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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8602543" data-attributes="member: 6790260">That's what I was going for with my reply, at the very least. We can do better than just "did you have fun y/n," and avoid the necessary vagaries and vacillation induced by being focused on the "boots on the ground" perspective. A general model can still be extremely useful, especially if it inherently accounts for games having different purposes.Doesn't that mean that a system working is primarily a function of familiarity on the part of the players and DM? That would seem to indicate that it's impossible for a new system to EVER be "working." That seems like a metric without much utility.I mean, I tried to go for something as specific as I could without going overboard into "this model only works for X subtype of game."I disagree. As noted in my previous post, we can set well-defined goals (which goals is a matter of personal taste, of course) and acceptable ranges of results (which ranges are acceptable is, again, a matter of taste), and then test to make sure that those goals are met within the defined ranges of acceptability.Whether players agree with those goals or ranges is up to them. Part of being a gamer is finding games that suit you and your tastes.Well said. This is exactly the kind of analysis I'm looking for. It identifies ways in which the specific mechanical expression falls short of the goal or acceptable range of results, in a way that can be tested and improved.I find the "3+CON" thing leans rather too much into the worst aspects of its various elements, being neither super intuitive nor particularly well-grounded (e.g. I would expect a low-Con Wizard with Athletics or Acrobatics training to be better at this task than a high-CON Warlock without said training, because endurance is heavily skill-based IRL.) It further doesn't really add much in the way of drama: either the hunters have more Dashes than the quarry does, and thus catches them, or the hunters don't, and thus the quarry escapes. The purpose of these rules, from a plain reading of the text, is to add a heightened sense of urgency and the thrill of the chase (aesthetic values, but expressed via testable mechanics). I don't think these rules achieve that goal well, and in fact are likely to get in the way of that goal.I....don't quite get how that's supposed to be "the system working as intended." The chase rules are meant to...y'know, be more active than just "are you running away fast enough?" But I consider the entire Exhaustion mechanic to be fundamentally badly designed, which then infects every other system it gets invoked into. The idea of exhaustion as a mechanic is great. The application in 5e is terrible.I see what you did there.Which is about as useful as "an antihero is a hero with villainous qualities or lacking in heroic qualities." Passing the buck to a new definition. That said...By saying "doesn't work and is disruptive," does that mean the two are not totally synonymous?More importantly, does this imply that sometimes, the issue is not "the game is incorrectly designed," and instead "the group is playing a game which does not do what they want it to do"? IOW, would an appropriate response to "X system doesn't work [for me]!" sometimes be a suggestion to play a different system that does meet the expectations of players and DM without needing (excessive) time spent on clarification and adjudication?My retort, here, would be that that is not something a game designer can handle. It is not possible to design a game such that every possible participant gets the experiences they desire most of the time. Instead, as noted above, it is on each potential participant to examine the game and determine whether that game offers experiences they're looking for. One would not (and, I argue, could not) say that rap music "doesn't work" if it fails to provide a pleasurable listening experience, whereas one very easily could say that a particular rap song is badly-executed because it fails to achieve the goals rap music is made to achieve (e.g., the rhyming is bad or forced, the beat is meandering or unfocused, excessive auto-tuning weakens the singer's vocal distinctiveness, etc.)Instead of someone saying, "This song doesn't work because it isn't giving me the kind of experience I want," they should say, "I would rather listen to something else that I find more enjoyable." It has nothing to do with the functionality of the song, and everything to do with having preferences that don't match it. If a particular game does not give you the kind of experience you're looking for, or features particular experiences you vehemently oppose, it may be in your interest to play some other game better adapted to your interests, rather than trying to force a game to do what you want it to do. Just as trying to wrangle with rap music until it resembles classical music is just going to end in frustration.Or, to put it more simply, at some point a game designer must decide what her game is for. Anyone who wants it to have some purpose other than that is, pretty much by definition, going to end up at least a little disappointed. This is an unavoidable fact of game design, and should therefore be embraced. That doesn't mean that it is impossible to design a game that can cater to more than one purpose, but it does mean that trying to be all things to all people is a fool's errand that simply ends up frustrating fans (and, as like as not, designers too).</blockquote>

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