New Legends and Lore: The Rules

[TerraDave]

One thing about the advice in the 08 DMG: it would have been good if WotC had followed it for its adventures...

 

[Balesir]

No system as written will ever perfectly match the styles of everyone at the table; all will need some adaptation to really sing. Worse still, people's preferred styles will drift over time. Far better to support the group in adapting the game (and evolving it as necessary), rather than sticking with "here's what our game does, and nothing else."

Any game can be adapted somewhat, but there comes a point where, for me at least, I decide that I would be far better starting with a different system.

I'm not sure that styles "drifting over time" is actually accurate, either, except as a result of blinkered attitiudes. Having 'discovered' a range of styles, I actually enjoy several of them. I pick a system to use for a specific game to fit with the particular style I want to play. When I have picked a system, it follows that I want a game that does what that system supports, not some other thing that I would be better using a different system for.

Bear in mind that if D&D had never looked into other styles, there would be no Dark Sun, no Spelljammer, no Ravenloft, no Eberron... oh, and no 4e.

Hmm, definitional issues again. I don't count any of those D&D variants as being good at supporting fundamentally different styles. Pretty much all D&D supports pretty much the same style - 4E just does that specific style better than any previous edition.

To try to be clearer, when I say "radically different style" I mean, for example, the difference between D&D (where you have a DM and players who each have one character with hit points and attributes, etc.) and Universalis (where you have no GM, no set character attributes, no fixed character for each player and the world setting is developed by everyone collectively).

The differences between "flavours" of D&D really are quite minor.

 

[Skyscraper]

But I think in the case of 4e the situation is a bit different. 4e is fundamentally a fairly simple RPG. You have stats, defenses, skills, and powers, and a d20 mechanic, and then you have various general combat rules (action system, LoS/LoE, etc). Then there are a few other rules (a few exploration rules, more general cases of resolution, SCs, a few others). Where you have complexity and sheer scale is in the number of elements that use that core, and the way those elements can combine (which they can only do BECAUSE the core is uniform and simple).

Contrast with 1e AD&D, which had a MORE complex core in many respects. Many things were not done in consistent ways, there were lots of strange fiddly combat rules that practically nobody ever understood, etc. It wasn't BIGGER than the 4e core, but it was certainly more complicated to use. OTOH in terms of game elements it was much smaller. There were never more than 10 classes, around 300 spells, nothing like feats, etc.

AD&D actually has a surprisingly large number of rules, you can adjudicate MANY things in 1e that are simply not even mentioned in 4e. It wasn't that in 1e you had less to work with and had to intervene more, it was more like you had to apply lots of duct tape to 1e to keep all the parts working when things got outside of what was written. In 4e OTOH its d20 mechanic 'just works'.


Hmmm, yeah, I think basically the thing is you cannot generalize about 'rules'. As Mike stated in his article there are different types of rules. Some are proscriptive, some are prescriptive, some are advisory, some are structural, and some are just ideas. Also it depends a lot on the type of system. In 4e you have a strong general resolution mechanic that is used uniformly, so you can attach many specific situational rules to that which are mostly prescriptive. You can have loads of them, and still have flexibility because you can just fall back to basic d20 mechanics whenever it makes sense. That isn't true of all systems.

Good points all around.

 

[Skyscraper]

I haven't read the DMG2

I highly recommend reading it. 4E DMG 2 gives fantastic RP ideas. It's the best DMG I've read, I believe.

 

[Jhaelen]

Ii donnt think the solution for d&d is to be super customizable. The solution is to create an edition that appeals broadly to as many styles as possible but doesn't go too far in one direction.

I don't think so. We already have that and it's called GURPS.

I prefer focused rpg systems that provide mechanics that work best for their intended playstyle. A 'super customizable' D&D is the last thing I'd want.

This is something I've often read and never understood: Why are some players so keen to bend D&D out of shape and use it for something it's particularly bad at? Why use a hammer to tighten a screw?

There's a plethora of brilliant rpg systems for every style, genre, and setting. Why not use one of them if D&D isn't well-suited for what you want to do?

 

[delericho]

Any game can be adapted somewhat, but there comes a point where, for me at least, I decide that I would be far better starting with a different system.

True. It's just a shame that it's often easier to heavily adapt a system in ways that don't really suit than it is to find players who'll try an alternate system. Sadly, lots of people will play 4e or nothing.

