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"Hot" take: Aesthetically-pleasing rules are highly overvalued
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<blockquote data-quote="Mistwell" data-source="post: 8111479" data-attributes="member: 2525"><p>That was not the reason for the use of natural language.</p><p></p><p>The use of natural language was an aesthetic choice, but not <strong>that</strong> 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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Mistwell, post: 8111479, member: 2525"] That was not the reason for the use of natural language. The use of natural language was an aesthetic choice, but not [B]that[/B] 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. [/QUOTE]
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"Hot" take: Aesthetically-pleasing rules are highly overvalued
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