Monte Cook on what rules are for

[Mark CMG]

Now I've never heard of a game breaking up over an argument about an NPC's body odour, but here is a more typical example of the same phenomenon that can and does break up games:

Player: "My guy attacks him.:

GM: "Why?"

Player: "Because he's evil and I hate evil!"

GM: "But he didn't detect evil when you cast your spell."​

From here, it can be a pretty short path to a busted game. Is the GM going to override the player's authority over his/her PC's volition?

The GM should be describing the consequences of the players' actions.

In the second example the ref is questioning the player's motives. That's a big no no IME. I'm not saying that questioning a player is wrong on the ref's part, but "Why" specifically isn't asked. How? Who? What? Where? When? Sure, any of those clarify the attempt.

Yup. That's just bad GMing. Certainly the GM should be asking for more information so that the consequences can be accurately described but that information needn't come from the question of "Why?" (Unless the GM believes that the player misunderstood the descrption of the detect evil spell or the consequences from using the spell and finding no evil.)

 

[Celtavian]

re

I don't think 3E is very simulationist. I think it is just as gamist as 4E, but provides wider range of situations it handles. Hit points don't at all mirror reality. Neither does the four iterative attacks during a 6 second period nor AC nor saving throws. Those are all gamist mechanics.

Seriously, good archers used to get off one great longbow shot every 12 seconds, whereas a 3E D&D archer can shoot 6 or 7 accurate shots hitting at ranges far beyond reasonable.

4E's 1 attack or two attacks during a combat round is closer to a simulationist approach than 3Es attack system.

The amount of damage dealt in 3E is far in excess of 4E damage. And much less realistic. Two-handed weapons in real combat are far less effective than they are in 3E. But someone wanted to make two-handed weapons fun for purely gamist reasons. Normally you put a two-handed fighter against a good single sword fighter, that two-handed fighter is going to die.

No edition of D&D has ever been simulationist in creation.

What 3E has over other editions is breadth of rules. Which is helpful to DMs. We have to deal with players. Players generally like to do a lot of things that aren't covered in the rules like grab people or disarm or create strange illusions or come up with odd ways to solve a problem. So it is up to we DMs to come up with a means to adjudicate that.

A game like 3E which had a lot of rules help for players and DMs to handle a great many situations. All of their rules very simple, gamist, with very minor touches of simulationist thinking like size bonuses on grapple. You have a simple, but interesting enough skill system that allows skills to be somewhat useful, though they still give far too few skill points to equal anything like a simulation. 3E is very gamist, but the wide breadth of rules gives DMs and players a lot of choices and means to adjudicate those choices. Which both players and DMs like.

To 4E which suddenly puts you back in the small box of older versions of D&D. Everything they can do is written into powers rather than extended rules for grappling and skills. Feats are no longer fighting styles, they are minor bonuses on some aspect of combat. All fighting is summed up in powers. All skills are for out of combat. Skill contests are now what skills are used for rather than combat. The wider breadth of gamist rules we had in 3E are reduced to the point where both players and DMs have more limited choices. This makes some happy because a DM can tell the player "You can't do that because their isn't a rule" and a player can have a very clear idea of what he can and cannot do. And I guess many liked 4E because of the nebulous idea of balance it introduced.

But all versions of D&D are gamist. For someone like me, I like breadth of rules and some attempts to build the gamist rules around things like fighting styles and the ability to do things like you would see in the real world even if the rules aren't adhering to real world phenomena in but the loosest of ways. I don't need a simulationist game. I need a game that at least makes sense and provides me with rule guidance for adjudicating as many different player actions as possible. That's what 3E provided with its wide breadth of rules. It used the simple gamist philosophy of the past by keeping everything simple, but it provided the means for players to do the many strange things that come to their minds. I like that in a rule set.