D&D 5E On rulings, rules, and Twitter, or: How Sage Advice Changed

[DEFCON 1]

I’m also struggling to see why anyone would follow @Charlaquin ’s advice to ignore this ruling, when it makes a lot of sense.

It's simply because (general) you should never have gotten to the point where you are actually reading the question, the answer, and then coming to a conclusion as to whether JC was right or wrong in his response in the first place.

(General) you should have already known what your ruling was at the time someone in (general) your game tried to use Bardic Inspiration on a Dispel Magic check. (General) you should have known how Bardic Inspiration works at your table, how the Dispel Magic spell works at your table, and thus how the two of them combined together at your table... and thus it doesn't matter at all what JC ultimately says.

B. Dave Walter's question and JC's response should be nothing more than a curiosity. That's it. Giving it any other credence is to go against the central premise of 5E altogether, which is Rulings, Not Rules.

 

[TheSword]

It's simply because (general) you should never have gotten to the point where you are actually reading the question, the answer, and then coming to a conclusion as to whether JC was right or wrong in his response in the first place.

(General) you should have already known what your ruling was at the time someone in (general) your game tried to use Bardic Inspiration on a Dispel Magic check. (General) you should have known how Bardic Inspiration works at your table, how the Dispel Magic spell works at your table, and thus how the two of them combined together at your table... and thus it doesn't matter at all what JC ultimately says.

B. Dave Walter's question and JC's response should be nothing more than a curiosity. That's it. Giving it any other credence is to go against the central premise of 5E altogether, which is Rulings, Not Rules.

Well that’s assuming I have a definite answer.

If I just assumed that bardic knowledge didn’t apply to Dispel checks and a player referred me to Sage Advice I’m probably going to adjust my position. Unless it’s something I feel strongly about. What would be the benefit of bloody mindedly sticking to my guns?

If I haven’t decided yet, or not come across it and unsure, we google... ‘bardic knowledge dispel check’ and see the Sage Advice tweet why would we not adopt this approach. Googling like that takes less than a minute.

In both cases. Sage Advice was useful.

 

[DEFCON 1]

What would be the benefit of bloody mindedly sticking to my guns?

It gets both you and your players in the mindset that no one else's opinions of D&D matter and it's only your own opinions of D&D that do.

If you open the door to letting your players go searching for other people's choices on how the game is played and try and use it to trump your own rulings... you're never going to see the end of it. Plus, you're occasionally going to have situations where you DO feel strongly about a rule and are then going to have shut your player down who brought in another ruling trying to change your mind. Enjoy that confrontation when it happens.

5E's Rulings, Not Rules was intentionally chosen as a credo so that no one would have to spend their time (or as I might say it, waste their time) searching for just the right answer. Whatever you decide in the moment IS the right answer. If others agree with you, cool! But if they don't... it doesn't mean you were wrong.

 

[TheSword]

It gets both you and your players in the mindset that no one else's opinions of D&D matter and it's only your own opinions of D&D that do.

If you open the door to letting your players go searching for other people's choices on how the game is played and try and use it to trump your own rulings... you're never going to see the end of it. Plus, you're occasionally going to have situations where you DO feel strongly about a rule and are then going to have shut your player down who brought in another ruling trying to change your mind. Enjoy that confrontation when it happens.

5E's Rulings, Not Rules was intentionally chosen as a credo so that no one would have to spend their time (or as I might say it, waste their time) searching for just the right answer. Whatever you decide in the moment IS the right answer. If others agree with you, cool! But if they don't... it doesn't mean you were wrong.

I’m a bit more pluralistic than you, I think. I have an open mind when I don’t have a dog in the fight. I’m happy to be led by the lead designer. I suspect most people ... particularly those returning to D&D or the new crop of players feel the same way.

 

[overgeeked]

This idea of products being produced with perfection from day one, is ignoring 50 years of modern business development. Product after product is released in a useable form and refined over time to improve it.

Sage advice is no different to the small clarifications and updates made to any game or technology product over time. Expecting perfection in the first place is doomed and leads to a poorer experience. Partly because perfection is subjective, partly because it takes too long.

The Ratters Guild is the discord community of WFRP. The writers past and present frequently drop by to post comments on rules conflicts. If you think 5e has odd rules combinations, believe me, you haven’t seen anything yet. It’s a game though. I do wish people would stop talking as if sage advice/errata/rule conflicts are some terrible injustice resulting in players being sentenced to life imprisonment.

The fact of the matter is that 95% of Sage advice tweets pass without mention because they’re generally common sense. The ones that tend to be controversial are the ones that close a loophole players have been exploiting or open one a DM objects to.

