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

[Stormonu]

D&D used to use the Chicago manual of style for its bookwriting. I'm wondering if they are moving away from that with attempting to utilize keywords, into their own sort of thing, and if was suggested by their editors or just "made up".

 

[MothMayI]

There is no ad hominem. I have expressed my criticism of your statements, where you communicate something in one way, and I have said I see it in another. But if you want it as pithy as possible (which I never like doing, because literally 100% of the time my pithy responses are disliked for not having enough detail):

You want a book that is fun to read for itself. You think anyone who doesn't want that can shove off and use an internet connection. That's not very nice, because it says "my interests are more important than any other reason someone might want this book." Why should a book explicitly written to communicate game rules be instead written as entertaining fiction?

These are rule books. Why should rule books primarily focus on being entertaining fiction?

Because for a lot of people, making something easier to read and invest oneself in allows better retention of the information within.

Or to put it another way: if reading about the rules does not instill a sense of interest and excitement, does that give a reader much hope for the game itself?

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

Because for a lot of people, making something easier to read and invest oneself in allows better retention of the information within.

Or to put it another way: if reading about the rules does not instill a sense of interest and excitement, does that give a reader much hope for the game itself?

A properly written manual is easy to read. That means no fluff text mixed into rules text, and clear rules with concise terminology.

This benefits everyone. People who don't want rules text get less of it, and it is separated from the other text and thus easier to avoid, and people who like rules text can focus on that and ignoring the fluff text.

 

[Micah Sweet]

So--this leads to a few questions.

Why should only people with an internet connection get access to a useful, made-for-reference book?

What if you were to learn that your impression (IMO, more like "gut feeling") that "the books were made for DDB and printed" were completely incorrect? That is, a lot of this sort of feeling, of alienation because it uses defined terms, seems to arise from a fear of such a thing without even once ever actually...y'know...doing that thing. People said much the same of 4e, which never got a video game. It never got this "made for computers" thing everyone was so fearful of. If that thing never actually manifested--if the game never actually did the thing your gut reaction was responding to--what does that say about that gut reaction? Because to me, it says that that gut reaction ought to be examined and questioned. It may be that you are dealing with self-inflicted problems because you have jumped to conclusions about what a game-design element is for, rather than fairly judging that game design element on its merits first and then deciding what it is "really for."

It can be both. I respect but don't like 4e's game design (and I have enough experience with it to be comfortable with those feelings), but I also feel part of its design exists for digital purposes.

 

[Micah Sweet]

No, I think you should change your opinion, because it's wrong. If you got your way, it would greatly damage my experience playing the game.

When I heard you say "I read the books more than I play the game, so I think the books should be more enjoyable reads" my mind immediately went to this video (warning: swear words).

Game books should not prioritize being fun reads for the DMs. They should prioritize on having content (lore, mechanics) that would be fun to play. And, for the record, I am a DM that spends more time reading the books than playing the game, as I don't have the opportunity to play very often. That's the "tiny minority of players" I was referring to. The majority of players are not DMs, and I would be surprised if most DMs spend more time reading the rulebooks than playing.

How much time do you think most DMs play a game like D&D? At the table, I mean?

 

[Micah Sweet]

The system needs to distinguish between text intended to provide description and flavour vs text intended to be clear, because doing so makes it more readable. We don't need the rules of some particular spell or ability to be nice to read because the rules are the mechanics.

GEO
1 action, range 1-4, Object
Digging into wells of geothermic power, you will
the battlefield to reshape itself.
Object [X]: Create one or (5+) two height 1
boulder objects in free space in range. When you
create an object, you may push an adjacent
character 1 space away from it.

This is an example from the ICON playtest (version 2.0 just came out) and it shows how they separate the flavour of the ability from the mechanics.

IMO doing this makes the point that the designers consider the context of the game far less important than the rules of the game. It says that flavor, setting, and immersion (however those things are accomplished for a given individual) is subservient to the mechanics. 4e did this too. It is not what I want out of an RPG, and it never has been.

 

[Micah Sweet]

A properly written manual is easy to read. That means no fluff text mixed into rules text, and clear rules with concise terminology.

This benefits everyone. People who don't want rules text get less of it, and it is separated from the other text and thus easier to avoid, and people who like rules text can focus on that and ignoring the fluff text.

But mechanics in a book that among other things provides the rules for playing a game obviously can't be avoided unless the reader has no interest in ever playing (not the case for me at least). You can't avoid mechanics, and I don't want to try. I simply the books far more enjoyable and inspiring and, yes, readable, when the text is integrated far more than you are suggesting.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Because for a lot of people, making something easier to read and invest oneself in allows better retention of the information within.

Or to put it another way: if reading about the rules does not instill a sense of interest and excitement, does that give a reader much hope for the game itself?

I'm not the person who articulated this as a hard binary, that folks who want the thing I like should be exclusively served by the book's authors and anyone who wants anything else should shove off and hope they have an internet connection handy 100% of the time they want to play the game. You did that.

I absolutely agree that it is important for a game manual to inspire excitement to play the game.

But inspiring excitement to pay the game cannot come at the cost of making the game significantly harder to actually play! And no, it is NOT true that "everyone" had absolutely zero problems whatsoever with the natural language in 5e. Plenty of people had LOTS of problems with it. That's why WotC had all sorts of ways for folks to ask questions, and why the Sage Advice stuff happened, and various other things besides. Responding to their customers' desire for a greater degree of clarity was one of the very reasons that brought us 5.5e to begin with! (There were several, and I'm absolutely of the opinion that this wasn't in the top 3--but it's still up there as a reasonably significant contributing factor.)

 

[EzekielRaiden]

But mechanics in a book that among other things provides the rules for playing a game obviously can't be avoided unless the reader has no interest in ever playing (not the case for me at least). You can't avoid mechanics, and I don't want to try. I simply the books far more enjoyable and inspiring and, yes, readable, when the text is integrated far more than you are suggesting.

Integration is fine.

If that doesn't damage the rules in the integrating.

That's the problem here. I understand that you'd prefer to have things about as maximally naturalistic as is physically possible. I don't personally think that that desire is wise or prudent. I think it directly leads to several significant game design issues that have been known about for ages and which we keep circling round and round and round, because the folks who demand exactly that hyperfixation on maximal naturalism above all else don't realize that that fixation is part of the problem.

 

[Gadget]

Using so-called "natural English" was one of the greatest failings of the 5.14 rules that they still have not quite recovered from. It lead to very ambiguous and hard to adjudicate in a consistent manner rules, and not just obscure corner cases and 'bag of rats' issues. They tried to launch with a 'rulings not rules' mantra, but that did not last long at all. I suppose it is the difference between reading the rules as one might a novel and actually playing the rules.