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"Hot" take: Aesthetically-pleasing rules are highly overvalued
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<blockquote data-quote="Bacon Bits" data-source="post: 8112191" data-attributes="member: 6777737"><p>Hey, Mein Kampf might say that murder is wrong but that doesn't mean that's what was really in the mind of the author. A book need not be consistent with itself. Just because it says something on page 6 doesn't mean that every page after it reinforces that idea, or even that that point is where they're heading. That's where plot holes come from. It's doubly true for rule books. The PHB makes it really clear that Rule Zero exists (the DM is the final authority) but it's also really clear from reading the book that the rules are going out of their way to make you think that Rule Zero is a necessary evil best avoided.</p><p></p><p>I think it's very clear that from 2000 to 2014, WotC tried <em>extremely hard</em> to make rules that were as consistent, comprehensive, and concrete as possible. They wanted players and DMs to be able to find definite correct answers in the books when they looked things up. These editions tried to <em>minimize</em> the role of the DM as rules arbiter precisely because 1e/2e AD&D was so obtuse, arbitrary, and cumbersome that not only did no two tables play the same way but often two different tables would be playing wholly incompatible games. That's fine from a game play standpoint, but it's unworkable from a "we are a business and need to sell stuff to our customers" standpoint. Part of the reason it was abandoned by the community was because of how unmanageable the rules were. It wasn't just TSR's bad decision making.</p><p></p><p>The problem is that no matter how hard they worked, no matter how much errata and rulings they issued, and no matter how much they tried to compile the equivalent of MTG rules that you don't need to interpret, the community just kept shouting about more and more crap that people should just ask their DM for. The harder they worked the deeper the hole they had. For over a decade they worked at this until they gave it up. So they stopped digging. They decided to take away rules instead of trying to build rules up.</p><p></p><p>5e just dropped a ton of rules and never looked back. Not like changing skill rules, but dropping almost the entirely of the mechanics from the spells chapters. You ever notice that <em>wall of force</em> says that it extends into the ethereal, but there's no general rule that force effects extend ethereal anywhere in the books? That rule is gone. Tags are gone, too, and translating [Mind-Affecting] tags into the "sometimes we use a condition and sometimes we don't" of 5e is a whole lot less consistent and comprehensive, especially because monster types are much less prevalent. Monster types still exist, but they're super simplified with basically no consistent abilities for a given type. Lots of weapons are gone, as are lots of actions in combat. You still can use grappling, but it's pretty terrible almost all the time. Circumstantial bonuses and penalties are gone, replaced by the single advantage/disadvantage mechanic.</p><p></p><p>And as far as making rulings... they go out of their way not to. Sure, there's errata for actual mistakes; you can't avoid that. But, by and large, they don't rule based on the idea of creating a system of consistent rules they can build on going forward. They rule by reading the book back to you and telling you how the book reads. And then they make no subjective opinion about it. That's not a ruling. That's a <em>reading</em>. They give you an answer, but knowing that no answer will satisfy they do their best to spend as little time on rules questions as possible.</p><p></p><p>Like... 3.5e was basically <em>entirely</em> power level errata for 3e (too conservative of power level errata as it turns out) while for 5e, beyond <em>contagion</em> and the Revised Ranger (i.e., problems with Natural Explorer, Favored Enemy and Beastmaster) there's been essentially no power level errata in 5e. And Revised Ranger got discarded! It died in playtest! The best we're going to get is Tasha's variant class features and probably some Hexblade-fixing-Bladelock-like subclass to replace Beastmaster someday (e.g., Battlesmith Artificer) and that's it. It's not like they don't know the faults in the game. They're just not interested in fixing them anymore. This is the 7th year that 5e has been out. If you put 3e's timeline over 5e, 3.5e would be out in 2017, 4e is due out early next year, and Pathfinder in early 2022! Tasha's is <em>the third</em> major splatbook after SCAG and XGTE. That's a huge strategy change and design philosophy change.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Bacon Bits, post: 8112191, member: 6777737"] Hey, Mein Kampf might say that murder is wrong but that doesn't mean that's what was really in the mind of the author. A book need not be consistent with itself. Just because it says something on page 6 doesn't mean that every page after it reinforces that idea, or even that that point is where they're heading. That's where plot holes come from. It's doubly true for rule books. The PHB makes it really clear that Rule Zero exists (the DM is the final authority) but it's also really clear from reading the book that the rules are going out of their way to make you think that Rule Zero is a necessary evil best avoided. I think it's very clear that from 2000 to 2014, WotC tried [I]extremely hard[/I] to make rules that were as consistent, comprehensive, and concrete as possible. They wanted players and DMs to be able to find definite correct answers in the books when they looked things up. These editions tried to [I]minimize[/I] the role of the DM as rules arbiter precisely because 1e/2e AD&D was so obtuse, arbitrary, and cumbersome that not only did no two tables play the same way but often two different tables would be playing wholly incompatible games. That's fine from a game play standpoint, but it's unworkable from a "we are a business and need to sell stuff to our customers" standpoint. Part of the reason it was abandoned by the community was because of how unmanageable the rules were. It wasn't just TSR's bad decision making. The problem is that no matter how hard they worked, no matter how much errata and rulings they issued, and no matter how much they tried to compile the equivalent of MTG rules that you don't need to interpret, the community just kept shouting about more and more crap that people should just ask their DM for. The harder they worked the deeper the hole they had. For over a decade they worked at this until they gave it up. So they stopped digging. They decided to take away rules instead of trying to build rules up. 5e just dropped a ton of rules and never looked back. Not like changing skill rules, but dropping almost the entirely of the mechanics from the spells chapters. You ever notice that [I]wall of force[/I] says that it extends into the ethereal, but there's no general rule that force effects extend ethereal anywhere in the books? That rule is gone. Tags are gone, too, and translating [Mind-Affecting] tags into the "sometimes we use a condition and sometimes we don't" of 5e is a whole lot less consistent and comprehensive, especially because monster types are much less prevalent. Monster types still exist, but they're super simplified with basically no consistent abilities for a given type. Lots of weapons are gone, as are lots of actions in combat. You still can use grappling, but it's pretty terrible almost all the time. Circumstantial bonuses and penalties are gone, replaced by the single advantage/disadvantage mechanic. And as far as making rulings... they go out of their way not to. Sure, there's errata for actual mistakes; you can't avoid that. But, by and large, they don't rule based on the idea of creating a system of consistent rules they can build on going forward. They rule by reading the book back to you and telling you how the book reads. And then they make no subjective opinion about it. That's not a ruling. That's a [I]reading[/I]. They give you an answer, but knowing that no answer will satisfy they do their best to spend as little time on rules questions as possible. Like... 3.5e was basically [I]entirely[/I] power level errata for 3e (too conservative of power level errata as it turns out) while for 5e, beyond [I]contagion[/I] and the Revised Ranger (i.e., problems with Natural Explorer, Favored Enemy and Beastmaster) there's been essentially no power level errata in 5e. And Revised Ranger got discarded! It died in playtest! The best we're going to get is Tasha's variant class features and probably some Hexblade-fixing-Bladelock-like subclass to replace Beastmaster someday (e.g., Battlesmith Artificer) and that's it. It's not like they don't know the faults in the game. They're just not interested in fixing them anymore. This is the 7th year that 5e has been out. If you put 3e's timeline over 5e, 3.5e would be out in 2017, 4e is due out early next year, and Pathfinder in early 2022! Tasha's is [I]the third[/I] major splatbook after SCAG and XGTE. That's a huge strategy change and design philosophy change. [/QUOTE]
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