I'm not sure that styles "drifting over time" is actually accurate, either, except as a result of blinkered attitiudes. Having 'discovered' a range of styles, I actually enjoy several of them.

For the first several years of play, my tendency was always to very crunch-heavy games, with very complex rules systems. I had no interest in 'story', or anything that went with it.

Then things gradually changed. Endlessly hacking through dungeons lost some of its charm; it was important to consider why. At about the same time, I discovered "Vampire: the Masquerade", and moved to a very storyteller style.

The thing is, although I did come back to D&D, my style had changed irreversibly by then. We didn't just go back to the crunch-heavy dungeon hack; there were always heavy story elements, and role-playing was really important, in a way it just hadn't been in the older days.

Even so, my tendency towards greater complexity had never changed. Even when playing Vampire, I'd been constantly tinkering with the system, trying to 'fix' it. (Some might say I was completely missing the point...)

So 3e really sang to me. It was immediately obvious that this was the game we should have had since forever. The maths were so clear, so obvious. And the system was so extensible...

But again, over the last few years, my style has shifted. The weaknesses of 3e became glarigly apparent, especially at high levels. The heavy crunch started detracting from the story elements that remain of crucial importance to me. (Going "core rules only" helps, but only a bit. Many of the problems are fundamental to the system, and cannot be fixed within the 3e framework.)

That's a large part of why I disdain 4e - the game as released in the PHB/DMG/MM is far too limited for me, but if you go much beyond that the bloat of options is such that I just have no interest in digging in to it. It's also why I don't run Pathfinder - the game is just too heavy for what I want now. And it's why I really like Star Wars Saga Edition.

That's what I mean by drifting styles. It's nothing to do with blinkered attitudes; it's just a preference for running the game in a particular way, and a way that genuinely has shifted over time, from "rules-heavy, no RP" to "heavy RP, tending towards complexity", to "heavy RP, solid mechanics, tending to complexity", to "heavy RP, tending back towards simplicity".

Hmm, definitional issues again. I don't count any of those D&D variants as being good at supporting fundamentally different styles. Pretty much all D&D supports pretty much the same style - 4E just does that specific style better than any previous edition.

I disagree with literally everything in this paragraph.

To try to be clearer, when I say "radically different style" I mean, for example, the difference between D&D (where you have a DM and players who each have one character with hit points and attributes, etc.) and Universalis (where you have no GM, no set character attributes, no fixed character for each player and the world setting is developed by everyone collectively).

I see. It probably is a definitional issue, then. When I say I was an "Advanced DMG" to talk about handling different styles, it is the differences between, say Spelljammer and Dark Sun that I mean, not the differences between D&D and Universalis. But also the differences between "tending towards complexity" and "tending towards simplicity", or "no RP" and "heavy RP".

 

[delericho]

I prefer focused rpg systems that provide mechanics that work best for their intended playstyle. A 'super customizable' D&D is the last thing I'd want.

This is something I've often read and never understood: Why are some players so keen to bend D&D out of shape and use it for something it's particularly bad at? Why use a hammer to tighten a screw?

Because the way you run D&D isn't the way I run D&D. In my RPG group we have six different GMs, of whom four have experience running D&D in various incarnations. All four visions of the game are vastly different.

Hell, my current campaign is very distinctly different from my previous campaign, despite using exactly the same system (including most of the same house rules), the same DM, most of the same players...

 

[delericho]

I think you really SHOULD read DMG2.

Maybe one day. I have a policy of not spending money on books for games I'm not going to run...

Really, the PLAYERS should know the rules. A 1e style DMG honestly never made sense "Oh, the DM has all the tables and charts, you shouldn't know what your character actually needs to hit anything!" lul wut?

Ah, the 1st Edition DMG. I have actually been reading the 1st Edition books for the first time this year, and finished the DMG last weekend. And I was shocked at how poor it actually is - badly organised, full of tedious minutae in many places, quite confusing at times (I read the initiative rules three times, and still don't understand them), and so on... (Which is probably heretical, I know... )

However, where the 1st Ed DMG excels is in the appendices, with all that material on building dungeons, stocking dungeons... and the little flavour bits, such as the dungeon trappings, the medicinal uses for herbs, the inspirational reading...

The 2nd Edition DMG is a sad joke. Fortunately, they went some way towards fixing that with the "Campaign Sourcebook and Catacomb Guide". Even so, I don't think they ever actually explained how to build an adventure.

