How many Tools do you Need?

[Professor Phobos]

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

Wouldn't common sense simply rule that out?

 

[D'karr]

Wouldn't common sense simply rule that out?

Shhh... How else could we have these threads? Don't ever let common sense stop these.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Despite your warning, I now want to learn LISP.

Don't do it, man! You'd be messing with powers mortals were not meant to understand!

Three words: Reverse Polish Notation.

Thems some bad mojo.

 

[Ulthwithian]

This is a very useful question, and one that arises (in a somewhat different form) in Industrial Design. Specifically, it is the question of tolerances, or in the time-honored form, "How close is close enough?"

Tolerances are used in industrial design to denote how large the deviation is allowed to be in a part. E.g., a piece of metal needs a hole punched in it that is 3" in radius, +-0.2". The last part is the tolerance of the part (more specifically, the tolerance of that operation on the part).

The issue is that the tighter the tolerance (i.e., the less room for error), the cost of the operation increases, and it is not generally a linear relationship. Normally, if you graph the tolerance vs. cost of an operation, you achieve an inverse exponential plot. The conclusion generally drawn is that tightening the tolerance after a certain point is not worth the cost associated with it.

This is all directly analogous to the question raised by the OP. Say you have three rules systems. They all cover the same genre.

1) There is no confusion about the system, and it covers 90% of the situations.
2) There is some confusion about the system, and it covers 99% of the situations.
3) There is a LOT of confusion about the system, and it covers 99.9% of the situations.

Which is 'best'? That is actually a decision that needs to be made by each individual. The 'cost' of the system, taken from the standpoint of the tolerance analogy, is the confusion that can result from using the system, as well as overall complexity and the 'friction time' that can result from constantly having to look up rules and other minutiae. Now, some people can hold all of 3.5 in their heads, and so the cost:benefit ratio for them is favorable to playing. Others find that they would rather have a less robust system, since it is less complex and, frankly, less of a headache to play.

Everyone falls somewhere on the curve.

 

[Voss]

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.

That isn't common sense though. Its a personal preference that you don't use the rules as written a certain way (ie, 'power' exploits are bad, so people shouldn't do them, though this is a pretty trivial example of a power exploit).

Furthermore, in this situation I'd say common sense supports the exploitation of the power. Your knack for cleaving into opponents doesn't care if the target of the attack is an opponent or not. It could be an ogre, a rat or a small boy named Kevin. All your character knows is that if he twists his axe *this* way, he can slice it along the flesh of someone/thing standing close by.

Plus, of course, 'common sense' means very different things to different people. The rules have to provide for: playing with friends, playing with strangers, playing with experienced folk, playing with inexperienced folk, playing with smart, stupid, old or young people, organized play, and so on and so forth. If it isn't covering situations in an understandable way for most, if not all of those situations, its failing on some level.

And personally, I find that the more people I play with (which is inevitable since I move around a lot), the more I find that what I think of as 'common sense' is not quite unique to me, but only found a very small part of the population.

 

[Hella_Tellah]

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.

100% agreement on this point, and I'm happy about it. I want D&D to be a system for running a certain kind of game and running it really well, with comprehensible but deep rules for a combat-heavy game of high fantasy. To my mind, an RPG should tell you "Play like this!" to a certain extent.

The two games I'm playing right now, Nobilis and Mage: The Awakening, are excellent examples of this. Nobilis has very simple and flexible core rules, but they're only useful for making demi-gods with power over neat little niches of reality. The system also has suggestions and little add-ons, like an alchemy system, that expand the game. It explicitly does not have rules for doing things on a mortal scale--every Nobilis simply succeeds at doing things normal human beings can do. That, to me, is an ideal game design. Mage is an extension of a much larger ruleset, the WoD storytelling system, but it's similarly quite focused. The rules of Mage are useful for making versatile modern-day mages who are particularly adept at investigating supernatural phenomena. You absolutely could not use Mage to create a D&D-style Wizard or Cleric.

Both games very clearly tell you what the game does, what it doesn't do, and how to play it. And that's a very good thing. I'd rather play three different games that all do their specific shtick well than play one game that does all three poorly.

