Waibel's Rule of Interpretation (aka "How to Interpret the Rules")

The only CORRECT interpretation is the one I say!

The sooner the rest of the world gets that, the sooner we can all sit down and have fun...and end all fantasy rpg forum arguments everywhere.

heheheh.

[Seliousry though, nice chart. ]

 

[Raith5]

No. It really doesn't. For the flowcart to be accurate to you it needs to say that. That is personal preference, not some objective accuracy.

But isnt that the pathway to solo D&D? For rules to work in a social game there needs to be some common agreement or a meta agreement about how rules are changed or adjusted.

I have no problem with DMs controlling which armours or monsters are present in a given context. The game requires scene setting authority with the DM. But I dont like unilateral changes or interpretation to rules which actively nerf individual players - I dont see how it makes a good game

 

[aramis erak]

To be fair though, as kids in the early 80's, we had a LOT of crap games too.

In the early 80's I was a monte-haul GM. I thought I was a major-monte-haul-from-hell, but then I met some guys in college who made me realize I was anything but... but by then, I was (1) no longer running D&D regularly, (2) no longer running monte-haul style, (3) MUCH much wiser about what made my games fizzle.

Rules interpretation by on-the-fly call and discuss after session by consensus seems to be the safest route. If you ≤Bleep≥ it up, admit so, make note of it†, and go forward from there.

I also learned to not look to prior editions for correct interpretations of current editions, but to look at them for explanations of why something odd was retained. And to treat each set of rules as a separate, stand alone game, so as to prevent assuming something was handled one way when the intent was some other way. (I've played almost all the editions for at least a couple sessions each... not holmes, and not 4e essentials.)

† make a physical note. The act of writing something down once has been shown to exceed the recall rate amongst elementary and middle school students over reciting it 10x... but it takes about 100 repetitions to ingrain something...

 

[ExploderWizard]

Yeah, personally, I kinda think it's a dick move too. But, then, I wasn't the one bringing it up. He didn't think he was being a dick. And, considering the amount of ink spilled over the last couple of years about the importance of D&D canon (cf. anything to do with Planescape or any 4e changes to monsters), I'd say there is a significant portion of gamers for whom this sort of thing matters.

Obviously, it didn't matter to me. Heh, I was shocked to read the climate/terrain bit in the Monster Manual for 2e. I had been using manticores for years in all sorts of situations and never gave it a moments thought. But, the point here is, I was wrong. It's no different than trying to drop a tiger in Africa. I was 100% wrong here. Manticores, by the rules, don't live where I put that one. So, is the player really wrong for bringing this up? At the time, I was kinda peeved, since it ground the game to a screeching halt. But, looking back at it, it's not cut and dried.

There is a manticore in White Plume Mountain. There are manticores in the Steading of the Hill Giant Chief. There are manticores wherever the heck the DM thinks it would be cool to have manticores.

The only one who needs to know the who, what and why of everything is the DM. If you feel the need to know all this stuff then run your own game.

 

[Authweight]

I really believe that everyone at the table should have an attitude of openness and willingness to compromise. If the DM has a really cool idea, the players should accept it and roll with it. If a player has a cool thing they want to do, the DM and everyone else at the table should be willing to roll with it unless it's causing real problems.

I also think that part and parcel of DMing is navigating the compromises necessary to make the game flow smoothly. If your players are upset, then you should be re-evaluating your approach. Sometimes your players are just unreasonable, but as often as not it really is your own fault.

 

[Jester David]

Here's a perfect example in this forum. There's an ongoing discussion on how blindsight works in this thread: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...nd-opinions-after-8-levels-and-a-dragon-fight . Now, I have my interpretation and Celtavian has another one. Which one makes sense? Well, mine makes sense to me and his makes sense to him. Can a creature with blindsight see through doors, for example. No one is being unreasonable but, disagreements do happen.

I'm not comfortable with the idea that "It makes sense to the DM, so, that's what we do". It's not to my taste. I'd prefer a much more consensus approach. Not that I'm saying it's better. I'm not. For some groups, go with what the DM says. Fair enough. Like I said, it's purely a taste thing.

There's no perfect situation.

They can make rules that cover each potential situation, but that's going to take a lot of room and cut into other content.
And, invariably, there's going to be some situation that doesn't work. For example, something with radar sense (like Daredevil) shouldn't be able to blindsense through a door but something with tremor sense should be able to feel vibrations. Or stealth rules that invariably end up either requiring DM adjudication or somehow just allow someone to "hide" in the middle of a featureless room because of how the rules are phrased.

The unique thing about D&D and simmilar RPGs is that there is a sentient thinking being running the game. That's one of the few things that separates it from other forms of game or RPGs. That should be encouraged. Emphasized. Otherwise the game is just a computer RPG with a slower processor. You shouldn't just be able to replace the DM with simple procedural text or rules knowledge.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

But isnt that the pathway to solo D&D? For rules to work in a social game there needs to be some common agreement or a meta agreement about how rules are changed or adjusted.

You say that as if solo D&D is a bad thing. It's different, but still fun. (I believe the OP mentioned the Lone Wolf adventures, which aren't D&D but still...)

