Hoo boy, my hot take really did blow up. I might miss some posts since the time I started quoting things, or that said similar stuff, so...apologies if you felt your point deserved personal attention. Note that for me and I'll gladly provide it. As it is, I'll be trimming posts like mad to conserve space!
Or to put it another way, trusting the DM and acknowledging that if players didn't trust the DM, the game was probably doomed no matter how precise the rules were.
I really wish this argument would also stop. While I do recognize that trust is important, neither this issue nor most of my issues are
about "trust." And it's really frustrating to be told that my concerns arise from, effectively, being
unable to trust people. Like, you're literally disguising an
ad hominem attack here. Please don't do that.
I believe you're wrong about the intent of natural language. I don't believe it was intended to create greater clarity in the rules, in the sense of precision; rather, it was intended to be clearer in the sense of transparency--and also to be flavorful, with the idea that any ambiguities would be settled table by table instead of trying to enforce one exact experience across all arenas of play.
Well uh...I don't find it transparent. Not anywhere near as transparent as 4e was, anyway. Like, that was literally a huge beef with 4e, that it showed how the sausage was made, and people
welcomed 5e being a little more old-school obscurantist. Not everyone, mind, but some totally did.
« Playing DnD is an exercice in collaborative creation. » that is taken from the preface of the phb. they choose natural langage because it fits better the goal of the design.
That's not a design goal? I'm not sure what your point is here.
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?
The aforementioned Sage Advice stuff about attacks. That is, a "melee weapon attack" and an "attack with a melee weapon" are (almost) completely distinct things, despite being
perfect synonyms in natural English diction, and that a "melee weapon attack" can involve
no actual weapons whatsoever (e.g. unarmed strikes are "melee weapon attacks" even though unarmed strikes aren't weapons...but see below for more.) That...cannot be understood from the natural meanings of the words alone. "Melee weapon attack" in 5e means a melee attack, which just
happens to involve a weapon. If you want "attack with a melee weapon" as a meaning, the Sage Advice compendium specifies that
the only difference you make is adding a hyphen. "Melee-weapon attack" means an attack which specifically employs a melee weapon. So you can make a "ranged weapon attack" that is alsoa "melee-weapon attack" (e.g. a thrown dagger), and you can make a "melee weapon attack" that is also a "ranged-weapon attack" (e.g. smacking someone with a crossbow).
The
contagion spell is another oft-cited example, one which even Crawford explicitly said on twitter "could be clearer." I used to know at least one other spell with similar issues, but I've forgotten what it is and don't feel like pouring through the hundred-plus pages of spells in the PHB right now. As others have said, the common confusion about how Surprise works is something of a borderline case. That is, the rules theoretically
do work as written, but the focus on natural-language presentation prevented the authors from effectively communicating how Surprise works
differently from previous games, and thus that focus has led to much confusion.
Another example: "natural weapons" are weapons, while "unarmed strikes" are not. But there are natural weapons (such as the tabaxi claws)
which allow you to make unarmed strikes. So...are they weapons because they're natural weapons, or
not weapons because you use them to make unarmed strikes? The text is insufficient to distinguish which of these mutually exclusive, jointly exhaustive options is valid.
One I only just encountered, which has been often overlooked: Ranger Favored Terrain. It doesn't tell us much of anything about what the terrains refer to, just giving high-level nouns (desert, Underdark, etc.) But "desert" in natural language just means "a place that gets less than 10 inches of rainfall per year." The Antarctic is one of the world's largest deserts, for example, and the Underdark (by definition) gets zero rainfall--thus both are, by natural language meanings, "deserts." Obviously, DMs can always overrule things, but this is a clear place where the "natural language" meaning of terms is reliant on something entirely outside
both the text itself
and the meanings of the words used. You and I know the understanding that is
meant, but it is not actually
communicated by the text.
I think the topic is about rules that play well vs. rules that read well.
A reasonable, albeit short, summary.
I think that the meta-aesthetic concerns (which I'd render as 'narrativist', 'simulationist' and 'gamist') are somehow 'too important' when making rule...
I'm not referring to any of those three things. Sometimes the meta-aesthetic argument pursues a simulationist aesthetic, e.g. skill points and PrCs. Sometimes it is gamist, e.g. condensing all Martial powers (from 4e) into a single shared pool for all Martial classes. I can't think of a narrativist example off the top of my head, but I'm sure one exists. And, again, as I have repeatedly said, meta-aesthetics are NOT invalid! They can totally be a reason to do something. My argument is against any argument where meta-aesthetics are taken to be irrefutable, self-evident proof that a particular approach is not only correct, but
best.
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. <snip>
5e chooses to use natural language because it's trying to tell you that it doesn't matter as long as you're consistent.<snip> TLDR; You're supposed to grok the rules, not follow them like a blueprint.
1. 4e didn't try to do that, and I find the repeated assertions that it did extremely annoying. 4e defined a set of things that
definitely did work, and then created a set of extensible frameworks (such as Skill Challenges and Page 42) that were meant to support DM extrapolation. Should the DM wish to do
further extrapolation, the rules intentionally
got out of the way because, as 13A puts it for one of its feats, "If you want <such an improvised thing>, you have a better idea than we do what it should look like."
