D&D 5th Edition: the fifth edition of the discussion thread

[Craft (Cheese)]

With this scaling, low-level combat will be skirmish combat; high-level combat will be like Lord of the Rings: four adventurers will be able to take out dozens of orcs.

And if one dagger stab will take you out no matter what level you are, just how do you expect that to happen? Making sure high-level characters can slay dozens of orcs without breaking a sweat is precisely why we have inflated HP pools.

[Ziegander]

Like how apparently now in addition to attack/AC not scaling, HP and damage will be cut dramatically as well?

Where are you getting this information from? If anything, we've seen evidence, from the first playtest packet, that neither one of those is true.

Sure, there's no longer base attack bonus, but magic items and feats are going to give bonuses to attack rolls and armor class.

Damage isn't cut dramatically. Rogues' Sneak Attack feature deals more damage than it ever has.

HP continues to go up each level by a healthy, fixed amount, and it starts higher than it did in 3rd Edition.

[obryn]

Mearls mentioned the general reduction in HP and damage in the recent column about monster building. Healing has stayed the same for now; they want to see if this made a big enough difference.

This does not mean that HP won't still be the primary scaling measure across levels, however. I think that's still the plan; keep your bonuses and target numbers confined to a narrow range, but inflate damage and HP by level. That's the whole philosophy behind "bounded accuracy" which they don't seem to have abandoned. (I think abandoning that would basically mean going back to the drawing board on the whole system at this point.)

-O

[1337 b4k4]

A major bone of contention across the web was trying to decipher what's flavor text and what's rules whenever a dispute came up. (And, related, rules vs. guidelines - for example, was the CR/EL system a rule, or just a baseline for DMs to ignore or follow?)

What I find interesting about this is how far we've come from the origins of the hobby. The answer to the second question back then was always that all of the rules are guidelines. Even in later years when Gary Gygax would interact with fans on the forums, his most common answer to "Should X happen" or "The rules say X does that mean XY or XZ" was "Whatever you want it to be, its your game."

Not as explicitly stated, but still heavily implied was that the answer to the first question is all fluff is rules. Combined with the answer to question 2 and you can see why fans of older editions find newer rules are separate and immutable from the mutable fluff to be grating.

Apropos of nothing, long as I'm comparing old editions, I thought I might mention something I found interesting from my most recent 4e session. One complaint I see rather frequently about old editions is the high low level lethality (see wizard vs housecat) and how 3e and later 4e really fixed that with their inflated HP values, and how many are afraid 5e is going to go backwards on that front. In the last session, we had 4 13th level characters go up against a hydra. I'll be honest, it seems to me that if you make challenging level appropriate encounters, 4e really isn't that much less lethal than older editions. The hydra was easily dealing between 1/4 and 1/3 character HP per successful attack, which isn't that much different from early editions. The characters might have survived an additional few rounds, but ultimately the damage inflation that has come with the HP inflation appears to mean we're doing the same thing, just with bigger numbers.

[kyoryu]

I'll be honest, it seems to me that if you make challenging level appropriate encounters, 4e really isn't that much less lethal than older editions. The hydra was easily dealing between 1/4 and 1/3 character HP per successful attack, which isn't that much different from early editions. The characters might have survived an additional few rounds, but ultimately the damage inflation that has come with the HP inflation appears to mean we're doing the same thing, just with bigger numbers.

In 4e, it's definitely true that all of the numbers (at least at 1st level) are inflated. The rate of comparative increase also seems lower.

But the bigger thing to me with 4e is that there's a bigger 'margin' between alive and dead. That allowed me to play much harder as a DM, and throw challenging fights out, without fear that a small miscalculation would lead to TPK. Between death saving throws, and death only occurring at -half hp, going unconscious is scary but not inherently lethal. The revised math for crits helped out as well, as you had to be prepared for the amount of damage a crit could deal in any case (since they just maxed damage).

