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<blockquote data-quote="KarinsDad" data-source="post: 3124209" data-attributes="member: 2011">Interesting discussion.I think it is a matter of focus. If a designers attention is brought to an issue before release, he can address it. Otherwise, he might not. I wrote some rules for a third party D20 product once and we playtested it, we reviewed it, we tried to go through it with a fine toothed comb. Within a month of its release, someone said &quot;What happens if you do this?&quot;. It was an extremely common scenerio that the rules were just plain broken for. Nobody had caught it before release. It didn't come up in playtesting. It was flat out a bug in the way the rules were written. We couldn't believe that something so obvious had not gotten spotted. So, we put out an errata for it. But, it illustrated how difficult it is to handle all issues for all situations.The more people focus on a given topic, the more synergy that occurs and the more inconsistencies or questions can arise.I do not consider it carelessness when a rule is not perfect. I consider it human nature.I think the designers often mean something specific and do not necessarily think of all of the ramifications at the time.With regard to the RAW issue, the rules are there for a reason: to be used by people to play the game. Modifying those rules is fine. Interpreting them in &quot;your way&quot; is fine.But, the closer a given campaign is to a &quot;reasonable&quot; interpretation of RAW, the easier it is for new players to the group to understand the rules. The more unusual RAW interpretations and the more house rules a given campaign has, the more difficult for new players to correlate what is written in the rules with how the game is being played.However, the rules are there to facilitate fun. That can be done in a lot of RAW or non-RAW ways.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="KarinsDad, post: 3124209, member: 2011"] Interesting discussion. I think it is a matter of focus. If a designers attention is brought to an issue before release, he can address it. Otherwise, he might not. I wrote some rules for a third party D20 product once and we playtested it, we reviewed it, we tried to go through it with a fine toothed comb. Within a month of its release, someone said "What happens if you do this?". It was an extremely common scenerio that the rules were just plain broken for. Nobody had caught it before release. It didn't come up in playtesting. It was flat out a bug in the way the rules were written. We couldn't believe that something so obvious had not gotten spotted. So, we put out an errata for it. But, it illustrated how difficult it is to handle all issues for all situations. The more people focus on a given topic, the more synergy that occurs and the more inconsistencies or questions can arise. I do not consider it carelessness when a rule is not perfect. I consider it human nature. I think the designers often mean something specific and do not necessarily think of all of the ramifications at the time. With regard to the RAW issue, the rules are there for a reason: to be used by people to play the game. Modifying those rules is fine. Interpreting them in "your way" is fine. But, the closer a given campaign is to a "reasonable" interpretation of RAW, the easier it is for new players to the group to understand the rules. The more unusual RAW interpretations and the more house rules a given campaign has, the more difficult for new players to correlate what is written in the rules with how the game is being played. However, the rules are there to facilitate fun. That can be done in a lot of RAW or non-RAW ways. [/QUOTE]

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