Missing Rules

[Mistwell]

Mike Mearls and Jeremy Crawford spoke most about "Rulings, Not Rules" as a theme for what was then "D&D Next" and became D&D 5e in late May 2012 (and it had previously been a phrase most commonly heard in reference to the Old School Renaissance movement). They did a lot of interviews and at least one podcast around that time, introducing the playtests for D&D Next, and mentioned it repeatedly as a major theme for the new edition.

You can find some quotes here. For example, " The biggest hurdle has been trying to make sure that we can encourage more creativity, immersion, and flexibility in DMs and players. We want to have a solid set of rules, but at the same time I think D&D is at its best when the game is about the DM's rulings rather than the actual rules. The rules are a tool that a DM uses to keep the game moving and inform decisions. The rules don't make decisions for the DM, unless that's how the DM wants the game to work."

You can also hear a podcast here starting around the 10 minute mark.

Here is an excerpt in part, but it's worth listening to as Crawford also chimes in, and then Mearls expands on the concepts further and describes how this approach will differ from organized play approach where there will be much more canonical rules:

Q: What part of the playtest are you most looking forward to?

A: [Mearls] I am really curious to see how people react to the way we’ve approached DM’ing. Because we really tried to take a different tack on things. One of my personal things with D&D is I think the rules are there as a tool for the DM to use as the DM wants. The rules aren’t just this canonical thing that the DM must obey. The DM obeys the rules when the DM feels like yes these rules make sense for my campaign. And so we’re really emphasizing this idea of instead of saying hey here’s this hard and fast rule, it’s here’s a rule you can use, but really we’re going to rely more on the DM to make rulings based on the situation. One of the things we focused on in the DM’ing packet was giving the DM a really clear sense of ‘here is how checks work’ and different die rolling conventions or whatever, but here’s how you use these things. And what I imagine is, in a lot of adventures we write, I want to just be able to describe a room and not give any DC’s. And the DM just judges and is like ‘Hey a character wants to try and do this, here’s what I think the DC should be.’ Or ‘here’s the kind of tweak I want to make to this check, OK you can that but if he fails by more than 5, or whatever, something bad is going to happen to you.’ So instead of giving you this full page rules on climbing that covers all these different cases, we need to say well hey if a character wants to climb well here’s how fast you can climb, and usually it’s a strength check and here are some sample DC’s, and here’s some other tweaks you might want to make to the check, but it’s really up to the DM. And the goal is to make those guidelines and rules simple enough that the DM is using them on the fly. You know it’s the kind of thing where it takes 5 minutes to learn it and then a lifetime to master.

 

[smbakeresq]

The above is the goal. Actually I think the rules should be easy enough that the players know them and can use them preparing for their turn and don’t have to ask for a ruling so they can go quickly

 

[clearstream]

Mike Mearls and Jeremy Crawford spoke most about "Rulings, Not Rules" as a theme for what was then "D&D Next" and became D&D 5e in late May 2012 (and it had previously been a phrase most commonly heard in reference to the Old School Renaissance movement). They did a lot of interviews and at least one podcast around that time, introducing the playtests for D&D Next, and mentioned it repeatedly as a major theme for the new edition.

You can find some quotes here. For example, " The biggest hurdle has been trying to make sure that we can encourage more creativity, immersion, and flexibility in DMs and players. We want to have a solid set of rules, but at the same time I think D&D is at its best when the game is about the DM's rulings rather than the actual rules. The rules are a tool that a DM uses to keep the game moving and inform decisions. The rules don't make decisions for the DM, unless that's how the DM wants the game to work."

You can also hear a podcast here starting around the 10 minute mark.

Here is an excerpt in part, but it's worth listening to as Crawford also chimes in, and then Mearls expands on the concepts further and describes how this approach will differ from organized play approach where there will be much more canonical rules:

Q: What part of the playtest are you most looking forward to?

A: [Mearls] I am really curious to see how people react to the way we’ve approached DM’ing. Because we really tried to take a different tack on things. One of my personal things with D&D is I think the rules are there as a tool for the DM to use as the DM wants. The rules aren’t just this canonical thing that the DM must obey. The DM obeys the rules when the DM feels like yes these rules make sense for my campaign. And so we’re really emphasizing this idea of instead of saying hey here’s this hard and fast rule, it’s here’s a rule you can use, but really we’re going to rely more on the DM to make rulings based on the situation. One of the things we focused on in the DM’ing packet was giving the DM a really clear sense of ‘here is how checks work’ and different die rolling conventions or whatever, but here’s how you use these things. And what I imagine is, in a lot of adventures we write, I want to just be able to describe a room and not give any DC’s. And the DM just judges and is like ‘Hey a character wants to try and do this, here’s what I think the DC should be.’ Or ‘here’s the kind of tweak I want to make to this check, OK you can that but if he fails by more than 5, or whatever, something bad is going to happen to you.’ So instead of giving you this full page rules on climbing that covers all these different cases, we need to say well hey if a character wants to climb well here’s how fast you can climb, and usually it’s a strength check and here are some sample DC’s, and here’s some other tweaks you might want to make to the check, but it’s really up to the DM. And the goal is to make those guidelines and rules simple enough that the DM is using them on the fly. You know it’s the kind of thing where it takes 5 minutes to learn it and then a lifetime to master.

And yet, what they keep repeating is that the rules they provide are intended to be clear and intended to be used. "We want to have a solid set of rules...". What I'm disputing is where people adduce that the rules set is not solid because it is complemented by rulings.

 

[Mistwell]

It's a solid set of guidelines.

 

[Oofta]

And yet, what they keep repeating is that the rules they provide are intended to be clear and intended to be used. "We want to have a solid set of rules...". What I'm disputing is where people adduce that the rules set is not solid because it is complemented by rulings.