Of course, it took three or four sessions before I fully 'got' this, and stopped playing with assumptions based on older editions. And, frankly, that's one of the things I liked most about 4e compared to older editions - the number of fights that, if done well, ended up feeling like close fights without truly risking TPK. And that's one of the things that I hope 5e manages to keep.

[Fatebreaker]

What I find interesting about this is how far we've come from the origins of the hobby. The answer to the second question back then was always that all of the rules are guidelines. Even in later years when Gary Gygax would interact with fans on the forums, his most common answer to "Should X happen" or "The rules say X does that mean XY or XZ" was "Whatever you want it to be, its your game."

Not as explicitly stated, but still heavily implied was that the answer to the first question is all fluff is rules. Combined with the answer to question 2 and you can see why fans of older editions find newer rules are separate and immutable from the mutable fluff to be grating.

Rules should always be clear. That way, everyone is playing the same game.

In a game like D&D, the rules they put forward aren't connected to any specific setting. As such, connecting fluff to mechanics works in opposition to the idea that you can create your own world, and only gets worse the more you blur the line between fluff and rules. As you build and design your world, every time you add your own touches, you may be inadvertently creating a conflict between the fuzzy pseudo-rules of someone else's fluff, the hard rules of the mechanics, and the world you wanted to make and play in. Worse, the blurrier the line is between rules and fluff, the more likely such conflicts are to sneak in unnoticed.

When "design and create your own fantasy world!" is a major draw for your game, having shadowy half-rules which impede your ability to truly design and create your own fantasy worlds is a Bad Thing.

It's different when setting and rules are sold as a set. In Legend of the Five Rings, the "Tea Ceremony" skill is only effective because tea ceremonies are an important part of that setting. Once you leave the setting, that rule no longer makes sense. That's okay, though, because the rules are specifically designed to model that particular setting.

Tangent #1: About two years ago, Games Workshop released the 8th Edition of Warhammer Fantasy. Now, whether you like the specific game or not, the rulebook is worth taking a look at. It's organized in a very clear way, sections and subsections and all that, but the best part is that each rule leads with a bolded, succinct version of the rule, followed by a lengthier, more casual description. Not only does it aid in clarity, but when you're flipping through the book looking for that one rule, now it's much easier to sort out Rules from Not-Rules, which makes it easier to resolve rules disputes and get back to the game. That's a positive thing.

Tangent #2: The only time rules should not be clear is when that's a core element of the game. Playing a game with mystery rules can be fun, but that's not really D&D's schtick, so for our purposes, saying "Rules should always be clear" works well enough.

Tangent #3: The "rules and fluff should be immutable and interlinked!" argument falls apart immediately upon considering that many of the most basic elements of the game do not have a clear link between fluff and rules. For example, consider the basic attack: role a dice, add modifiers, compare to target defense. This holds true whether you're stabbing folks with a sword, hacking off limbs with an axe, bashing heads with a mace, or slitting throats with a dagger. The modifiers might change when other rules come into play, but even so the same basic mechanic models a variety of story interpretations. Mechanically, it doesn't matter whether my killing blow cuts off his head or slits his throat, because mechanically, all that happened was that I rolled well enough to overcome his AC (or THAC0) and dealt enough damage to kill him. Letting the player imagine the action happening in ways that they think are cool is much better than constraining the player into things that the designers thought were cool.

[obryn]

Even in later years when Gary Gygax would interact with fans on the forums, his most common answer to "Should X happen" or "The rules say X does that mean XY or XZ" was "Whatever you want it to be, its your game."

What's even crazier, IMO, is that people seem to have this idea that when Gary & co. were in the process of laying the foundation for D&D that they had answers to these sorts of weird philosophical questions in mind. Rather than just, you know, making up a game that they and their friends wanted to play which was based on miniature wargaming rules. :) AC? Hit points? They're that way because that's how Chainmail and some other wargames worked, and it worked for the game they were playing.

