Does 3/3.5E cause more "rule arguments" than earlier editions?

[blargney the second]

On a slightly different note, I've noticed lately more disagreements happening all around, not just in D&D. I suspect it's just a little peak that'll wane shortly.
-blarg

 

[Plane Sailing]

I think you are 200% wrong.

There have always been knock-on effects. You just got used to the fact that suffering ugly knock-on effects was the norm because the game was practically unplayable without the heavy hand of DM intervention.

The difference with 3e is that knock-on effects are relatively tame, fairly predictable, and out in the open.

You are completely mistaken, I'm afraid. I don't know how long you've been playing, but I've been tweaking rules and houseruling things for thirty years now and I've seen a lot of water go under the games design bridge.

In case you missed my reference to APAs... they were Amatuer Publishing Associations, where groups of people sent in articles to someone who collated, printed and distributed them. I've still got some of my old ones (UK Trollcrusher, to which I was a contributor; US Alarums and Excursions which was one of the biggest and best known).

These were packed full of the kind of house rules and tweaks to systems which could easily be integrated into any classic D&D game (1e or earlier) but which would be virtually impossible to introduce into a 3e game because of the tight inter-relationship between elements of 3e. Whether it is the fact that now all monsters have ability scores which then have a knock on effect on hit points and chance to hit, or a variety of feats with prerequistes that might or might not be in play or the expansion in HD (and hit points) for PCs and creatures...

I'm not saying that the integration of 3e makes it unfun. I am saying that any tightly integrated system is more difficult to change.

 

[WizarDru]

It's my belief than 3/3.5E has tried to pin down a lot more things with specific rules than earlier editions, which often left things "up to the DMs discretion" without setting a concrete rule in place. For sure there were always bones of contention regarding rules in 1E & 2E, but I believe never to the degree of the current rule set.

Are you at all familiar with the Knights of the Dinner Table? I'd be suprised if anyone reading this thread doesn't have at least passing familiarity with said comic. The central part of the strip's humor focuses on the foibles of a group of gamers (and an ever-growing cast of their extended gaming circle) playing (more often than not) the once-fictional game Hackmaster. The game features tons of player-vs-DM scenes, and focuses heavily on rules arguments and actual experiences by many gamers. When did it first appear? 1990. You know, TEN YEARS PRIOR to 3.X.

I would say I've had fewer rules discussions trying to figure out the designers intent under 3.X than everything in the decades of gaming that predated it. Do we still have rules discussions? Sure....but now we tend to get answers fairly quickly. The person who pointed out that every book receives errata may have forgotten (or not known) that Dragon magazine once served that function, prior to online days. How many people here have copies of Unearthed Arcana with replacement text pasted/taped in from Dragon Magazine? Bueller? Bueller?

As someone else pointed out, under previous editions, whole sections of rules were tossed by the wayside. Going back and looking, I was stunned how many rules I just simply didn't use. The initiative system? Chucked it. Everyone gets one move per turn. I decide if an action is longer than one turn...and we'll probably argue when that happens. There were weapon speeds in 1e? What, to become a bard you do WHAT? Psionics? Simply TONS of material that I didn't use if I either didn't like it or thought it was too complicated. I never met a single AD&D DM that ran the game like any other DM. Every single one did it differently. That was both the appeal and the dread of a new DM. He might take a game to dizzying new heights or terrifying lows. I had my share of rules arguments from both sides of the screen...now I rarely do, either. Occasionally we hit a nebulous rule, discuss it and then make a snap decision which we might change later upon reflection or research...but at the table we quickly decide the rule's intent and settle it.

The difference, IMHO, is that 3.X provides us with a rock-solid basis of what the designer's intended and guideposts to judge some answers simply by extrapolating from existing rules...because the individual rules are part of greater whole and were not made separately. AD&D had many rules to cover different situations...but they were so discrete that they rarely gibed. Consider, for example, how elegant the now simple ability score bonuses work. A 16 DX is just as advantageous in its advantages to the dextrous character as a 16 ST is to a warrior. Compare that with AD&D....and don't forget, some ability scores only conferred bonuses on characters of a certain class (CON), while others didn't confer bonuses where you'd expect (climb walls didn't get a bonus from a high-dex, but finding traps did).

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

These were packed full of the kind of house rules and tweaks to systems which could easily be integrated into any classic D&D game (1e or earlier) but which would be virtually impossible to introduce into a 3e game because of the tight inter-relationship between elements of 3e. Whether it is the fact that now all monsters have ability scores which then have a knock on effect on hit points and chance to hit, or a variety of feats with prerequistes that might or might not be in play or the expansion in HD (and hit points) for PCs and creatures...

I'm not saying that the integration of 3e makes it unfun. I am saying that any tightly integrated system is more difficult to change.

Okay. At least now I can understand where you are coming from. I nonetheless vehemently disagree with your central premise.

I have only flipped through some of the older Alarums & Excursions somet time back but a heck of a lot of that stuff is just 1e with a facelift.

A bunch of material written specifically for a OD&Dish/1eish game that happens to work in your 1e game but apparently cannot even port well into 2e is non-evidence about the relative strengths and weaknesses of 3e.

We might as well criticize 2e for being too much unlike 1e. Is 2e too tightly integrated to be customized, too?

To support your position, you cannot simply take some random Houserule X found from some random source as the yardstick. I could easily grab any book out of a mountain of indy d20 material to "prove" problems with 1e using the same methodology.

You need to begin from a sensible starting position. If you want to add Concept X to your game, you must compare how much work it takes to formulate Concept X into specific houserules for both 1e and 3e, and then consider the pros and cons in each treatment.

