TG as an Industry: A pendulum swing against the excesses of Rule 0 culture

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG as an Industry: A pendulum swing against the excesses of Rule 0 culture

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Dexo: Aug 15, 2009; A city that was to live by night after the wilderness had passed. A city that was to forge out of steel and blood-red neon its own peculiar wilderness.

Mister Olympus posted:

https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/sac/sage-advice-compendium#SA262

this seems to imply that they can, that there is a difference between "natural" and "unarmed" attacks, and most posts on the subject seem to agree that a paladin that has a claw, bite, horn or w/e can smite with it. except maybe not, sometimes, depending on the reading of the specific ability. why does every instance of this concept function differently? why is a claw attack not just an identical "claw" weapon that functions like any given sword does? isn't that easier? it is, except for the person who wants to only read the specific things on their sheet and not any other part of the rules

Okay, I did misunderstand you then. That was my confusion.

A Natural weapon, like a claw/horn etc etc is like it said a weapon. Which means both smite and Improved smite would work with it.

quote:

By 11th level, you are so suffused with righteous might that all your melee weapon strikes carry divine power with them. Whenever you hit a creature with a melee weapon, the creature takes an extra 1d8 radiant damage.

a Fist/headbutt etc is not a natural weapon, which means neither Divine Smite nor Improved Divine Smite work(that I agree was comically stupid naming for a feature)

Also agree that smites should work with unarmed attacks but shrug.

Dexo fucked around with this message at 16:42 on May 2, 2024

# ? May 2, 2024 16:40

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# ? May 18, 2024 18:02

Mister Olympus: Oct 31, 2011; Buzzard, Who Steals From Dead Bodies

OtspIII posted:

Like, I guess they could add all these extra rules, but would that game be better? Do we want to return to the days of rulesets that try to explicitly spell out every edge case scenario with more mechanics? I lived through those days and they were not actually very playable. At some point adding rules to handle situations to come up are adding more pain to needing to memorize crunch than they are removing pain in needing to make snap decisions, and my personal take is that the scale for that tips surprisingly quickly

the thing is, those old days are what 5e is explicitly trying to emulate with its whole 'natural language' thing. those days didn't have clean or systematized rules in the way that i'm talking about, they just had a lot of rules, that were not written in a standardized style to be compatible with each other. the reason people in these arguments hold up 4e as the best dnd is because it made an effort to have everything work on the same basic systems, rather than inventing a new rule for every new version of a similar concept that would get printed.

the model for the type of game that i'd ask for in this position is not 2e or 3.x or even 4e itself anymore, but rather lancer or gubat banwa or emberwind

# ? May 2, 2024 16:40

Dexo: Aug 15, 2009; A city that was to live by night after the wilderness had passed. A city that was to forge out of steel and blood-red neon its own peculiar wilderness.

CR is trash and useless though I will grant you that.

# ? May 2, 2024 16:42

Mister Olympus: Oct 31, 2011; Buzzard, Who Steals From Dead Bodies

OtspIII posted:

I think I get what people mean, now, although I'm not entirely sure what the better solution is. To me, it feels like the core problem is that trying to fully systematize a RPG (with both mechanical and narrative sides) is just inherently impossible? Like, I get the problem, and I agree that it sucks, but it feels to me like that's a symptom of WotC trying to create a tight system, not them abdicating responsibility.

this is also a false dichotomy caused by dnd overexposure. plenty of games are set up such that the mechanics exist to drive a particular narrative forward. dnd mechanics exist to push pieces around a map and adjust statistics. these are fundamentally different types of games, with different goals, but it just so happens that the biggest one of the latter type insists that the ideal way to model a narrative is just to go full freeform, and that dice rolls and numbers should only exist for combat and combat-adjacent activities.

i'm not even knocking the dudes on a map type of game for existing. i love strategy games. i just also don't like that a bad strategy game is the most prominent tabletop game, period

Mister Olympus fucked around with this message at 16:51 on May 2, 2024

# ? May 2, 2024 16:45

OtspIII: Sep 22, 2002

Mister Olympus posted:

the thing is, those old days are what 5e is explicitly trying to emulate with its whole 'natural language' thing.

Shouldn't role-playing games have rules that hit both the mechanical and narrative sides of play, though? The fact that you have both in the same game is the defining and best feature of rpgs

Mister Olympus posted:

the reason people in these arguments hold up 4e as the best dnd is because it made an effort to have everything work on the same basic systems, rather than inventing a new rule for every new version of a similar concept that would get printed.

