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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9294568" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Of course one should not use "just more rules." The rules should be well-crafted. Why presume that the rules would simply be a crappy assemblage thrown at the problem with no effort or thought?We're never going to have a world where every DM is nearly perfect--we're not even going to have a world where every DM is merely "very good" in all ways. That's just not a thing that's going to happen. And, as long as the hobby is growing, there will be a never-ending stream of new DMs needing help and guidance and support, and that's exactly what good, circumspect, effective rule design does. That's one of the myriad ways that testing is so terribly important; it helps to winnow out the rules that don't contribute to an effective experience.Like laws, rules are inherently teleological: they exist to serve a purpose. Like laws, rules can vary in how effectively they achieve the purpose for which they were designed, and the purposes for which they are designed can vary in whether, and how much, they are worthy of pursuit. Good rules effectively achieve worthy purposes. Bad rules may be ineffective at pursuing worthy purposes, or quite effective at pursuing unworthy ones. (I guess we could say most grapple rules are ineffective at pursuing unworthy purposes, but such things are generally so obviously bad they don't even happen in the first place.)It is much more productive to ask whether rules can help, and if so, in what way, and given a particular tack, how one might go about achieveing that, than it is to simply blanket declare: "Every rule is bad. Eliminate them always. Just make a person make a decision." Human decision-making itself is made better, not worse, when we allow for some rules. (After all, is that not what we developed statistics for?)Impatience is not a very kind way of putting it, but I think I see where you're coming from. I would call that a desire for efficiency. TTRPGs are a long, long, slow burn. Slow burn stuff can be great (I'm an FFXIV player, I'm contractually obligated to say this), but TTRPGs are an even longer, even slower burn with far less tangible proverbial "return on investment," as it were. As someone who has been rather frustrated by the realization that while no gaming is better than bad gaming, no gaming still sucks, yeah, I really would have appreciated rules and structures in place that would have forestalled or addressed a lot of the actually bad gaming I've had with 5e.Also: Why do you structure it as the rules "covering" for them? You are importing this implication that you've already proven that it always should be the DM's responsibility for absolutely everything. I don't buy that. I think the DM is one part of the equation. A big part, to be sure! An essential part! But the rules are also part. Good rules, well-made, with focus, rules that aren't profligate nor wasteful nor unproductive, are incredibly useful. Rules are tools. We don't make better carpentry by telling carpenters to throw away every tool that isn't a basic whittling knife or bow saw. Carpentry today is better, more adroit, more productive because we have access to all sorts of new tools that didn't exist even a hundred years ago. Good rules can do exactly the same thing.As someone who did an awful lot of effort to try to find such a thing: It's not nearly as probable as you think.Did I say this was so? I don't recall doing so. I am instead advocating a position that rejects the extreme overreliance on DM-skill-and-absolutely-nothing-else; the extreme hostility to rules, treating them not as tools but as icky stains on the glorious purity of DM Vision; the estreme demands of near-perfection from DMs who use a system, leaving the vast majority high and dry and having to come up with answers on their own (and, as the 5e community has amply demonstrated, even an antipathy for the very idea of providing another DM useful advice).Yes. I'm aware. I think this policy has been taken to a ridiculous extreme, due to a vocal minority loudly shouting down (often with pithy but empty arguments like "white room"s and "if you don't trust your DM, don't play with them") any and all discussion of how rules are, y'know, useful tools.3e was a game that genuinely tried to have a rule for everything, and everything in its rule. That is, and always was, a mistake. That doesn't mean that we should thus conclude, "Don't bother having rules for anything. Just have the DM make something up." There is an extremely productive middle ground here; there are ways we can find to have our cake and eat it too, like extensible frameworks, which do not cover every situation with laser precision, but instead usefully abstract over many different situations. (After all...is that not what both HP and AC do, something literally every edition of D&D uses? If you know a target has 14 AC, you have no idea what caused it--chitinous hide, amazing dexterity, chainmail, who knows?)</blockquote>

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