I'll be honest, it seems to me that if you make challenging level appropriate encounters, 4e really isn't that much less lethal than older editions.

Agreed; that's been my finding, too. If I hadn't handed out a few get-out-of-death-free cards early on in order to encourage a character-centric game, every player in my game would have lost one or two characters by now.

At mid-Paragon, death is harder to reach - negative Bloodied is pretty far down there - but I was pretty sure one of the PCs was set to die each session in my last three.

-O

[Knaight]

What's even crazier, IMO, is that people seem to have this idea that when Gary & co. were in the process of laying the foundation for D&D that they had answers to these sorts of weird philosophical questions in mind. Rather than just, you know, making up a game that they and their friends wanted to play which was based on miniature wargaming rules. :) AC? Hit points? They're that way because that's how Chainmail and some other wargames worked, and it worked for the game they were playing.

It's not like they ever even had any real idea of what they were doing - they were working with no precedent, shooting in the dark and hoping for the best.

[obryn]

It's not like they ever even had any real idea of what they were doing - they were working with no precedent, shooting in the dark and hoping for the best.

Well, they did have experience ... with miniature wargames. :)

Reading some accounts of early D&D, that's pretty much how they treated their PCs, too - as (more or less) disposable units, with expected high levels of attrition. It's pretty fascinating how the hobby has changed since then.

-O

[Craft (Cheese)]

It's not like they ever even had any real idea of what they were doing - they were working with no precedent, shooting in the dark and hoping for the best.

You fool! Gary Gygax designed D&D when he received a holy vision from Tiyesar, the God of all Gaming. All the problems with D&D are because we have abandoned the wisdom of Tiyesar, and we are receiving our just punishment!

[1337 b4k4]

Rules should always be clear. That way, everyone is playing the same game.

This is only relevant for two groups of people:
1) Everyone sitting around the same table
and
2) People playing in RPGA events

Beyond that, it doesn't matter if Jim Bob interprets the rules one way in his game and Jane Doe interprets them another in her game and Gary Gygax does it another way in his game. What other gamers do is irrelevant to your table. Other gamers can inspire you, and good ideas tend to pollinate across different groups, but there is nothing at all fundamentally wrong with 5 different D&D groups each sitting down with the same rule book in coming up with 5 different games.

As you build and design your world, every time you add your own touches, you may be inadvertently creating a conflict between the fuzzy pseudo-rules of someone else's fluff, the hard rules of the mechanics, and the world you wanted to make and play in. Worse, the blurrier the line is between rules and fluff, the more likely such conflicts are to sneak in unnoticed.

See the answer to question 2: All rules are guidelines. THere is never a conflict between fuzzy pseudo-rules, RAW and the world you want to play in because your rules override all the others. If the RAW says an attack is a physical attack against someone, and the fluff says its a slice with a sword and you want to play in a world where everyone fights hand to hand then either you will make up your own rules for hand to hand, or you will simply declare that in your game all sword attacks are now unarmed attacks, and that is perfectly ok.

When "design and create your own fantasy world!" is a major draw for your game, having shadowy half-rules which impede your ability to truly design and create your own fantasy worlds is a Bad Thing.

Only if you believe that RAW/FAW is sacrosanct.

hen you're flipping through the book looking for that one rule, now it's much easier to sort out Rules from Not-Rules, which makes it easier to resolve rules disputes and get back to the game. That's a positive thing.

Only if you believe that there is such a thing as rules and not-rules when describing the game rules and the setting being modeled. See the answer to question 1: Fluff is rules.

The "rules and fluff should be immutable and interlinked!" argument falls apart immediately upon considering that many of the most basic elements of the game do not have a clear link between fluff and rules.

Of course, "Fluff is Rules" and "All Rules are Guidelines" is pretty much the exact opposite of "rules and fluff should be immutable and interlinked".

