Unpopular opinions go here

[MGibster]

The road is long/
With many a winding turn/
That leads us to who knows where/
But I'm strong/
Strong enough to carry him/
He ain't heavy, he's my D&D rules

 

[Thomas Shey]

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

It must have been really early then, since TSR's name was on it by the time of the beige box I bought in 1975.

"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"

Naw, that's being reductive. There are people who genuinely do not want hardcoded rules for a lot of things. It wouldn't matter how good they were.

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

I don't think its quite that; its more that some people are progressively more hostile to having some things handled directly with mechanics and process rather than heavy player-level decision making. "The answer is not on your sheet" and all that.

(Me, I've expressed the opinion that many parts of most games could use more mechanical decision making, of the sort no one blinks about in a combat system (i.e. engagement that is resolved with mechanics but where there's piecemeal input in it) but that takes up more space, and ends up slopping into areas of intellectual (or worse, social) engagement that a lot of people are really hostile too, so...)

 

[Hussar]

Personally, I find the whole rules light thing to be a pretty thin veneer of edition warring rhetoric. Much like the whole DnD is simulationist.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Naw, that's being reductive. There are people who genuinely do not want hardcoded rules for a lot of things. It wouldn't matter how good they were.

There are. And they don't always game exclusively with eachother....

I don't think its quite that; its more that some people are progressively more hostile to having some things handled directly with mechanics and process rather than heavy player-level decision making. "The answer is not on your sheet" and all that.

(Me, I've expressed the opinion that many parts of most games could use more mechanical decision making, of the sort no one blinks about in a combat system (i.e. engagement that is resolved with mechanics but where there's piecemeal input in it) but that takes up more space, and ends up slopping into areas of intellectual (or worse, social) engagement that a lot of people are really hostile too, so...)

There may be a certain amount of chicken-and-egg going on. D&D was a decidedly incomplete game, and has never been a well-balanced one able to handle everything, but it's also always been the point of entry for and exemplar of the hobby. It's easy to get the impression that handling things without mechanics is a great idea, when the mechanics you're using haven't much improved in the last 50 years....

 

[MGibster]

Personally, I find the whole rules light thing to be a pretty thin veneer of edition warring rhetoric. Much like the whole DnD is simulationist.

I've honestly tried to figure out what all those Forge words mean, but I'm at a seeming loss no matter what. I can explain to you the historiography of Scottish witchcraft, lynching in the United States, and prohibition, but if you ask me to describe simulationist games my eyes will roll into the back of my head, I'll collapse, and shake uncontrollably as my mouth foams up.

 

[Thomas Shey]

There are. And they don't always game exclusively with eachother....

Doesn't change what they want, though.

There may be a certain amount of chicken-and-egg going on. D&D was a decidedly incomplete game, and has never been a well-balanced one able to handle everything, but it's also always been the point of entry for and exemplar of the hobby. It's easy to get the impression that handling things without mechanics is a great idea, when the mechanics you're using haven't much improved in the last 50 years....

Its obviously next to impossible to test for this, but I've seen plenty of low-mechanics preference people who've engaged with a lot of other games, so it obviously isn't just exposure to D&D.

 

[Jd Smith1]

I wouldn't say that. Ive noticed that there's a growing appetite for more indepth systems lately; the appeal of rules light/storygaming is burning out, if slowly.

4e and its derivatives could very well come into their own if that trend continues.

I didn't play 4e, but I've read the rules, and its awful.

I don't disagree that rules-light is fading, helped along by the rules-bloated entry drug that is 5e, but 4e got replaced for a very good reason.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

That's what I said.

3E was not TSR.

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.

And yet 13th Age is there, doing just fine. One can make a perfectly fine fantasy game that runs similarly to 4E, just using the OGL.

"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"

You really undercut yourself with this. It is fine to not like a style of gameplay, but to insist that said gameplay must be bad, rather than just not being for you, is kind of a stretch.

I have no interest in playing Champions or GURPS, but that doesn't mean that highly granular games are somehow inherently bad.

 

[MGibster]

Voicing an opinion where you state the reasons you don't like the rules from a previous edition of D&D isn't edition warring. People are allowed to dislike things. Disagreement with my opinions is a serious offense though.

 

[Jd Smith1]

5e is rules light. It just has a lot of stupidly designed content, including subsystems masquerading as "rules" when they're not.

I've been gaming since 1979, and 5e is one of the most rules-bloated systems I've seen. And I played Phoenix Command and Rolemaster for years.

The core system is simple, almost elegant, but when you empty the bottomless cesspit of feats, spells, class abilities, racial abilities, items, and 3rd-party drek over it, its a bloated, tedious mess.