D&D General "Hot" take: Aesthetically-pleasing rules are highly overvalued

[Mistwell]

Dude. DUDE.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

The choice to employ natural language in wasn’t a particular aesthetic the developers were aiming for, but rather a response to player feedback, both the general critique of 4e’s over-reliance on keywords, and in the playtest surveys. I do agree that it was a poor choice, but I see the problem being more about designing by popular vote instead of by clear and consistent design principles and goals, than about aesthetics. Also, the fact that WotC is really bad at writing natural language. 5e is actually written quite technically, it just tries to appear natural by using natural-sounding words in technical ways.I guess one could argue that in pursuing a natural language aesthetic without sacrificing technical precision they ended up with the worst parts of both approaches.


I don’t see prestige classes as aesthetically preferable over Paragon Paths at all. Paragon Paths follow a clean, consistent design structure, which is far more aesthetically pleasing than the mess that is Paragon Paths. Likewise, I don’t think the 3e skill rank system is the least bit aesthetically pleasing. It’s a giant pile of fiddly math. It looks ugly and it plays poorly. In contrast, 5e’s system where there’s a unified proficiency bonus that increases with level and applies to all proficient checks is highly aesthetically pleasing.

I struggle to grok your argument because I’m not seeing the consistent thread between the design elements you say are driven by “meta-aesthetics.” It also doesn’t really help that aesthetics are highly subjective. Designs that you find aesthetically pleasing may be aesthetically displeasing to others.

3.x skill points, with different rules for first level, different rules for class skills and cross-class skills, and fiddly synergy bonuses, are very much not what I would consider aesthetically pleasing.

I think you folks may be relying too much on your normal every day usage of "aesthetic" rather than reading the OP's specific explanation of how they're using the term in this thread.

3e's skill points system was designed with what the OP calls "meta-aesthetics" in mind, just like 4e's Power Sources were. They're there so that when you read the rules in the rulebook it has a certain look and feel, rather than with ease of use, balance, etc, in mind.

 

[Undrave]

(There's a reason that when PF2e was announced, another company announced they were going to carry on the PF1e torch just as Paizo had done for 3.5e before them. Look up Porphyra sometime.)

Geez... how many DECADES of material do these people NEED?! Just play with what you go for pete sake... get over it...

I would refer you, for example, to the excellent AD&D 1e Combat Flowchart. Which is, frankly, insane. Rules are pulled from all over the place in the PHB and DMG and even elsewhere.

JEEZUS... people played that?!

WTF is OP talking about?

I think that the meta-aesthetic concerns (which I'd render as 'narrativist', 'simulationist' and 'gamist') are somehow 'too important' when making rule... except I'm not sure why you would create rules if you're not trying to fulfill one of those three aesthetics? Or, fulfilling one of the 8 aesthetics of fun, which are a different type of meta-aesthetic that apply to games in general (while the other three apply to RPG more specifically).

Like... what else is there exactly??

 

[doctorbadwolf]

If we aren't going to discuss the particulars of you example... your assertion becomes non-falsifiable.

Trying to engage with every discussion as if you're arguing the merits of a scientific paper isn't actually helpful, and it doesn't make you right, it just makes you good at doing a very very specific type of discussion that isn't especially relevant to the one at hand.

In other words, this is a physics class or an academic publication. Your insistence on always treating every single discussion like it was one of those gets obnoxious.

 

[GMMichael]

I like to write natural-language rules and statutory rules. Just to really confuse people

Let the DM have the ability to examine the situation and make a judgement call.

...was a design goal of 5e if I'm not mistaken. "Rulings, not rules." @EzekielRaiden's point might be that aesthetic rules, ruling-friendly rules, didn't help 5e at all, thus the design team overvalued that goal, but the degree to which that happened is so subjective that I don't see it as worth debating. I also don't know that there's a general clamor over how great aesthetic rules are, so I won't say that other games are guilty of overvaluing either.

5e removed the concept of 'skill check' but does a TERRIBLE job of explaining that it did and how the use of them SHOULD be handled.

Wait, what? I'm pretty sure skill checks are still in 5e... did you mean removed the "term" skill check?

 

[Bacon Bits]

Also, the actual M:tG rules are extremely complex and fiddly. I would never run a tournament for that reason.

More than that, the MTG rules are comprehensive. They completely explain every conceivable interaction between every possible set of cards with every possible set of abilities. And when they don't, they have to create a new rule for it. Everything in Magic is predefined and codified before it ever goes to print.

D&D doesn't do that. D&D tells you to invent your own stuff and make it up as you go along.

That was not the reason for the use of natural language.

