Unpopular opinions go here

[Tony Vargas]

I don't think that 5e not being rules light makes 5e a bad game.

Fair. It was being seemingly designed to restore radical class imbalance, and present rules so ambiguous and dysfunctional that DMs are strongly incentivized to substitute their own judgement, that makes 5e a bad game. Light or heavy, it's not designed badly, it's bad by design.

Nor do I understand the desire some people have for needing 5e to be considered a rules light game.

You can say a lot of bad things about D&D in general and 5e in particular, and I guess 'easy to learn' and 'rulez lite,' while plausible only relative to something like 3.5 or GURPS, are meant to excuse those myriad failings.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I am willing to stipulate that those two words are synonymous, for the purposes of this discussion.

If the game presents content, the content matters, and adds to the game's "rulez weight"

Sure, you can cut away, consolidate, or add content or sub-systems, changing the game, and create a new, possibly derivative game that is heavier or lighter. It says nothing about the original - other than you didn't much care for it, since you saw a need to extensively change it.

Yeah, at the point you're calling everything that isn't extremely base mechanic "content" and not "rules" for rules weighting, almost no game is anything but light. By that standard you could describe Shadowrun or Rolemaster as "rules light". If its elements that require handling and memory to play the game, its part of the rules, and just because you could theoretically trim it off means nothing.

 

[Thomas Shey]

If it all it takes is for 5e to be considered "rules light" is d20 + modifiers vs. DC, then there would still be thousands of TTRPGs out there considerably lighter than 5e D&D.

I don't think that 5e not being rules light makes 5e a bad game. Nor do I understand the desire some people have for needing 5e to be considered a rules light game. It obviously doesn't need to be rules light to be successful. It simply is successful regardless of how "heavy" its rules are. There's no need to pretend that the game is lighter than it is out of any misguided sense that rules heavy games are somehow instrinsically more worse than rules light games.

Its actually the attempt to claim its relatively light by some proponents I object to; it attempts to present a counterfactual and use it as a virtue element in comparisons. It has required, at the bare minimum, ignoring the magic system since virtually the beginning of the game's history.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

It was being seemingly designed to restore radical class imbalance, and present rules so ambiguous and dysfunctional that DMs are strongly incentivized to substitute their own judgement, that makes 5e a bad game. Light or heavy, it's not designed badly, it's bad by design.

It was designed to more greatly resemble pre-4E versions of the game, yes, and even pre-TSR ones, where the DM's adjudication was the most important arbiter, rather than attempting to codify everything that might come up in play.

That's a stylistic choice, neither good nor bad.

Fortunately, we live in a world where the OGL still stands and there are multiple alternatives that play very much like 4E and other versions of D&D, for people who'd prefer tighter class balance and fewer "rulings not rules" situations.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Nor do I understand the desire some people have for needing 5e to be considered a rules light game.

I think, for WotC's part, they really don't want people who find 5E to be heavy (one of my regular players, for instance) to know that the grass doesn't just appear greener on the other side of the fence.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It was designed to more greatly resemble pre-4E versions of the game, yes, and even pre-TSR ones, where the DM's adjudication was the most important arbiter, rather than attempting to codify everything that might come up in play.

I'm assuming you mean pre-WOTC ones here?

That's a stylistic choice, neither good nor bad.

Well, its neither good nor bad in a broad objective sense. "Rulings not rules" is not a judgment-free statement, and evaluating it does not require one not to make judgments, you just can't universalize them.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I'm assuming you mean pre-WOTC ones here?

Mostly, but I do think 5E intentionally brought back a few 3Eisms. The D20 chassis, for instance, is something they could have jettisoned, but chose not to.

"Rulings not rules" is not a judgment-free statement, and evaluating it does not require one not to make judgments, you just can't universalize them.

I think "rulings not rules" is used to make judgements, with proponents suggesting that "rulings" are automatically better (which anyone who's ever played with a bad DM knows isn't true), but I disagree that the statement itself has an inherent judgement built into it. It's a descriptor, nothing more, even if people like to wield it like a weapon.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Mostly, but I do think 5E intentionally brought back a few 3Eisms. The D20 chassis, for instance, is something they could have jettisoned, but chose not to.

I meant talking about "pre-TSR D&D" seems to be, well, hard to parse.

I think "rulings not rules" is used to make judgements, with proponents suggesting that "rulings" are automatically better (which anyone who's ever played with a bad DM knows isn't true), but I disagree that the statement itself has an inherent judgement built into it. It's a descriptor, nothing more, even if people like to wield it like a weapon.

Its the "not" that throws in the judgment; it says that the virtuous choice is having human judgment involved is superior to having a rule for many situations. That's a value judgment in and of itself; its not objective, and there's no reason someone else should be require to judge it on an objective level to call it good or bad since the position itself is not objective.

Essentially, any preference here is going to have strong subjective elements, but that doesn't require someone not make judgments about them; as I said, you just can't extend those judgments as universals.

 

[Emberashh]

Particularly in a game like 5e where there is no clear line between fluff and crunch, and rules can be lurking almost anywhere.

At this point you're not really talking to me at all and just quipping at no one in particular.

Pretty insufferable way to communicate, fyi.

 

[Tony Vargas]

It was designed to more greatly resemble pre-4E versions of the game, yes, and even pre-TSR ones, where the DM's adjudication was the most important arbiter, rather than attempting to codify everything that might come up in play.

That's what I said.
Though, TBF, 1e AD&D used to be criticized for trying to have rules for everything... even tho it didn't even have anything much resembling a skill system until the Survival Guides... 's'all relative, I guess.

Fortunately, we live in a world where the OGL still stands and there are multiple alternatives that play very much like 4E and other versions of D&D, for people who'd prefer tighter class balance and fewer "rulings not rules" situations.

The OGL stands for 3.0, 3.5, 5e.2014, and less directly, numerous OSR games. The GSL stands squarely in the way of 4e.

I meant talking about "pre-TSR D&D" seems to be, well, hard to parse.

I think, technically, the earliest printing of 0D&D was published by "Guidon Games?"

Its the "not" that throws in the judgment; it says that the virtuous choice is having human judgment involved is superior to having a rule for many situations.

"Rulings not Rules" is just a catchy way of saying "these rules are bad, do whatever you want, it'll probably be better, and is unlikely to be worse"

There's also a lingering bit of ROLL v ROLE in there, too. Like functional systems are somehow innately antithetical to RP.