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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercule" data-source="post: 370594" data-attributes="member: 5100">This has pretty much been my experience.  I suppose one could argue that the books are more rules-oriented than in previous editions.  I'm not sure that I'd agree that was true, nor would I agree that having a rules-oriented rules-book was bad.What I've found is that the 3E design team put a lot of thought and effort into tightening down, balancing, streamlining, and just stabilizing the core rules set.  This allows me, as a DM (or player), to just be creative.  I don't have to come up with a full-blown mechanic for every detail of my world.  Most of the time, it's "use this skill/ability/level-based-value to roll against a DC from this table".  (This is actually my beef with some of the 3rd party products out there: They still seem to want a brand new, full-blown mechanic for every new idea.)Being a computer programmer, I relating it to building an application.  Previous editions are like the hobby-shop crud I do for my own use: I have to jam in some odd input values to get the answer I want, if I click the buttons in the wrong order I'll get a memory leak and things will crash, no help file, etc.  You've almost got to be a programmer (game developer) to use it.  Heck, sometimes I've got to go in and change a hard-coded value or routine everytime I want to do something even slightly different.3E is more like what I do for pay:  Consistant interface, input boxes are actually labeled, etc.  The idea is that anyone can come in and use what I've created.  Basically, just sit down and _use_ it instead of tweaking while using.What's the difference?  The amount of attention I pay to and the effort I put into the code structure/integrity.  The same is true of the 3E rules.  Their much more "stable" and internally consistant that earlier editions.  The difference is that all the work is laid out for people to look at in D&D, so it can be a bit jarring when you realize that a solid framework is more obvious than piecemeal.</blockquote>

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