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<blockquote data-quote="Jackelope King" data-source="post: 4158852" data-attributes="member: 31454">This is a big part of it. The fewer (and simpler) the steps involved in a player's proposition, the more likely a player is to make and carry through with the proposition when it's relevant. I refer to this as the &quot;Forget It Test&quot;. If a rule is complicated or confusing enough that when I explain to a casual player in my face to face group how to use it, the player just shakes his head ands says &quot;forget it&quot;, then it's not a well-designed rule.The other big part of it is finding just how broadly applicable a particular rule can be. Older editions went for narrow applicability, where each resolution system was independent of the other. While it might be that this allowed for a finer grain in each resolution system (combat could have special rules just for combat that wouldn't exist in a wilderness system). With the d20 System, you have a single main resolution system which can be applied across an entire spectrum of potential situations. Different situations are kept thematically separate by changing what modifies the core d20 roll.An ideal rule is broad enough to resolve many situations in similar ways while keeping those vastly different situations different enough to be relevant and interesting. The broadness is useful because it makes it much easier for the people playing the game to keep, well, playing the game with reduced dependence on rulebook flipping. The relevance is essential to make sure that the game is still fun and exciting. How relevant something needs to be is a function of taste (for instance, I don't see much advantage to having hundreds of different condition modifiers... having just a few modifiers which can represent a lot of different conditions well would be preferential to me, as it would enable my group to use them more quickly and easily in-game and it would make it easier for me to reverse-engineer those conditions into new balanced crunchy bits that my group might need).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Jackelope King, post: 4158852, member: 31454"] This is a big part of it. The fewer (and simpler) the steps involved in a player's proposition, the more likely a player is to make and carry through with the proposition when it's relevant. I refer to this as the "Forget It Test". If a rule is complicated or confusing enough that when I explain to a casual player in my face to face group how to use it, the player just shakes his head ands says "forget it", then it's not a well-designed rule. The other big part of it is finding just how broadly applicable a particular rule can be. Older editions went for narrow applicability, where each resolution system was independent of the other. While it might be that this allowed for a finer grain in each resolution system (combat could have special rules just for combat that wouldn't exist in a wilderness system). With the d20 System, you have a single main resolution system which can be applied across an entire spectrum of potential situations. Different situations are kept thematically separate by changing what modifies the core d20 roll. An ideal rule is broad enough to resolve many situations in similar ways while keeping those vastly different situations different enough to be relevant and interesting. The broadness is useful because it makes it much easier for the people playing the game to keep, well, playing the game with reduced dependence on rulebook flipping. The relevance is essential to make sure that the game is still fun and exciting. How relevant something needs to be is a function of taste (for instance, I don't see much advantage to having hundreds of different condition modifiers... having just a few modifiers which can represent a lot of different conditions well would be preferential to me, as it would enable my group to use them more quickly and easily in-game and it would make it easier for me to reverse-engineer those conditions into new balanced crunchy bits that my group might need). [/QUOTE]

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