Unpopular opinions go here

[Hussar]

I don't care what flavors are offered to other people, but I'd like to have flavors I like as well.

You’re mixing metaphors though now.

You have your six flavours that you like. But adding the seventh is suddenly “why do they hate gamers!?!??!”

Very, very often the double bludgeons of canon and simulation are used to gate keep the game. We can’t have mythic fighters unless we absolutely satisfy everyone’s needs. The fact that someone will likely never use it doesn’t matter.

If it’s in the game it must absolutely be approved by the keepers of the gates.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Again, in attributes? Remember what we're talking about here.

Perhaps I'm not following you, because @Hussar's reply post to me is definitely is not what I was referring to.
The below is how I understood your conversation around the simplicity of Attributes in 5e and all of D&D - which I say was far more nuanced in some of the earlier editions.

When you're speaking about Attributes in 5e we have even numbers denoting + or - on skill checks and various other scores.

In 2e (and 1e) odd numbers and even numbers played a roll and the attribute tables were far more detailed than just + or a -. There were columns for all sorts of categories. In 2e they introduced Non-Weapon Proficiencies which made odd numbers mean something, since you had to roll to either equal to or lesser than your attribute score for success.
And all this was further expanded upon in the Skills and Powers where each attribute had 2 sub-attribute scores which could have a differential of 4 points from each other and 2 from the main attribute score. That is far more nuanced than 5e's Attributes IMO.

 

[Hussar]

Perhaps I'm not following you, because @Hussar's reply post to me is definitely is not what I was referring to.
The below is how I understood your conversation around the simplicity of Attributes in 5e and all of D&D - which I say was far more nuanced in some of the earlier editions.

When you're speaking about Attributes in 5e we have even numbers denoting + or - on skill checks and various other scores.

In 2e (and 1e) odd numbers and even numbers played a roll and the attribute tables were far more detailed than just + or a -. There were columns for all sorts of categories. In 2e they introduced Non-Weapon Proficiencies which made odd numbers mean something, since you had to roll to either equal to or lesser than your attribute score for success.
And all this was further expanded upon in the Skills and Powers where each attribute had 2 sub-attribute scores which could have a differential of 4 points from each other and 2 from the main attribute score. That is far more nuanced than 5e's Attributes IMO.

That's a really odd definition of granularity.

In 2e, your NWP's had exactly one DC. For all actions. That DC was set by your stat, whatever the stat was, and it never changed. That's the opposite of granularity. Yes, it's true that an odd number would be a different DC than an even number, but, since you only ever had one DC for all actions, I'm thinking that that's not really an issue.

Now, as far as the base attributes go, you're still mistaken. The attribute table bonuses or penalties only occurred at the far ends. 15+ or 7-. IOW, most stats had no adjustment at all. Again, the opposite of granularity.

I think the reason we're disagreeing is we are fundamentally not talking about the same thing. You seem to be using a very strange definition of nuance and granularity that I honestly don't understand.

 

[AnotherGuy]

That's a really odd definition of granularity.

In 2e, your NWP's had exactly one DC. For all actions. That DC was set by your stat, whatever the stat was, and it never changed. That's the opposite of granularity. Yes, it's true that an odd number would be a different DC than an even number, but, since you only ever had one DC for all actions, I'm thinking that that's not really an issue.

Now, as far as the base attributes go, you're still mistaken. The attribute table bonuses or penalties only occurred at the far ends. 15+ or 7-. IOW, most stats had no adjustment at all. Again, the opposite of granularity.

I think the reason we're disagreeing is we are fundamentally not talking about the same thing. You seem to be using a very strange definition of nuance and granularity that I honestly don't understand.

Those are all fair points and perhaps I'm completely mistaken but the convo Thomas Shey was having with other posters upthread was how Constitution was the same mod for abcd and that it wasn't nuanced, and it was like that throughout all of D&D's editions. I'm saying not really and that there was a time where abcd were split within the attribute (particularly with Skills and Powers which allowed you to have 2 more for the sub-attribute than your primary stat, so you could reach a score of 20)
Furthermore, if I recall correctly you could invest in NWP more than once which would act like a modifier (but it is not a hill I'm willing to die on - as it has been a while).

