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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5848305" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>The great edition wars are ultimately a form of culture war. The big problem IMO at least is that people end up mistaking culture, style, and design for system. They then assert that various qualities that are a product of encounter design, play style, and table culture are inherent products of a system and that the system forces you to play in that way. Instead, the real difference is that based on examples of play, or based on a prevailing culture, people enter into a system with certain expectations about how to play and prepare for a game system.</p><p></p><p>Celebrim's second law of roleplaying says that, "How you prepare to play a system and how you think about playing a system is more important than the system." In other words, if you prepare to play and set about playing 'Dogs in the Vineyard' with a D&D mindset, that is, you make a map of dungeon, you design traps, you populate it with monsters, and then you have players who set about with the goal of killing things and taking their stuff, you'll end up even if you stick to the system playing something very much like D&D. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>This is a good example. How 'handwave-y' as you put it, a system is depends heavily on how the DM prepares for the game, how he expects to run it, and how the players expect to interact with the DM. Although the system may make it easier to encourage 'handwave-y' play, there is nothing about the two systems that demands you are more or less handwave-y than the other. Third edition creates a perception that it is less handwave-y than first edition by having a rules set that appears on first blush to be comprehensive. Part of this difference in perception is simply that the 3e rules are a lot better organized. Arguably the 1e rules are just as comprehensive, but they aren't compiled in any easily usuable form and many of the rules - like 'rolling under your ability score to resolve a difficult challenge' - while frequently cited as a resolution method by 1e DM's are basically house rules that have widespread use. </p><p></p><p>Part of the difference in perception is that 3e's appearance of being comprehensive tends to trick players into believing that the only valid propositions are those covered by the rules, and therefore they only propose to the DM things which are explicitly covered by the rules and therefore easy to adjudicate within them. </p><p></p><p>And part of the difference is that a culture of DMing arose that suggested that only things covered by the rules are allowable propositions and to 'say no' to everything else, even though in point of fact the rules didn't say anything of the sort.</p><p></p><p>But in point of fact, both systems are incomplete and require quite a bit of DM fiat and handwaving to run. You can see backlash to this within the culture of 3e itself, with ideas like, "Say 'Yes' or throw the dice.", rightly suggesting that too many 3e DM's had got locked into a mindset that what was not permitted by the rules was forbidden.</p><p></p><p>It's very easy to run 3e in a handwave-y fashion. The monster creation rules are still subject to rule zero; the DM is in no way obligated to follow them. And even if the DM desires to follow them, there is no reason to fill out the full skill stat block for every monster and make sure the math works given that the monster 99% of the time never needs to make Knowledge (History) checks. You can just include the relevant information, in the same way that in 1e prep you might just write 'John Smith' (F8) and hand wave John Smith off until he actually entered combat and you needed to know if he had a 16 Con or whatever. If you aren't certain about the DC of a skill check, then the answer is 15. If you miss a +1 modifier in your addition, 95% of the time it doesn't matter, just go with it. If you aren't certain how to adjudicate a stunt that the player wants to preform, give him a +3 circumstance modifier and run with it. If you aren't sure what the rule is, wing it and then look it up after the game. </p><p></p><p>A lot of 3e DM's no doubt run the game very much like that, and believe it or not, a lot of 1e DM's back in the day ran very precise games with minatures and worried about whether to monsters were 12' apart or only 10' apart, counted out the rounds by the segment, made sure that the claw/claw/bite reutine properly alternated attacks with the fighters 5/4 attacks per round according to the several pages of rules for determining initiative, figured in the -3 penalty that a long sword had to his AC 2 when calculating the to hit chance, etc. etc. How you experience the game is a matter of how you were trained to experience the game and the expectation you bring to the table.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 5848305, member: 4937"] The great edition wars are ultimately a form of culture war. The big problem IMO at least is that people end up mistaking culture, style, and design for system. They then assert that various qualities that are a product of encounter design, play style, and table culture are inherent products of a system and that the system forces you to play in that way. Instead, the real difference is that based on examples of play, or based on a prevailing culture, people enter into a system with certain expectations about how to play and prepare for a game system. Celebrim's second law of roleplaying says that, "How you prepare to play a system and how you think about playing a system is more important than the system." In other words, if you prepare to play and set about playing 'Dogs in the Vineyard' with a D&D mindset, that is, you make a map of dungeon, you design traps, you populate it with monsters, and then you have players who set about with the goal of killing things and taking their stuff, you'll end up even if you stick to the system playing something very much like D&D. This is a good example. How 'handwave-y' as you put it, a system is depends heavily on how the DM prepares for the game, how he expects to run it, and how the players expect to interact with the DM. Although the system may make it easier to encourage 'handwave-y' play, there is nothing about the two systems that demands you are more or less handwave-y than the other. Third edition creates a perception that it is less handwave-y than first edition by having a rules set that appears on first blush to be comprehensive. Part of this difference in perception is simply that the 3e rules are a lot better organized. Arguably the 1e rules are just as comprehensive, but they aren't compiled in any easily usuable form and many of the rules - like 'rolling under your ability score to resolve a difficult challenge' - while frequently cited as a resolution method by 1e DM's are basically house rules that have widespread use. Part of the difference in perception is that 3e's appearance of being comprehensive tends to trick players into believing that the only valid propositions are those covered by the rules, and therefore they only propose to the DM things which are explicitly covered by the rules and therefore easy to adjudicate within them. And part of the difference is that a culture of DMing arose that suggested that only things covered by the rules are allowable propositions and to 'say no' to everything else, even though in point of fact the rules didn't say anything of the sort. But in point of fact, both systems are incomplete and require quite a bit of DM fiat and handwaving to run. You can see backlash to this within the culture of 3e itself, with ideas like, "Say 'Yes' or throw the dice.", rightly suggesting that too many 3e DM's had got locked into a mindset that what was not permitted by the rules was forbidden. It's very easy to run 3e in a handwave-y fashion. The monster creation rules are still subject to rule zero; the DM is in no way obligated to follow them. And even if the DM desires to follow them, there is no reason to fill out the full skill stat block for every monster and make sure the math works given that the monster 99% of the time never needs to make Knowledge (History) checks. You can just include the relevant information, in the same way that in 1e prep you might just write 'John Smith' (F8) and hand wave John Smith off until he actually entered combat and you needed to know if he had a 16 Con or whatever. If you aren't certain about the DC of a skill check, then the answer is 15. If you miss a +1 modifier in your addition, 95% of the time it doesn't matter, just go with it. If you aren't certain how to adjudicate a stunt that the player wants to preform, give him a +3 circumstance modifier and run with it. If you aren't sure what the rule is, wing it and then look it up after the game. A lot of 3e DM's no doubt run the game very much like that, and believe it or not, a lot of 1e DM's back in the day ran very precise games with minatures and worried about whether to monsters were 12' apart or only 10' apart, counted out the rounds by the segment, made sure that the claw/claw/bite reutine properly alternated attacks with the fighters 5/4 attacks per round according to the several pages of rules for determining initiative, figured in the -3 penalty that a long sword had to his AC 2 when calculating the to hit chance, etc. etc. How you experience the game is a matter of how you were trained to experience the game and the expectation you bring to the table. [/QUOTE]
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