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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9243738" data-attributes="member: 4937">I would like at some point to be able to distinguish between actually bad mechanics and mechanics that are simply not to someone's taste.For example, 3e D&D is notoriously fiddly with lots of possible stackable and even worse named non-stackable modifiers to a roll.  But I would claim that this isn't actually a "bad mechanic" just that it is a mechanic that may not be to someone's taste, because the mechanics do have a noticeable positive impact on gameplay for certain aesthetics of play and that is the players are motivated to fight for every advantage encouraging planning and creativity.  And if you don't think that's an advantage, well I put it to you that some people are going to miss it when it is gone.  So the question is are you willing to trade fiddly for granular since there is a tradeoff here of ease/speed of play versus depth.How you manage that tradeoff is just a matter of taste.  The game could take a very long time to figure out at each step and be heavy math but it doesn't necessarily follow that that is bad, just that the further you lean into that the smaller your audience is like to be.On the other hand, there are mechanics that are just objectively bad.  An example would be adding steps to the process resolution that don't actually effect the results in a meaningful manner.  For example, imagine rules set where you have a contested roll and each contestant first rolls a D20 to determine their target number, and then rolls a second D20 to determine their success based on how much the second D20 beats the target roll and then you compare your degree of success to your opponent's degree of success to determine who won.  It's probably the case that we could generate the same range of results using fewer steps than that.  Phoenix Command IMO is an example of this sort of process resolution in spades where the results of the system could probably be approximated by some more abstract system with fewer steps but the same or close to the same probable results at the end and just as much verisimilitude.  Dwarf Fortress isn't a tabletop RPG but it has the same mindset and is likewise an example of intuitive concrete steps can end up generating results that probably not only could be produced with fewer steps but might even have more verisimilitude if they were. So those I would argue are objectively bad mechanics.  They might not be part of objectively bad games, but we can learn a lesson here about what not to do even if we are goal and intended tone are the same as those games.</blockquote>

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