D&D General Rules, Rules, Rules: Thoughts on the Past, Present, and Future of D&D

[Oofta]

You repeatedly caricature the opposition, and wonder why these threads get so contentious.

Maybe if you allowed for the possibility of something other than "a facade of control on the player's part," a productive discussion could occur, rather than a contest to see who can optimize their Sling Mud rolls.

Who, me, sarcastic about the exact same topic brought up the umpteenth time? I apologize that it came across as overly harsh but we're just not going to agree.

Spoiler: Hide and Hidden

HIDDEN [CONDITION]
While you are Hidden, you experience the
following effects:
Concealed. You aren’t affected by any effect that
requires its target to be seen
Surprise. If you are Hidden when you roll
Initiative, you have Advantage on the roll.
Attacks Affected. Attack Rolls against you have
Disadvantage, and your Attack Rolls have
Advantage.
Ending the Condition. The Condition ends on
you immediately after any of the following
occurrences: you make a sound louder than a
whisper, an enemy finds you, you make an
Attack Roll, you cast a Spell with a verbal
component, or you aren’t Heavily Obscured or
behind any Cover.
HIDE [ACTION]
With the Hide Action, you try to conceal yourself.
To do so, you must make a DC 15 Dexterity
Check (Stealth) while you’re Heavily Obscured or
behind Three-Quarters Cover or Total Cover, and
you must be out of any visible enemy’s line of
sight; if you can see a creature, you can discern
whether it can see you.
On a successful check, you are Hidden. Make
note of your check’s total, which becomes the DC
for a creature to find you with a Wisdom Check
(Perception).

In any case I can summarize again. There are bad DMs. No amount of rules will make a bad DM any better. If a DM doesn't want anyone to hide ever there will simply be no options to hide. Meanwhile more rules frequently makes it more difficult for good DMs because it takes away their freedom to tell engaging stories.

While the wording is a bit confusing, my understanding is that you can take the hide action DC 15 Dex to become hidden which is now a condition. So what happens if one guard A could see you soon because they're walking your way but guard B doesn't have a chance to see you? Perhaps you can take guard A out or cast silence before they can raise the alarm. But with the new rules it doesn't matter because hidden is a condition: once guard A sees you, you lose the condition whether or not they have a chance to raise the alarm.

There will always be mother may I issue because the DM is the one establishing the environment. More rules have never improved bad DMs. Feel free to disagree.

 

[Lanefan]

In any case I can summarize again. There are bad DMs. No amount of rules will make a bad DM any better. If a DM doesn't want anyone to hide ever there will simply be no options to hide. Meanwhile more rules frequently makes it more difficult for good DMs because it takes away their freedom to tell engaging stories.

While the wording is a bit confusing, my understanding is that you can take the hide action DC 15 Dex to become hidden which is now a condition. So what happens if one guard A could see you soon because they're walking your way but guard B doesn't have a chance to see you? Perhaps you can take guard A out or cast silence before they can raise the alarm. But with the new rules it doesn't matter because hidden is a condition: once guard A sees you, you lose the condition whether or not they have a chance to raise the alarm.

There will always be mother may I issue because the DM is the one establishing the environment. More rules have never improved bad DMs. Feel free to disagree.

More to the point, IME more rules - and the accompanying attitude of rules-uber-alles - can sometimes turn a good DM into a bad one if the DM insists on following those rules to a T even though doing so makes no sense in the fiction.

My go-to example is that two allies in a combat can't move together from point A to point B, as WotC-era rules state a) a character can only move on its turn and b) turns cannot be simultaneous. Pre-WotC D&D, however, had no problem with this; as simultaniety of actions was accepted and allowed.

 

[Umbran]

Mod Note:

@Oofta and @EzekielRaiden - it is barely page two, and already someone has to come in here and tell you to get out of each other's faces?

If you cannot be kind to each other, maybe stop speaking, before you say something you'll regret.

 

[Maxperson]

Gygax (sometimes, he isn't easy to pin down) wanted AD&D to be the standardized game, so all players would be playing the same way.

Where do you get that from? Everything I've seen from his thread quotes to the 1e books themselves indicates that he wanted DMs to run the game how they wanted and the rules be damned if they get in the way.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

More to the point, IME more rules - and the accompanying attitude of rules-uber-alles - can sometimes turn a good DM into a bad one if the DM insists on following those rules to a T even though doing so makes no sense in the fiction.