My impression of 5e is that it actually does this pretty actively. Maybe not always well (see the entire smite discussion going on), and not as hard as 4e did, but it does do a ton of that sort of keyword consolation

# ? May 2, 2024 16:51

Tuxedo Catfish: Mar 17, 2007; You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

even if you couldn't fully systematize a TTRPG as a whole -- i'm skeptical -- you can absolutely systematize a combat minigame that exists as fully siloed / closed system within a larger structure and only needs to produce a win/loss outcome and deplete PC resources before turning control back over to the narrative system. and frankly as professional board game and CCG developers WotC should have more institutional expertise on this subject than nearly anyone else on the planet. they just can't be bothered.

# ? May 2, 2024 16:53

Mister Olympus: Oct 31, 2011; Buzzard, Who Steals From Dead Bodies

OtspIII posted:

My impression of 5e is that it actually does this pretty actively. Maybe not always well (see the entire smite discussion going on), and not as hard as 4e did, but it does do a ton of that sort of keyword consolation

that's exactly the point we're getting at re: why this particular edition war started. 5e does it better than 2e or 3.x, but it was a notable step back from 4e for no apparent reason besides the one person in charge of everything didn't like that 4e made a rulebook look too much like a rulebook.

and then because of this one guy and a bunch of other accidents of history, wotc made a concerted effort to memory hole the time it did something better than usual,* such that people are convinced 5e is the best things could possibly get.

*and then the other consistent wotc thing of stifling any suggestion that other games in this form and genre might exist, which is rational behavior for a big corporation but really stinks when you're the only big corporation in your field with the ability to do that kind of thing, and the people you're stifling are largely just singular people doing their own thing

Mister Olympus fucked around with this message at 16:58 on May 2, 2024

# ? May 2, 2024 16:53

Mister Olympus: Oct 31, 2011; Buzzard, Who Steals From Dead Bodies

i think it's very relevant that while OSR as a subculture exists to re-evaluate 1e and 2e, the equivalent subculture for 4e is primarily occupied with making better games than 4e that are not bound to a dnd genre-conception

# ? May 2, 2024 17:00

mellonbread: Dec 20, 2017

Mister Olympus posted:

OSR as a subculture exists to re-evaluate 1e and 2e

Not really. The majority opinion in OSR is that while 1e and 2e had some nice modules, the rules only got worse after the Basic/Expert set.

# ? May 2, 2024 17:03

Kurieg: Jul 19, 2012; RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20

I'm still incredibly annoyed at their naming of "Bonus Actions" because as a name it implies that it's something extra you get for free but in practice it's 4e's minor actions since you only get one a turn.

# ? May 2, 2024 17:03

Mister Olympus: Oct 31, 2011; Buzzard, Who Steals From Dead Bodies

mellonbread posted:

Not really. The majority opinion in OSR is that while 1e and 2e had some nice modules, the rules only got worse after the Basic/Expert set.

i'll grant you that but you have to admit that most OSR games are dnd-shaped things--specifically TSR dnd shaped things--rather than any alternative, because the attachment is to dnd-as-form as much as it is to a particular mode of tabletop RPG play.

Mister Olympus fucked around with this message at 17:09 on May 2, 2024

# ? May 2, 2024 17:04

mellonbread: Dec 20, 2017

Mister Olympus posted:

i'll grant you that but you have to admit that most OSR games are dnd-shaped things rather than any alternative, because the attachment is to dnd-as-form as much as it is to a particular mode of play

It's possible. I suspect people are still playing d20 fantasy games because it lets them access a huge library of dungeons and adventures. I think people do not actually care that much about rules, but they care a lot about modules. Too many substantive mechanical changes and you break backwards compatibility.

e: I say "backwards compatibility" but I wonder how many people are playing classic modules vs contemporary indie darlings like Stonehell or Dolmenwood.

Best example I can think of is the Into the Odd family of games. It addresses two of my main beefs with d20 fantasy (redundant ability scores, endless tedious rolling to hit) but I don't think you can drop in a module like Against the Giants or Anomalous Subsurface Environment into it and get the intended experience.

mellonbread fucked around with this message at 17:24 on May 2, 2024

# ? May 2, 2024 17:16

Mister Olympus: Oct 31, 2011; Buzzard, Who Steals From Dead Bodies

much like the "i don't mind strategy games" caveat above, i don't actually mind playing a dndlike here and there either. see also my excessive posting in the pf2 thread. i just detest how wotc specifically and 5e more specifically make a deliberate effort to suck all the air out of the room in the hobby, such that it is extremely hard to convince any given person who shares this hobby to play something other than a d20 fantasy, and is even pulling teeth to play something other than 5e in specific.