The use of natural language was an aesthetic choice, but not that aesthetic choice. If that had been the intent, then they would have taken a more legalistic approach or instruction manual style, with an extensive glossary and high end index with lots of cross referencing and defined terms. Which clearly was not the choices they made.

They made these choices with natural language to intentionally evoke the 1e "magic" where opening a core book feels like you're opening an arcane tomb of knowledge. It was to intersperse story elements into the rules elements, and a bit of meandering to the reading path that the rules take. This was to begin the common experience shared by D&D players of themselves encountering an adventure in the rules themselves. To make it feel like you're not reading a legal document or an instruction manual. Some of the rules are made intentionally vague, to make each table more unique, and put more judgement calls back in the hands of the DM.

Now, these are as you say aesthetic choices. Which means they're not objective, but subjective in nature. So if they rub you the wrong way, I can understand that.

But for me, these were great choices. They returned my interest in the rules, and did bring back some of that "magic" I felt with 1e AD&D.

I think this is the core of it from an aesthetics standpoint, but I can think of two other reasons.

First, I also think they were tired of players saying that fluff wasn't mechanics and was therefore not a rule. "No," they're saying. "The fluff is just as important as mechanics and just as mutable as mechanics. There's nothing wrong with changing the fluff or the mechanics."

Second, I think it's founded in the idea that it's impossible to create a set of rules that completely explain every conceivable interaction in an RPG. I think 3e, 3.5e, and 4e all tried it and they all failed either as comprehensive rules sets or as playable games because you're essentially forced to write a physics engine in RPG rules. It's just not reasonable.

5e chooses to use natural language because it's trying to tell you that it doesn't matter as long as you're consistent. And it doesn't matter if you're consistent as long as you've got a good rationale. And however you want to play, it's fine. The rules are not a recipe where you input players on one side and output fun on the other. The rules aren't there to restrict what is possible like in MTG or Risk or Warhammer 40K. The rules are there to give you an explanation of theory and method with general recommendations for how things work. It's a framework, not a program.

It's like the difference between having plans and diagrams for one table and a book entitled How to Build Tables. You follow the plans as closely as you can because you're trying to recreate a specific thing with specific dimensions. You read a book on table construction and you expect to learn what you need to know to plan and create a table of any design. D&D rules are the latter.

TLDR; You're supposed to grok the rules, not follow them like a blueprint.

You are still talking about a class of items, without naming any particular concrete examples. Can you quote at least one 5e rule that you feel is given in natural language, that cannot be understood the way it is written?

Stealth and hiding rules. Those rules are basically, "You can hide when it's reasonable that you are able to hide." And then there's Halfling's Naturally Stealthy and Wood Elves' Mask of the Wild(?) ability that say, "You can hide in these conditions." So now it's not clear if you should be able to hide when the DM says it's not reasonable because there are abilities that appear to explicitly let you hide when it's otherwise not reasonable for anyone else. And what happens when you keep hiding in the same spot? Is that still unreasonable? Based on the number of people who complain about it or ask Sage Advice about it, it feels really cheesy for Halfling Rogues to be able to do this to a lot of tables.

Like I don't think it was even explicitly clear that this really was an intentional design until the Class Variants UA (and presumably forthcoming in Tasha's) included the Aim action for Rogues.

 

[Charlaquin]

I think you folks may be relying too much on your normal every day usage of "aesthetic" rather than reading the OP's specific explanation of how they're using the term in this thread.

3e's skill points system was designed with what the OP calls "meta-aesthetics" in mind, just like 4e's Power Sources were. They're there so that when you read the rules in the rulebook it has a certain look and feel, rather than with ease of use, balance, etc, in mind.

All rules are created with a certain look and feel in mind, as well as well as with ease of use, balance, etc. Different designers will prioritize things differently; for instance, 4e placed a high priority in cross-class balance, particularly as it relates to damage output and tactical battlefield manipulation. It also had a particular design aesthetic that was influenced by its intended VTT compatibility, which accounts for the “videogamey” feel many felt it had.

In contrast, 5e prioritizes cross-class balance less highly, aiming for a general feeling that everyone can contribute meaningfully over tight mathematical parity. The aesthetic it aims for is an informal conversation with the audience, emphasizing the conversational nature of the core gameplay loop (this was something they really tried to emphasize in the play test process).

3e placed very low priority on game balance but very high priority on a particular internal logic. How much damage any given character could do per round or how much they could contribute to the group was not given near as much attention as whether or not the character’s capabilities were consistent with this internal logic. It’s design aesthetic was of a comprehensive catalogue of the world this internal logic described.