Did you play previous versions? I'm just asking because when I did there were more rules arguments than there are in 5E, along with much, much more page-flipping to look up specifics. In addition, people who have only played 5E seem to have fewer issues with this kind of stuff.

I guess it just seems that people forget that previous versions had just as many if not more issues, and that the people who find an issue tend to be people that started with previous editions.

Of course that may not describe you or anyone else, everybody's preferences are going to vary.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Did you play previous versions? I'm just asking because when I did there were more rules arguments than there are in 5E, along with much, much more page-flipping to look up specifics. In addition, people who have only played 5E seem to have fewer issues with this kind of stuff.

I guess it just seems that people forget that previous versions had just as many if not more issues, and that the people who find an issue tend to be people that started with previous editions.

Of course that may not describe you or anyone else, everybody's preferences are going to vary.

You make me remember the halcyon days of yore when we would spend half the session flipping though our ever growing pile of 3.5 books arguing over rules. Ah memories.

 

[Oofta]

You make me remember the halcyon days of yore when we would spend half the session flipping though our ever growing pile of 3.5 books arguing over rules. Ah memories.

You mean back in the "good old days" when we had clarity because we had detailed rules except when we didn't because no set of rules could ever be complete?

Back when I had to walk to school in the snow? Uphill? Both ways? Fighting off the grizzly bears with my spiral ring notebook? Dang whipper-snappers ...

 

[clearstream]

You mean back in the "good old days" when we had clarity because we had detailed rules except when we didn't because no set of rules could ever be complete?

Back when I had to walk to school in the snow? Uphill? Both ways? Fighting off the grizzly bears with my spiral ring notebook? Dang whipper-snappers ...

Yup, back in the good old days when DMs weren't allowed to alter or ignore rules. Oh wait...

There are two questions here that I'm finding interesting. 1) Are rulings in some sense superior to rules? 2) Does whatever we decide about 1) entail that rules mean anything we want them to mean?

In looking at those questions, I ask other questions like - why buy rule books? what allows us to recognise a D&D game as a D&D game? what did we want from rules anyway?

My working premise is something like - Rules are a stable and meaningful foundation. They continue to have meaning even if we can alter or ignore them as we choose. We can have meaningful, resolvable debates about rules. A claim that rules mean whatever a given DM wants them to mean is not only unhelpful, in terms of the analysis of rules, but also false. A DM can alter or ignore the meaning, but cannot erase the meaning. As an aside, I think their meaning can be erased through removing them from context, i.e. rules only have meaning, given context.

 

[Mistwell]

Yup, back in the good old days when DMs weren't allowed to alter or ignore rules. Oh wait...

There are two questions here that I'm finding interesting. 1) Are rulings in some sense superior to rules? 2) Does whatever we decide about 1) entail that rules mean anything we want them to mean?

In looking at those questions, I ask other questions like - why buy rule books? what allows us to recognise a D&D game as a D&D game? what did we want from rules anyway?

My working premise is something like - Rules are a stable and meaningful foundation. They continue to have meaning even if we can alter or ignore them as we choose. We can have meaningful, resolvable debates about rules. A claim that rules mean whatever a given DM wants them to mean is not only unhelpful, in terms of the analysis of rules, but also false. A DM can alter or ignore the meaning, but cannot erase the meaning. As an aside, I think their meaning can be erased through removing them from context, i.e. rules only have meaning, given context.

The next quote from that podcast I was quoting above is Crawford chiming in on what Mearls had just said. Part of his response was, "And because in D&D each group has a kind of unspoken social contract we expect that the degree to which a DM is re-shaping the rules will change group by group. Because we know there are going to be groups where some of them are going to fully embrace this, they’re going to houserule the heck out of the game, and it’s going to be truly their Dungeons and Dragons not only in the story but even in the system. We know there are other groups where, what Mike just described, they’re thinking ‘Oh my God this is chaos!’ Those groups will be able to play the game as written and essentially have the official rules of the game and they will have enough there that they can run with it. "

Does that help?

 

[Mistwell]

Also for those curious about how they were originally thinking about Organized Play versus home play, Mearls explained the more canonical approach to rules for Organized Play in that podcast as follows:

"Mearls: I think there was a sense when 3rd edition came out, before the Internet really became such a social venue, that you wanted groups to have a really consistent application of the rules from group to group so that people can move around. But I think now that since everyone is online these days, or it’s easy to get on line and talk about things, that we have a much more connected community. And when you have a much more connected community it makes it much more easy for us to be much more open with letting people tinker with the rules, and we just assume you’re going to do that, because it’s much more easy to see as a whole what the community is doing, what DM’s are doing, different blogs about DM’ing, or how to put together adventures and stuff. There is a lot more communication. People are not as isolated as they used to be. So its much easier now, if you’re really into D&D, to just go online and just read up on how other people are approaching the game, and the different techniques. So you don’t have to say OK this is canonical, what you must do."

"Now for something like Organized Play, like the Forgotten Realms, what I imagine we’ll do is something similar to what a lot of games do, like say Magic [the Gathering] or whatever. And we’ll just say alright for Organized Play program, here are the ground rules. For that we’ll probably just say here’s what we expect the rules to be. But we don’t have to design the game for that. We just have to design a good game, and then create the subset of rules or the rules we add on that say here’s how it works for playing in Organized Play. Like for example in Magic you could put eight copies of a card in one deck. No one is stopping you. But that’s not a tournament legal deck, right? You could easily play that way. You could play Planechase at home, but that might not be what you’re playing at a Pro tournament. But you know that’s fine, it doesn’t break the game or make Magic incomprehensible, it’s just a different variant. "