 

[Reynard]

@Reynard I have to agree with Hussar and the others. On the fly means little to no prep at all. What you described upthread about prepping situations is the opposite of on the fly, even though there may be a lot of improvisation that you have to do. The presence of improvisation doesn't equate to being on the fly.

You can give "on the fly" and "improvisational" whatever nonsensically opposite definitions makes you feel like you've won an argument. I have repeatedly explained what I meant and I am pretty tired of being "corrected."

All this stemmed from one explicit truth: it takes more time and effort to use a published adventure for a successful game than to not do so FOR ME.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Unpopular opinion to unpopular opinion; I like doing that extra work. I think part of making a module and/or AP great is on the GM and not the material alone. Also, the shared experience allows hundreds and thousands of GMs to share ideas to make even badly written adventures great ones.

This relates to my Community reason of why I enjoy D&D in the other thread.

 

[Maxperson]

You’re mixing metaphors though now.

You have your six flavours that you like. But adding the seventh is suddenly “why do they hate gamers!?!??!”

Very, very often the double bludgeons of canon and simulation are used to gate keep the game. We can’t have mythic fighters unless we absolutely satisfy everyone’s needs. The fact that someone will likely never use it doesn’t matter.

If it’s in the game it must absolutely be approved by the keepers of the gates.

That isn't an example of adding a flavor, though. That's an example of taking one of the six flavors and changing it out for a different sixth flavor. At least it is if they give the fighter supernaturally powerful abilities without them being supernatural in nature. Again, I don't care if Zoro the normal human trains to an incredible degree and can supernaturally cut someone from 100 feet away as long as the ability is supernatural(magic).

It's when someone tries to say that it's they should have that ability as a mundane ability that alters the flavor from chocolate chip to mint chip. So mythic fighters are okay. Mythic fighters doing supernatural things as mundane abilities is not okay. If you want that, leave fighters alone and add some other class(add a flavor) that we can ignore the way I personally ignore warlords. I'm happy for you to have the warlord flavor even though I will never eat it in my game.

 

[Maxperson]

You can give "on the fly" and "improvisational" whatever nonsensically opposite definitions makes you feel like you've won an argument. I have repeatedly explained what I meant and I am pretty tired of being "corrected."

This is the same issue we have with @pemerton and a few others. If you're going to personally redefine a term and then come here to argue that term as being correct, you will get pushback on it.

We understand what you mean, but that's not what "on the fly" really means in the RPG community. It's a drastically atypical definition.

All this stemmed from one explicit truth: it takes more time and effort to use a published adventure for a successful game than to not do so FOR ME.

And I agree with that. It's not because of "on the fly," though. Published adventures don't come close to my style of DMing. They give away too much OR too little in the chat boxes, so I end up having to go through and highlight a bunch of stuff to add and remove to them, and then learn things that I would know if I just created the adventure myself.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

So, what do you consider to be "on the fly"?

 

[Thomas Shey]

Perhaps I'm not following you, because @Hussar's reply post to me is definitely is not what I was referring to.

Let me elaborate on the part of the conversation I was participating in was about.

This was primarily about the fact most attributes roll too many things together. Constitution includes resistance to disease/poison, durability and fatigue; Dexterity includes reaction time, agility, manual dexterity and hand-eye coordination.
This isn't a property limited to D&D, but its pretty endemic to it. The only part of your response that relevant to it was:

And all this was further expanded upon in the Skills and Powers where each attribute had 2 sub-attribute scores which could have a differential of 4 points from each other and 2 from the main attribute score. That is far more nuanced than 5e's Attributes IMO.

...but note S&P was not part of the core. As such, in practice the basics of D&D were not any more nuanced than the modern one; they still lumped things pretty heavily. There's apparently been no real interest in breaking out from the six across its history, S&P notwithstanding.