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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8849978" data-attributes="member: 6790260">I mean....I don't see how there's any way they could be anything but objectively incorrect."Rulings" are ad hoc, contextual rules. I mean, it's literally in the name--the act of making a rule. Making rules, in TTRPGs, is called "design."Recognizing the request for greater respect: I am deeply frustrated when you say things like this. This is not the only thing it did. It did a lot of things. This was one possible result.Another result--one with quite a substantial cultural demonstration--is a massive increase in shared vocabulary. Consider, for instance, the TVTropes page, "Took a Level in Badass." This is, very directly, drawing on 3e vocabulary, the idea that one can "take a level" in a particular class. Prior to 3e, at least to the best of my knowledge, there was no such thing as à la carte multiclassing. Certainly that way of phrasing--to "take a level in" something--was specific to 3e. There are various other ways in which the standardization and systematization of 3e made a permanent and, I would argue, positive impact on not just D&D, not just TTRPGs, but nerdy culture in general.Continually demonizing things as this pernicious obsession with legislating table morality is not productive, and portraying anything that doesn't conform to your tastes as a dead-end, destructive waste needlessly raises the temperature of the conversation.As I've said repeatedly, and as I believe literally everyone here agrees: it doesn't. No one is making that argument, and it is not hard to see why, given it is so trivially wrong. Please consider other interpretations of the things being said, ones which do not hinge upon this obviously foolish goal. For example:Improving our rules design does not mean making it impossible for people to do bad things or behave poorly. It means finding places where we can close the experiential gap better than we have in the past. It means critically examining whether the rules actually achieve the goals for which they were intended, and if they do not do so, to repair them, or replace them with ones that work better. No rule is perfect, but we can still do better. Advice can only go so far; actually improving the tools themselves is of greater impact. To turn an old phrase, no amount of advice, no matter how superlative, can turn a sow's ear into a silk purse.</blockquote>

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