 

[Mallus]

All your character knows is that if he twists his axe *this* way, he can slice it along the flesh of someone/thing standing close by.

Stop me if you think you've heard this one before...

Your character knows nothing, because he doesn't exist. It's what the player knows that counts, and any player that doesn't know the bag-of-rats trick is the bad kind of stupid (as opposed to the ridiculously entertaining kind of stupid that's the hallmark of great RPG play) should smacked in the head with a beer bottle.

 

[I'm A Banana]

100% agreement on this point, and I'm happy about it. I want D&D to be a system for running a certain kind of game and running it really well, with comprehensible but deep rules for a combat-heavy game of high fantasy. To my mind, an RPG should tell you "Play like this!" to a certain extent.

Hey, I know I was on that track with FFZ years ago already, so I definately see the strengths of it.

What I'm less sold on is the idea that it's a good idea for D&D to do this. Part of that is because I use D&D as a toolkit, and I like using it as a toolkit. I tell it to give me "Postapocayptic orcs riding motorcycles" and it does that pretty well. I tell it to give me "Planescape!" and it does that pretty well. I tell it to give me "Tribal society where the PC's play as gods!" and it does that pretty well, too.

4e is taking some steps back from that, but the extent to which the game retains it will be part of the deciding factor for me. I'm a HUGE fan of D&D's modular nature, and I think that's an edge that D&D has over CRPGs and other table-top games (it hits a sweet spot between GURPS and the Storyteller games that I enjoy!). If all D&D4e can give me is a single world and "have adventure!" I'm going to be unable to use it.

 

[ThirdWizard]

I tell it to give me "Planescape!" and it does that pretty well.

Do you see issues with running a 4e Planescape game? I ask because I'm planning on running a 4e PS game, and I haven't sat down to think of any issues (because it will be my second 4e campaign) but I haven't though of any.

 

[Hella_Tellah]

Hey, I know I was on that track with FFZ years ago already, so I definately see the strengths of it.

What I'm less sold on is the idea that it's a good idea for D&D to do this. Part of that is because I use D&D as a toolkit, and I like using it as a toolkit. I tell it to give me "Postapocayptic orcs riding motorcycles" and it does that pretty well. I tell it to give me "Planescape!" and it does that pretty well. I tell it to give me "Tribal society where the PC's play as gods!" and it does that pretty well, too.

4e is taking some steps back from that, but the extent to which the game retains it will be part of the deciding factor for me. I'm a HUGE fan of D&D's modular nature, and I think that's an edge that D&D has over CRPGs and other table-top games (it hits a sweet spot between GURPS and the Storyteller games that I enjoy!). If all D&D4e can give me is a single world and "have adventure!" I'm going to be unable to use it.

Yeah, I'm still ambivalent on that score. I played 3.5 about a month ago, running a game based on the Shinto myths of Japan, and it worked really nicely, even though I probably could have picked up L5R and done it better. I definitely used D&D 3.5 as a toolbox, because like you, I tinker. But I do think moving D&D away from that, at least somewhat, is good for the industry as a whole.

I think it's better for the gaming industry as a whole if D&D is no longer the go-to system for tabletop gaming. It will be a huge boon for gaming if roleplaying is no longer conflated with D&D in the general public and in the gaming community, because other systems will get a greater chance to shine. It might even lose some of that geeky stigma that's keeping millions of potential gamers from picking up the dice and learning that they'd really like roleplaying games. It may be good for WoTC, but when I look at the RPG section of a book store and 75% of the books are d20 system, I see stagnation. If D&D becomes the go-to system for running high fantasy, action-packed games, but leaves room for other systems to take the field, so much the better. My current players are open to trying and learning new systems, but previous groups I've had looked at me like I was a lunatic for suggesting a different game system for a change of pace. If "D&D" were no longer synonymous with "RPG" in most people's minds, it would be a lot easier to get some real innovation in the industry.

Side note: I've been having a hell of a time getting a group to try out FFZ, but I swear that one day I'm running a game of Cornerian Red Mages on Chocobos. Oh yes.