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Context Switching Paralysis, or Why we Will Always Have the Thief Debate
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<blockquote data-quote="Greg Benage" data-source="post: 8749264" data-attributes="member: 93631"><p>My take is that this is a worthwhile principle for RPG play and design, but OD&D botched it from the jump, well before the thief was released. It was codified rules for spellcasting and rulings for everything else. They could (should, IMHO) have "designed" (to the extent the original rules were designed) a freeform spellcasting system with ample room for the more-than-a-little <em>ad hoc</em> "rulings not rules" ethos that pervades everything else. Other old-school games did it. Many OSR games have done it.</p><p></p><p>But they didn't do it. This split personality in how the game treats magic and how it treats the mundane has been with us ever since. And all the movement (with occasional backpedaling) had been towards more codification of the mundane stuff, which, for me, is taking things in precisely the wrong direction. D&D, for me, would have been better if the Greyhawk supplement, instead of introducing the thief, had scrapped the spell lists and descriptions and presented a freeform magic system that would have been a better fit for the game (worse for a set of wargaming rules, but better for a set of RPG rules).</p><p></p><p>TL;DR OD&D needed more and consistent MMI, and they missed their chance.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Greg Benage, post: 8749264, member: 93631"] My take is that this is a worthwhile principle for RPG play and design, but OD&D botched it from the jump, well before the thief was released. It was codified rules for spellcasting and rulings for everything else. They could (should, IMHO) have "designed" (to the extent the original rules were designed) a freeform spellcasting system with ample room for the more-than-a-little [I]ad hoc[/I] "rulings not rules" ethos that pervades everything else. Other old-school games did it. Many OSR games have done it. But they didn't do it. This split personality in how the game treats magic and how it treats the mundane has been with us ever since. And all the movement (with occasional backpedaling) had been towards more codification of the mundane stuff, which, for me, is taking things in precisely the wrong direction. D&D, for me, would have been better if the Greyhawk supplement, instead of introducing the thief, had scrapped the spell lists and descriptions and presented a freeform magic system that would have been a better fit for the game (worse for a set of wargaming rules, but better for a set of RPG rules). TL;DR OD&D needed more and consistent MMI, and they missed their chance. [/QUOTE]
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