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D&D's Evolution: Rulings, Rules, and "System Matters"
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8403442" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>In your first para, would would matter would not be the status of the rules as <em>official</em>, but clarifying what it was that you had read.</p><p></p><p>Official rules are useful where uniformity of resolution and adjudication matters - eg competitive sports played across multiple venues and leagues.</p><p></p><p>But I think they are overrated in RPGing.</p><p></p><p>In my 4e D&D game, we didn't have issues with "weapliments" that plagued some tables because it was obvious from the get-go (both in terms of flavour and mechanical effectiveness) which feats would work with a dagger used as a weapon, and which would work with it used as an implement. WotC finally released errata that gave effect to our house rules, but that didn't change anything about what was happening at our table.</p><p></p><p>Or from the other side: what makes Greg Stafford's rules for Prince Valiant a masterpiece of RPG design is not that they are <em>official</em> but that they work incredibly well. Which goes back to the other current sub-theme of this thread: designing a good RPG is not easy. Designers like Stafford, and Vincent Baker, and Robin Laws, can come up with ideas that are far from commonplace.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 8403442, member: 42582"] In your first para, would would matter would not be the status of the rules as [i]official[/i], but clarifying what it was that you had read. Official rules are useful where uniformity of resolution and adjudication matters - eg competitive sports played across multiple venues and leagues. But I think they are overrated in RPGing. In my 4e D&D game, we didn't have issues with "weapliments" that plagued some tables because it was obvious from the get-go (both in terms of flavour and mechanical effectiveness) which feats would work with a dagger used as a weapon, and which would work with it used as an implement. WotC finally released errata that gave effect to our house rules, but that didn't change anything about what was happening at our table. Or from the other side: what makes Greg Stafford's rules for Prince Valiant a masterpiece of RPG design is not that they are [i]official[/i] but that they work incredibly well. Which goes back to the other current sub-theme of this thread: designing a good RPG is not easy. Designers like Stafford, and Vincent Baker, and Robin Laws, can come up with ideas that are far from commonplace. [/QUOTE]
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