, doesn't mean kids who do are smarter than them. I know adults who bounce off basic math, doesn't mean kids who are doing advance math are smarter than them. Better at math, yes. Smarter, no.

Intelligence wasn't brought up before the above quote. It's not about intelligence.

Again, common sense isn't so common. Common sense dictates that any kind of life-threatening situation is by definition not restful, yet people are pretending that it's "common sense" that you can maintain restful sleep through 59 minutes and 59 seconds of combat...but adding in one extra second of life-threatening mayhem is clearly the "common sense" dividing line.

It is common sense that the game has abstractions, and that within the abstracted nature of a Long Rest, having a quick fight doesn't preclude finishing the rest if the rules say that it doesn't. Which they do. "No more than an hour" is quite obviously there to give the DM guidance on the difference between a short interruption, and constant or prolonged interruption. Only overthinking the minute wording and thinking literalistically can lead to a problem with this rule.

The point being, the rules might sometimes lead to wierd cases, if taken as if written in legalese, rather than just eyeballing it and making a judgement call that doesn't obviously fly in the face of what you've read. The point is to use the rules as a guide, not as laws.

I often find the rules difficult to parse. I have been gaming for more than 20 years and work as a software developer. Compared to Old School Essentials, Apocalypse World, Worlds Without Number, and even Pathfinder Second Edition I find the writing style really frustrating to deal with. Particularly the choice to describe things in text that are much easier described through templating and graphic design.

Thank goodness for D&D Beyond. Without it I probably would not play 5e.

This fits my experience. People without such technical expertise have no issue whatsoever reading the 5e books, while people who are either coming from very very technical games, or who have a strong background in things like coding or legalese naturally read the rules as if they were written for them, rather than for the first group, and various aspects of the books make it hard to parse for them as a result.

Like the idea of describing things via templating and graphic design being easier to understand. It is the opposite, for a lot of people. There is no way to write a phb that will be equally easy for both you and for my friend Mike, who in spite of dyslexia very rarely gets rules wrong in 5e, but had immense trouble with 4e.

Two people in my gaming group. One somehow read that the monks extra attacks were off-hand attacks so they didn't qualify for the ability mod damage of most attacks. Kept talking about taking a feat or multiclassing into ranger to get two-weapon fighting...just to get the ability mod damage on those extra attacks. Normally a really smart person, but just bounced off that particular rule. The other was playing a cleric and for the life of him could not understand why it wasn't listed anywhere how many cantrips he could cast in a day. Again, otherwise smart person...just bounced off that rule.

Those are both cases of someone just not actually reading the rules of their character abilities. Neither has complex rules, nor is either remotely unclear in the text.

And intelligence has nothing to do with it. It's just a reality of people reading something for reference that some folks will skip over things even though they are trying to get everything.

If any of those conditions aren't met, the reader cannot unambiguously determine that "melee weapon attack" refers to a "melee attack with a weapon" rather than an "attack with a melee weapon".

Of course they can. The two phrases are used differently within the text. The only people I have ever seen get it wrong are people who are very prone to overthinking rather than just taking the text at face value.

where the writers deliberately chose to nevertheless condition full understanding on the minutae of the compound adjective rules.

They didn't, though.

If you say so. I think it shows that even a horrid thing can be popular and garner lots of sales. It's a clear indication that sales do not equal quality.

It's not at all. It rather shows that you are conflating your preferences with something greater than your preferences.

 

[Parmandur]

Of course they can. The two phrases are used differently within the text. The only people I have ever seen get it wrong are people who are very prone to overthinking rather than just taking the text at face value.

To be perfectly honest, I have trouble remembering what the potential confusion is here for people (though obviously there is one for certain folks), because the intent in any given situation involving melee weapon attacks or melee-weapon attacks in the rulebooks have been clear in my experience.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I remember watching the The Love Boat back in the early, early 80s with my family (parents used it to practice their English comprehension) and having fond memories of the show.

Episodes recently started streaming on TV again, so I tried to watch a couple. And well, wow - nostalgia is a heck of a thing because, now, couldn't even make it through a full episode.

It's streaming on PlutoTV. Every now and then, I watch it (the 70s ones), because, you know ... WTF. Come for the bizarre guest appearances, stay for the "I can't believe that actually happened" plot lines.

The last one ... well, here was the gist of the plot- a guy ends up on the cruise with his ex-wife's female divorce attorney. Who he hates because she was really mean during the divorce. And she insults him. But the reason his ex-wife's divorce attorney was so mean to him during the divorce is because she really had the hots for him.

And then they totally hook up, because it's a cruise. Or something. I couldn't see at that point because my eyes had rolled too far back into my head.