and something like that, i feel, is close to the 'party line' for a lot of indie rpg people, such that a twitter rant like the one that kicked this whole discourse off can follow from an otherwise innocuous use of a very loaded phrase because of its strong association with 5e-only culture

Mister Olympus fucked around with this message at 17:23 on May 2, 2024

# ? May 2, 2024 17:20

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

YggdrasilTM posted:

Like what

One type of occurrence that was unique to 5e was that some of the designers made themselves available on twitter. So, the type of question that would previously been posed to Dragon magazine was instead posed on a public platform where replies were allowed. In addition, people kept asking complex questions to Mike Mearls, who would occasionally respond �ask your dm� instead of directing them to Kevin Crawford who actually worked on the game rules.

# ? May 2, 2024 17:20

Mister Olympus: Oct 31, 2011; Buzzard, Who Steals From Dead Bodies

mellonbread posted:

e: I say "backwards compatibility" but I wonder how many people are playing classic modules vs contemporary indie darlings like Stonehell or Dolmenwood.

this is a bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario, though, in that all the contemporary OSR darlings are still created with a dnd-like setting and dnd-like playstyle in mind. just because their attachment to the genre comes from the adventures more than the rules doesn't mean they aren't attached to the trappings of dnd. you could not run an OSR module in monsterhearts, and even something like lancer would be a big stretch in terms of converting random encounter tables and the premises of how physically exploring a dungeon works, etc

Mister Olympus fucked around with this message at 18:40 on May 2, 2024

# ? May 2, 2024 18:37

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

OtspIII posted:

I'm not a big fan of 5e (it's solidly the third-best D&D edition)

solidly both the third-best and the best 3rd edition

# ? May 3, 2024 00:12

Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

OtspIII posted:

I'm not a big fan of 5e (it's solidly the third-best D&D edition)

How would you rank them? (And what are we counting as an "edition" in this context? By some definitions, there are 13 of them!)

# ? May 3, 2024 00:27

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

Silver2195 posted:

How would you rank them? (And what are we counting as an "edition" in this context? By some definitions, there are 13 of them!)

I have strong feelings about them but this thread isn't the place for that -- I really just wanted to make that joke

# ? May 3, 2024 00:33

Farg: Nov 19, 2013

5e
4e
3e
2e
1e

# ? May 3, 2024 00:36

mellonbread: Dec 20, 2017

Basic/Expert
Other Basic
Other Basic
0e
Braunstein
???

# ? May 3, 2024 01:05

Jimbozig: Sep 30, 2003; I like sharing and ice cream and animals.

Silver2195 posted:

How would you rank them? (And what are we counting as an "edition" in this context? By some definitions, there are 13 of them!)

I'm not Homullus, but for me:
4e and Basic (moldvay) equal first place because they tried to do a thing and tried to have a design that would do that thing effectively.
5e in 3rd place basically by default. As Homullus said, it's the best 3e.
1e and 3.5e equal last place for being full of junk and thoughtless crap and not worth playing at all.

2e and 3.0e and other versions of basic and OD&D not ranked: didn't play, didn't read.

# ? May 3, 2024 01:05

OtspIII: Sep 22, 2002

Mister Olympus posted:

this is also a false dichotomy caused by dnd overexposure. plenty of games are set up such that the mechanics exist to drive a particular narrative forward.

That's exactly what I'm suggesting RPGs should be--games where both hard mechanics and narrative exist, and where both are being constantly influenced by each other through play.

Mister Olympus posted:

dnd mechanics exist to push pieces around a map and adjust statistics. these are fundamentally different types of games, with different goals, but it just so happens that the biggest one of the latter type insists that the ideal way to model a narrative is just to go full freeform, and that dice rolls and numbers should only exist for combat and combat-adjacent activities.

I don't think this is true. This conversation feels like it's people saying "D&D is a pure combat game that doesn't care about anything but combat mechanics" and then following up on that by saying "D&D sucks because it has all these mechanics that aren't about the pure beautiful numbers of combat". D&D has always been an adventure game--they very explicitly talked a bunch about the "three pillars" of D&D a bunch during 5e dev. The game is good because it's a mix of fighting, exploring, and talking, and the fact that each of those exist on a gradient of mechanical granularity is also a good thing.

