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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WizarDru" data-source="post: 3091964" data-attributes="member: 151">Are you at all familiar with the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_of_the_dinner_table" target="_blank">Knights of the Dinner Table</a>?  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).</blockquote>

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