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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6349070" data-attributes="member: 4937">Wait, what?I didn't ask you to buy anything.  I was making conversation.  Apparently I did a bad job of explaining what I was saying, because I haven't a clue where you got what you responded with.I'm getting really sick of seeing that phrase broadly applied to anything people say.  The Oberoni Fallacy is very simple, and it refers to people excusing real failures of the design by saying that the GM can produce house rules.So for example,Person #1 "1e Thieves suck"Person #2 "Yeah, but you can house rule that."That's the Oberoni Fallacy.  There is nothing remotely involved in the Oberoni Fallacy in pointing out that 1e AD&D had a variety of subsystems in official sources that you could rely on to handle novel situations.In the case of:Person #1: "AD&D lacked a social conflict system"Person #2: "I guess.  If you mean that AD&D lacked a skill system, then I agree, but if there was a social conflict where you needed to have a fortune mechanic to resolve the outcome, it was pretty easy to apply the standard of 'roll below Charisma' which was used in published TSR modules, or to do some sort of NPC reaction/response test based on the character's charisma score which was also part of the official rules."That's not the Oberoni Fallacy.In your case, I was calling out that for each of your 'several ways of handling it', there existed precedent for handling a combat in a similar way in a published source.   I choose 1e AD&D precisely because I thought it would be surprising that such an old system had all the different general approaches suggested by FATE in its tool bag.  The example of subduing a dragon corresponded not at all to resolving the situation as a social challenge, but rather to your suggestion of "if no one is supposed to actually get hurt, just run it as a Contest with the fighting as flavor."  Nothing in the AD&D rules forbids the DM from running a scenario as a combat in which no one gets hurt, and the example of the dragon shows that there is precedent and reason to think that a DM would think that is in his toolbag.   While the AD&D rules may not have specifically called out the DM's ability to use subdual rules in a situation not involving a dragon, the overall approach of the 1e DMG and TSR modules was to treat the DM as privileged to adopt the rules to the situation.  Now, this creates a real design problem, in that there was not a unified approach to any particular problem - something proven by the diversity of ways that were published to determine if someone had drowned - and this meant that often an answer to 'how to run' this was not at a DM's finger tips leading to rules of dubious utility.  But that's not the issue we are trying to resolve.  We are trying to resolve the question of, "Can AD&D allow you to talk with your fists?"   And the answer to that is, "Yes.  Yes it can."  Really, not from where I'm standing.  Both involve relying on the GM to use his judgment as to how to handle something.  The rest of what you said about 'deprotagonizing PCs' or 'taking away player agency' is in context just jargon BS.   It sounds good but in practice it doesn't mean anything.   I don't even want to know how you think you resolve the inherent contradiction in claiming that you don't risk deprotagonizing PC's but also that you are looking at the dramatic purpose and intent of the scene.  I'm not going to get into a qualitative analysis of AD&D with you, because first it is a red herring, secondly it's crappy edition warring that will end up amounting to subjective preferences, and third you are really out of your freaking mind if you think I'm all full of nostalgia for 1e and think the system was great.  You seem to be engaging in an inherent contradiction here in that you think I think 1e was great, but also that I felt the need to create lots of house rules.   If I was really a 1e die hard I'd be playing some OSRIC system.  I don't know where you got your chip on your shoulder about 1e, but when you go off on those sorts of rants you aren't responding to what I said.The point is that at its core the scene of "talking with your fists" is pretty simple in both intent and resolution, and virtually any system can handle it in any number of ways provided the GM's approach to the system is to see the rules as a toolbox for solving problems.  This doesn't involve house rules or customizations (except to the extent that every ruling is itself a house rule, which would not differentiate FATE from anything else)!  Concepts like "Roll below your ability score to succeed." appear very early in TSR publications.  Yes, it was most often in modules, but its not unheard of to introduce new rules in modules.  To apply, "Roll below you ability score to succeed" in AD&D is not a house rule.   Player #1: "AD&D has no way of resolving a generic strength test."Player #2: "Wrong, it has many.  You could roll a bend bars/lift gates check.  You could roll under the strength ability score.  Or you could roll and open doors check."That's NOT the Oberoni fallacy!  Player #1: "AD&D has no way of resolving a generic fortitude test."Player #2: "Wrong, it has many.  You could roll a system shock survival test.  You could roll under the constitution score.  You could ask for a save vs. petrification/polymorph...."That's NOT the Oberoni fallacy!Player #1: "AD&D has no way of resolving a generic social challenge."Player #2: "Wrong, it has many...."That's NOT the Oberoni fallacy.Player #1: "AD&D has multiple ways of resolving any proposition, no official way to resolve any but the most generic dungeon bashing propositions, very little guidance to the DM how to pick from his many tools, and its made worse by a highly eclectic organization of its rules - some of which don't even work right."Player #2: "Well, you can fix that with house rules."Player #1: "AD&D's rules are so disorganized that often experienced players didn't even know it had rules to cover situations much less what those rules were."Player #2: "Well, you can fix that with house rules."THAT is the Oberoni fallacy. Ratskinner: "FATE has an extensive tool bag for resolving combat as a social challenge, it's specifically called out as an intent of the rules, and there is tons of guidance to the DM on how and when he should adopt each particular strategy."Celebrim: "Yes, all that is true and it's great.  But if there is really six different ways to handle the same scene each with its own mechanical particulars and stakes and the GM has to carefully construct the right solution for each scenario, it's really not any better than any other game where you would have to carefully adapt the rules to the situation except that it specifically shines a spotlight on it as an intent of the system and privileges the GM to do so."Ratskinner: "Oberoni! Oberoni!!!""There is more than one way to do things" is not necessarily good design.  Ask anyone who has ever tried to debug someone else's Perl.The big advantage to FATE's expressability is that it gets everyone on the same page, and highlights that there can be more goals and challenges of play than physical combat.  I'm not going to get into it with you about why I consider FATE a self-defeating design that gets in the way of its own goals of play any more than I'm going to defend in detail what I think AD&D got right and what it got wrong.</blockquote>

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