Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Imaculata" data-source="post: 6885336" data-attributes="member: 6801286">Or bad players. Not exactly the same thing. The rules in D&D are mostly there to resolve areas of uncertainty, where DM bias is not welcome. For things like combat and skill checks, it helps to have established rules, but you don't really need them. As a game like Dread shows, you can resolve any and all combat encounters simply through narration and pulling a Jenga block. Rules do not get in the way of telling a story, unless YOU let them. So this isn't a case of a wonky car. It doesn't matter how complex or simple the rules are, when it comes to telling a good story. You could tell a great story with no rules what so ever, or a great story with very deep and complex rules. Discussions and disagreements about DM adjudication are separate from storytelling.That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying, is that rules are (and should be) irrelevant when it comes to the narrative.Of course, I absolutely agree. My opinion that it 'feels' watered down, comes purely from my experience playing a system that has deeper and more complex rules. If you strip that away, then yes it becomes more simple and streamlined... but you also lose some stuff in the process.I went back to playing a bit of 2nd edition again about a year ago, and I immediately noticed what a bother it was to not have clear grapple rules. It didn't get in the way of telling a good story, but mechanically it felt like something was missing. In fact, some rules seemed outright nonsensical. But we still had a very exciting campaign, regardless of rules.I want to be clear about this, I'm not saying I hate 5th edition. I had a lot of fun with it. But there's a difference between having fun, and having so much fun that I want to switch to that edition now. I did not get that from 5th edition. When I switched from 2nd to 3rd edition, that was a big deal. It felt totally different, and far more logical. I was hoping for a bigger difference in 5th edition. I suppose for many players the similarities make it easy to get into. I felt the same way. But I wasn't looking for a similar set of rules. I was hoping for something objectively better. I think it would be a great help to new DM's to have more examples of none-combat encounters in these sorts of modules. I think it is bad to get new DM's into the mindset that every encounter must be some random combat encounter. That gets tiresome quick, and doesn't make for very compelling storytelling.</blockquote>

Verification