How many Tools do you Need?

[Cadfan]

You need exactly as many tools are necessary to do the job of the game. Different games have different jobs.

D&D is fight-porn and wish fulfillment. So you need tools that allow for 1) tactical and 2) totally awesome combat, plus rules that allow for lovingly crafted butt-kicking characters.

Then, because people find fantastical heroes demolishing stuff to be more meaningful when there's a plot, you need a smaller amount of rules to help you craft plotlines.

That's it.

For other games, things may be different. D&D doesn't need extensive rules for insanity, because its not a big part of the game's goals. A Lovecraft based game does need extensive insanity rules. A Lovecraft based game, by contrast, would actually be harmed by the amount of combat rules D&D has, because combat isn't the point of the game. D&D style combat in a Lovecraft style game would function as a morass in which the game drowns.

Genre mixing belongs in supplemental books that openly admit that they're attempts at genre shifting. Done right, these books not only provide additional rules to add things like extensive insanity systems to your game, they also admit that they're changing the underlying goals of the game, and suggest edits to already existing rules.

 

[Thaumaturge]

Do we really need mechanics that cover 99% of the situations, when we can design simpler mechanics that cover 90% of the situations? How much more complexity do we add in order to cover that last 9%?

In the late 90s I would have answered covering that last 9% is worth a good deal of complexity, so I was happy with 3e when it rolled around. Now, however, I've tired of the added complexity and just want to ignore it, yet still play by the rules. Just in time for 4e. When 5e comes out and is more complex again, I'll likely welcome the change back.

Thaumaturge.

 

[Crosswind]

I will answer with my misguided expansion of the analogy from the other post:

Would you still want those extra 99 tools if you were going backpacking? =)

"More is always better, because you can always ignore the stuff you don't need" is a flawed argument. Complicated systems scare off players. The fact is, most of the posters here have 5 billion years of playing experience. You all, like me, are unintimidated by the various rules intricacies of 3.5, and can probably pick up other, complicated systems quickly.

New roleplayers -CANNOT DO THIS-. If our hobby is to continue to exist, it must appeal to new players. This means that it should be relatively straightforward to pick up and play.

The less random @#$% you put in the PHB about Disarming, Sundering, How to throttle somebody with a banana peel, etc, the easier it is for new people to pick up the game.

-Cross

 

[Wormwood]

The less random @#$% you put in the PHB about Disarming, Sundering, How to throttle somebody with a banana peel, etc, the easier it is for new people to pick up the game.

...and the longer old farts like me will be willing to run the game.

Life is too short to look up rules three times a night.

 

[Mallus]

Better analogies are programming languages, because that is what a gaming ruleset *is*

Except that gaming rulesets are programming languages explicitly designed to run on sentient machinery capable of and expected to make judgment calls, including ones regarding basic code execution. In other words, they're not much like programming languages at all.

Disclosure: I don't know LISP. Can LISP make judgment calls?

 

[Cadfan]

Disclosure: I don't know LISP. Can LISP make judgment calls?

Yes. LISP can also balance your taxes, and seduce your girlfriend. Be careful with LISP.

 

[SSquirrel]

The less random @#$% you put in the PHB about Disarming, Sundering, How to throttle somebody with a banana peel, etc, the easier it is for new people to pick up the game.

But, but...my rogue has SPECIALIZED in banana peel throttlings, I have Weapon Focus:Banana Peel, Exotic Weapon Proficiency:Banana Peel....I can kill a kobold at 400 paces w/a banana peel!

*grin*

 

[I'm A Banana]

A game needs 100% of the rules to cover the things you are expected to do with the game.

The things you are expected to do a lot need detailed rules you can fiddle with and change up so they don't get stale.

The things you are not expected to do a lot need broad rules you can use when needed easily, and ignore when not needed easily.

3e D&D had a different goal than 4e D&D in this respect. It expected you to do a lot of stuff outside of the box in your own world. Since it was coming from 2e, an edition of prolific settings and vague homebrew and a very limited "box," that was understandable. 3e's approach was thus more of a toolkit approach on how to make your own version of D&D. Heck, in a lot of ways, the whole OGL/SRD/3rd party movement was based in this principle: take D&D, make it your own, and go sell it on the streets!

4e D&D takes a few big steps back from that toolkit approach, to a more "Play like this!" approach. They won't abandon the toolkit entirely (because that'd be dumb), but they're spelling out exactly what they expect you to do, rather than mostly giving you a set you can assemble yourself.

If I come away from a sourcebook without it having sparked my imagination, I consider that book a failure no matter how solid the mechanics might be. And I believe, as well, that bad flavor is still better than no flavor, since even the worst favor can still be inspiring.

Dude, were we reading the same 3e? 'Cuz I pretty much always had my imagination sparked, even if it was just a simple sentence like "Bodaks retain some vague memories of their past lives" in the MM.

 

[Imban]

I agree to a certain extent; I agree with a clarification that you can't cleave at someone that is outside of your reach, but I don't want clarifications that you can't attack the rats you brought along when cleaving or something like that. I would like the rules to trust that the reader has some common sense.

Er, well, of course you can cleave the rats you brought along with you. They're... valid targets, even if the player and character have both clearly gone mad, and I'll just sit on the other end of the table and shake my head sadly while you flail away at rats with a greataxe in order to have a slightly easier time killing off individual kobold minions instead of just killing kobold minions two at a time.

Meanwhile cleaving through a solid stone wall is one of those "physical impossibility" things. I'm slightly more concerned with those.

 

[Mallus]

Yes. LISP can also balance your taxes, and seduce your girlfriend. Be careful with LISP.

Despite your warning, I now want to learn LISP.