Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 9502586" data-attributes="member: 29398">I'm not concerned with whether the optional rules level the playing field, tilt the playing field, or stand the playing field on its ear.  I'm instead talking about the desirability (or not) of a) having a base system with lots of optional rules or b) incorporating as many of those optional rules into the base system as possible, maybe by only presenting several options without presenting a baseline or "core" version of a rule.An example* of the latter: D&D could (and 5e kind-of has) say that for initial stat generation you have to use one of the following three optional systems: dice roll, point-buy, or standard array (and would then go on to explain the details of each one).  That way, stat generation itself is core but the means of doing so are entirely optional.* - presented as an example only, as I personally would never support it. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Problem with that is it forces you to limit your potential audience.I'd rather design a system that can equally well handle fantasy Vietnam, big damn heroes, high-drama story arcs, courtly intrigue play, rogue-like play, West Marches sandboxes, heists and treachery, short fast adventure paths, 10+-year campaigns, imbalanced characters, balanced characters, mismatched levels, no magic, high magic, monty haul, and whatever else the customer base decides to throw at it.And yes, "equally well for all" is almost certainly going to mean "not perfectly well for any given one".  And that's good, because it means we can in theory all use the same system for whatever we want it for.As it stands there's several styles on that list 5e can't touch without massive kitbashing, which is why I don't play or run it.  The right mash-up of BX-1e-2e, while still not perfect, easily gets a whole lot closer.  Why is that?  Two reasons: 1) they weren't designed to be as mathematically "tight" as the WotC versions thus allowing it more latitude in function and 2) they were built on discrete-subsystem design, which makes them far easier to tweak to suit one's preferences.A fine sentiment in theory, but in practice it risks binding the DM (and-or the whole game) in the straitjacket of predictability.Reliable = predictable.  Predictable = boring.At least we agree on that much. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />And if that commitment consists of "here's the basic rules framework and here's a bunch of options you can use to build your own system on to that framework", isn't that good enough?I had hoped that framework-plus-options idea was what they were talking about in 2013-14 when referring to the "modular" design 5e was going to have, that then got abandoned during playtest.</blockquote>

Verification