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<blockquote data-quote="SweeneyTodd" data-source="post: 4271522" data-attributes="member: 9391">I really, really don't want to get into a GNS discussion. This is coming from somebody who's spent a lot of time debating and discussing it. Please, it's sell-by date is long expired. Take all the ideas you want as a foundation for your own theory, but please don't use it as is. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Anyway, the way I think of &quot;coherence&quot; is: Does the game design actually do what it is setting out to do? The reason I'd personally describe 3e as &quot;incoherent&quot; is because you can run any number of different types of games with it, which can be good, but that if you have a bunch of players who sit down to &quot;play D&amp;D&quot;, it's like the blind man and the elephant... you have to do a lot of talking to figure out if all these folks who want to get together to &quot;play D&amp;D&quot; are actually talking about the same thing.For that reason I don't think incoherence is ever a good thing if you're trying to run a game as written. People make lemonade out of it because they're used to houseruling and snipping bits they don't like, sure. But we'd probably all be better off if those different games had different names and you knew what you were getting. In comparison, I think 4e is pretty damn coherent. Both in terms of the design, and in the DMing advice given. (I'm ignoring the intro &quot;This is how you play&quot; stuff... it's extremely superficial and the in-depth DMing advice later in the book doesn't match it, so I figure we can safely ignore it.) That's just my opinion from reading the books.For example, there's bits in the DMG about the PCs looking to gather info in the local wizard's guild library, the DM hasn't yet established that one exists, but since it's plausible and the players have an idea he wants to run with, voila, yes, there is a wizard's guild. Or the quest section where players are encouraged to come up with quests and the DM assigns suitable difficulty and reward. That's pretty neat stuff and it goes far beyond the kinda-railroady introduction text.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="SweeneyTodd, post: 4271522, member: 9391"] I really, really don't want to get into a GNS discussion. This is coming from somebody who's spent a lot of time debating and discussing it. Please, it's sell-by date is long expired. Take all the ideas you want as a foundation for your own theory, but please don't use it as is. :) Anyway, the way I think of "coherence" is: Does the game design actually do what it is setting out to do? The reason I'd personally describe 3e as "incoherent" is because you can run any number of different types of games with it, which can be good, but that if you have a bunch of players who sit down to "play D&D", it's like the blind man and the elephant... you have to do a lot of talking to figure out if all these folks who want to get together to "play D&D" are actually talking about the same thing. For that reason I don't think incoherence is ever a good thing if you're trying to run a game as written. People make lemonade out of it because they're used to houseruling and snipping bits they don't like, sure. But we'd probably all be better off if those different games had different names and you knew what you were getting. In comparison, I think 4e is pretty damn coherent. Both in terms of the design, and in the DMing advice given. (I'm ignoring the intro "This is how you play" stuff... it's extremely superficial and the in-depth DMing advice later in the book doesn't match it, so I figure we can safely ignore it.) That's just my opinion from reading the books. For example, there's bits in the DMG about the PCs looking to gather info in the local wizard's guild library, the DM hasn't yet established that one exists, but since it's plausible and the players have an idea he wants to run with, voila, yes, there is a wizard's guild. Or the quest section where players are encouraged to come up with quests and the DM assigns suitable difficulty and reward. That's pretty neat stuff and it goes far beyond the kinda-railroady introduction text. [/QUOTE]

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