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

[TheSword]

I've seen designers interpretations of their own (or their company's) rules cause internet angry faces for decades.

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), and some of the WoD stuff (which wasn't even expressed as rulings generally, just suggestions) got people pretty angry. WoD overall annoyed a lot more people with really questionable Storyteller advice than rules stuff though. There was a bit of an issue generally in the 1990s with GM advice for various RPGs representing a disconnect between the authorial intention of the game and "how it was actually played", but that's a whole other (lengthy) topic.

Or good grief the original 1E/2E Dragon Sage Advice, which caused an awful lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth (often justifiedly lol, some of that column was spectacularly silly in a bad way or clearly misunderstood - and in some cases didn't even seem to have checked - the rules).

And that didn't carry the same (inaccurately) perceived weight as Jezza's stuff. Ironically, I think the fact that he started out giving opinions, and that the stuff isn't errata makes people want to argue with it more.

Hard disagree, in fact I daresay this is outright incorrect.

You're discussing actual errata and rules clarifications (and or software patches/fixes). That was the approach 4E took. It is not the approach 5E is taking, neither when it started out, nor presently.

Yup. His opinions are rarely seen beasts these days. Even the stuff he seems to be putting a spin on the RAW of, it's pretty much always for the sake of balance, which I doubt is what he values in his home game or w/e.

I suspect we just fundamentally disagree on the approach. That’s cool. It isn’t errata... yet. But he is the lead designer of D&Ds rules so it carries weight with me (and I suspect a lot of other people).

It is called Sage Advice and not Sage Law.

I don’t experience the same rejection of Jem’s opinions like the single magic missile roll or the resting time. These seem to be blown out of all proportion as like the discussion of what counts as a weapon.

In a game where players invariably want an advantage against their foes in the rules. Having the lead designer chart a middle course between DMs and Players seems like a very sensible approach to me.

I suspect Jem does care about balance a lot more than you give him credit for.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

In a game where players invariably want an advantage against their foes in the rules. Having the lead designer chart a middle course between DMs and Players seems like a very sensible approach to me.

Problem is that that very concept goes directly against the approach discussed in early 5E SA and against the whole "rulings not rules" notion that 5E was supposedly designed to support. Also, I don't see any evidence of "charting a middle course", at all. I see only literalistic, lawyerly interpretations of 5E's rules, which don't represent a "middle course" but an entirely different approach.

I suspect Jem does care about balance a lot more than you give him credit for.

Define "care".

I don't think it's a priority for him when he's running/playing stuff, based on comments he's made, but I think it is when he's designing stuff and his lawyerly interpretations tend to skew towards minimizing the power of things.

It isn’t errata... yet.

99.5% or thereabouts of what he says in SA won't be errata ever. Maybe even higher. So "yet" is really odd in that context.

But he is the lead designer of D&Ds rules so it carries weight with me (and I suspect a lot of other people).

I can't really speak for anyone else, but it's interesting to see how the reputation of SA declined on the 5E reddit over the years. When it started, people were constantly doing exactly what @Charlaquin warns us against here - treating his rulings as RAW/RAI - and more importantly close to the word of law. But there's been a steady decline in how seriously people take them, which sped up after he stopped really explaining them and got increasingly rules lawyer-ish, to the point where any mention of SA is now immediately met with "it's just a suggestion, not a rule" or the like and people discussing alternative takes which make work better.

Personally, his lawyerly opinion as to how a rule works carries relatively little weight, because I've been playing RPGs for 30+ years, and I've seen designers get stuff "wrong" about their own games countless times, especially when they get into the weeds on rules. However, I was always very interested when he explained why they made rules certain ways, what the goal was, and so on, and still am. If you want to convince me to use a certain odd or silly-seeming rule a specific way, just explain why it should work that way from a design perspective. But if all you do is explain how you believe a rule works, why would I care? Your game literally told me not to care!

 

[DEFCON 1]

I can't help but find it funny that even now after 6 1/2 years some people still get so annoyed that the 5E rules are just an "It is what it is" document.

- Has the focus on Sage Advice changed over the years? Yeah, but so what?

- Have the rules evolution perhaps not aligned with the original design intent back in 2013? Yeah, but so what?

- Has errata begun adding one or two things to actually change rules rather than just clarify them even though way back when they said they weren't planning to do that? Yeah, but so what?

All of this is exactly why a lot of my posts always talk about the "board game" of D&D, and why it's not worth it to treat that like it's the important part of the game rather than the story and narrative building roleplaying part. Because the "board game" has a lot of holes, has a lot of ambiguity, has a lot of misalignment between the game rules and the "narrative" the rules are meant to represent, has a lot of parts that might not be all that fun to play, and most importantly turns some players into a-holes when they can't get things to work the way they want them to.

There's a reason why both the 3E and 4E "D&D miniatures" games got almost no traction in the marketplace. Because on their own-- without the roleplaying part layered on top-- D&D combat just isn't all that great compared to other boards games out there you could be playing instead. And thus spending all this time hounding Jeremy and consulting Sage Advice and bickering here on EN World in an effort to make the rules airtight is like putting lipstick on a pig in my opinion.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

There's a reason why both the 3E and 4E "D&D miniatures" games got almost no traction in the marketplace. Because on their own-- without the roleplaying part layered on top-- D&D combat just isn't all that great compared to other boards games out there you could be playing instead.

I'm not sure that's actually true.

Even without RP I felt like 4E was a long way ahead of say, Descent, or most dungeon-bash boardgames I've played (I haven't played Gloomhaven note). I think it's more an issue of perception, particularly that they're "dumbed down" compared to the RPG, or, from a boardgame perspective, overcomplicated and not really designed as boardgames. Which isn't really the same issue.

