D&D (2024) Anyone else dislike the "keyword" style language of 5.24?

[Puddles]

I am in the process of writing some rules (perhaps to sell on the DM's Guild) and I am trying to use the 2024 standard wordings as a template. However I keep getting turned off by the "keyword"-style turns of phrase and longing to use the elegant natural English that I found so appealing in 5.14.

For example, where-as before failing the saving throw to the Blindness/Deafness spell would make a creature "blinded or deafened" for the duration, now it has "the Blinded or Deafened condition for the duration."

Hempen rope is the worst offender. No longer is it hempen, nor do you get 50ft of it to do with as you may, now you have "Rope" and a while you have "Rope" you can do a "Utilize" action to bind unwilling creatures as long as they have the "Grappled", "Incapacitated" or "Restrained" condition.

Every paragraph seems full of these awkward, "Titled Cased", turns of phase. For me, the elegant use of natural English was one of the best parts of 5.14 and I find myself wanting to write in that style rather than the Everything Is A Keyword Style of 5.24. As long as natural English is used in a consistent manner, it is just as water-tight as adopting a keyword style system. The new style just feels ugly to read and write with, as if every paragraph needs to call out this is a game and not an inscribing of a breathing fantasy world into written word.

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

Keywords are great. One great flaw in 5E is that it is very rules-hesitant. It feels like the designers are ashamed of actual mechanics.

I agree that capitalising them is a bit excessive though. I prefer bolded (or none at all).

 

[payn]

It doesnt read well, until you need clarity on how to adjudicate it at the table.

 

[Stormonu]

I think Keywords help in many areas, but it's too easy to fall into the Overused Condition.

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

The controlled vocabulary is a greater human accomplishment than the printing press.

 

[Sorinth]

It doesnt read well, until you need clarity on how to adjudicate it at the table.

Not to be overly pedantic but you don't seem to be talking about adjudicating anything. There's no judgement call to be made when you are simply looking up a rule and then applying it. Keyword style language can certainly help you when you want to apply things in a consistent manner, especially across tables. But doesn't really help clarify the edge cases where the DM would actually have to make a judgement call, and I find tends towards a more rules-lawyering style of game, but that could just be me.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I quite like keywords, so if they're actually using them well, that sounds good to me.

I'm not at all confident that they are using keywords effectively.

 

[DrJawaPhD]

As long as natural English is used in a consistent manner, it is just as water-tight as adopting a keyword style system. The new style just feels ugly to read and write with, as if every paragraph needs to call out this is a game and not an inscribing of a breathing fantasy world into written word.

"Natural English" leads to far more confusion and ambiguity. I greater prefer the emphasis on Keywords for clarity.

Your argument does make sense; I hadn't thought about this before but I agree that the newer style provides more constant reminders that you are reading game rules and is less conducive to immersing yourself in the fantasy. I still prefer my game rules to focus on being as unambiguous as possible though, even if it's more ugly to read.

 

[DrJawaPhD]

I'm not at all confident that they are using keywords effectively.

I definitely wouldn't say they're doing an amazing job at using keywords effectively, but it is pretty clear that they did put effort in 2024 towards using keywords to make wording less ambiguous or open for interpretation, at the expense of making wording sound natural.

There are some spectacular misses like everything with dual-wielding, but I would say rule clarity is generally improved

 

[EzekielRaiden]

As long as natural English is used in a consistent manner, it is just as water-tight as adopting a keyword style system.

Except that doing that is almost 100% guaranteed to not happen--and, worse, two people can look at the same natural-language terms and derive different meanings that both happen to be internally consistent.

Which...is kind of the whole problem with "natural language" as a design. It looks beautiful! But that's putting design meta-aesthetics ahead of actual design function.

There is a reason law, mathematics, physics, philosophy, and essentially every other designed system operated by humans uses what are, functionally, keywords. Cleanly-defined specific terms, even if those terms diverge from ordinary meanings some of the time. Because it turns out, clarity in rules is actually really useful, and rules that are really beautiful but unclear are often less useful than rules that aren't pretty but are quite clear.