Letting the player imagine the action happening in ways that they think are cool is much better than constraining the player into things that the designers thought were cool.

Which is why part of why attacks in D&D are called "attacks" and not "sword swings". On the other hand, "Fluff is rules" tells us that "Backstab" is a stab in the back of some sort. Followed up with "Rules are guidelines" means that in the world D&D is modeling, the mechanic involved in backstabbing models being stabbed in the back, but since this is your world, if you want to decide that backstabbing also works for non stabbing weapons, or doesn't even happen at all, that's perfectly ok too.

Which again brings me back to the only people for whom rules need to be consistent are your players.

Reading some accounts of early D&D, that's pretty much how they treated their PCs, too - as (more or less) disposable units, with expected high levels of attrition. It's pretty fascinating how the hobby has changed since then.

Part of that also I think comes from the fact that early games were as much about random exploration as they were about telling a preset individual story. When it's about exploring this labyrinth in front of you, who (character wise) your exploring with doesn't matter quite as much, so Rigby, Zigby, Zygag, Melf, etc are all perfectly acceptable and to a large degree interchangeable.

[HeadlessMermaid]

When "design and create your own fantasy world!" is a major draw for your game, having shadowy half-rules which impede your ability to truly design and create your own fantasy worlds is a Bad Thing.

Sorry, but when was that a major draw? At the beginning? Along the way? For 5E?

The way I see it*, D&D is an awful system for worldbuilding. There's so much fluff in the crunch, that without extensive homebrewing and houseruling, you can only produce variants of the generic setting (even if they have an "exotic" feel). Not something new, though.

There are exactly two non setting-specific classes in core: fighters and rogues. Use the rest as written, and you immediately assume a whole lot of things about the setting, the culture, magic, and religion. Use alignment as written, and you assume a whole lot of things about the planes, the gods, the very laws of the universe. Use core races (and monster races) as written, and you assume a whole lot of things about the population, the culture, the mindset. Use NPC classes as written, and you assume a very specific caste system.

Now, don't get me wrong, it's entirely possible to adapt D&D (any edition) to your needs. Infinite worlds, infinite possibilities, imagination runs wild and all that jazz. But you can't do it out of the box. If you want to shift radically from the "generic" setting, you must bend the rules beyond recognition.

Otherwise, your setting may turn out awesome (and distinct and original and very fun to play, I'm not denying any of these), but it won't be far off the vanilla D&D setting, not really.

*Disclaimer: Perhaps I only see it that way because my personal taste in settings somehow, ALWAYS, clashes with the rules. I expect that people who don't get regularly annoyed, frustrated and angered by this whole "fluff in the crunch" thingy will have no problem whatsoever with worldbuilding options in D&D, and won't feel restricted by the rules. It's just a matter of preference.

In a game like D&D, the rules they put forward aren't connected to any specific setting. As such, connecting fluff to mechanics works in opposition to the idea that you can create your own world, and only gets worse the more you blur the line between fluff and rules.

In the ideal D&D in my mind, that's certainly how it would work. I'm with you 100%! But the rules have always been (inadvertedly) connected to a specific setting. Ever since Clerics got Turn Undead.

Think about it for a moment, and tell me why that should be the case in ALL fantasy settings, including, say, animistic ones, where the resident undead are your own ancenstral spirits. (Spirit Shaman in a great class, and also not the point. ) Or in a specific mythology setting, any of them. Or in a setting where undead don't even exist. Or in a setting where you want undead to recoil from some specific symbol, no matter who or what is holding it, and balk at nothing else.

Here's why: In The Beginning, there was Gygax, and he was once running a team Vs team game. One team had a Vampire. To even the odds, Gygax gave the other team a Van Helsing. At the time, they were also debating to incude in the rules divine magic and healing units. So Gygax combined these, and behold: The Cleric Who Turns Undead. And now we take it for granted, as if it's the only possible way to handle Fantasy, while in fact it came about by chance, for specific needs which arose during a specific game.

