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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8314870" data-attributes="member: 82106">Yeah, I am an IT Architect/Developer, so I find that I prefer universalizable systems. If 2 things are based on a common set of 'interfaces', then they can each work in a system. That creates a 'universal language' in which things can be 'mixed together' and simplifies the mechanical process of play. It also allows for a trait called 'closure', where a thing can be replaced by the results of a process which produces the same outcome. An example: 5e has a poor design (IMHO) around 'saves' vs 'attacks'. This creates 2 separate classes of things which are BASICALLY THE SAME, but cannot mix together or substitute for each other! A 'fire attack' won't be more difficult against a target which has a bonus to saves against fire! This just makes no sense at all, and thus either 5e items/spells/etc exhibit this weirdness OR ELSE they all have to have some 'patch language' which papers over this difference. It is bad design, pure and simple. It adds nothing materially to the game, but makes it more complicated in several ways (likewise an attack bonus won't make saves against an identical type of effect more difficult even though that would be perfectly logical).Another example (of Closure): In my game a challenge (a 4e SC basically) produces a result, failure, success, complete success. A check also produces the same outcomes, failure, success, complete success. A challenge can REPLACE A POWER IN A RULE. Thus ANY place where you can put a check in my game can (at least mechanically if not narratively) be replaced by a challenge. Challenges also have a DV (difficulty value, like DC in 4e) and so do checks. Thus we know what the DV of the checks in a challenge is (barring some sort of modifying situation), and this also supports replacing checks with challenges (you can go the other way too, a challenge could be replaced by a single check). EVERY other rule in HoML will work perfectly when you do this. That is the power of closure, universal language.And if you want subtle distinctions and 'handles' on which you can distinguish things, then tags (4e keywords essentially), at least in my design, present that. You don't need multiple different incompatible subsystems to do that. You can simply design a tag which applies a specific handling for pretty much anything anywhere. You want 'Undead' to be impossible to backstab? Well, write it into the backstab rule! Or the Undead rule that goes with the tag, whichever. You can have infinite distinctions of any degree (it could get unwieldy if too many of them interact I suppose, but that seems like a 'spherical cow' kind of problem to me).</blockquote>

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