 

[Mishihari Lord]

I'm with Hussar. If it makes sense to everyone at the table that something should work a certain way, then sure, just do it that way. If people have different ideas of what makes sense, though, you need to navigate it with some delicacy. Obviously, rules disputes are impossible if only one person is concerned with the rules. The written text is there to help resolve places where what "makes sense" is different for everyone at the table.

I'd rather just have the DM make a call and move on with the game. I've seen rules discussions like this go on for entirely too long, and that's not what I'm at the game to do. Accepting a DM decision, even one I don't care for, and playing for the next hour is far preferable to spending that hour in a rules discussion. Even ten minutes is too large of a waste of time for me to tolerate.

 

[Viking Bastard]

Well, no, I was wrong. The rules say that manticores appear in the desert. I was using the manticore in a forested area out of ignorance, not because I had deliberately made any conscious changes to the rules.

This is totally foreign to me.

As far as I'm concerned: This is not a rule, but a piece of lore, and the sole purpose of lore is DM inspiration. If it hadn't previously been established in the campaign (by the DM) that manticores only appear in deserts, then that's just not a thing. It's not a change if it hasn't been established!

I don't even know how I'd respond to a player who made such a point during a game. I imagine I'd open with a chuckle, but probably end up with a blank stare of confusion if he persisted.

.

But otherwise I agree. I'm vary of house rules based on what "makes sense" unless everyone is in agreement on what makes sense.

 

[Manbearcat]

I'd rather just have the DM make a call and move on with the game. I've seen rules discussions like this go on for entirely too long, and that's not what I'm at the game to do. Accepting a DM decision, even one I don't care for, and playing for the next hour is far preferable to spending that hour in a rules discussion. Even ten minutes is too large of a waste of time for me to tolerate.

Rules discussions like this will go on for entirely too long. And they will go on at the table and be an interruption to play. This is especially likely to happen when you're playing at a table where most participants, or everyone, are GMs or at least have GMing experience. This is an inevitability of a "rulings not rules" ethos combined with a ruleset that has various rules intersections where one aspect that must be considered during adjudication is codified, measured, and pinned down with precision....while another aspect, or potentially multiple aspects, that must be referenced with respect to the first is scribed in an intentionally vague or deeply abstracted manner. It will be intuitive to some to reference one precedent in the ruleset (which may be the vague part or the codified part) to determine what spits out of that mix, while it will be entirely intuitive for another to reference another, perhaps wildly, divergent precedence.

In these scenarios, when players have to rely on their reason and intuition (rather than symmetry and clarity within the rules) in order to form coherent action declarations...and then the GM vetoes it because of different reasoning or intuition...it should be expected that there is going to be some extremely jarring moments for players and likely some pushback (hopefully overt pushback rather than passive-aggressiveness). Further, if it happens in this instance (where varying reason, intuition, and precedence invoked regarding the interpretation of the ruleset's intersections causes a divergence of expectations on action declaration and resolution), you can certainly expect it to happen in plenty of other instances.

While I understand your inclination toward wanting to "just have the GM make a call and move on....even if you don't care for the GM's decision", there is a problem with that that can, and will (and I'm sure you know this given you've been playing for some time) proliferate as the game moves on and this (good faith) variance in interpretations persist. In order for the game to work at all, player expectation and GM expectation of what comes out of these rules intersections must be fairly congruent with extreme regularity. When this doesn't happen, players are suddenly left in the uncomfortable position of making action declarations (of which they find intuitive and sensible) that are askew of what the actual world (in this case GM rulings) says is intuitive and sensible. It becomes akin to a real person physically moving through our world suddenly having their proprioception and/or spatial awareness upended. Expect a loss of confidence and faith in their senses, their mind's orientation toward all things, and their subsequent movements based on the combination of the two. When another person's "say so" is the causal mechanism for the disruption of their sense of themselves and other objects in space, expect some bad feelings and some pushback. That isn't immaturity or egoism. That is inevitable and natural.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I keep wanting to start a thread of my own on the currency of trust, and the DM's authority. We see it come up here too.

I always look at it this way, if you have 2 DMs, and one always makes fun and interesting games, and the other make OK games to bad games depending, then these nit picking styles show up more in the second DMs games... as a player if you are not having fun little things stick out more (like the manticore) and as a DM you should realize you are starting to lose your players at moments like this.

When in my deadlands game about 10 years ago I had to explain what a wandering Marshal was to a player that new almost nothing about the wild west (In fact didn't even know the genre existed) I said a bit like a Jedi (this was about the time the prequals where being made) a walking law man that could be a Judge Jury and Executioner. One of my other friends pitch a fit and the entire game ground to a halt with 3 hours of debate because all 7 of us involved (me and 6 players) could not agree on what a marshal was...

To this day Kurt and I disagree with how much a Marshal could or could not do... the real problem was though that from game one there was a building issue, one where the players and the DM (me) where not on the same page. I was running fort courage and yosemity sam with a bit of Moo mesa and spaghetti westerns thrown in... some players were looking for realistic frontier, and others wanted dark gritty... 1 player had no idea what to expect and thought it would be more Victorian steam punk, and like I said there was a young girl from Russia that had no idea what "wild West" ment at game one...

I wasn't a bad DM (I hope) but I was running through my trust currency fast, and when it ran out with kurt things went south fast...