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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ariosto" data-source="post: 4971280" data-attributes="member: 80487">That seems to wander a bit, so no surprise if my response does as well, eh?"Completeness" first suggests to me that the rules-set covers every situation possible in the game. When you oppose that to "flexibility", it appears that what you mean is a degree of specificity. A very simple and general (in the hobby-game field, abstract  rather than simulating) rules-set could be very flexible and -- in the first sense -- complete.The specificity requirement appears to mean that no game can be complete without arbitrary limits on the situations possible, for any situation requiring an ad hoc ruling would demonstrate the incompleteness of the rules.One thing that has happened with D&D is the transformation in players' perceptions of the work from descriptive and exemplary to prescriptive and limiting, of chrome from even more optional to "core rules". I can see the ASL analogy, as material from OD&D supplements and magazine articles was laid out all at once and largely undifferentiated in the AD&D volumes. There was at the same time a culling and synchronization, much as (if memory serves) ASL presents in some cases standardized systems where the SL series offered successive different approaches.Although I am not a big fan of the 2e material, I appreciate how the "splats" offered variants while the basics in the PHB remained quite recognizable and back-compatible. I like that modularity, and that even the PHB explicitly addressed options so often. (See, e.g., the presentation of both secondary skills and NWPs).Right through the TSR era, I cannot really see D&D as a "game system". There was nothing "systematic" about the accretion of material. Only with 3e do I see the laying down of a formal "system" structure, and part of that was locking in more complexity as "essential".With 4e, I see the tendency to try for strict completeness by limiting possibilities becoming more prominent. As always, it is not just a matter of what the designers suggest in their text; interpretation in game culture entrenches "rules" as well. There is an elegance in the original D&D concept, one that I see in all the presentations that really are just literal editions to me (as opposed to the new games that Wizards released). I can see how mechanisms serve key purposes in the design, where in other games they may seem at best pretty useless and at worst counter-productive because the basic goals have changed.</blockquote>

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