Nobody is forced to accept any ruling. However if given a choice between listening to Jeremy or ‘random faceless internet dude’ I’m gonna listen to Jem. It wouldn’t stop me changing it if I really disagreed but I’d expect to have to work a little harder to justify that to my players, or convince my DM.

There’s a vast universe of a gulf between “write for clarity” and “produced with perfection from day one.” Humans are imperfect beasts who will never reach perfection in anything, except perhaps needless cruelty. I don’t expect perfection. Errata happens. Writers and editors miss things. Mistakes happen. I do expect the writers of game rules to understand that rulebooks for games are first and foremost technical documents whose primary goal is clarity and precision in the transmission of clear an unambiguous game rules. That’s not expecting perfection, that’s expecting they understand the job they have.

 

[Mort]

We can go all the way back to 2E WoD and Rifts in the 1990s, and there'd be some rule which seemed pretty obvious and straightforward, and with Rifts Kevin Siembieda would be like "Well it's supposed to work like this..." and people were like "Hell no, that's completely dumb and directly disagrees with the text in the game..." (full disclosure: I was one of them, but far from the only one),

Siembieda once wrote that if a PC wilfully jumps on a grenade then that character is 100% dead, no matter his remaining SDC or other considerations. Which is all well and good, but he wrote that in a forward to a SUPERHERO game (the Villains Unlimited supplement of Heroes Unlimited)!?! Some designers miss the intent of their own games.

 

[Parmandur]

I think the greatest part of Sage Advice is that a DM could interpret this sentence to mean something else (because natural language isn't as hard-coded as english professors want you to believe) and the players don't have some sort of actual authoritative evidence to argue with the DM.

If the DM says "Any combat resets long rests, that's how I read it." Then that's how it plays regardless what you try to convince them about the structure of prepositions.

Alternatively, the DM can just allow a Long Rest to happen without having to get into complex calculations.

 

[TheSword]

There’s a vast universe of a gulf between “write for clarity” and “produced with perfection from day one.” Humans are imperfect beasts who will never reach perfection in anything, except perhaps needless cruelty. I don’t expect perfection. Errata happens. Writers and editors miss things. Mistakes happen. I do expect the writers of game rules to understand that rulebooks for games are first and foremost technical documents whose primary goal is clarity and precision in the transmission of clear an unambiguous game rules. That’s not expecting perfection, that’s expecting they understand the job they have.

That’s what you want first and foremost.

I equally want a book that is:

• Physically attractive.
• Conveys a theme and tone of the game through its artwork, sidebars, descriptions and introductory text.
• Inspires me to play the game with evocative language.
• Is fun to read.

 

[overgeeked]

That’s what you want first and foremost.

Almost. It’s what game rulebooks are meant to be. That’s literally why they exist. To clearly and precisely convey the rules of the game.

I equally want a book that is:

• physically attractive.
• Conveys a theme and tone of the game through its artwork sidebars and introductory text.
• Inspires me to play the game with evocative language.
• Is fun to read.

I’m not sure why you think well-written and clear rules would detract in any way from you getting what you want.

 

[Parmandur]

There’s a vast universe of a gulf between “write for clarity” and “produced with perfection from day one.” Humans are imperfect beasts who will never reach perfection in anything, except perhaps needless cruelty. I don’t expect perfection. Errata happens. Writers and editors miss things. Mistakes happen. I do expect the writers of game rules to understand that rulebooks for games are first and foremost technical documents whose primary goal is clarity and precision in the transmission of clear an unambiguous game rules. That’s not expecting perfection, that’s expecting they understand the job they have.

Game books are toys meant to facilitate fun. That might not always be aided by overly technical language.

 

[overgeeked]

Game books are toys meant to facilitate fun. That might not always be aided by overly technical language.

Where does the fun come from? Playing the game. How do we know how to play the game? By reading the rules. It’s a lot easier to learn how to play a game by reading well-written rules.

For example, the matter of combat and long rests could be cleared up with the simple inclusion of a colon. I don’t think that qualifies as “overly technical language”.

 

[Mort]

Where does the fun come from? Playing the game. How do we know how to play the game? By reading the rules. It’s a lot easier to learn how to play a game by reading well-written rules.

For example, the matter of combat and long rests could be cleared up with the simple inclusion of a colon. I don’t think that qualifies as “overly technical language”.

I'm fairly sure that, like much of 5e the the tone of the writing (natural language etc.) was partly due to (over)correction from 4e.

4e books were written in a technical (some would say dry) manner to facilitate comprehension - I liked it, many people did not.

