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<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9240824" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Indeed, this is one of the areas that was actually very well-designed in early-edition D&amp;D. It was just, you'd better believe it, extremely NOT transparent, which meant that the books which came after, written by other hands, failed to account for the design involved. Gary Gygax was, by all accounts, both an excellent DM and an excellent game designer (just with preferences that maybe aren't widely shared)--but he was absolutely terrible at organizing his work and explaining those systems. This meant that a lot of folks who didn't learn the game from his social group simply never knew the purpose or meaning behind most of 1e's game design. E.g., the item tables were effectively a Fighter class feature, heavy armor was an XP penalty you could wear for added survivability (trading fewer, very risky delves for more, moderately risky delves), etc.I would go so far as to say that around a third of all the balance problems in 3e arose specifically from the creators having no idea why 1e did what it did design-wise. (Another third came from foolish and usually unquestioned assumptions, and the remaining third came from emergent effects that couldn't have been foreseen without extensive testing.)This is one of the prices you pay with opaque design. It's why presuming that the subsystems speak for themselves is simply not correct; all too often, they do not. If you want to make a book that is purely a reference manual and nothing else, then sure, keep it lean and focused. But if it's meant to be a guide, meant to teach and introduce, then opaque design is a bad choice.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 9240824, member: 6790260"] Indeed, this is one of the areas that was actually very well-designed in early-edition D&D. It was just, you'd better believe it, extremely NOT transparent, which meant that the books which came after, written by other hands, failed to account for the design involved. Gary Gygax was, by all accounts, both an excellent DM and an excellent game designer (just with preferences that maybe aren't widely shared)--but he was absolutely terrible at organizing his work and explaining those systems. This meant that a lot of folks who didn't learn the game from his social group simply never knew the purpose or meaning behind most of 1e's game design. E.g., the item tables were effectively a Fighter class feature, heavy armor was an XP penalty you could wear for added survivability (trading fewer, [I]very[/I] risky delves for more, [I]moderately[/I] risky delves), etc. I would go so far as to say that around a third of all the balance problems in 3e arose specifically from the creators having no idea why 1e did what it did design-wise. (Another third came from foolish and usually unquestioned assumptions, and the remaining third came from emergent effects that couldn't have been foreseen without extensive testing.) This is one of the prices you pay with opaque design. It's why presuming that the subsystems speak for themselves is simply not correct; all too often, they do not. If you want to make a book that is [I]purely[/I] a reference manual and nothing else, then sure, keep it lean and focused. But if it's meant to be a guide, meant to teach and introduce, then opaque design is a bad choice. [/QUOTE]

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