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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5637553" data-attributes="member: 4937">Celebrim's First Law of RPG's (tm): "Thou shalt not be good at everything."I'm particularly proud of that one, because its a lot deeper and more subtle than it first appears.  I believe that the entire rules structure of RPG's is built to provide for the first law, in as much as the fundamental need in structured imaginative play is to prevent someone from always getting their way.  Virtually every rule in every game is simply a special case of the first law.I don't know how to say this without being harsh, so I'm just going to risk being harsh.I'm not entirely sure that Saeviomagy's idea is bad - in fact it may be the kernel of a very good idea - but I think it procedes from several false premises.  As such, a lot of were he goes with his ideas grate on me.  Also, I don't think that his implementation will actually get him to where he wants to go because not only is the problem he's trying to solve not mostly a system problem, but the system alterations he adopts aren't radically different enough from the system to really push the way you think about play away from the mental model he's trapped in.  I think he's showing signs of not having been exposed to enough different rules systems so he's not really aware of how you can change the rules to change the way people think about the game, and hense of not fundamentally understanding Celebrim's second law.  (Which essentially implies that you can play D&D using Dogs in the Vineyard as the system, provided you prepare for play like you were going to play D&D and hold the mental model of D&D as the way to game.  Of course, Dogs system tries to set up a different model of preparation and play, and usually I would guess succeeds in that.)But yes, a good character creation system supports diverse play styles.  If the character creation system is good, then different people looking at it can see different possibilities for how to play the game with in it.  For example, I can tell by how he describes the metagame, that how he plays D20 is rather radically different than how I play it on many points.The problem RPG's often have is that they - for lack of understanding of the Second Law - are often guilty of not telling you enough about how to think about playing the game.  The games are short not only on examples of play, but on examples of preparing for play.  (I'm not picking on D&D; it usually does a better job of this than some other games.)  D&D is historically good about putting adventures out there to provide examples, but the adventures don't discuss why they were put together with the information that they have in them or at an even higher level, how different sorts of information prepared ahead of time would color how the DM percieves what the game of D&D is.  And when they do present this information, for example Pazio is pretty good at it especially in their low level modules, they often seem to not realize that properly this ought to be in the DMG.  And for that matter, the module itself because of limitations in the format tends to hide dials that are available to the DM in a way that novices won't see them.In otherwords, RPG's don't discuss how the players and DM can adjust how they think about the game to achieve the game that they want.  Adjusting the rules effects that, but in my opinon the effect is comparitively minor unless the rules change is predicated on an understanding in the group of what the rules change is trying to achieve and that goal is agreed upon.  A rules system that pushed you hard enough to not think of playing D&D in the way you've always thought to play it, would have to look nothing like D&D.  Minor changes won't cut it, unless they are changes that directly impact that metagame.</blockquote>

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