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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9478548" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Part of my problem with much of the "great thief debate" is that a lot of the anti-rules positions seem...pretty blatantly disingenuous, and [USER=2067]@I'm A Banana[/USER] asked exactly the question which pokes that hole in said positions.That is: why is it that we should presume (to use Snarf's legal term) expressio unius est exclusio alterius?It has always been exceedingly clear to me that, for a game like D&D, three general principles always apply.1. If the rules make a clear statement, you should do what you can to make that statement make sense, within relatively lenient bounds of reason. E.g., a gelatinous cube falling prone sounds weird if we rigidly define the "prone" condition as falling flat. But if we take the spirit of the statement--the cube is in a weak position defensively and will need to gather what little wits it has in order to improve its defensive position--then there is clearly no problem with the cube being badly thrown off, losing full awareness of its surroundings, and not being particularly well-comported to avoid incoming attacks. We just happen to call that condition "prone." Most times, it does in fact literally mean "prone." But unless it would egregiously violate reason and sense, we should try to make sure that reasonable game effects work as they're designed to. Yes, it may take a little bit of explanation or thinking. That's okay, it's going to happen some of the time no matter what, so we should prepare for that.2. If the rules don't explicitly say something is forbidden, and doing that thing is not clearly a violation of the spirit of the rules, you should go along with it unless and until it produces undesirable consequences. Or, to put it simply: Anything not forbidden is permitted, unless it is obviously bad or you realize later that it's bad. You see this, for example, with 4e's skill system. 4e skills were big, chunky, and intentionally open-ended. ANYTHING you could do involving Do Magical Secrets Stuff is Arcana. ANYTHING you could do involving the weird-@$$ monsters that fill dungeons in D&D? Dungeoneering. ANYTHING you could do involving knowledge of current affairs, gossip, rumor, etc., etc.? Streetwise. ANYTHING involving the past, or social structures, or practices and traditions, etc.? History. The world is your oyster, so long as you can give a reason why it falls under the associated purview. Hence why I say I'm so baffled at how people run skills in 5e. The way skills are written in 5e is actually much more similar to 4e than to any other past edition. Yet the way people run them is nearly identical to how they were run in the 3e era, which very much was "anything not permitted is forbidden."3. A formally defined rule is simply a guaranteed way that something does work; if you successfully improvise the same solution multiple times, you should write it down as a new, formally defined rule. This is sort of the opposite side of the same coin as #2. Well-designed rules are useful patterns that were worth keeping because they produced the kind of experience the designer intended. If the players in a particular group have repeatedly improvised something for which there are no rules, and the DM has in fact actually been consistent about how that improvisation works...they really should just turn it into a new, actual rule. That way there's no "Mother May I," no guessing, no constant concern that the rug gets pulled out from under you this time because some gotcha you didn't know about suddenly pops up. Having a rule does not tell you that's how you HAVE to play. It tells you that you CAN do X thing.</blockquote>

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