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Message: <blockquote data-quote="howandwhy99" data-source="post: 5079371" data-attributes="member: 3192">I hear your inner dude speaking, innerdude.  Any particular ruleset is going to have its' highs and lows depending upon what the players want from it.  My own preference is for a more traditional D&D type game, meaning it is an elaborate pattern finding game engaging the players logical reasoning abilities as the foremost activity of play.  In this game all the rules fit on a single page or so for every player to know, but the rules hidden behind the screen to be guessed, those created by the referee, are as complex, elegant, mystifying, and pleasurable as he or she can create. That means every game by every ref is going to be different.  This make it hard to judge "good rules" and "bad rules" on a community-wide level, but the conciseness of a rule, achieving each rule's particular purpose, knowing their effects on player behavior during the game, and the resulting workload for the referee/DM/GM are all important to every game.  Having a rules discussion between every kind of game in the hobby is difficult especially because of players differing desires for games, but also philosophies of what makes quality game design, how one defines roleplaying, and the category of games one plays.  The popularity of any philosophy and any game also impact the discussion.  D&D will probably always have a significant spot in the conversation and the vast differences between its' designs over the years is going to be talked about.  Can these conversations be civil?  I think so.  But the current position of said discussion, of D&D at least, is to call non-storygamers abashed, deluded, suffering from mental illusions, even brain damaged, and then to walk away, if not mock.  Talking about the philosophies of RPG rule design between solely D&D editions has been a non-starter for the last several years and it doesn't help when attempted conversation is purposefully shut down for whatever reason.  My understanding of the main rationale behind this is it is a question of death for the hobby to continue to design and play games like those from its' past.  In my opinion this is a fear tactic and I don't care for it.  But I may be misinterpreting intentions.  I don't know, as I said many things are not really openly talked about and edition warring does get in the way.</blockquote>

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