NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6961194" data-attributes="member: 42582">I care about it for a few reasons.First, I think it is frustrating to see anachronistic projection into old rules texts. It's interesting to try and understand what those rules were talking about, on their own terms.Second, failing to acknowledge that the goals of play changed is an impediment to rational discussion of how the game works, and  what the rules are for, and should be. For instance, consider the legacy of "XP for killing monsters". That had a certain logic when the game was built around dungeon-delving, and monsters were obstacles to extracting loot from dungeons. Killing monsters was, broadly speaking, overcoming some of the key challenges the game posed.But why does the game still have that rule? How does it make any sense in a game the goal of which is to develop and express a character's personality?Other examples could be given, too, like the fact that the combat rules continue to be the most detailed element in the action resolution rules. Why?Third, and following on from the above, there continue to be different approaches to RPGing. These include different views about the goals of play, about the role of mechanics, etc. Ignoring different approaches in different rulebooks, and arguing for the assimilation of those approaches to a single "We're all doing the same thing" illusion of consensus, makes it harder to talk about those different approaches, and the different rules and methods that support them.Instead of useful discussion of different rules and methods, we get silly complaining about "railroading", "player entitlement", "munchkins", etc.</blockquote>

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