D&D General Alternate thought - rule of cool is bad for gaming

[tetrasodium]

The "Talk to the DM to find out what he's doing and if he has changed anything" isn't new. It was in the 2014 PHB as well, just in a different spot. Moving it to the character creation section is much better and makes it less likely to be overlooked by the players.

That page indicates that the DM is still the authority over the game in 5.5e and the players need to find out what the DM is doing.

Yes I'm aware of a directionless footnote in an entirely different section almost no newbie is going to read or really understand the game well enough to engage in meaningful discussion while later talking to the gm. This new form of layout and wording provides a solid start while admitting that characters need to bend to some of those questions. What is absolutely completely different is not treating the gm like a service worker waiting for input and not treating other players like sidekicks and talking to them in relevant ways before character creation is complete.

Both of those things set an entirely different tone that is impossible to overlook or argue against. That was not true in their previous forms. d&d takes more than everyone showing up for it to work. 2014 had that section written and arranged as if all it took was Kurt's famous line about teen spirit, now it acknowledges that work needs to take place on both sides of the gm screen with everyone involved.

 

[Lanefan]

Something here doesn't quite square:

First, I said that AW has a rule for everything - there is no action declaration whose resolution is not covered by the ruleset.

OK, sounds great so far: AW has a rule for everything. Straightforward, simple, no questions - declare any action, the rules can handle it.

However...

Second, your claim is a non-sequitur. AW's rules - which provide for the resolution of any declared action - deliberately produce a certain sort of focus and play experience: the themes are scarcity, interpersonal conflict, and the ever-present threat of violence.

...if it indeed has a rule for everything then in theory it should be able to reasonably-equally-well output any sort of focus and-or play experience its particpants desire, yet you state it instead produces "a certain sort of focus and play experience".

Which tells me that while AW may well have rules that fully cover all the things its designers want them to cover in order to produce that play experience, they're still - just like any other RPG rule-set - only covering a subset of "everything".

 

[Lanefan]

Maybe I'm out of touch . . . but 5e D&D doesn't strike me as very DIY in its aesthetic. I don't really see much resemblance between it and classic D&D in this respect.

There's a resemblance if you squint hard enough: by its own admission 5e is based on "rulings, not rules", and the accumulation of ruling after ruling after ruling is in effect a slow-motion (and somewhat disjointed) method of kitbashing the 5e system into what you want to run.

 

[Oofta]

Something here doesn't quite square:

OK, sounds great so far: AW has a rule for everything. Straightforward, simple, no questions - declare any action, the rules can handle it.

However...

...if it indeed has a rule for everything then in theory it should be able to reasonably-equally-well output any sort of focus and-or play experience its particpants desire, yet you state it instead produces "a certain sort of focus and play experience".

Which tells me that while AW may well have rules that fully cover all the things its designers want them to cover in order to produce that play experience, they're still - just like any other RPG rule-set - only covering a subset of "everything".

Or, just like D&D, gives you a framework to adjudicate certain specific actions and a more generalized framework to handle the rest. How that is handled can change.

You can't have specific detailed rules for everything unless you're playing a board game. Its also why video games are limited, your avatar can only do what the game has been programmed to do.

 

[pemerton]

There's a resemblance if you squint hard enough: by its own admission 5e is based on "rulings, not rules", and the accumulation of ruling after ruling after ruling is in effect a slow-motion (and somewhat disjointed) method of kitbashing the 5e system into what you want to run.

5e asserts that it is based on "rulings not rules". But it has a uniform system for stats, and for skills. There is a system of backgrounds and feats (I gather the former are getting merged into the latter?). The classes are integrated, total packages. If I want to know how my fighter can wrongfoot an opponent, I don't look for a ruling - I look at the Battlemaster sub-class rules.

I don't see anything that resembles the "just make up a new subsystem" approach of classic D&D, or "just write up a new class" that gave us the thief, the ranger, the illusionist, the bard, etc back in the early days.

 

[pemerton]

OK, sounds great so far: AW has a rule for everything. Straightforward, simple, no questions - declare any action, the rules can handle it.

However...

...if it indeed has a rule for everything then in theory it should be able to reasonably-equally-well output any sort of focus and-or play experience its particpants' desire

Why?