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

even if you couldn't fully systematize a TTRPG as a whole -- i'm skeptical -- you can absolutely systematize a combat minigame that exists as fully siloed / closed system within a larger structure and only needs to produce a win/loss outcome and deplete PC resources before turning control back over to the narrative system. and frankly as professional board game and CCG developers WotC should have more institutional expertise on this subject than nearly anyone else on the planet. they just can't be bothered.

You could, but is that universally (or even generally) desirable? Games that do that can be great (Lancer's hard mode shift between mech combat and everything else comes to mind), but that's just one of many ways to be a good RPG, and I'm not convinced it's a good flagship structure.

I'm not convinced that D&D would be a better RPG if it doubled down on dropping all RPG elements every time combat started up. It would be a better tactical combat game, sure.

Mister Olympus posted:

that's exactly the point we're getting at re: why this particular edition war started. 5e does it better than 2e or 3.x, but it was a notable step back from 4e for no apparent reason besides the one person in charge of everything didn't like that 4e made a rulebook look too much like a rulebook.

Note that I said 4e did systemization "harder" than 5e, not necessarily "better". It made the combat way better, but the tools they gave you for between-combat shenanigans are pretty anemic. All the spells that are just like "+5 on an athletics check" are super boring, and even ones with a little heft like Charm Person are still way less interesting than in any other edition. You gain something and you lose something when you do that. (them giving more options to non-casters was, obviously, one of the best things about the system)

Mister Olympus posted:

i'll grant you that but you have to admit that most OSR games are dnd-shaped things--specifically TSR dnd shaped things--rather than any alternative, because the attachment is to dnd-as-form as much as it is to a particular mode of tabletop RPG play.

I mean, this is pretty explicitly what OSR is. The whole idea of OSR play is diving deep into an activity (dungeon crawling), and iterating on procedures of play to make that as enjoyable as possible. Some scenes go wide and try out a bunch of activities, some drill deep into one, both are valuable contributions to the RPG scene.

Silver2195 posted:

How would you rank them? (And what are we counting as an "edition" in this context? By some definitions, there are 13 of them!)

Hah, sure (and I'm playing pretty loose with 'edition' and also not ranking OD&D because I haven't played it):

B/X and 4e are 1 & 2 because they both have a vision and then do them well (I swear I was going to give this answer before Jimbozig did)
5e is thid best because it's okay at everything
2e is probably pretty decent as a pure rules document, but the culture of play that surrounded it was an absolute mess
3e (where I got started) was too much 'rules as physics' without well designed rules
AD&D is a near unplayable mess

# ? May 3, 2024 01:21

kingcom: Jun 23, 2012

OtspIII posted:

Oh, I have this one! The one part of 5e I know pretty well is monster statblocks

The confusing one is 'melee weapon attack', but it's confusing precisely because 5e tried to over-systematize itself. The 'weapon' in 'melee weapon attack' just means it's not ignored by targets immune to spells, right? It's a mechanical keyword.

I think I get what people mean, now, although I'm not entirely sure what the better solution is. To me, it feels like the core problem is that trying to fully systematize a RPG (with both mechanical and narrative sides) is just inherently impossible? Like, I get the problem, and I agree that it sucks, but it feels to me like that's a symptom of WotC trying to create a tight system, not them abdicating responsibility.

Like, I guess they could add all these extra rules, but would that game be better? Do we want to return to the days of rulesets that try to explicitly spell out every edge case scenario with more mechanics? I lived through those days and they were not actually very playable. At some point adding rules to handle situations to come up are adding more pain to needing to memorize crunch than they are removing pain in needing to make snap decisions, and my personal take is that the scale for that tips surprisingly quickly

I think you and others are missing the point of these examples. That they are confusing both mechanically but also verbally and relies on local groups needing to houserule this or literally tweet at Crawford to get a passive-aggressive unclear answer as a response.

Shield Bashing order of operations is so confusing that we've had Crawford post two different rulings (that hes said is a clarification lol) on it that are completely in opposition to the previous ruling that he posted about it. Natural language is unclear and confusing and depends on passed down knowledge and rulings rather than what is actually in the rules themselves.

I'm running a 5e game after a while and we are just constantly running into scenarios like this because we've forgotten the half thought out groupthink rules people came up with along the way.

That is where this comes from:

Terrible Opinions posted:

"You can change the rules" good

"Ask your GM how this thing works because we didn't bother defining it" bad

So far as I know only 5e has made the latter a core part of its identity.

