Celebrim
Legend
RFisher said:
This to me points again to what I consider the biggest changes in the game as it has progressed through the additions.
I've often made mention of the fact that I think that the 3rd edition rules (and 3.0 in particular) are the best rules D&D has ever had. I consider this to be pretty much unarguable and not even really a matter of opinion. What confuses people is that in saying this, I'm not necessarily suggesting that 3rd edition is a better game than any other edition. Just because a particular edition has the best rules, it doesn't necessarily follow that it makes for the best game. The rules are thier to provide for conflict/proposition resolution, and as guidelines for that the 3rd edition rules are without question better than earlier editions. But there is more to a RPG than merely rules to provide for conflict/proposition resolution. There is this whole metagame and particularly player experience of the game that is in some ways quite independent of the rules.
What I've noticed, and what my earlier topic (high detail versus low detail propositions and proper referee resolution of those events) is basically about, is that in some ways better rules make for a metagame which is IMO worse for the goals of a role-playing game as I understand them, namely, that there will be alot of role-playing going on consequent emmersion into the setting and role by the player. In other words, the goal of the game is not only to get the player to mentally be in the game space where the rules take place, but also to be in the shared imaginary space where ostencibly the game is taking place.
And the problem is that high detail rules that are useful for resolving the popositions about what those imaginary figures do in the imaginary space enlarge that game space to the point that it makes it difficult to be mentally in that imaginary space. My earlier point was this tends to constrict the number of propositions that the player will make about the imaginary space.
A similar filtering process is mentioned here by RFisher, in that I've long noted that anything that isn't explicitly allowed by the rules is typically assumed at a metagame level to be forbidden - even if it makes no sense at all for it to be forbidden at the level of the imaginary space. Because the rules do not specifically allow the fighter to 'sneak', it is assumed that 'my fighter sneaks' is not a proposition that you can offer in the game. You might think that because, for example, 3rd edition rules make it explicit what happens when a non-sneaky character sneaks that high detail rules mitigate this problem and in some ways they do. High detail rules do allow more explicit options, so that, for example, propositions I was fully prepared to accept and arbitrate in earlier editions like 'I trip', 'I grapple', 'I push' are more often proposed by players in 3rd edition because they know that they can do it from the rules. But what I've noticed is the counterpart to this is that the more detailed the rules become, the more blind that the player/DM becomes to possibilities that aren't explicit in the rules. The sheer quality of the rules tends to create the illusion of being all encompasing and always effective arbitrators in a way that earlier editions with really clunky and clearly poor rules never were in danger of doing.
In some ways, regardless of edition, I've had the best luck with players who don't know the rules AT ALL. Lacking any explicit game propositions to dwell on, they revert entirely to inhabiting the imaginary space (rather than the game spacE), and when they do that they will give any proposition that they think can be made in the circumstance. Brand spanking new role players in many ways tend to play the game 'better' than ones with more experience, and in some ways the problem becomes worse (IMO) the latter the edition that the player was forged on. More experienced players tend to play the game more tactically and optimize better, but this is I think we will all agree not nearly the same thing. Accepting that 'better' in an RPG means 'more tactically optimal decisions', is like accepting that the rules for Settlers of Cataan are good rules for a RPG of frontier exploration or that Puerto Rico strongly encourages players to assume the roles of colonial governors and emmerse themselves in this experience. I think that we will all agree that 'Settlers of Cataan' and 'Puerto Rico' have very good rules indeed, but it doesn't necessarily follow that they are good rules for a role-playing game.
Now, I'm not saying that there is anything necessarily wrong with playing D&D as a competitive skirmish level tactical wargame, and some people could quite rightly claim that in many ways this brings D&D back closer to its roots. But, at least in my opinion it was not in being a competitive skirmish level tactical wargame - even one with fantasy elements - where D&D was really innovative.
