D&D General Why Editions Don't Matter

[doctorbadwolf]

I think we are pretty much in agreement in that we both believe... no one reads the entire text before play. Furthermore I would argue few if any read any part of the book before play, at least that's been my experience with new players. They try the game out or watch a stream and then decide to purchase some game stuff.

EDIT: To further clarify... I was more questioning the assumption that the default should be relying on the corebooks to be the primary device for new people to learn how to play.

Oh I get that, for sure, and I think that it is a very good device for that purpose.

 

[overgeeked]

More rules do not inherently make a better game.

No, they don't. Quite the opposite, really. They create barriers to entry.

More rules in the past made it more difficult to understand the game and created a barrier of entry.

Exactly. More rules, more problems. Rules lawyers, rules arguments, silly edge cases, nonsensical rules interactions, and barrier to entry.

There's no such thing as perfect balance of rules vs free-form ruling over rules, but I think for the most part 5E does pretty decent.

Objectively perfect, no. Subjectively perfect, as in matching one's preferences, yes. For me, the fewer rules the better. Makes it easier to run, play, and learn. Others want literal stacks of rules and subsystems for everything despite that being almost impossible to do for something as open ended as an RPG and that even trying to do so would make the game effectively impossible to learn and play. The only real way to do that is fewer more broadly applicable rules.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

So I am going to be as brief and positive as possible. I do not think it is helpful to try and just argue something without understanding what the person was saying. I think if you look at what I wrote, you probably realized that I probably wasn't advocating for a call Jake system. Which ... yeah.

Here, I would point out that what you are saying is neither correct nor incorrect, but wholly orthogonal to what I was saying. I will be completely explicit- the whole point was not that the method of adjudication doesn't matter for other reasons, but that for a ruleset, once an outside referent is used for adjudication that will return a result, that process is considered "complete" for purposes of the ruleset. The actual process doesn't matter. It was really more Chinese Room (which I referred to) than anything else.

It's really not that hard. You could add in "roll dice." "Call Larry." "Use random numbers generated from the phone book." "Play Rochambeau." Or ... whatever. That was the point!

That some methods are preferable to others ... was not the point. Yes, dice can be loaded. Coins can be manipulated. Hidden rolls can be fudged. You might not know anyone named Jake. Larry might be on vacation. Phone books might not exist anymore. Etc. So if you want to get into a conversation about your favorite methods of adjudication, feel free to! But you know- maybe not with me, and not using my post?

Good? Great!

Uh...no, not good. I have absolutely no idea what the point of the example was then. You asked what the difference was between the two. I specified as such.

So...what was the point? Because I literally don't understand what you're saying here. The Chinese Room thought experiment, as I've studied it, has nothing whatsoever to do with rules design and everything to do with the (alleged) impossibility of making an artificial intelligence that only operates on syntactic, rather than semantic, content. (Note I say "alleged" not because I disagree with the claim but because the thought experiment is controversial.)

I also don't understand why this led to you completely ignoring the entire rest of my post, which has nothing to do with this point, and is instead responding to your questions about how one would address bad-faith play or people doing things that defy the requirements of the other poster's hypothetical game.

(Finally, and just a general tip - given that most attorneys can't use hearsay correctly, unless you understand what it means, I really recommend not using it in normal conversation. Because then you'll get caught up in the whole, "Wait, do you mean it as a synonym for a rumor, or do you mean it in the technical sense?")

...it is your report of someone else's testimony given to you (in this case, about the result of the coin.) How does that not meet the legal definition of "hearsay," (generally, though not always, inadmissible) testimony reporting on the testimony of a third party who is not present?

 

[Oofta]

This is really useful! I think, for me, 5e fails hard at (2) and (4), whereas I think Basic is pretty good but sometimes misses me on (1), (3), and (4).


Link is here, for reference. I think 'scene framing' as a particular thing might be leading us astray. The bigger questions are stuff like 'where are we?', 'what's here?', 'what's happening here?', and 'what happens next?'. The OD&D methods tend to provide solid answers to those questions (so long as you stay in the dungeon!). It's not only about strict rules vs. loose rules.

I finally had time to read the article and all I can say is that I disagree with at least 90% of their conclusions.

First, I played OD&D back in the day. We never used the supposedly fantastic dungeon crawl structure. I can't remember ever using any "structure" from 2 or 3.x either. The rules he does quote are very static, with no flexibility whatsoever. No wonder we ignored it. Then when it comes to LMoP, they complain about how there's no advice on how to do the dungeon crawl. What advice is necessary? They already went over the basics of how to run combat in the goblin ambush, they don't need to repeat it. He makes it sound like people will have no clue that if they've decided to go to the caves that they wouldn't logically go into the cave. It's a bit silly.