EDIT: Another thing, idk who said it but yeah there secretly are a lot of keywords in 5e that mean and do very specific things, however for quite a while that was wasn't clear at all! Instead of formatting and writing that a specific keyword was used to mean something it was just written often as part of a run on sentence with no formatting to indicate it should stand out. Until you used the system a bunch it and realized that if the phrase was used in a specific way it was secretly giving you more information. This is insane design for an ruleset to do but in large part if was done in response to 4e using its keywords to be very clear and separate from anything else as a big neon sign to the reader that this was a special thing to acknowledge.

kingcom fucked around with this message at 06:00 on May 3, 2024

# ? May 3, 2024 05:34

Ghost Leviathan: Mar 2, 2017; Exploration is ill-advised.

Yeah, it's specifically because people got mad at 4e having clear and precise rules so they made the rules less clear and more poorly defined to soothe them. Unironically.

# ? May 3, 2024 08:23

queeb: Jun 10, 2004; m

I get some friction at my pf2e table about how there's rules for everything. But that's why I like it as a gm, it's way way easier for me to run a pf game than my 5e ones personally

# ? May 3, 2024 13:08

Ominous Jazz: Jun 15, 2011; Big D is chillin' over here
Wasteland style

ironically that's something that made me more interested in pathfinder 2e
oh maybe I should check out the pathfinder 2e group at the local store

# ? May 3, 2024 13:42

Arrrthritis: May 31, 2007; I don't care if you're a star, the moon, or the whole damn sky, you need to come back down to earth and remember where you came from

queeb posted:

I get some friction at my pf2e table about how there's rules for everything. But that's why I like it as a gm, it's way way easier for me to run a pf game than my 5e ones personally

Yeah, it's pretty great because even though there are a ton of rule elements that interact with each other there's a pretty clear way things are supposed to resolve in 99% of cases.

# ? May 3, 2024 13:45

Kibner: Oct 21, 2008; Acguy Supremacy

Arrrthritis posted:

Yeah, it's pretty great because even though there are a ton of rule elements that interact with each other there's a pretty clear way things are supposed to resolve in 99% of cases.

My only complaint is that the nesting of rules can get way to deep. Terms that reference other terms that reference other terms, etc. Takes too long to look up sometimes. Other than that, I had fun with the couple sessions I played.

# ? May 3, 2024 13:49

hyphz: Aug 5, 2003; Number 1 Nerd Tear Farmer 2022.

Keep it up, champ.

Also you're a skeleton warrior now. Kree.; Unlockable Ben

I often find that former D&D GMs have to be reminded that there are a ton of non-combat �moves� in PF2e and that using them can make things more chaotic but can be a lot of fun too.

# ? May 3, 2024 16:38

Dexo: Aug 15, 2009; A city that was to live by night after the wilderness had passed. A city that was to forge out of steel and blood-red neon its own peculiar wilderness.

https://twitter.com/DnDBeyond/status/1786441094177153378

# ? May 3, 2024 19:20

Ominous Jazz: Jun 15, 2011; Big D is chillin' over here
Wasteland style

rough day for the least interesting people you know

# ? May 3, 2024 19:37

Mors Rattus: Oct 25, 2007; FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

That�s a whole lot of words that mostly say �we aren�t using it but if we do and don�t say anything please leave us alone.�

# ? May 3, 2024 20:04

Hollismason: Jun 30, 2007; FEEL FREE TO DISREGARD THIS POST

It is guaranteed to be lazy, ignorant, and/or uninformed.

I figured I'd ask here but has there been any rumors about DnDbeyond going exclusive and being the only vtt available when it's released. I. Terms of Dnd not just role-playing vtt.

Like are they going to maintain their relationship with roll20 and others?

# ? May 3, 2024 20:22

Dexo: Aug 15, 2009; A city that was to live by night after the wilderness had passed. A city that was to forge out of steel and blood-red neon its own peculiar wilderness.

Hollismason posted:

I figured I'd ask here but has there been any rumors about DnDbeyond going exclusive and being the only vtt available when it's released.

No, outside of people doom spiralling.

They just signed a deal with Foundry to sell books for that VTT.

# ? May 3, 2024 20:24

DalaranJ: Apr 15, 2008; Yosuke will now die for you.

Hollismason posted:

I figured I'd ask here but has there been any rumors about DnDbeyond going exclusive and being the only vtt available when it's released. I. Terms of Dnd not just role-playing vtt.

Like are they going to maintain their relationship with roll20 and others?

They put an creative commons SRD out. I don't think they would be able to prohibit other VTTs from maintaining mods that contain all the 5e data, they can just disconnect them from D&D Beyond

# ? May 3, 2024 22:54