 

[Zaruthustran]

I've seen way more arguments with 3E. Maybe it's because when I played OD&D and second edition my peers and I were just kids, and not very good at debate. Also, I strongly suspect that we used less than half the rules (other than basic mechanics like THACO, character advancement, weapon damage, and spell effects). If someone wanted to, say, slide down a railing or fight while climbing a ladder we just assigned a modifier and moved on. Even with minis we never really cared about exact movement rates or other nonsense (you moved your "guy" as far as seemed reasonable, and simply moved him back if anyone said "dude, that's too far").

These days I play Living Greyhawk, which is about as codified and rules-strict as D&D can get. In an effort to be fair, every DM/judge (and most players, since DM/judges also play) try to be as knowledgable as possible. This means everyone holds strong opinions on the rules, and thanks to poor wording of said rules, this leads to strong arguments.

Thing is, the depth of 3E means both sides can build pretty compelling cases. Check out Infinite Monkeys or this board's rule section for examples of very reasonable, well-researched arguments that come to completely different conclusions.

-z

 

[MerricB]

These were packed full of the kind of house rules and tweaks to systems which could easily be integrated into any classic D&D game (1e or earlier) but which would be virtually impossible to introduce into a 3e game because of the tight inter-relationship between elements of 3e...

Hmm. Could you give us a few examples?

1E gave us (even in official products) things that significantly changed the balance of the game. Weapon Specialisation is my poster child for that: it significantly alters the balance between the classes and between the party and the monsters.

A less obvious example is the introduction of one of the critical hit systems; especially with instant death options, the dynamic of combat suddenly changes in a big way. 1e combat tended to be a lot more attritional than 3e combat; instant death attacks change things around. The balance between fighters & magic-users changes as a result, especially if the system is *only* for weapon combat (as it often was).

More extreme would be the way that you could use Arms Law in an AD&D game to replace the combat system! Of a certainty, doing so in 3e would cause more hassles than in 1e days, but at the point when you are doing surgery to the major part of the system, this is not really a surprise.

Cheers!

 

[Hussar]

What about the knock-down dragouts that frequently occur in rules forums both here and at other sites? There's a heck of a lot of argument just because there ARE rules to cover a situation, and often they're not written in legalese (which I oppose quite strongly). There are in truth probably as many, but (1) they're now more clearly documented, thanks to the internet, and (2) as I noted before, they changed from "the DM's rule for this makes to sense," to "the DM's Interpretation of this makes no sense."

Like others have said, these rule arguements tend to be pretty corner case examples. The lance for example. How often have any of you actually seen a lance used in combat? In 6 years of 3e, I've seen it once and that was by me (the twinking little munchkin that I am). Speak with the Dead on a skeleton? How often is SWTD actually ever cast, let alone cast on an undead, which is NOT a corpse and thus not a target for the spell (one dead creature is pretty clear).

The vast majority of problems that I've seen in 3e is when DM's make arbitrary rules, not because their idea is better, but because they don't know the rules in the first place.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Like others have said, these rule arguements tend to be pretty corner case examples. The lance for example. How often have any of you actually seen a lance used in combat? In 6 years of 3e, I've seen it once and that was by me (the twinking little munchkin that I am). Speak with the Dead on a skeleton? How often is SWTD actually ever cast, let alone cast on an undead, which is NOT a corpse and thus not a target for the spell (one dead creature is pretty clear).

The argument wasn't about an animated skeleton; just a run-of-the-mill everyday collection of bones.

The problem occurs with the spell description: "You grant the semblance of life and intellect to a corpse....You can cast this spell on a corpse that has been deceased for any amount of time, but the body must be mostly intact to be able to respond. A damaged corpse may be able to give partial answers or partially correct answers, but it must at least have a mouth in order to speak at all."

Is a skeleton a corpse or part of a corpse? Is it reasonably intact? Does it have a mouth? The argument raged for many pages and many posts. The illusion of a fully comprehensive ruleset breaks down when you examine the parts, and if you don't have a means to resolve conflicts chosen ahead of time (DM, group consensus, whatever) you can run into problems.

Because I have a conflict resolution method spelled out for my table, I've never had these problems. However, that doesn't mean that others do not.


RC

 

[Thurbane]

What's to argue about in 3e? Seriously, you look up the rule, and you read it, and that will solve 90% of problems with how a rule works. There are the occasonal abberations where there's ambiguity, but in most of those cases, the group just needs to know how they're playing it.

I can't see how 3e leads to rules arguments unless you just don't read the rulebooks.

In that case I would direct you to look at a certain 10+ page debate on whether a Monk can take Improved Natural Attack as a feat or not.

......................

Well, some very good answers to my initial post here.

It has made me reassess my viewpoint somewhat. Perhaps I just perceive there being more arguments due to the accessibility of media (like the internet) compared to the past. Also, maybe there are more arguments in my own group because we had played earlier editions for so long, all of the relevant arguments had been hashed out and resolved, but are now resurfacing in the new rules set for us.

What I found to be more of concern is the “us vs. them” mentality that many people seem to have in regards to players and DMs. I could be wrong, but there seems to be a real trend to only trust the DM to run the game up to a point, after which he must be held to intense scrutiny for all decisions. It’s almost more like a defense lawyer vs. prosecution lawyer relationship than some friends playing a game that should be fun for all involved. I can’t say for certain, but it almost seems like a DMs role has shifted from the arbiter in a world designed to be fun for all involved, and into basically just a CPU to facilitate the players interaction with rulebooks.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I don't think the arguments are any more frequent...I just think they're more involved and sophisticated.

And the Internet lets them last longer.