For instance, suppose that the participants don't want a game in which threatening violence is a principle way to get others to go along with you. Suppose, instead, they prefer a game in which offering hugs is a principle way to get others to go along with you.

In that case, they probably would not want to use a game that includes AW's Go Aggro move, which is triggered when a player has their PC go aggro on someone, that is, threaten them with violence. And they might want to introduce a new player-side move that is triggered when you offer to hug someone.

yet you state it instead produces "a certain sort of focus and play experience".

Which tells me that while AW may well have rules that fully cover all the things its designers want them to cover in order to produce that play experience, they're still - just like any other RPG rule-set - only covering a subset of "everything".

You are incorrect. There is no action declaration in AW which the rules don't explain how to resolve.

EDIT: This post is especially bizarre because I know that you have removed the XP from gold rule from your version of AD&D. Which changes the focus and play experience of the game. But this has nothing to do with whether or not there are action declarations for which the game has no resolution process.

 

[pemerton]

Or, just like D&D, gives you a framework to adjudicate certain specific actions and a more generalized framework to handle the rest.

No, this is not how AW works.

I posted upthread how it works. It's not like what you say here.

 

[pemerton]

On "cool" in RPGing, I like this:

The real cause and effect in a roleplaying game isn't in the fictional game world, it's at the table, in what the players and GM say and do.

If you want awesome stuff to happen in your game, you don't need rules to model the characters doing awesome things, you need rules to provoke the players to say awesome things. That's the real cause and effect at work: things happen because someone says they do. If you want cool things to happen, get someone to say something cool. . . .

If your rules model a character's doing cool things, and in so doing they get the players to say cool things, that's great. I have nothing against modeling the cool things characters do as such.

Just, if your rules model a character's doing cool things, but the player using them still says dull things, that's not so great. . . .

You want your rules to actually GET them to say cool things. Turning to them like "okay say something cool. Well? Well?" is a crappy way to go about that, it doesn't work.

No, what you have to do as designer is organize the game behind the scenes, like, so that what the players say without really thinking, what they say just naturally, are cool things. . . .

I'm talking about what I think is cool. I design games to get you to say things that I think are cool. So should you, if you design games.

My supposition is that you and your friends all agree with me about what's cool. If you don't, you won't pick up my games in the first place. (Which is fine. If you don't think is cool what I think is cool, you won't like my games, please don't bother.)

If you don't even agree with each other about what's cool, I've got absolutely nothing for you. Are you sure you should be playing games together in the first place? . . .

Seriously. I'm categorically uninterested in roleplaying, theory or practice, when the players' agreement about what's interesting isn't a rock-solid given. Any theorizing where you have to attend to "the speaker thinks it's cool but the listener doesn't," no thanks. I'm out, good luck and god bless.​

 

[Oofta]

No, this is not how AW works.

I posted upthread how it works. It's not like what you say here.

I'm using action as a generic term, not as defined by how D&D does it. In any game there are rules on how to progress a game in a direction, either successfully, unsuccessfully or no change. No game can have specific rules to do that for every situation unless what can be done is very restricted.

PbtA games take a very different approach than D&D does but it still ultimately comes down to automatic resolution, randomized resolution or using some resources.

Unless of course you're just playing pure narrative system but I wouldn't call that a game, I'd call it shared story telling.

P.S. "somewhere above" isn't particularly useful when there are more than 500 posts.

 

[Remathilis]

5e asserts that it is based on "rulings not rules". But it has a uniform system for stats, and for skills. There is a system of backgrounds and feats (I gather the former are getting merged into the latter?). The classes are integrated, total packages. If I want to know how my fighter can wrongfoot an opponent, I don't look for a ruling - I look at the Battlemaster sub-class rules.

I don't see anything that resembles the "just make up a new subsystem" approach of classic D&D, or "just write up a new class" that gave us the thief, the ranger, the illusionist, the bard, etc back in the early days.

5e certainly can create new classes (artificer being an official example, blood hunter and 3pp one) and new systems have been added on (renown or piety for example). I find it much easier in 5e to do these things than in 4e (class design was a nightmare) or 3e (where systems often clashed with one another).