The more I read the rules...

[Dracorat]

That implies carelessness on part of the rules.

From what I have seen, the rules are quite carefully weighed, decided upon, and laid out.

 

[the Jester]

It's not a modification to the rules as written if you follow what they actually mean.

Except that the only indicator of what they actually mean is how they are written. How do you know that they actually mean something different this time? It The argument that it's simply common sense won't hold up here, because people are disagreeing here as to which interpretation is correct.

The RAW are not always the same as the intended meaning, but they're (mostly) all we have to intertret the intended meaning with.

 

[Pielorinho]

That implies carelessness on part of the rules.

From what I have seen, the rules are quite carefully weighed, decided upon, and laid out.

Not really from what I've seen. I mean, sure, compared to the rules for First Edition, perhaps. Compared to your average bug-free C++, not so much; compared to legal documents, not so much.

The rules as written, IMO, are an imperfect document, well-designed but with minor contradictions and unintended consequences if interpreted literally. Human language works best, again IMO, when it can handle contradictions, when it relies on the audience to discount obvious minor mistakes, when multiple approaches to constructing meaning from the language (whole-text, parsing, metaphor, etc.) are used. So that's how I approach the rules as written.

Daniel

 

[Dracorat]

Usually I approach the rules as the rules. Overall, if you have a willingness to accept that the rules mean exactly what they say, then you don't often find contradiction. It's when you try to impose real-world physics, extrapolate rules to mean what they don't and intend to bend them in way to suit your desire that they start to fall apart.

Now, I am not saying that it's a bad thing to do so, however, when you do, and they show signs of weakness, you need to realize the cause is your implementation and stretches of those rules that have placed you in that spot. If it works for you, more power to you. But that doesn't mean the rules are weak.

 

[Pielorinho]

Usually I approach the rules as the rules. Overall, if you have a willingness to accept that the rules mean exactly what they say, then you don't often find contradiction.

A spell called Darkness creates light; that appears to me to be a contradiction. There are plenty more. There are other places where absurdities are created (e.g., the druid infinite-intelligence machine via Awaken and Polymorph). It seems to me that my approach, in which the rules are read through multiple strategies, results in a stronger, not a weaker, set of rules for the game. At least, they seem stronger to me, for my way of playing.

Danile

 

[Dracorat]

Which is fine, but it doesn't bother me that the rules are as they are. They describe a generic set of constructs and just because a spell could have been better named, that doesn't mean the rules have failed.

For that matter, when it comes to spells, we might know it as Darkness as players, but that doesn't mean the characters don't call it "Shadow Light".

 

[Crothian]

I like the RAW. It gives me and my players a solid baseline to start from. It is much easier to ask them to read a book and understand those rules then to have a system losely based on what is in the books. I am all for House Rules, but I don't want to make things more complicated and I want the players to be involved in the choosing of the rules as they shape the game.

 

[Vegepygmy]

A spell called Darkness creates light; that appears to me to be a contradiction.

A spell called Time Stop actually just speeds the caster up. Don't read too much into the names of things.

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

In 2E I used to make up all sorts of house rules for things I didn't like about the game. It became a major chore to keep track of all the changes and communicate them to (new) players.

So in 3E, I made the conscious decision to modify as few rules as possible. I have a couple pages of house rules, but most of them aren't rules-specific but are more generic RP do's and don'ts. For the most part, I use the RAW. Modifications and interpretations come up when a rule doesn't address a particular issue. But I very rarely change an existing RAW simply b/c I don't agree with it.

One thing I've learned over the years is to simply roll with it. Everything doesn't need to be "realistic" (or what people think is realistic"). It's a fantasy RPG and there are many, many things that simply don't need logical explanations for. For example, whenever I used to create magical conditions (e.g., no teleporting into this room) I would look for rules to support it and if I couldn't find any, I'd use something else. I've learned over the years that it doesn't matter whether the rules cover something; just do it. If I want a room where every wall is magnetized, I don't go looking for rules that would allow me to do it (although I might look up relevant rules to figure out how the mechanics would/could/should work). Just do it. In the end, players won't care about the technicalities of the room. All they'll remember is the havoc the magnetic walls played on their characters.

 

[Sejs]

A spell called Time Stop actually just speeds the caster up. Don't read too much into the names of things.

Both cases (time stop and darkness) are actually results of later changes to the mechanics of those spells. Darkness used to create actual darkness instead of 'shadow light'. Time Stop used to actually stop time instead of speeding the caster up a whole bunch.