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<blockquote data-quote="Greg Benage" data-source="post: 8085352" data-attributes="member: 93631">And this is something designers should be clear-eyed about when including &quot;rules structures&quot;: A lot of players simply won't use those structures if there's a more naturalistic (or maybe just lazier) way to handle them. In general, I think the OSR has taken elements such as &quot;time in a dungeon,&quot; encumbrance, and the like way more seriously than most tables did when we were playing those games at the time. I played AD&amp;D in tournament events at GenCon in the 80s where all those rules really should have been used, and they still weren't. I suspect they didn't fall out of the books by accident.Fast forward to 5e, where it's revealed in every other complaint about &quot;nova damage&quot; or unbalanced spellcasting that DMs don't use the game's existing rules structures for the adventuring day. That shouldn't come as any surprise, because (many/most?) players always ignore rules structures it feels more &quot;natural&quot; to ignore.I don't necessarily think there's any way around this, but recognizing that actual play is likely to be more &quot;unstructured&quot; than you assume is probably a decent baseline from which to start. Some designs may make it very difficult to play in a unstructured way (not naming any names), but those designs run the risk that players simply reject them in favor of those that accommodate their preferred playstyle more easily.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Greg Benage, post: 8085352, member: 93631"] And this is something designers should be clear-eyed about when including "rules structures": A lot of players simply won't use those structures if there's a more naturalistic (or maybe just lazier) way to handle them. In general, I think the OSR has taken elements such as "time in a dungeon," encumbrance, and the like way more seriously than most tables did when we were playing those games at the time. I played AD&D in [I]tournament events at GenCon[/I] in the 80s where all those rules really should have been used, and they still weren't. I suspect they didn't fall out of the books by accident. Fast forward to 5e, where it's revealed in every other complaint about "nova damage" or unbalanced spellcasting that DMs don't use the game's existing rules structures for the adventuring day. That shouldn't come as any surprise, because (many/most?) players always ignore rules structures it feels more "natural" to ignore. I don't necessarily think there's any way around this, but recognizing that actual play is likely to be more "unstructured" than you assume is probably a decent baseline from which to start. Some designs may make it very difficult to play in a unstructured way (not naming any names), but those designs run the risk that players simply reject them in favor of those that accommodate their preferred playstyle more easily. [/QUOTE]

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