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<blockquote data-quote="S'mon" data-source="post: 2057695" data-attributes="member: 463">I'm definitely of the &quot;certain rules encourage certain play styles&quot; approach, although I disagree with Edwards in that he seems to think that the more rules there are about X, the more the play will focus on X.&nbsp; When there was no Diplomacy skill, players had to roleplay the interaction with the NPC to the best of their abilities and hope they were persuasive - the interaction was a gamist challenge directly for the player.&nbsp; With Diplomacy skill a player can roll a d20 and leave it at that - the RAW don't even give bonuses for convincing presentation, it's all abstracted into the die roll.&nbsp; Likewise 3e's heavily tactical ruleset encourages thinking within the ruleset - square-counting, AoOs, special feats - rather than 'outside the box', which in 1e was almost the only alternative to simply rolling to-hit.This isn't just a 3e D&amp;D thing - I found that Heroquest's extended-contest rules with wagering bunches of points turned into an incredibly dry mathematical exercise completely divorced from any visualisation of the in-game climactic combat that was supposed to be occurring.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="S'mon, post: 2057695, member: 463"] I'm definitely of the "certain rules encourage certain play styles" approach, although I disagree with Edwards in that he seems to think that the more rules there are about X, the more the play will focus on X. When there was no Diplomacy skill, players had to roleplay the interaction with the NPC to the best of their abilities and hope they were persuasive - the interaction was a gamist challenge directly for the player. With Diplomacy skill a player can roll a d20 and leave it at that - the RAW don't even give bonuses for convincing presentation, it's all abstracted into the die roll. Likewise 3e's heavily tactical ruleset encourages thinking within the ruleset - square-counting, AoOs, special feats - rather than 'outside the box', which in 1e was almost the only alternative to simply rolling to-hit. This isn't just a 3e D&D thing - I found that Heroquest's extended-contest rules with wagering bunches of points turned into an incredibly dry mathematical exercise completely divorced from any visualisation of the in-game climactic combat that was supposed to be occurring. [/QUOTE]

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