And thus spending all this time hounding Jeremy and consulting Sage Advice and bickering here on EN World in an effort to make the rules airtight is like putting lipstick on a pig in my opinion.

I feel like this is misunderstanding the motivations of people who do it, and the idea that people asking someone to do something they offered to do is "hounding" them seems to fall into the realm of intentional mischaracterizations lol, even if it is an amusing one. If JC decided he was done with SA stuff, sure, it'd be hounding.

I believe that the reason people do this is because, as I noted, 5E is actually written in quite a tight, almost MtG-like or 4E-like way in a lot of ways, and the way it's written generally encourages one to think, if there is a rule, there's a right way to understand it, and a wrong way.

This isn't an approach all RPGs take. It's not the approach you'd expect a game with 5E's alleged ethos to take. But it is the approach they took, and I do think it helps keep 5E's appeal broad, but it has a consequence. People want to know the "right" way to understand a rule. This is why as @Charlaquin said, his approach to SA has become pared back. The sort of people who want to know his understanding of a rule aren't interested in RAI or RAF, only RAW. Someone like me, I would pretty much never naturally go looking for SA, because I'm quite capable of deciding what a rule means, and only if it was really terrible would I go looking. RAI and RAF are very interesting to me, though, so that was cool and helped give context and stuff. But again, for a lot of people, there's a right way and a wrong way to understand the rule, and they want the "right way". I don't think that's inherently a bad thing, but it is evidence perhaps of how D&D occupies a slightly weird space in RPGs, where a lot of people are playing as something closer to a somewhat free-form boardgame, and less as what might conventionally be regarded as an RPG.

- Has the focus on Sage Advice changed over the years? Yeah, but so what?

- Have the rules evolution perhaps not aligned with the original design intent back in 2013? Yeah, but so what?

- Has errata begun adding one or two things to actually change rules rather than just clarify them even though way back when they said they weren't planning to do that? Yeah, but so what?

Personally I think the "so what" is "it's really interesting to see". I'm particularly interested in the lack of alignment between design intent and rules evolution and so on, because it's fascinating to see this sort of process.

 

[TheSword]

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...

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.]

 

[tetrasodium]

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.

That's the PHB not SA, wotc actually wrote that somehow thinking it was reasonable. Interrupting a rest is generally ptretty pointless & dickish unless rthe players rested someplace the gm explicitly told them was a stupid idea. Even the, throwing it onto the gm to invent some new rest mechanic that doesn't make "ok lets try again" the immediate next step goes back to the dickish point but changes the victim to the poor gm. The whole problem of making the GM look bad by forcing them to change so many areas in the system to turn the danger up a hair north of "deadpool & wolverine & a looney tunes episode."

Saying rulings not rules about the plain $ RAW reading of the phb loses the softening when in nearly every case its worded to dislike the players up to some degree & either force the gm into a corner or make the GM the bad guy creating horrible mean mildly lethal rules

 

[GlassJaw]

I'll say up front that I love 5E. I've played every edition and it's my favorite. It's well-designed system that checks a lot of boxes for a lot of people.

That said, I will also admit that it's tight enough to handle most interactions but loose enough to create discrepancies. Plus it's been "playtested" by a multitude more people than most games even dream of getting.

On top of this, Sage Advice has been inconsistent. And not just inconsistent in the actual rulings but also inconsistent in the nature of its rulings. Sometimes that have been draconian and ultra-specific and other times somewhat hand-wavy and contradictory.

Overall, Sage Advice is a useful tool but it's just that: one tool or resource you can draw upon for determining what works best for your home game.

If you sit at my table and have Shield Master, you can use your bonus action to swing your shield first when your attack.

 

[TheSword]

That's the PHB not SA, wotc actually wrote that somehow thinking it was reasonable. Interrupting a rest is generally ptretty pointless & dickish unless rthe players rested someplace the gm explicitly told them was a stupid idea. Even the, throwing it onto the gm to invent some new rest mechanic that doesn't make "ok lets try again" the immediate next step goes back to the dickish point but changes the victim to the poor gm. The whole problem of making the GM look bad by forcing them to change so many areas in the system to turn the danger up a hair north of "deadpool & wolverine & a looney tunes episode."

Saying rulings not rules about the plain $ RAW reading of the phb loses the softening when in nearly every case its worded to dislike the players up to some degree & either force the gm into a corner or make the GM the bad guy creating horrible mean mildly lethal rules

I agree with you in principle. But I would say, whether the DM interrupts the rest with a single round of fighting, or several attacks. Either way the DM has chosen to interrupt the rest. If that’s the DMs aim then that’s what’s gonna happen. I agree that interrupting rests is a bit of a douche move. But it is the DMs move. I’m not sure they’re forced to it... unless I’m misunderstanding you.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

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.

I don't think that's a remotely reasonable way to use the word "confrontational" lol that is more than a reach, that's a rocket to the moon.

The point is that 5E itself suggests SA should be ignored, not sure why that's controversial given the rulings not rules approach is key.

 

[tetrasodium]

I agree with you in principle. But I would say, whether the DM interrupts the rest with a single round of fighting, or several attacks. Either way the DM has chosen to interrupt the rest. If that’s the DMs aim then that’s what’s gonna happen. I agree that interrupting rests is a bit of a douche move. But it is the DMs move. I’m not sure they’re forced to it... unless I’m misunderstanding you.

Yea on that last bit. Tge thing gms are forced into us rewriting tge rules so saying something like a perfectly reasonable "guys taking a long rest in the bad guy's keep is a really really monumentally stupid idea and every one of your characters know thst" holds slightly more weight than "men whatever I think we are going to be fine lets do this guys". Over & over the rules are written where the risk is so low that it's hard to expect any other player reaction and it does rest consistently almost without fail in that fashion