How Visible To players Should The Rules Be?

[Micah Sweet]

This doesn't really address my point.

When a GM introduces a scenario and tells you what's going on in it, and you as a player decide "my character doesn't understand this part of the situation" you have chosen to create the conditions for metagaming. If metagaming is a concern for you, then you can just accept that your character understands the situation as it was explained.

You're opting into the situation where what you're calling metagaming occurs.



No!

I'm sure they'd rather that the GM simply didn't tell them information their PC wouldn't necessarily know.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And stop it with this 'bounded accuracy' stuff! I don't have time to learn newfounded jargon. Why can't we just say 'the deliberate limiting of cumulative bonuses and penalties on any given dice roll so as to limit both the cognitive load of repeated mathematical calculations and to ensure that no enemy or obstacle renders itself outside of the parameters of enjoyable interaction with the player characters by means of either exceeding the practical reach of their own abilities, such that interactions are frustrating or impossible, or being so far below them that those same interactions have a foregone conclusion and lack all suspense'.

I'd be cool with that, especially as "bounded accuracy" doesn't actually appear as a term in the actual 5e books.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Really? I'd be willing to bet that it's not even the jargon that's keeping you from these games, is it? You said earlier that your main reason for not wanting to play them is because they take away the worldbuilding aspect of the GM role.

So are you saying that if they changed the phrases they use, then you'd suddenly be willing to play such a game?

Come on.

No, of course not. But I'd certainly enjoy talking about them more if said discussions weren't rife with exclusive jargon.

 

[Micah Sweet]

But for the most part, this isn't going to be an area where a game is going to be fair to all parties. Only a relatively small subset of games (usually universal systems) try to target options for different starting power levels. So this is absolutely a case where someone's ox is going to get gored, the only question is who.

Then we all have to accept that different games are different. Doesn't make it any less upsetting when that difference shows up in new iterations of the same game, especially if that game claims nearly all the headspace in the community.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Sure. Now look around and see how often that's done.

Like I said, you see discussion of this in games like Hero, but in class and level systems? Its virtually nonexistent, and in some of them its not even clear what a "level 0" character should look like.

I will again point you to DCC and other games of the OSR. 1e/2e, 0-level characters, 3e's NPC classes and 5e's Sidekick system show similar themes.

 

[James Gasik]

Yeah, 5e does tend to squash all this stuff together. Too bad. I think you could really do something neat with cultural or ny tradition spell lists.

I have a friend who calls 5e "D&D: Friendship is Magic" because of how so many things are basically spells or spell-like abilities. I kind of wish WotC would just take the Earthdawn approach and be done with it, but I realize that there's a lot of people who don't want chocolate in their peanut butter. So we get this lopsided "some of what you want and a lot you don't want" in the game.

And absolutely, different magical traditions would be fantastic, but it adds a level of complexity that apparently only a third-party developer could add to the game. We can't confuse all those people that the Champion Fighter was written for, now can we? /sarcasm

 

[James Gasik]

I'm sure they'd rather that the GM simply didn't tell them information their PC wouldn't necessarily know.

But as this thread has proven "what your PC wouldn't necessarily know" is not something that can be universally agreed upon.

Upthread, I said "well, as the GM, I decide" and I got a response of "but what if, I as a player, doesn't want to know that?".

On the flipside, if someone says "the player decides", a lot of posters would balk at that idea.

I suppose then that the only real answer is for a given group to come to a consensus about what the appropriate amount of transparency is.

 

[Maxperson]

Oh stop it.

No you!

Imagine you had this idea when learning D&D. Why are they making up all these terms for elements of the game? I refuse to learn a game that requires that I learn jargon!

I know this applies to sports as well! I much rather hear an announcer say "the player ran beyond the defense before the ball was put into play in that area" rather than "he's offsides". Natural language for the win!

I was much younger when I learned D&D. I know D&D. I don't have the desire to learn jargon for game X, different jargon for game y, and yet more jargon for game z. Not going to do it when natural language fixes everything.

 

[Micah Sweet]

No you!

I was much younger when I learned D&D. I know D&D. I don't have the desire to learn jargon for game X, different jargon for game y, and yet more jargon for game z. Not going to do it when natural language fixes everything.

There does seem to come a time for many folks when they just lose interest in starting over with new terminology and a whole new way of looking at games. For some the juice isn't worth the squeeze.

 

[Campbell]

There does seem to come a time for many folks when they just lose interest in starting over with new terminology and a whole new way of looking at games. For some the juice isn't worth the squeeze.

Sure, but at that point you are saying you are not interested in the conversation rather than making a critique about the best way to bring a given game's play model forward. You're basically saying don't say GM Move yet not providing an alternative framing to talk about the concepts involved. That's not really a useful critique for those of us who are interested in talking about and engaging with these things.