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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jgbrowning" data-source="post: 2780332" data-attributes="member: 5724">Two different uses of the word rule, I believe, is the confusion. Using a "rule1" to create a "rule2." There's a difference between rule1 and rule2.You're using a rule1 to design a rule2.The "rules of a game" are almost always only rule2s. Only in an open-ended game where there can never be enough rule2s to cover every possible situation, rule1s are used to provide a judge a guideline in how to make up an entirely new rule2.For example chess is only composed of rule2s. However, if you wanted to change how the pieces moved in a someone consistant way from person to person, you could create a set of rule1s (design guidlines) that would make creating new ways pieces can move easier. And if you made your design guidelines good enough, you may make the %chance of two people producing the same result greater as opposed to lesser. That's good design.If the results are different, the rule2s are defacto different. If you give a +4 and I only give a +2 and that difference causes one player to succeed while the other fails....the rules are different.Because the assumptions are integral to the creation of a rule. If the assumptions aren't the same, you're in the design phase of rule creation.Just because you follow rule1 to create a rule2, that rule2 isn't necessisarily any better than a ruling that doesn't follow rule1.No matter how you decided to use rule1 to design rule2 all your really doing is taking modifiers that will result in a %probablity of success/failure of an action. I can just cut to the chase and decide what %of success I want to occur and then roll d100 for the result.The only difference between what I did and you have done is that you have followed the rule1 design principles of the game to create your rule2 while I looked at what expected % of success/failure I thought was appropriate (just like you did, but in adifferent manner).Your method is better design for the d20 system, but it's still ad hoc rules creation.Rule1 exists to help those GMs who feel like they cannot come up with good %chances of success failure based upon situations not actually covered by rule2. It also exists to try and make ad hoc rulings more similiar from GM to GM as not all situations can be covered in the rules2.The important thing here is rampant. The fewer situations where adjudication differs between one GM and another GM means the fewer weakness of the system as designed. However, the design may not cover what you want covered, and then, unsurpisingly you have to ad hoc (improvise) the system to make it do what you want it to do and what is hasn't been explictly designed to do. And if the system has been designed to provide guidelines for ad hoccing, that system is better than one which offers no guidelines.I think once you understand rules as only rule2s and use the words "design guidlines" for what you've been calling rule1s everything becomes clear.Because that's what the "rule" of d20 +modifiers is: not a "rule, but a "design guideline" to help you create a rule2 that is similiar in execution to the other real rule2s of the game.You've been given the power to design the rule2s of the game as you go and they gave you some guidelines to hopefully make your game more enjoyable. The guidline isn't a rule, it's a design principle. And it's a design principle that has limitations as well because some situations will require different guidelines than d20+ modifiers "rule" you're referring to to adjudicate success/failure ratios. (ie. if you ever want to make the difference between success and failure anything less than 5%, you cannot use d20+ modifiers "rule")joe b.</blockquote>

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