 

[Parmandur]

Where does the fun come from? Playing the game. How do we know how to play the game? By reading the rules. It’s a lot easier to learn how to play a game by reading well-written rules.

For example, the matter of combat and long rests could be cleared up with the simple inclusion of a colon. I don’t think that qualifies as “overly technical language”.

The rules in 5E are pretty clear, though. Even the examples in this thread are mostly Crawford re-stating what I would say is pretty clear in the rules originally.

 

[Charlaquin]

I suspect the differing tone is probably a direct result of some of the challenges I see in response. When everything you say is parsed, relativized and twisted to a corkscrew. It’s ever likely he gives these people less ammo.

Let’s take for instance this recent item...

View attachment 136151

I don’t see how posts like this are anything but good for the game. I dispute the argument that Sage Advice tends to minimize player abilities. I actually find it pretty balanced. It also often does offer explanation for why he has made a call. It just tends to curb the worst excesses. I’m also struggling to see why anyone would follow @Charlaquin ’s advice to ignore this ruling, when it makes a lot of sense.

I find it a mystery. Not to mention a pretty confrontational approach to a designer clarifying how they see the game.

[That post was the most recent one, just in case people think I’m cherry picking.]

I mean, I agree with JC on that ruling. I just didn’t need to read it to reach that conclusion. And frankly, neither did B. Dave Walters. From his tweet, it sounds like he already knew how he wanted it to work and was fishing for validation. I think that goes against the spirit of Sage Advice and of 5e. He should have just worked it out with his own group instead of trying to appeal to JC’s authority.

If JC had gone into why the intent is for Bardic Inspiration to be so generous and what a DM looking to rule differently might want to consider, that would be valuable insight. I don’t blame him for not doing so, especially on Twitter, but the lack of insight makes his answer... Not particularly useful in my opinion.

 

[Parmandur]

I'm fairly sure that, like much of 5e the the tone of the writing (natural language etc.) was partly due to (over)correction from 4e.

4e books were written in a technical (some would say dry) manner to facilitate comprehension - I liked it, many people did not.

The 4E books were written in a technically correct manner...the best form of being correct.

They also looked good, but really, really didn't check any of those other boxes. It's hard to care about playing a game when reading the rules isn't fun.

 

[overgeeked]

The rules in 5E are pretty clear, though. Even the examples in this thread are mostly Crawford re-stating what I would say is pretty clear in the rules originally.

That there is a wide variety of readings and questions suggests the rules could have been written much, much better, i.e. clearer.

 

[Parmandur]

I mean, I agree with JC on that ruling. I just didn’t need to read it to reach that conclusion. And frankly, neither did B. Dave Walters. From his tweet, it sounds like he already knew how he wanted it to work and was fishing for validation. I think that goes against the spirit of Sage Advice and of 5e. He should have just worked it out with his own group instead of trying to appeal to JC’s authority.

If JC had gone into why the intent is for Bardic Inspiration to be so generous and what a DM looking to rule differently might want to consider, that would be valuable insight. I don’t blame him for not doing so, especially on Twitter, but the lack of insight makes his answer... Not particularly useful in my opinion.

I would say that the grind of answering these questions has broken him down. Honestly, a lot of his answers at this point are to just restate the 5E text and remind people that 3.x assumptions do not apply. Or reminders to just do whatever is fun.

Another factor is that the Sage Advise model seemed to majorly shift around the same time as a major personnel shift at the head of the D&D team, though I don't really want to get into that.

 

[Parmandur]

That there is a wide variety of readings and questions suggests the rules could have been written much, much better, i.e. clearer.

Not necessarily. Multivaliance can be a strength, particularly in a game where DIY is baked into the DNA. That the same rulebook can facilitate opposite play styles is one of the major successes of 5E.

 

[Mort]

The 4E books were written in a technically correct manner...the best form of being correct.

They also looked good, but really, really didn't check any of those other boxes. It's hard to care about playing a game when reading the rules isn't fun.

True.

The 4e magic items were easily the most boring of any edition.

Which is weird because the presentation of the artifacts was really, really good - the mechanic of the artifact growing or lessening in attunement depending on the acts of the user was awesome (The Eye of Vecna literally ripping itself out and leaving if it got pissed off enough at the user had me both on the floor laughing AND really wanting to get it into a campaign). If only they could have presented the rest of the items like that!

 

[Charlaquin]

The 4E books were written in a technically correct manner...the best form of being correct.

They also looked good, but really, really didn't check any of those other boxes. It's hard to care about playing a game when reading the rules isn't fun.

I found 4e a lot of fun to read.