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There's a massive difference. In the first example the DC is 15. In the second example the DC is in fact 10, not 15; as in 5e (and 3e and I think 4e also) success is defined as matching or beating the DC. For someone who likes quoting RAW I'm surprised you're cool with this.

Snarf left the original DC at 15 and added a 10-14 range that turned a fail into a success. That's vastly different than simply lowering the DC to 10 and adding a success-witn-extras range up to 14.

Then the actual DC should be 10, not 15. Yes it's terminology, but it's terminology that matters. A lot.

And the big one: magic item loss. In 1e, if you failed a save vs AoE damage everything you were carrying then had to save or be destroyed. Makes for a far more "easy come, easy go" vibe, which I quite like. Better, but still a red flag (though not as big). I don't want to have to argue...

The way I read it, they seemed to want to take those few hours of play and concatenate them into a few minutes of player-side "Here's how we approach this" followed by a string of rolls; with the specific intent being to speed up play by skipping over all the granularity previous editions would...

This is exactly what I've been railing against: your 10-14 bracket turns a fail into a success, which dishonours the original 'fail' roll! Should instead be, using your ratios and if the DC is 15: 20 and higher: success 15-19: success with complication 14 or lower: failure. (maybe failure with...

To a point, I agree. There's times when a complication makes sense, and times when it doesn't. Also, while it's a good tool in moderation, adding complications all the time can get overdone. I'll often let the task roll inform this. A close fail might just mean nothing happens while a bad...

And then the question simply becomes one of how willing people are to live with or tolerate those failure states when* they occur. IME most people will put up with them as long as they know it's a temporary situation rather than forever. An example might be a somewhat lead-'em-by-the-nose...

A game in Hobbiton would flat-out rock! Unfortunately, I'm about as far away from New Zealand as I can be and still be on the same planet, and am unlikely to get down there anytime soon.

I think the example was there being a secondary roll to determine the presence or absence of a complication; and if that roll were player-visible it might force the dM to add a complication (because the players would expect it due to the roll they just saw) where a complication just doesn't make...

Correct. Incorrect. Even though I don't play it, I care about what it does because, for better or wosre, that becomes what the community comes to expect. Which means when it does something I think is either really good or really stupid I'm gonna call it out. Same goes for 4e, or did during...

Only to a point. There comes a time when over-analysis becomes dull; thankfully there's always players with low-ish boredom thresholds who, when they get bored, will have their characters (who also tend to have low boredom thresholds) do something to stir the pot. Also, modern D&D really does...

No. Mechanics aren't required if the DM is acting in good faith. Yes, just like it's mind control if an NPC succeeds vs a PC. I trust them to act in good faith absent any of those mechanics, and hope I've earned the same trust in return when it comes to running my NPCs. As such, I see no...

It's not mind control to hit my character with a sword but - unless the blow puts me down for the count or worse - it is mind control to tell me how I react to the pain that hit causes. Physical vs mental. We have to abstract the physical side of any RPG (a bit less so in a LARP), and thus the...

In fairness, I've DMed and played with one or two players who seemed constitutionally incapable of doing anything the least bit gonzo, and always tried their best to analyze down to the best/most optimal option. Great for their characters' survival odds, awful for the entertainment value. :)

That's a new one on me, but then the whole world of fanfic is a land in which I don't tread so this doesn't surprise me any. That's a different motive than I have. I'm not here to "give them a chance to shine", I'm here to provide the opposition and challenges and obstacles and if they happen...

Neither am I. :) When someone posts some direct-quoted rules text and that text says X, it's not my fault if I read it as saying X even though the writer may have intended it to be read as saying Y. And this goes right back to day one; Gygax was guilty of this on a far too frequent basis and I...

Nah - if it's remote, I'm out. But get us together in a pub sometime and hells yeah, count me in. Even if we didn't actually play anything, the discussion and arguments would be increasingly epic per beer consumed! :)

While I agree with your point about mechanics being more neutral, I detest rules that work one way for PCs and another for NPCs. I'm a hard-liner in the "it works the same for everyone" camp as I see the PCs as being, at their root, inhabitants of their setting just like everyone else and thus...

With the bolded, I agree. I don't need mechanics to force me to do it. It doesn't play nice with the "no companion left behind" types, but that's no concern of mine. :) Here we've really only got two choices in the end: 1 - rely on player-side good faith, or 2 - take away quite a bit of...