D&D General Why Editions Don't Matter

[FrogReaver]

For instance with greater flexibility in general there is less well defined common ground between DM and players and fewer result expectations for anyone. Open ended or freeform can also make it hard to prevent ummm "rules" shifting if you want the experience consistent it takes more diligence. With defined rules you can still change them (though that is for some harder to do and they can get push back) but for me defined rules give a starting point instead of demanding a whole cloth construction.

I fully agree. I don't see anyone saying get rid of all the rules in D&D. So I think we all agree the rules should provide a starting point. The question is what that starting point should ideally look like.

As a separate thought: Is rules shifting sometimes potentially desirable over consistency?

 

[FrogReaver]

There's a breaking point where a "well defined" system creates more overhead than a more "loosey-goosey" system, though. I'd rather an occasional inconsistency than having to cross-reference or memorize seldom-used or corner-case rules.

This 100%. Some of what we are seeing is the exact point where we would rather risk inconsistency to save cross referencing tables is probably a bit different for each of us.

 

[FrogReaver]

I would say that my point is that what with analysis paralysis, decision fatigue, and any other issues that crop up from increasing the cognitive burden directly borne by the DM/GM, there's no universally-observed inversely proportional relationship between formal constraints on GM decision-making and flexibility in one or more aspects of gameplay as such. Such a thing might be true of some GMs, sure, but I wouldn't posit it as something worthy of unanimous agreement regarding its existence.

I guess that depends on what you define flexibility as. To me the lack of formal constraints on GM decision-making increases the theoretical space for decision making - that to me is flexibility. You mean something similar but different by it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

There's a breaking point where a "well defined" system creates more overhead than a more "loosey-goosey" system, though. I'd rather an occasional inconsistency than having to cross-reference or memorize seldom-used or corner-case rules.

Depends on how seldom. Frankly, if something is rare enough inconsistency isn't even going to be noticed by most people because no one will remember how it was handled last time.

That said, some people's sense of "seldom" is--interesting--and with a system with a lot of special-casing, even one offhand decision can seem seriously off-kilter in not relating to the things it seems most similar to (this was a serious issue early on in D&D sphere since special casing was everywhere, and there was little common metric to a lot of mechanics).

 

[Thomas Shey]

I don't disagree with the theme here - flexibility has more positive and negative space. There must be something else that constrains toward the positive space. In some games that may be explicit game principles. In other games that may be social contract/table expectations. It's my belief that constraints applied based on the social contract absent explicit rules are also much more flexible than explicit and unchangable written game principles.

They're also much more susceptible to misunderstanding and problems with arguments about appropriateness. Its one of those things that's probably an unalloyed good with group with a very tight understanding of what is expected from everyone, but I'm not sold that even applies to a massive minority of groups.

 

[Garthanos]

There's a breaking point where a "well defined" system creates more overhead than a more "loosey-goosey" system, though. I'd rather an occasional inconsistency than having to cross-reference or memorize seldom-used or corner-case rules.

Sure from what I heard 3e went over the limit of well defined into perhaps overly defined... having broad paradigms can be sufficient fairly often. One of the interesting things presented by Amber diceless roleplaying was something I might call variable detail resolution. Sometimes you want a bunch of rolls/resolutions to up the tension but sometimes you simply want to narrate a result with variations in between.

 

[FrogReaver]

They're also much more susceptible to misunderstanding and problems with arguments about appropriateness. Its one of those things that's probably an unalloyed good with group with a very tight understanding of what is expected from everyone, but I'm not sold that even applies to a massive minority of groups.

That's a good starting point and I don't disagree that this is more likely in a given random session, but I think there's a process that minimizes this concern.

Consider the following:

• What is expected is often not very strict
• Thus, the understanding of what is expected doesn't have to be super tight either
• Anyone that consistently has too little understanding and/or too little respect for the group's expectations will eventually need to find a new group that more closely aligns with their expectations

Thus, I think you will find that groups that play together over time trend toward understanding and honoring each other's expectations.

 

[Maxperson]

Well!

D&D 5E - Is D&D 5e a Sandwich?

That's right. You read the title. Search your feelings. You always knew that the internet would throw this at you, with the inevitability of your uncle forwarding you an email that you don't want to read. The ancient hotness: Is a hot dog a sandwich? Yesterday's hawt taek: Is a taco a...

www.enworld.org

Since 5e is a sandwich, and all editions are the same, then by the transitive properties of irrefutable logicks and maths …

All D&Ds are sandwiches.

And since system doesn’t matter …

All TTRPGs are sandwiches.