My go-to example is that two allies in a combat can't move together from point A to point B, as WotC-era rules state a) a character can only move on its turn and b) turns cannot be simultaneous. Pre-WotC D&D, however, had no problem with this; as simultaniety of actions was accepted and allowed.

I don't understand how that would be beneficial. What is gained by allowing this?

 

[Oofta]

More to the point, IME more rules - and the accompanying attitude of rules-uber-alles - can sometimes turn a good DM into a bad one if the DM insists on following those rules to a T even though doing so makes no sense in the fiction.

My go-to example is that two allies in a combat can't move together from point A to point B, as WotC-era rules state a) a character can only move on its turn and b) turns cannot be simultaneous. Pre-WotC D&D, however, had no problem with this; as simultaniety of actions was accepted and allowed.

Yeah, I gave my example of hiding above. Guard A can see you and since hidden is now a condition, it doesn't matter if guard A can warn his buddy or not - according to a strict reading of the rules every enemy in the vicinity now knows.

I don't want D&D to be a board game with "I win" buttons if the PC is specialize in something, whether that's hiding or being persuasive. In addition the more you lock down the rules the more people will think they are 100% limited to the rules and will never attempt anything outside the lines. If someone comes up with a cool idea I may not always let it happen. Sometimes it's just cool and inventive and we go with it, other times it's "You can't do that but you can ...". The game loses something when you lose that.

 

[Lanefan]

I don't understand how that would be beneficial. What is gained by allowing this?

Seriously?

A character covering a wounded companion with a shield while they both move from one point of safety to another?

Two characters joining hands to run through an area of fog or darkness and not lose each other en route?

Two (or more!) characters attempting to maintain a shield wall while charging or advancing - or retreating?

These aren't beneficial?

And that's just movement. Add in other aspects of combat and simultaniety allows two foes to take each other out, an age-old trope which currently cannot happen: IMO a glaring flaw. It also adds greatly to the fog-of-war side of things, where stuff is happening fast and not everybody can react in time.

 

[Lanefan]

Where do you get that from? Everything I've seen from his thread quotes to the 1e books themselves indicates that he wanted DMs to run the game how they wanted and the rules be damned if they get in the way.

He's conflicted on this. In some places he says what you note above, in others he exhorts that only the rules as written be used and that they should not be deviated from.

 

[Arilyn]

Where do you get that from? Everything I've seen from his thread quotes to the 1e books themselves indicates that he wanted DMs to run the game how they wanted and the rules be damned if they get in the way.

Yes, Gygax swung back and forth. Rule books are get to know system, then change what you want. But in Dragon, Gygax called for more conformity, so players could move their characters to different tables. He feuded with the "California Group" (and some others) for not playing D&D right, and therefore not actually playing D&D. On the other hand, he could be super lax about the rules himself.

My point is simply, that at times, Gygax was trying to unify the rules. 2e is admittedly worse with its dire warnings of Change things at your own Risk in introduction.

 

[overgeeked]

There will always be mother may I issue because the DM is the one establishing the environment. More rules have never improved bad DMs.

As others have said, and as I tried (but failed) to express in my "Rules aren't important" thread, more rules just get in the way of good referees and their players. Players mistakenly think that more rules means more player empowerment and less referee empowerment. It's a false dichotomy. As long as there's a referee they have effectively infinite power. No rules will ever curtail that short of reducing the referee to a slow computer executing code for the players' enjoyment.

More to the point, IME more rules - and the accompanying attitude of rules-uber-alles - can sometimes turn a good DM into a bad one if the DM insists on following those rules to a T even though doing so makes no sense in the fiction.

To me, that attitude turns everyone into a bad participant. It's the fiction that matters, the rules are (at best) rough guidelines to get the players into the fiction.

My go-to example is that two allies in a combat can't move together from point A to point B, as WotC-era rules state a) a character can only move on its turn and b) turns cannot be simultaneous. Pre-WotC D&D, however, had no problem with this; as simultaniety of actions was accepted and allowed.

I still prefer the old days where we had phases. Everyone moves, everyone fires missiles, everyone melees, etc.

And that's just movement. Add in other aspects of combat and simultaniety allows two foes to take each other out, an age-old trope which currently cannot happen: IMO a glaring flaw. It also adds greatly to the fog-of-war side of things, where stuff is happening fast and not everybody can react in time.

Exactly. The abstract nature of the rules actively gets in the way of immersion and any sense of even basic verisimilitude.