2. That would be great...if human beings were all that capable of consistency. Thing is, we really aren't. One need look no further than Gygax's D&D to see what happens when you presume consistency from the unbiased referee: you get an unending hodgepodge of unrelated, sometimes contradictory elements. And that's for
one person's game; the inconsistency expands exponentially if you have to game as I've had to, where I must seek out groups (usually online) because I don't know anyone who plays.
3. If that's the case, why do we have stuff like the above, where "melee weapon attack" is explicitly and intentionally different from "melee-weapon attack"? That doesn't sound like a grok thing. That sounds like a blueprint, where precise bits matter.
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." <snip> 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.
Perfect example, thank you. A clear "grok" vs "blueprint" situation, which the text alone demonstrably doesn't clear up, given the repeated requests for clarification.
All rules are created with a certain look and feel in mind, as well as well as with ease of use, balance, etc.<snip>
Yes. I explicitly said so. I'm talking about the cases where anyone--fan playtester, game designer, DM, whomever--argues that it is
that look and feel, not of the physical product, not of the experience of play, but purely within the internal structure of the rules, that overrides
all other concerns unless the other concerns are truly overwhelming.
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.
I don't care what meta-aesthetics you go for. I'm saying that there are a lot of people--more fans than designers, but designers too--the meta-aesthetic is far and away the most important thing, and everything else is secondary. That a meta-aesthetic argument, like that (A5E) Knacks should just be condensed into a single list that each class samples from, is nearly unassailable, indeed self-evidently so.
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.
I don't see why these goals need to be in conflict. This is like saying that a video game has to appeal to new players at the expense of giving old players nothing to do; if you neglect
either end, you have a bad game that will do poorly. FFXIV, a personal favorite, struggled with cumbersome slow-burn introduction to a story that got
good with the first expansion and has only gone up from there; it has since taken steps to address this problem, and is (almost surely) seeing sustained growth even as the pandemic wanes because of these efforts.
If we don't solve for
both things--games that play well once they're familiar AND that feel welcoming before they're familiar--we're not making great games. We're making either great games no one will play, or bad games lots of people will play.
Besides all that? Stuff like "we should make a single list of all A5E Knacks that each class gets to take a few from" is...entirely orthogonal to being "inviting" or not
and to being "experienced-friendly" or not. Only an experienced player could be doing the playtesting to make that request!
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
I should bloody well hope it results in "a game you can play." A game that isn't playable
should never be printed. "It's playable!" is tied for the most pointless defense of any game, TTRPG or otherwise, alongside "you can still have
fun with it!" (Because if the game
isn't even playable or somehow manages to
prevent even the possibility of having fun, it should never even be printed!)
What more, you claim that these rules disputes led to your groups falling apart. What if <snip>
Not interested in your hypothetical alternatives to my lived experience, sorry.
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.
I don't think I understand your point here. These three sentences seem unrelated.
This kind of thing inhibits players from deciding to wager stakes and take risks. Instead they tend to just fall back on a small repertoire of well-understood tactics instead. Or more likely they 'play the DM' trying to measure just how much the DM is vested in a given outcome or scenario, or perhaps just using social engineering on them in some cases.
Thank you! Yes! This is a HUGE part of what I mean by sacrificing the play experience. The meta-aesthetic is more important than people, y'know, actually doing the high-level abstracted actions of playing the game (like
taking risks or
asking questions, way above the level of even "making attack rolls" or "talking to elves").
And what really is gained? The NUT of the motive was to let the GM, in a Gygaxian fashion, squelch 'abuse', which is really just a code word for "I don't like how easy this is to use." The 4e (at least) solution was to simply put things in a fairly narrow context, so 'Charm Person' generates a condition, and that has specific in-game effects. It can't really be abused because that's all it does! Now, that doesn't preclude other uses, but it puts them into things like 4e's 'page 42' (the rules for attempting things that are not already defined as powers or similar). Page 42 is pretty clear about what the expectations are there. In other situations you have SC rules, which are again pretty clear and give a good indication of the relative value of using a power as a resource cost in an SC. One of the issues with 5e is it lacks analogs to both of these, meaning you MUST leave things open-ended, and then you're always putting the GM in the spot of deciding if a given use is "OK" or not.
Firstly: it is terribly nice to have someone who recognizes the extensible frameworks built into 4e, so that it didn't
need "a rule for everything and everything has its rule"
a la M:TG, but rather "the codified, the formally improvised, and the informally improvised--and you know better than we do what that last thing needs."
Secondly: Yes, this is definitely a criticism I have of a meta-aesthetic stance in 5e, "everything must go to the DM." I had to start putting as a disclaimer on
every. single. post. of advice for 5e play "if your DM says..." or "Assuming your DM's okay with it" etc. etc. etc. for ANYTHING, literally ANY part of the rules no matter how basal, because 5e
really is pretty close to "the rules are suggestions."
Wait ... are you saying is that the problem here is that people are reading jargon as natural language?
The irony was not lost on me.