 

[Thomas Shey]

That's a good starting point and I don't disagree that this is more likely in a given random session, but I think there's a process that minimizes this concern.

Consider the following:

• What is expected is often not very strict
• Thus, the understanding of what is expected doesn't have to be super tight either
• Anyone that consistently has too little understanding and/or too little respect for the group's expectations will eventually need to find a new group that more closely aligns with their expectations

Thus, I think you will find that groups that play together over time trend toward understanding and honoring each other's expectations.

I think your third bullet point is vastly overoptimistic. Groups tend to keep limping along with internal problems for very long periods of time for any number of reasons (a member who is difficult to eject and is not prone to removing themselves for various reasons is a common one), and given the frequent hesitance to have honest discussions, it can be hard for there to even be a clear sense of what exactly the problem is (after all, you third bullet point individual may be, instead, multiples; a seven person group including the GM with two or three people off from the rest of the group (or worse, four where none of them are the GM) can have a lot of internal stressors without any simple resolution to the problem.

(We won't even get into what you do if you have a group of the same size where two people aren't with the majority in one fashion and one isn't with them in a different one).

 

[Xetheral]

Outside of dungeons, I don't think the game has any comparable procedures, either. OK, so the evil duke and his scary knights are trying to track down the PCs and their friends in the city. The PCs are racing against time to find a solution. How close is he to getting them? How do I decide when this happens? Do the players have a right to know how near he is, or that he is after them at all?

This is what I mean by incompleteness.

My procedure as a DM for determining how close the evil Duke and his scary knights are to tracking down the PCs goes like this:

(First, the duke wouldn't be pursuing the PCs adversarily in the first place except in response to actions the PCs took with the knowledge that it might cause the duke (or at the very least, some powerful political figure) to come after them.)

1. I'd start by determining how much of a priority the PCs have made themselves for the duke, considering any actions the PCs took (especially the success or failure of deliberate actions) to either increase or decrease that priority.
2. Based on the priority the duke places on finding the PCs and his overall available resources, I'd next determine the resources he would devote to tracking the PCs.
3. Finally, I'd determine how likely those resources would be to find the PCs in the elapsed time so far, taking into account the PCs' intervening choices (e.g. where to travel next, how high of a profile they're maintaining, etc.), especially the success or failure of PC actions intended to make it easier or harder for the duke to find them. The duke finds the PCs after the elapsed time catches up to the time required to find them, assuming the PCs are still in the area being searched at that time.

These determinations rarely give specific answers. When deciding between multiple possibilities, I consider the following factors:

• Consistency with material already established so far in play.
• Plausibility in the context of what the PCs know of the game setting.
• My preference for outcomes that cause the PCs' interactions with the setting to lead to learning more about, and becoming further involved with, other actors in the setting.
• My perception of whether having an encounter likely to lead to combat would be desirable, pacing-wise, at any particular moment, based on my read of the players' emotional state and current level of engagement.
• My deliberate bias towards ensuring that the PCs' actions impact the course of events and/or the state of the game setting.

I'd then repeat my process (tweaking the details, as relevant) to determine whether and how much the PCs learn of the Duke's pursuit.

Please note that although I've described my process methodically (based on reflective self-analysis), in actual use my process is more of an intuitive synthesis and less of a step-by-step resolution. I've been applying this process (with hopefully increasing levels of success) to running ad-hoc informal RPGs since before I knew D&D and similar packaged games existed, and continue to apply it with every system I run. Since I have a predefined process for running games, I prefer systems that provide useful action resolution mechanics and mechanical support for desired setting elements without trying to prescribe a specific process for running my game.

I realize that you would consider the fact that I need to bring in an external process for running 5e to mean that 5e is "incomplete" by your definition. However, from my standpoint, I suspect that any system you would consider to be "complete" would (unless it was written just for me) have process rules that would conflict with my personal process, and thus would be less useful to me as a tool for running games than "incomplete" games are.

I particularly liked this excerpt from one of the articles @Malmuria linked upthread, which quoted Brendan from Necropraxis as saying:

"[Lack of codification of procedure] is a weakness because it is notoriously hard to learn how to play an RPG (which involves conversational form, conflict resolution, rules math, and many other components) from a text alone. It is a strength because it leaves the borders of potential wide open, assuming that you want to use the rules more like a toolkit than a how-to manual."​

Using that terminology, I have a very strong preference for using a game system as a toolkit, rather than as a how-to manual. So, the how-to process elements you view as necessary for a game to be "complete", I view as actively unhelpful for running my game. I'm thrilled that there are both complete and incomplete game systems out there to cater to different preferences, but as far as my own use-case goes, I personally consider "completeness" (as you define it) to be undesirable.