The 3e DMG contains much of the solid stuff from the 1st Ed DMG, and is considerably better organised. Sadly, it spends so much time on dungeon trappings and the like that it's really dull. Plus, it doesn't actually say much about running the game - that wouldn't come until the DMG2.

So, yeah, the 4e DMG1 doesn't actually fare too badly in the comparison.

So, yes, DMG1 is all talk. What else would it be? The writing is excellent and it covers a lot of value and I think it actually is quite an excellent Dungeon Master's GUIDE. In other words it is a textbook on the nuts-and-bolts of DMing 4e and a pretty good one.

It's missing two key things:

1) An in-depth, step-by-step tutorial for building the first adventure.

2) An in-depth, step-by-step tutorial for running the first adventure.

The material is there, but it's spread out, and buried in a 224-page book. If you give that to a kid looking to start running games, he'll respond "TL;DR", and just wing it. And then, when it all goes horribly wrong, he'll give up and play WoW instead.

For someone with an advanced understanding of how to DM it may not be all that revelatory and then you're quite right, you could have a 50 page book with nothing but the crunch and a few paragraphs of advice on how it is intended to be used and be done with it.

I would advocate splitting the DMG into two sections. The main section should provide the two tutorials right at the start (with Kobold Hall or equivalent used as the example for the first tutorial, then presented in full immediately thereafter), then continuing with an ongoing tutorial for the DM on continuing the adventures, building a short campaign, then a longer campaign, the basics of a setting, and so on.

The second section, the appendices, should provide all the crunch. Put it all together at the back of the book, so the experienced DM can ignore the tutorials and still find what he needs easily. That's if we need to have the crunch at all.

So, I think with DMG1 it is a matter of you're probably not the primary audience.

No doubt. I come from a family of educators (while being the rebel of the family; I went into software engineering), so I have fairly strong opinions on how training materials should be presented. And, IMO, the DMG1 very definitely should be training materials.

DMG2 OTOH has a lot of pretty specific "here's how you can fix this problem" or "here's how you can approach doing this kind of thing".

That does sound really quite good. Maybe I will pick up a copy...

 

[Jhaelen]

Because the way you run D&D isn't the way I run D&D.

Okay. But why is that so?

People have different preferences and earlier editions of D&D were more flexible than 3e and 4e.

Gaping holes in the rules are a good thing if you enjoy customizing the game to fit your vision of a system that caters to your preferences:
My 2e houserules eventually filled a big folder. Was it still D&D? Perhaps, perhaps not.

3e was the first edition that worked well for me 'as written'. But it lost a lot of it's previous flexibility. Since I preferred the direction the game had taken that was a good thing for me. It focused on the system's strengths. 4e works even better for me because in addition to a better focus it also features an improved user-friendliness - at least for DMs.

Finally, Essentials is an attempt to improve user-friendliness for the players.
What is there left to improve except details?

Imho, trying to regain the flexibility of old will result in losing focus. The end result would be a serious step back in the game's evolution.

 

[delericho]

3e was the first edition that worked well for me 'as written'. But it lost a lot of it's previous flexibility. Since I preferred the direction the game had taken that was a good thing for me. It focused on the system's strengths. 4e works even better for me because in addition to a better focus it also features an improved user-friendliness - at least for DMs.

Finally, Essentials is an attempt to improve user-friendliness for the players.
What is there left to improve except details?

4e doesn't meet my needs. Not at all. Therefore, there's a very long list of things that I believe could be improved, including some of the fundamental assumptions of the system.

A more specifc, less-flexible system is great for you, provided it meets your needs out of the box. But that's only ever going to be true for a very small minority of groups; for most, at least some measure of adaptation is going to be necessary.

For anything but the most minor levels of adaptation, a much more flexible system is better.

Imho, trying to regain the flexibility of old will result in losing focus. The end result would be a serious step back in the game's evolution.

If we're talking evolution, then any step away from flexibility, and thus the ability to adapt, is a step in the wrong direction.

D&D is, and always has been, a broad church. It's the lingua franca of RPGs. And that's a large part of its appeal - player A may prefer system A, and player B may prefer system B, but if player A hates system B, and vice versa, at least they're able to compromise on D&D (in most cases).

By locking the game down into the specific d20 form, WotC reduced that ability to compromise. By locking it down even further into 4e, they reduced it still further. There is a very large group of players who simply will not play 4e, just as there is a very large who will not play Pathfinder. And that is not a good thing.