He links to another article that supposedly talks about the structure of the dungeoncrawl but all it says is that there should be a goal (duh) and that PCs should do something. Okay. So? You're in an empty room. Why do you need some "structure" to tell you that you would go to the next room? Why would anyone need any rules that tell them to move on? What else are they going to do, sit in an empty room until they starve or die of thirst?

About all I really agree with is that "The function of any RPG, therefore, is to provide mechanical structures that will support and enhance specific types of play." D&D has that structure with detailed combat rules and guidance for different ways of handling everything else. He states that the devs have a blind spot and that they just take it for granted that people know how to do dungeon crawls. But you don't need to break down exploration into static pieces with a predefined chance for encounters, exactly how often you need to rest or how far away random monsters will be when encountered. The OD&D rules were very rote with no inherent flexibility. Yuck.

Last, but not least, he states that no one is actually playing the game as written. That "everyone" kitbashes games to resemble games they already know. Obviously there's a subset of DMs that mod the heck out of the game. I've never met one in real life and honestly I'm not sure I'd want to play with anyone that had more than a handful of house rules. I fudge the rules once in a blue moon but 98% of the game is run within the rules*, every DM I've ever had over decades has done the same.

In any case, thanks for linking to the article. I just disagree with the conclusion.

*Occasionally there are things not really covered. For example in the last game I played I asked my DM if I could "Jackie Chan" my way out of a pit and use acrobatics to get to the top using acrobatics because the pit was only 5 foot wide and I could bounce off the walls. I think that's perfectly within the scope of the game and rulings over rules. But even that was unusual.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

No, they don't. Quite the opposite, really. They create barriers to entry.

Exactly. More rules, more problems. Rules lawyers, rules arguments, silly edge cases, nonsensical rules interactions, and barrier to entry.

For me, less rules, more problems. Rules legislators: every case is now brand-new law to be hashed out, and the "rules legislators" have every incentive to assure that it benefits their constituents, namely, their characters. Rules arguments abound, because now you have to argue about what the rules even are, before you can start arguing about what they mean. Nonsensical rules interactions? Ah, yes, something totally impossible when a human is making things up on the fly, because humans are perfectly logical rule-implementers who never forget, or get swayed by emotional states, or change their minds. Barrier to entry? Absolutely. "What can I do? "Anything you want!" "Okay but...what can I do?" I have seen this exact problem live. The tyranny of the empty page. I never struggled more in school with a writing prompt than one which said, "Write an essay or fiction story about a topic of your choosing."

Objectively perfect, no. Subjectively perfect, as in matching one's preferences, yes. For me, the fewer rules the better. Makes it easier to run, play, and learn. Others want literal stacks of rules and subsystems for everything despite that being almost impossible to do for something as open ended as an RPG and that even trying to do so would make the game effectively impossible to learn and play. The only real way to do that is fewer more broadly applicable rules.

Oooooor, as I've argued repeatedly, extensible framework rules. Stuff like, I dunno, exception-based design where everyone uses the same fundamental structure, but that structure is sufficiently open-ended as to let you do nearly anything with it (4e powers, DW moves, Fate aspects.) Rules that are solid, reliable, and general.

 

[pemerton]

The idea that it's not the function of a game's rulebooks to tell us how to play the game is a weird one, to me at least.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The idea that it's not the function of a game's rulebooks to tell us how to play the game is a weird one, to me at least.

Completely agreed. It doesn't have to be the best or only way, but it surely must be one of the goals of said books.

 

[niklinna]

The idea that it's not the function of a game's rulebooks to tell us how to play the game is a weird one, to me at least.

It's a longstanding thing in the industry, though. Like, from the very early days. I must say it is always nice to see a rulebook at least try.

 

[Malmuria]

Blades in the Dark GM Finally Knows How to Play after Reading the Book 83 Times - The Only Edition

Gabriela Borba happily announced that she finally plays Blades in the Dark properly after reading the rulebook for the 83rd time. “When I first started running the game, I used to have issues understanding basic mechanics like stress and flashbacks, and everyone said I should read the rulebook...

the-only-edition.com

 

[hawkeyefan]

Completely agreed. It doesn't have to be the best or only way, but it surely must be one of the goals of said books.

I mean… Bargle and Aleena exist for a reason.