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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Daztur" data-source="post: 9441670" data-attributes="member: 55680">"Direct-brain whisper projection: when you whisper a command direct to another person's mind (they have to be able to see you, but you don't have to interact), you get the effects of going aggro without going aggro. Roll+weird instead of roll+hard. If they force your hand, your mind counts as a weapon (1‑harm ap close loud‑optional)."My Apocalypse World rules jargon is a bit rusty (although I do have fond memories for Pig Dawg, my AW bike gang leader with Spam can armor who cemented the loyalty of his gang with food) but what I'm seeing here is that you can basically attack people with a different stat but at the same time (IIRC, been a while since I played AW) the specific effects of attacking someone ("going aggro") are subject to a lot of GM interpretation. But there are some problems with this approach. It's so abstract that often the details that are important to the fiction gets abstracted away and doesn't matter.The way I see it with RPGs you get a choice:1. Abstract: the rules are broad and cover a lot of situations. Downside: the details gets blurred away by the abstraction and stop mattering.2. Complicated: rules rules are specific and numerous and cover many specific situations. Downside: <a href="http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Grapple" target="_blank">www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Grapple</a> <a href="http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/climb.htm" target="_blank">www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/climb.htm</a> eyes glaze over3. Narrow: rules are both specific and simple. Downside: there's a lot of naughty word that the rules don't cover so the GM has to constantly make naughty word up.4e, taking a leaf from a lot of Indie games, is full-on abstract. 3.5e and the crunchier traditional RPGs tend to be complicated, while OSR games tend to be narrow. All approaches have strengths and weaknesses. 5e rejected a lot of the complication of 3.5e and has a lot of compromises between Abtract (things like advantage) and Narrow (a lot of legacy D&D-isms from TSR-D&D like, say, the Command spell). 5.5e is moving (slowly) back to Abstract which can be seen in things like how the summoning spells now summon mobile AoEs instead of critters and other moves towards abstraction such as Hide having a set DC of 15 (I actually rather like this one).I just tend to think that the mesh of narrow rules, rather than the blanket of abstract rules is a big part of the charm of traditional D&D and I'm sad to see 5.5e chip away at it.</blockquote>

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