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

[mrpopstar]

"Perfect is the enemy of good." This means that if something is good, not using it because it's not perfect is a bad idea. This is a good statement, that reminds us that sometimes you have to take the non-perfect solution and that's fine.

Yours, though, suggests that it's never a good idea to try and improve if what you're doing is sufficient. This is anathema to my worldview. I'm always striving to improve what I do. My job is about improving things. I just cannot agree with this formulation at a fundamental level. If your approach to life is that things are fine if they work at all, then, sure, we're just never going to have a productive conversation. Happy gaming!

My approach to game night is that things are fine if they work for three hours or so every other Thursday.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Sorry if this has been addressed but... you do realize that the BIFTs in the PHB and elsewhere are literally suggested characteristics. Right? Players can create any Trait, Ideal, Bond, Flaw they want - even ones that are complex and/or non-tropey. So... there's that.

Sure -- make it work yourself is a core tenet of D&D. However, the arguments from upthread focused on how the tables in the book provided everything needed -- making them up yourself was considered icing. The rebuttal to this is that there are no guideline or recommendations for making these up yourself -- what makes for a good Ideal? Dunno, if I'm going by the rules, I have to figure that out myself. Maybe I do a good job and get it right, or maybe I end up with an Ideal that never seems to fit the game I actually play -- 5e offers no help here.

 

[Ovinomancer]

My approach to game night is that things are fine if they work for three hours or so every other Thursday.

Good for you. Why are you here on these boards, though, if you're uninterested in doing it better?

EDIT: and by better, I mean better for you, not some ideal way to play.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Man, this thread has put me in the mood for Olive Garden...

 

[mrpopstar]

Good for you. Why are you here on these boards, though, if you're uninterested in doing it better?

EDIT: and by better, I mean better for you, not some ideal way to play.

I'm always interested in doing better, I'm just not interested in rewriting any rules or using another system.

Temperature check: We've just taken a hard pivot from me defending my game (which I'm cool with) to me defending myself (which I'm not). You're starting to make this personal. Please don't do that.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I'm always interested in doing better, I'm just not interested in rewriting any rules or using another system.

Sure, that's fine. It's an arbitrary line in the sand that I don't think holds, because I doubt you're against houserules for you own games. To be fair, though, this line of argument reads like claiming that the pizza you eat is the best pizza, only to find out you've only ever had 1 kind of pizza from one outlet and not tried anything else. It's very possible that, even if you did, that would still be your favorite pizza (I mean, I still very much like 5e even after trying other games), but someone that has tried other pizzas my find how you argue that the only one you've tried is great pizza a bit flat. "It's got sauce!" Yeah, pizza does that, is it good sauce, though? "It's sauce!" Okay, but is the sauce doing what you want? "It does sauce things!" Okay....

Temperature check: We've just taken a hard pivot from me defending my game (which I'm cool with) to me defending myself (which I'm not). You're starting to make this personal. Please don't do that.

Sure. I'd love a rules discussion that didn't invoke personal arguments like not wanting to discuss a rule because of where you work or some pithy malapropism. Let's do that!

 

[Oofta]

I think, and note what I'm saying here, in one respect they're not wrong; people who've played a variety of games do have the right to say they have a slightly broader perspective on mechanics, what works in what circumstances, and why. That's kind of inevitable from knowing other systems, not only theoretically but "on the ground" as it were.

What that doesn't say is that they have a right to tell people what to enjoy. Nor to project on others their assumptions that the other person is kidding themself.

But the latter doesn't tell me I should stop telling people they seem to be using a wrench as a hammer in some cases.

(Though the point in the post I was replying to was to note that there's a class of player/GM who's outside this whole discussion; they aren't really so much saying D&D is what they prefer as saying its all they've known and it has served them well enough they haven't been motivated to do the heavy lifting to try anything else. If they did, they might well decide, like you, D&D was really what they did want, or like many other people, that' they'd just been getting by with it. There's just no way to say because their situation hasn't exposed them to anything else enough to try.)

My comment wasn't really directed at any one poster.

But when it comes to conversations like this, I don't need to have played other systems to know what my preference is. I don't need to play a different game to know what I like and do not. I prefer to have freeform games when it comes to running PCs and social interactions and no system, no matter how elegant will change that. When it comes to specific implementations? Sure others will have a better grasp. But this edition comes close enough to hitting the sweet spot.