That’s where I’m struggling to understand the argument being put forth here. I understand the concept of meta-aesthetics, of designing to achieve a particular look and feel. I just see them as a concern in all game design. It seems like the OP has a certain design aesthetic they don’t care for, and are trying to claim that rules with this aesthetic are poor because they are too focused on aesthetic instead of other design concerns.

 

[Charlaquin]

Stealth and hiding rules. Those rules are basically, "You can hide when it's reasonable that you are able to hide." And then there's Halfling's Naturally Stealthy and Wood Elves' Mask of the Wild(?) ability that say, "You can hide in these conditions." So now it's not clear if you should be able to hide when the DM says it's not reasonable because there are abilities that appear to explicitly let you hide when it's otherwise not reasonable for anyone else. And what happens when you keep hiding in the same spot? Is that still unreasonable? Based on the number of people who complain about it or ask Sage Advice about it, it feels really cheesy for Halfling Rogues to be able to do this to a lot of tables.

Like I don't think it was even explicitly clear that this really was an intentional design until the Class Variants UA (and presumably forthcoming in Tasha's) included the Aim action for Rogues.

It doesn’t help that some people consider the conditions under which some of these abilities (particularly Mask of the Wild) allow you to hide seem to some like reasonable conditions under which to hide in the first place.

 

[Cadence]

Second, I think it's founded in the idea that it's impossible to create a set of rules that completely explain every conceivable interaction in an RPG. I think 3e, 3.5e, and 4e all tried it and they all failed either as comprehensive rules sets or as playable games because you're essentially forced to write a physics engine in RPG rules. It's just not reasonable.

The 3.5 DMG says in the first few pages that they know they aren't comprehensive:

"Often a situation will arise that isn’t explicitly covered by the rules." (DMG pg. 6)

And I'm not sure they tried to be. Trying to put in the most common things you picture happening based on your collective decades of experience seems different than trying to do everything. If they did try, they admitted the failur up front.

They certainly are playable games, given how many folks have, and still play them, so the failure, if any, isn't there.

 

[NotAYakk]

Well, as noted, "natural language" is a thing where I think these meta-aesthetics have got it wrong.

Natural language was favored by 5e's designers because, they claimed, it would make things so much better. There would be no need to learn any special words, no need to check references, because everything would just mean what it says! You could look at it and just know, because you already know how to read English (or whatever language the text was translated into).

Except...it didn't. This decision, driven by the meta-aesthetic desire to have rules that "need no explanation," has resulted in rules...that still need explanation. And rules that, a non-negligible portion of the time, cannot work even in principle unless the DM does actually explain them. It doesn't come up constantly, not even once a session necessarily, but it does come up, and has in actual games I have personally played. (No 5e game I've played in has lasted more than ten sessions, and part of it was this very problem in one of those games.)

So one of your problems is that you are solving for the wrong thing.

You are maximizing for good play experience among experienced players.

Maximizing for good play experience among experienced players is a trap.

It is what experienced players appreciate, but you only get experienced players if new players play, and those new players play enough to become experienced.

So rules have to look good to new players, and be inviting, in order to gain new players and avoid scaring them off.

Natural language is an example of something that looks good to new players. "I get to smite if I hit with a melee weapon? Awesome!" -- the fact that when making a melee weapon attack you can substitute an unarmed strike, but an unarmed strikes are not melee weapon attacks, so you cannot smite with an unarmed strike, that doesn't matter to the recruiting of a new player who picks up and reads the rules.

The value of "melee weapon attack" isn't that it is elegant or whatever. It is that it is inviting.

The rules need explanation, but that isn't why you use natural language. You use natural language to make the rules look like they need no explanation.

And heck, if you don't have the explanation, and you interpret smite to work with or without unarmed strikes, you still end up with a working game. Hell, you can interpret "melee weapon attack" to include casting a touch spell using a melee weapon as a focus and let the paladin smite on that, and the game still functions.

You can treat 5e as a bunch of natural language adjudicated on the fly by the DM. It results in a game you can play. And there is an entire wing of D&D players who play it that way. You can also look for official rulings and stuff and use that instead of on the fly rulings.

What more, you claim that these rules disputes led to your groups falling apart. What if your group dynamics led to them falling apart, and it was the rules disputes that where the symptom of the group dynamics?

You wouldn't be able to tell the difference from your experience. Yet "better rules" that didn't have rules disputes wouldn't have an impact on your groups falling apart.

What more, people making the game want there to be plenty of groups that form. They care less how long the groups last, because 10 sessions is long enough to buy a PHB. The "rare" Whale who buys every book is great, but not key.