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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gothmog" data-source="post: 3352711" data-attributes="member: 317">Convoluted in this case means that the rules and wording are often overly complex, and take three times as many words to convey the point as is necessary.  I write and review scientific journal articles for a living, and trust me- those can get bad, and much of the 3E text in the books rivals long-winded researchers describing their results.  The 1E DMG prose was flowery and somewhat stilted, but it had a certain kind of charm.  The 3E books read like very badly written textbooks.While its true people have different ideas what makes good literature, there is substantial disagreement.  I find Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Thoreau complete crap for example, but they are lauded as masters of the English language and great authors- go figure.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f615.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":confused:" title="Confused    :confused:"  data-smilie="5"data-shortname=":confused:" />  Anyway, there is a large degree of variance between tone of RPG books- compare 3E books to the masterfully written Classic Deadlands, Savage Worlds, Ars Magica or Fading Suns for example.  The difference is like night and day- those books inspire the imagination by their prose and cool ideas they present.I know WotC is going to do what sells, and right now clumsily written textbooks of crunch with no or lame background info sells.  I know there was a kneejerk reaction at the end of 2E when EVERY book had an excess of background info, but the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction.  Even the art in 3E books takes out the background and setting- in most cases its a character against a blank white page, and only in a few recent books (mostly the environment series) are we starting to see full-page artwork showing characters in a world and interacting with it.  Its fine to be able to detail a character to the nth degree with skills, feats, and prestige classes, but without some context or focus on his place in the world, its just a cumbersome list of facts and details that encourages players focus on their "builds".</blockquote>

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