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*Pathfinder & Starfinder
Should game designers remain neutral when designing D&D?
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6255760" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>I don't think that's what was said.</p><p></p><p>As I understood [MENTION=51168]MichaelSomething[/MENTION], the point was that the designers <em>know</em> that some rules are tightly integrated with other parts of the game, and that others are not. And that it is helpful when they share this knowledge with their player base.</p><p></p><p>My view is that WotC are very poor at doing this (and TSR also before them). I would contrast (say) 13th Age, where the book is full of commentary about why certain rules are how they are, and what the logic of those rules is.</p><p></p><p>An example from 4e can illustrate the contrast between rules that are optional and rules that are not, for one tenable meaning of "optional":</p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px">* If you eliminate from 4e its distinctive rest cycles - short rests and extended rests - you have a significant impact on the way the game's mechanics work, because you elide the distinction between encounter abilities and daily abilities that is built into the player-side resources. That impact may be good, bad or indifferent, but the impact is real.</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">* If you change the time requirements for 4e's rest cycles - say, make short rests take an hour and extended rests take a week - you have virtually no impact on the way the game's mechanics work, because the only 4e rules elements that reference the passage of ingame time (as opposed to its rest cycles) are the casting times for rituals - eg there are no random encounter rules, or exploration rules, that reference the passage of ingame time. </p><p></p><p>I think it is helpful for designers to point these sorts of things out, because it makes life easy for RPGers. It can also have other benefits, too. For instance, developing a version of 4e that eliminates the encounter/daily distinction would be quite a big deal (on a par with what Essentials did). Whereas including a note that you can change the ingame time required for the two sorts of rest, and that this will have no mechanical impact, would have added about 10 minutes to the time required to write the PHB and DMG, had an utterly marginal impact on layout, but probably headed off as much as 10% of the criticism that edition has been subjected to.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6255760, member: 42582"] I don't think that's what was said. As I understood [MENTION=51168]MichaelSomething[/MENTION], the point was that the designers [I]know[/I] that some rules are tightly integrated with other parts of the game, and that others are not. And that it is helpful when they share this knowledge with their player base. My view is that WotC are very poor at doing this (and TSR also before them). I would contrast (say) 13th Age, where the book is full of commentary about why certain rules are how they are, and what the logic of those rules is. An example from 4e can illustrate the contrast between rules that are optional and rules that are not, for one tenable meaning of "optional": [indent]* If you eliminate from 4e its distinctive rest cycles - short rests and extended rests - you have a significant impact on the way the game's mechanics work, because you elide the distinction between encounter abilities and daily abilities that is built into the player-side resources. That impact may be good, bad or indifferent, but the impact is real. * If you change the time requirements for 4e's rest cycles - say, make short rests take an hour and extended rests take a week - you have virtually no impact on the way the game's mechanics work, because the only 4e rules elements that reference the passage of ingame time (as opposed to its rest cycles) are the casting times for rituals - eg there are no random encounter rules, or exploration rules, that reference the passage of ingame time. [/indent] I think it is helpful for designers to point these sorts of things out, because it makes life easy for RPGers. It can also have other benefits, too. For instance, developing a version of 4e that eliminates the encounter/daily distinction would be quite a big deal (on a par with what Essentials did). Whereas including a note that you can change the ingame time required for the two sorts of rest, and that this will have no mechanical impact, would have added about 10 minutes to the time required to write the PHB and DMG, had an utterly marginal impact on layout, but probably headed off as much as 10% of the criticism that edition has been subjected to. [/QUOTE]
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Should game designers remain neutral when designing D&D?
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