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<blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5960780" data-attributes="member: 54877">I believe the terms you guys are looking for are &quot;robust&quot; versus &quot;brittle&quot;.&nbsp; These are different from questions of efficiency and flexibility.&nbsp; 4E is more highly engineered, which makes it high performance in its expected pursuits, and not so hot outside of those.&nbsp; 1E was barely &quot;engineered&quot; at all, which gives it a wider range of expected pursuits at the expense of less performance than what it might have had in any smaller set.&nbsp; &nbsp;No version of D&amp;D is terribly robust, and this is certainly not a virtue of 1E, anymore than having nothing but a bunch of basic yard tools is a &quot;robust yard maintenance&quot; system.&nbsp; Yeah, the components are hard to individually break (assuming no fools in control), but you can work yourself to death. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue&nbsp; &nbsp; :p"&nbsp; data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />&nbsp; Meanwhile, that 4E lawnmower you've got running like a dream is great for the main yard, but not so hot for trimming the edges or handling low-hanging tree limbs. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue&nbsp; &nbsp; :p"&nbsp; data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue&nbsp; &nbsp; :p"&nbsp; data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />&nbsp;That's not to say that all versions are all brittle, all the time.&nbsp; 4E holds up surprisingly well when wealth is not on the baseline, and 1E is pretty nifty in handling parties of different levels, for example.&nbsp; But as systems, they are not robust in the face of the expected range of play.&nbsp; (3E is more like one of those sophisticated paint sprayers in this analogy.&nbsp; Get it humming, you can do a lot with it, but it breaks in surprising places every third minute. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue&nbsp; &nbsp; :p"&nbsp; data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue&nbsp; &nbsp; :p"&nbsp; data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue&nbsp; &nbsp; :p"&nbsp; data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />)&nbsp; <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/angel.png"&nbsp; class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":angel:" title="Angel&nbsp; &nbsp; :angel:" data-shortname=":angel:" /></blockquote>

[QUOTE="Crazy Jerome, post: 5960780, member: 54877"] I believe the terms you guys are looking for are "robust" versus "brittle". These are different from questions of efficiency and flexibility. 4E is more highly engineered, which makes it high performance in its expected pursuits, and not so hot outside of those. 1E was barely "engineered" at all, which gives it a wider range of expected pursuits at the expense of less performance than what it might have had in any smaller set. No version of D&D is terribly robust, and this is certainly not a virtue of 1E, anymore than having nothing but a bunch of basic yard tools is a "robust yard maintenance" system. Yeah, the components are hard to individually break (assuming no fools in control), but you can work yourself to death. :p Meanwhile, that 4E lawnmower you've got running like a dream is great for the main yard, but not so hot for trimming the edges or handling low-hanging tree limbs. :p:p That's not to say that all versions are all brittle, all the time. 4E holds up surprisingly well when wealth is not on the baseline, and 1E is pretty nifty in handling parties of different levels, for example. But as [B]systems[/B], they are not robust in the face of the expected range of play. (3E is more like one of those sophisticated paint sprayers in this analogy. Get it humming, you can do a lot with it, but it breaks in surprising places every third minute. :p:p:p) :angel: [/QUOTE]

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