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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tequila Sunrise" data-source="post: 6691304" data-attributes="member: 40398">There's definitely a balance to be struck between making the rules as explicit as possible and the you-know-what-I-mean approach. I think that game writers should always err on the side of rules clarity and spelling out their intent, because a pure you-know-what-I-mean approach results in confusion and argument, both because common sense ain't common and because writers can easily make incorrect assumptions about what the reader knows. For example, an older gamer recently told me that early D&D lacks AoO-like rules because the writers came from a wargaming background, and they assumed that everyone knows that you don't simply run past an armed enemy. I guess they figured that running past an armed enemy would be such an unusual occurrence that it wasn't worth having official rules for.But there is a point where game writers can't be held responsible for gamers interpreting their rules as a computer reads an algorithm. At some point, the reader has to be willing to go "Okay, this seems like a weird rule...how might RAI differ from RAW, and what are the consequences of those differences?"Like, Greenfield's findings are amusing from an OotS kind of perspective, but I really hope his friend doesn't use the 'any weapon they are holding' wording to knock the super-monk down a notch. Unless the group genuinely enjoys playing the game by algorithmic interpretations -- possible I suppose, though unlikely -- I think there are better ways of nerfing an OP character than using such a literalistic reading of the rules. There ought to be a corollary of the 'Don't try to solve OOC problems with IC actions' adage -- something like 'Don't try to narrow power disparity with literalistic rules interpretations.'</blockquote>

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