Rules volume and play focus.

[payn]

I would also add the Law of the Instrument: "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

This is to say, that if a game mostly gives you things to deal with combat, then everything will begin looking like it requires combat to solve.

Also, if the game is primarily about pounding nails, its not a good idea to rip it because it cant drive screws.

 

[Umbran]

It's also the place min maxer's or anaylytical players will go to figure out the details that will give them advantage. And those players always slow a game down.

I think this thread will quickly degenerate into cacophonous nonsense if we start using it as a platform to critique playstyle choices, so let's not do that.

 

[Umbran]

Also, if the game is primarily about pounding nails, its not a good idea to rip it because it cant drive screws.

Yes. However if they are trying to sell it as a multitool, how well it accomplishes that is a fair ground for critique.

 

[payn]

Yes. However if they are trying to sell it as a multitool, how well it accomplishes that is a fair ground for critique.

Absolutely. I just see games get ripped for not being able to do what they were not designed to do often enough,

 

[MichaelSomething]

How do you feel about 4th Edition?

The degree and amount of design doesn't necessarily reflect the degree and amount of importance to play at the table.

What the degree and amount of design reflects is simply the amount of abstraction required. Combat has to be completely abstracted, as does magic (hence the many pages devoted to magic and spells) as neither can be done in reality and most of us have very-limited-to-no real-world experience with either one. Exploration only needs a certain amount of abstraction as we mostly already know how it works via experience in reality. Social needs very little abstraction as not only do we know how it works but it can be played out in person at the table. Downtime - the fourth and all-too-often-ignored pillar - is a mixed bag; it's the pillar that usually gets far less design attention than it deserves.

After that, it simply comes down to the amount of granularity the designers want to put into their rules and guidelines for combat, magic, and to a lesser degree exploration and downtime.

In terms of play focus, each pillar can be emphasized or not at any table based on how they want to play.

 

[Lanefan]

How do you feel about 4th Edition?

Other than a few very good isolated innovations (e.g. 'bloodied'), the less said the better.

 

[MichaelSomething]

So I can conclude that it is possible to write RPG rules in a way that it would affect play focus?

Cause I could dig up plenty of arguments that 4E rules are structured to suppress non combat activities, thereby affirming the rules affect play focus concept.

Other than a few very good isolated innovations (e.g. 'bloodied'), the less said the better.

 

[bloodtide]

I agree with Reynard that there is much more to a game system than what takes up the majority of the book's pages. But, I'm also open to the right argument changing my mind.

I also agree. Even from the start, plenty of gamers were more then willing to leave the rules on the page and do other things. While still "playing the game".

WOTC's attempts to develop non combat stuff has either been ignored or derided.

Remember skill challenges? Craft and profession skills? Downtime activities? BIFTs? Domain rules? Commoner/NPC classes?

Mostly they are half attempts. A couple pages of a couple vague rules, often with little or no further support.

I would also add the Law of the Instrument: "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

This is to say, that if a game mostly gives you things to deal with combat, then everything will begin looking like it requires combat to solve.

This has always been a problem with D&D. Your typical group of PCs are covered in armor, bristling with weapons, and full of combat abilities and spells. Then, when something like a guard blocks their way, the only response they think to have is to attack and kill the guard.


D&D 1E, 2E, and to a lesser extent 3X, you could make a pure non combat character and play the game. A diviner is the classic example: a character that uses information and knowledge to solve problems and challanges...and does not "hack and slash''. And more so 1E and 2E, some character classes like the wizard and thief were not overly intended for constant endless direct combat. In 1E, a typical wizard could cast a couple spells a couple times from a very small list and help out in a couple combats....and after that they were expected to...maybe..stab with a dagger.

 

[Malmuria]

Rules volume is one measure of what a game is 'about'. But I would also say any game has a core categorization of rules, one unsurprisingly conveyed via tables of contents. If we look at the 5e PHB table of contents, I wonder if we can rethink the "pillars of play"

Pillars of Play

• Character Creation (pp. 9-165)
  • Obviously there will be overlaps with the other pillars here. But I have heard people talk about building characters as its own pillar of play. Given the number of people who engage in "lonely fun" on dnd beyond just making characters, let alone the people who dream up backstories and create art for characters that never see play, I have to think character creation counts as a core activity for 5e.\
• Adventuring (pp.181-187)
  • Subsections: time, movement, the environment, social interaction, resting, between adventurers
  • Social interaction and exploration are subsets of the pillar adventuring
  • The engine for this is the "Using Ability Scores" section (pp. 173-180).
  • Even adding those two sections together, it amounts to only 13 A4 pages. So not a lot by volume, though I would argue that that's because the core of 5e is a very simple game. Also most of the dungeon master's guide pertains to actually creating and running the adventures (whatever you think of that advice)
  • Side note: Going through the 5 "downtime activities" on p. 187 would be a totally valid procedure for handling downtime. Just ask the PCs which of those actions they choose to take during downtime and then follow the rules in those sections.
• Combat (pp. 189-198)
  • Again, only 10 pages, but it is significant that it gets it's own section
  • You could add the "conditions" and "creatures appendix" (or, indeed, the entire MM) to this section. But creatures are just variations expressed using the base rules of combat, not additional rules.
• Magic (pp. 199-206)
  • Magic in this game has it's own special rules and lexicon
  • The spell lists (pp. 199-211) are just specific cases using the magic rules

Thus we can say that 5e is a game "about" creating heroic characters, adventuring, combat, and magic. So that exercise...tells us very little that we didn't already know! But maybe is a better way to look at play focus than simply rules volume per number of pages. In other words, how do the designers of any game think it best to organize and present their material? That tells you what the game is about.

Similar exercise with ...

• Vaesen: characters and their skills/talents, conflict (i.e. combat but I think important that they choose to call it "conflict" instead), the society, the mythic north, the vaesen, mysteries
  • This tells me the game is about the semi-mythic environment, its mysteries, and the conflict that arises between it and the modern investigators (which may or may not be conflict)
• Blades in the Dark: Characters, Crew, Scores, Downtime, Strange Forces, Doskvol
  • What's important in this game is the set structure of scores and downtime and the haunted setting of Doskvol.
  • etc

 

[Aldarc]

I think that one of the reasons that there is so much resistance to the idea that "the rules and play of D&D mostly support combat" is that for ironically both detractors and apologetics of this argument, combat is implicitly regarded as a "vulgar" pillar of play (possibly for a variety of reasons) or even not a proper form of roleplaying. So by pointing out that most of D&D's rules are about combat, this is regarded as an implicit judgment on the game by detractors of D&D and a source of embarrassment for apologetists of D&D, the latter of whom may likewise prefer if their games weren't mostly combat.

This was just a thought that has occurred to me, as it seems to me like a lot of similar threads and past discussions almost view combat forming the bulk of rules as something that requires either condemnation or apologetics rather than embracing such games for what they are or even can be.

Rules volume is one measure of what a game is 'about'. But I would also say any game has a core categorization of rules, one unsurprisingly conveyed via tables of contents. If we look at the 5e PHB table of contents, I wonder if we can rethink the "pillars of play"

Sometimes rethinking the "pillars of play" feels a bit like making minor readjustments to Aristotle's categories of "vegetable, animal, or mineral" rather than actually questioning whether such a schema is necessary at all or an appropriate schema for classification. If we were to rethink the "pillars of play," I would begin by questioning whether "pillars of play" acts as a useful tool for describing the play focus.