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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Daztur" data-source="post: 9437545" data-attributes="member: 55680">Yup, you totally disagree with me and that's fine. You're pretty hard on one end of the spectrum and I'm pretty hard on the other end.For me I don't want the mechanics to be 100% codified, I want the flavor to be 100% codified. Why?Well, if the flavor isn't totally codified then when the players start to interact with the spell/effect in a creative way then I have to either:A. Just shut them down.orB. Do a complete ass-pull.I don't like either solution. You like solution A. and you shut down players who want to do things like use "repent" when they cast Command because you view it as screwing with the game.Just for me, when players do stuff like that I'm OVERJOYED. Players trying to derail entire encounters with harebrained cunning plans it my absolute favorite part of DMing. That's why I like my flavor strictly codified but my mechanics a bit loose so that when they try crazy harebrained plans I can use that flavor to figure out if their bizarre off-brand uses of their spells/abilities apply to this situation and I like mechanics that are flexible enough for me to let the players apply them in unusual ways not just tell the players to stop screwing around and stop coming up with cunning plans.My biggest single inspiration for D&D is The Black Company and those books are FULL of "open ended power grabs for people to futz about trying to get as much bang for the buck as they can every single time they can." One of my favorite scenes in those books involve the heroes springing a sneak attack one someone...with a point blank ballista. I just love that kind of stuff as a DM.For me as a DM, RPing is important but it isn't as important as creative problem solving (what I called Tactical Creativity upthread). But I find that with the way I DM by treating flavor as strictly codified and not at all flexible while being totally open and encouraging "open ended power grabs for people to futz about trying to get as much bang for the buck as they can every single time they can" it can really encourage more RP as the players feel that the flavor REALLY MATTERS and isn't just color, the flavor descriptions can mean the difference between life and death for their PCs so they have to really pay attention to all of the flavor details and immerse themselves into the world more.Works for me, would be bored to tears playing D&D any other way, doesn't work for you I guess.But 5e was enough of a compromise that I could make it work even if it wasn't ideal. 5.5e looks like it won't be. That means that 5.5e is going to be shedding a bunch of people on my end when it would be smarter to keep it as a compromise. Hell, I'd love it personally if WotC fully embraced D&D my way, but it wouldn't be a smart business move to alienate people on your side either.</blockquote>

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