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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9348239" data-attributes="member: 4937">So, I'd just about decided not to bother responding, but since the thread seems to be dying and no one has anything else they want to say compared to the fun of disagreeing with me, I thought I'd address the complaints that have arisen from a half-dozen or so posters collectively.   If you read through those comments, you find a couple of common unifying themes.  Some of those themes are obvious fallacies, and some of them are more subtle with important half-truths hidden in the complaint.  There is actually a surprising lot we agree on, but let's get rid of the fallacies so we can look at the good stuff:1) "The Oberoni/Rule Zero Fallacy": Probably the most famous informal fallacy in RPG design and who does it show up big time in this thread.  A ton of the objections are of the form, "If the rules are bad, well you can always just change the rules." or else, "If the rules are missing, you can always just add the rules."  Some posters have even gone so far as to make a virtue out of bad rules or missing rules because it allows the GM to exercise their creativity.  The nice thing about the Oberoni Fallacy is that it sets up an unfalsifiable standard.  No amount of evidence that the game would be better with a better rule or fewer holes in its resolution mechanics can prove that the game would be better with a better rule given the Oberoni test.  If a game is good because it is bad, then we have nothing to say about it.2) "The My Rulings Aren't Rules Because they Aren't Written Down Delusion":  You could also call this the "Common Law isn't Law, Only Constitutional Law" delusion.  This almost always comes alongside the Oberoni Fallacy.  The idea is that if a table deals with the silence of the rules by implementing a large number of ad hoc rulings and procedures of play that somehow this isn't adding to the rules, the cognitive burden, the number of things that are memorized, just because they aren't written down.  This particular delusion is often really common amongst people that have been playing 1st AD&D since the 1970s or early 1980s.   I've talked with multiple 1e AD&D GMs that whenever you ask them about how they deal with something, they immediately can answer you with a procedure of play.  "Oh, yeah, we just roll under strength when that comes up.  Sometimes we just roll straight up under 1D20 but depending on how I judge the difficulty of the action, I might ask them to roll under attribute on 1d8+1d12 or on 2d12, and then...."   And I'm not kidding, they can go on like that for literally hours.  I've at one point listened to a 1e AD&D GM list his processes of play he'd developed over 30 years of gaming for over four hours.  It's really impressive, but if you actually tried to document those processes of play what you'd realize is that they amount to having memorized basically another 270 pages of extra rules that form part of the core mechanics of this post 1e AD&D game system.   This is actually a vastly more complex system than what I'm advocating for, because those 270 pages of methodology for how you deal with the lack of a unified skill system and challenge resolution system in 1e A&D by tacking one on with house rules ends up being a lot more elaborate if you just rebooted around a clean unified core challenge system with like a single common fortune test system instead of 20 diverse subsystems each rolling different dice combinations against different targets.   The fact that you haven't documented your complex processes of play doesn't mean that they aren't rules.  They are just rules you haven't written down and which the group collectively learns (or doesn't) as you communicate them to them (or don't).   Your system doesn't get smaller when it depends heavily on rulings.  It's bigger.  Bodies of common law set by precedent tend to be much larger than constitutional or legislative law.  You're actually advocating for a system that I find too complicated.3) "GM rulings are always better than rules, so why do we need rules" fallacy: The argument could be made that since humans are capable of sophisticated reasoning there is no need for a large body of law.  We could just rely on the GMs judgement to handle everything and run this like a Braunstein.  And this is true.  We could dispense with the rules and run everything by GM fiat.  The question this raises for me is why have rules at all?  The problem with this argument is that it doesn't just kick in when you hit 1000 pages of rules or 3000 pages of rules.   This argument is equally valid against the first rule you propose having.  After all, any rule is likely to have exceptions where the GMs judgment is better than the unreasoning judgment of the rules.  So if you can think of any reason to have a rule, then that reason equally applies to the first rule or the second or the three hundredth.   This fallacy really is tangential to the debate over how big our tomes of rules need to be.  Instead, the real truth underlying here is that we do have to have reasons to add a rule to the system.  There are in fact costs and tradeoffs involved in having rules.  The system gets physically more expensive to produce and purchase.  It gets harder to play test.  It gets harder to track.  I'm aware that there are tradeoffs in having more rules.  But I want to point back to my first couple of posts in the thread here.  I argued right from the start that the core engine, the core resolution mechanics, of a system should probably occupy no more than about 30 pages.  So when I'm advocating for rules to cover 1000 or 3000 pages, I'm advocating for rules that are something other than core resolution mechanics.  All the rules that I'm talking about beyond those first 30 pages are not part of the typical ordinary proposition->fortune->resolution system that will come up repeatedly and most often in play and which forms the backbone on which all the other rules are built.  I'm arguing in fact that some sorts of game play and some sorts of game needs are emergent above and beyond that core gameplay loop and that there are reasons why you build rules for that emergent gameplay instead of trying to resolve it just by simple recourse to the game core challenge resolution mechanic.   And I'm arguing that there is a vast body of supporting material that describes the game play universe you are playing in, which ought to be documented in a way that interfaces with the rules.  And if you go back and look at the questions I had about what a system provides for, what those other 970 to 2970 pages of rules look like ought to become clear.  Because I'm certainly not calling for a core resolution mechanism to cover 1000 or 3000 pages, and if you act like I am, well you aren't taking this (IMO important) discussion very seriously.More to follow about the actual more serious complaints against my position when I get a break.</blockquote>

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