Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9627564" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Yep.Going for 100% natural language simply doesn't work as advertised. It will generate conflicts of meaning, because people use the same words to mean different things IRL. It's an unfortunately common form of miscommunication, and is why nearly every professional field develops a jargon. Jargon feels unnatural because you have to learn it. Once you have learned it, as long as it isn't poorly-constructed (which it certainly can be!), the unnatural-ness tends to fade.But note that I said &quot;100% natural language.&quot; Good jargon should avoid the unnatural when feasible--when doing so doesn't hurt other things more. A great example of where 4e dropped the ball on this is &quot;burst&quot; vs &quot;blast&quot;. The words are too similar, starting and ending with the same consonants and being words that are too similar in natural meaning. I have never fully settled the difference in my head; I have to look it up every other time. (If you care, &quot;burst&quot; is out from the origin in all directions, &quot;blast&quot; is to one side of the origin.) If I were to rewrite 4e, I would change one of them to something else, even though I know, from having looked into it myself, that there aren't a lot of good options. (I prefer &quot;gyre&quot; myself, as it implies the &quot;all around&quot;-ness while being extremely different from &quot;blast&quot;.)Writers should use the most natural-sounding language they can that is still compatible with a high standard of clarity. Both overuse and flawed use of keywords is completely possible, they are not a perfect anodyne to all issues. But having keywords, generally speaking, is better for the in-play experience than totally avoiding them. Totally avoiding them will almost surely make the rules-text read better, as a pure prose artifact with no gameplay value, but again that's arguing that the game should look great no matter what effect that has on actually playing it...which I see as a deeply flawed premise.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 9627564, member: 6790260"] Yep. Going for 100% natural language simply doesn't work as advertised. It [I]will[/I] generate conflicts of meaning, because people use the same words to mean different things IRL. It's an unfortunately common form of miscommunication, and is why nearly every professional field develops a jargon. Jargon feels unnatural because you have to learn it. Once you have learned it, as long as it isn't poorly-constructed (which it certainly can be!), the unnatural-ness tends to fade. But note that I said "100% natural language." Good jargon should avoid the unnatural when feasible--when doing so doesn't hurt other things more. A great example of where 4e dropped the ball on this is "burst" vs "blast". The words are too similar, starting and ending with the same consonants and being words that are too similar in natural meaning. I have never fully settled the difference in my head; I have to look it up every other time. (If you care, "burst" is out from the origin in all directions, "blast" is to one [I]side[/I] of the origin.) If I were to rewrite 4e, I would change one of them to something else, even though I know, from having looked into it myself, that there aren't a lot of good options. (I prefer "gyre" myself, as it implies the "all around"-ness while being [I]extremely[/I] different from "blast".) Writers should use the most natural-sounding language they can that is still compatible with a high standard of clarity. Both overuse and flawed use of keywords is completely possible, they are not a perfect anodyne to all issues. But having keywords, generally speaking, is better for the in-play experience than totally avoiding them. Totally avoiding them will almost surely make the rules-text [I]read[/I] better, as a pure prose artifact with no gameplay value, but again that's arguing that the game should look great no matter what effect that has on actually playing it...which I see as a deeply flawed premise. [/QUOTE]

Verification