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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6203595" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think drifting only makes sense if there is something reasonably well-defined being drifted. If the system prior to "drift" is fuzzy or incoherent, then "drifting" is really just rendering the system precise: anyone has to do that to play the game (some probably more self-consciously than others) and so they're not really drifting the game from any sort of default.I think 4e is an example of a system that arguably has to be precisified to be played. It has modest but crucial moments of incoherence - like having a chapter called "Rewards" that then goes on to set out a system for XP and treasure acquisition that makes those things automatic and mere pacing devices for the development of story and of mechancial complexity; or in the PHB defining keywords only by reference to mechanical interactions, and leaving the relationship between keywords and fiction to be somewhat obliquely set out in the rules for attacking objects (leading to the well-known claim that in 4e fireballs can't set buildings on fire, even though the rules text is almost identical to the Moldvay Basic fireball spell).Classic D&D probably doesn't need drifting to play if you've seen or heard of the Gygaxian playstyle, but given the difficulty of extracting all the details of that style from the rulebooks, it must be one of the most drifted of all systems. On another current thread I ran the argument that moving D&D play from dungeon to urban setting (with attendant social intrigue etc) is a significant drifting of the system, because it dramatically changes the capacity that the players have, consistent with the ingame circumstances of their PCs, to acquire the backstory knowledge that they need if they are to achieve their goals. (Why? Because the only real obstacle to turning over a dungeon in pursuit of backstory is wandering monsters, for which you can plan; whereas in an urban situation you're basically at the GM's mercy as s/he decides how the great and the good respond to being burgled, interrogated etc. Another option would be for the GM just to tell the players the backstory out of character, but this is an unusual approach in D&D play.)</blockquote>

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