I know myself well enough that I won't like anchovy pizza even though I've never eaten it. I don't need to try pizza with jalapenos because I don't really care for that type of spicy. I don't need to play Blades in the Dark to know that for me, I'd prefer to play D&D (or several other games) even if I only glanced at the rules.

So sure. Discuss rules. Just don't tell me that rules that provide a carrot and stick to enforce what my PC thinks and does is universally "better".

 

[Ovinomancer]

My comment wasn't really directed at any one poster.

But when it comes to conversations like this, I don't need to have played other systems to know what my preference is. I don't need to play a different game to know what I like and do not. I prefer to have freeform games when it comes to running PCs and social interactions and no system, no matter how elegant will change that. When it comes to specific implementations? Sure others will have a better grasp. But this edition comes close enough to hitting the sweet spot.

I know myself well enough that I won't like anchovy pizza even though I've never eaten it. I don't need to try pizza with jalapenos because I don't really care for that type of spicy. I don't need to play Blades in the Dark to know that for me, I'd prefer to play D&D (or several other games) even if I only glanced at the rules.

So sure. Discuss rules. Just don't tell me that rules that provide a carrot and stick to enforce what my PC thinks and does is universally "better".

Sure thing, no one has said as much. What has been said is that if you want to carrot and stick a behavior in a game, BIFTs do a poor job and other systems do this better.

 

[mrpopstar]

Sure, that's fine. It's an arbitrary line in the sand that I don't think holds, because I doubt you're against houserules for you own games. To be fair, though, this line of argument reads like claiming that the pizza you eat is the best pizza, only to find out you've only ever had 1 kind of pizza from one outlet and not tried anything else. It's very possible that, even if you did, that would still be your favorite pizza (I mean, I still very much like 5e even after trying other games), but someone that has tried other pizzas my find how you argue that the only one you've tried is great pizza a bit flat. "It's got sauce!" Yeah, pizza does that, is it good sauce, though? "It's sauce!" Okay, but is the sauce doing what you want? "It does sauce things!" Okay....

Call it cherished ignorance, or maybe curated bliss. Either way, I'm content. I like the rules for personality characteristics and inspiration. I think they're fun. I don't want or need anything more complicated.

Note that I engage in the Dungeons & Dragons forum and not the TTRPG General forum. That's also a choice made with intention.

Sure. I'd love a rules discussion that didn't invoke personal arguments like not wanting to discuss a rule because of where you work or some pithy malapropism. Let's do that!

I never said that I don't want to discuss the rule. I've been doing so for multiple pages of this hijacked thread.

What I said I don't want is for this to become needlessly personal, like being told that I'm pithy and arbitrary. -- Do you talk to people like that in real life? Jeez.

 

[Thomas Shey]

But when it comes to conversations like this, I don't need to have played other systems to know what my preference is. I don't need to play a different game to know what I like and do not. I prefer to have freeform games when it comes to running PCs and social interactions and no system, no matter how elegant will change that. When it comes to specific implementations? Sure others will have a better grasp. But this edition comes close enough to hitting the sweet spot.

And that's fine. But at the moment someone says "This game does X better than anything else" the less of "anything else" someone is familiar with can't be ignored. And there's a distinct hierarchy of familiarity with "told about" < "read" < "read and played" < "read and GMed". That doesn't mean you always need to go all the way down the hierarchy to know something isn't for you or serve your purposes, but it does matter when talking about elements of play in a more general sense.

I know myself well enough that I won't like anchovy pizza even though I've never eaten it. I don't need to try pizza with jalapenos because I don't really care for that type of spicy. I don't need to play Blades in the Dark to know that for me, I'd prefer to play D&D (or several other games) even if I only glanced at the rules.

So sure. Discuss rules. Just don't tell me that rules that provide a carrot and stick to enforce what my PC thinks and does is universally "better".

"Universally" I think is almost always a mistake to use as you've done above; there are always going to be people something just doesn't work for. I'll maintain "generally" can be applied reasonably as long as you're willing to do the lifting to say why, however, and I don't think expecting people to stop doing that is, itself, reasonable.