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The point, as has been stated so far, is to not have "a character of level X is assumed to have Y items". That is not the same as completely ignoring items during adventure creation. Eliminating the former is tricky, but still potentially balanced. But ignoring them entirely? That is...

This approach is only reasonable if they provide a way to account for PC's magic items when building encounters/adventures. But this wasn't addressed in the article. Only a concern that too-powerful items might overshadow a character's own inherent abilities. Which isn't really all that...

That seems awfully nit-picky considering that "encounter" is strictly defined in terms of real time, and is basically just jargon to make the mechanics read more cleanly. An encounter is just a length of time that is bounded by rests of at least five minutes. "per encounter" is fully...

I don't see how once per X minutes is any more verisimilitudinous, or better in any game mechanics way, than "you must rest X minutes before you can do it again". If anything, fatigue recovery is much better modeled by resting, than by "oh, it's 5 minutes latter? You're not tired any more...

Huh? What's cleared up? Your post still seems to be talking about something entirely different than what Monte's essay is about. You're talking about different choices rules. Monte's talking about "rulings not rules". And I'm still not seeing much of any point to Monte's essay other than...

Is a wave-based encounter "screwing over" the players? The model I'm suggesting is just that, with the "waves" being small encounters they run into, instead of small encounters that come to them. Encounter Powers would still come back much more frequently than Daily powers (provided you still...

Well, there are always going to be rules questions. Not everyone has perfect system mastery. But there's a big difference between the DM giving a player a clarification or reminder of the existing rules, and inventing new rules on the spot.

Please, enlighten me. If I were to make short rest = 1 hour, have wandering monster checks every 10 minutes, and have smaller encounters throughout a dungeon, how would your group react?

Just don't let them short rest (it's trivial to adjust the short rest duration to help enable this, if you want), or have clear drawbacks for resting, and design the dungeon with smaller "encounters" using the wave-encounter suggestions in the DMG2. "Encounter" is just short-hand for "per short...

Of course there's that difference. What I don't understand is how that somehow makes clear, tight rules undesirable. Less absolutely necessary? Sure. The DM can play game designer, patch over missing stuff, and fix bugs. But that doesn't mean that forcing the DM to design rules is a good...

Sure you can. Many board games have much tighter, cleaner, and clearer designs than computer games and MMOs. Most computer games and MMOs have at least a few poorly documented, mysterious mechanics, that players can only figure out through experimentation, if at all. I'm still not clear on...

If the article isn't addressing that problem, then I really have no idea what it is addressing.

That isn't a matter of game design or rules systems. And a DM basing his decisions on "logic" could very well say it doesn't work that way, simply because, in fact, not all itching agents can be removed with simple water. The thesis of the article is that rules somehow limit DMs and players...

The main assumption of this essay is unfounded: tight-rules systems in no way prevent DMs making rulings, or relying on logic. If the rules say "It takes 2 turns and a roll to clean off the itchy powder", there is absolutely nothing preventing the DM from deviating from that rule and saying...

"The Dragonmark of Healing feat requires the Halfling race" is a rule. "All known bearers of the Dragonmark of Healing are Halflings" is setting fluff. It's not a mechanical rule, but it can shape the story. There's a clear difference. And I'm very thankful for the progress there's been on...

Yes, a DM can always break the rules, but if the rules exist both for balance and for pure fluff reasons, then it makes the DM's job harder. If the racial restriction is only in the setting fluff, then he knows that breaking that restriction is only a matter of breaking setting expectations...

It's a review thread. "House rule it" is not a good answer to a criticism of a game system. I didn't say it single-handedly ruins the game, and that if only it was something else, I'd play it. I said it was a mechanic that I particularly don't like. Now, it is a game that I don't like...

Yeah, my group ran the Beta for a little while, and I did not think that the level-0 stuff worked as expected. It was not survival of the fittest. It was survival of the characters that sucked at doing stuff, so were generally out of harms' way twiddling their thumbs while the useful...

The only way to cut yourself with a knife is pure DM fiat. If the DM fiats something that doesn't make sense, that's his own fault. But it would be trivial to explain as "your own poor grip on the knife means it doesn't actually do anything". As the rules clearly state, HP do not only...

I'm pretty sure it's possible, in the real world, to blind or trip someone without using magic...