I find this story fascinating. It's just an example, but it's very telling of how fluff got in the crunch, and stayed there, and got established, and ended up defining the game, if not the genre. And now we can't get rid of the damn thing without changing half the rules.

Do I like it? Hey, I love D&D! But is it a worldbuilding-friendly system? Not at all. Unless our only concerns are where to place the elven kingdom on the map, and how to subvert this or that trope - without really going beyond it, and without building something really new. IMO.

[Craft (Cheese)]

Beyond that, it doesn't matter if Jim Bob interprets the rules one way in his game and Jane Doe interprets them another in her game and Gary Gygax does it another way in his game. What other gamers do is irrelevant to your table. Other gamers can inspire you, and good ideas tend to pollinate across different groups, but there is nothing at all fundamentally wrong with 5 different D&D groups each sitting down with the same rule book in coming up with 5 different games.

D&D sells itself as a complete game: All you have to do is grab the books, sit down, and play. What you're describing isn't a complete game, but rather pieces of a game that can be picked up, rearranged, modified, and reassembled in different ways.

Really, I prefer the second approach myself, but the problem is there's nothing wrong with the game-as-ready-to-play-complete-package approach. With this approach, a half-rule that has to be interpreted (possibly in different ways) before it can be used is most definitely a flaw.

[Draz74]

I mean, nobody cared about HP, AC, XP or any of the dozens of basic "disassociated mechanics" before 4e came out -- it was only after that these terms came into vogue and somehow were never applied to previous editions.

I beg to differ. HP and AC have bothered me for a long, long time. I'm personally ok with the dissociations of XP, but a number of other RPG systems that involve use-based skill improvement are good evidence that the XP mechanic bothered some people. Again, long before 4e.

[kyoryu]

I beg to differ. HP and AC have bothered me for a long, long time. I'm personally ok with the dissociations of XP, but a number of other RPG systems that involve use-based skill improvement are good evidence that the XP mechanic bothered some people. Again, long before 4e.

The illogic of HP and AC were one of the things that drove me to GURPS, years back, actually. When I came back to D&D a few years ago, I basically decided to get over it and just have fun with the game.

[Draz74]

The illogic of HP and AC were one of the things that drove me to GURPS, years back, actually. When I came back to D&D a few years ago, I basically decided to get over it and just have fun with the game.

Makes sense, but I prefer to just houserule D&D (until it's not even recognizable as D&D) until those things make sense.

[1337 b4k4]

D&D sells itself as a complete game: All you have to do is grab the books, sit down, and play. What you're describing isn't a complete game, but rather pieces of a game that can be picked up, rearranged, modified, and reassembled in different ways.

Really, I prefer the second approach myself, but the problem is there's nothing wrong with the game-as-ready-to-play-complete-package approach. With this approach, a half-rule that has to be interpreted (possibly in different ways) before it can be used is most definitely a flaw.

It should come as no surprise that I disagree with your statements. There is nothing "incomplete" about rules that can be interpreted two different ways, nor rearranged and reassembled to fit, provided that those rules come with what in the IT industry we term "sane defaults." That is, a rule should provide enough information to adjudicate the situation the rule is trying to model a majority of the time. Leaving the edge cases to DM adjudication and reminding the DM that any and all of the rules are mutable is not a flaw.

[Menteith]

It should come as no surprise that I disagree with your statements. There is nothing "incomplete" about rules that can be interpreted two different ways, nor rearranged and reassembled to fit, provided that those rules come with what in the IT industry we term "sane defaults." That is, a rule should provide enough information to adjudicate the situation the rule is trying to model a majority of the time. Leaving the edge cases to DM adjudication and reminding the DM that any and all of the rules are mutable is not a flaw.

It's a matter of degree, for me. While I have no problems with houserules, I do have an issue if a system requires frequent use of them to function, or for core mechanics. I've played with DMs who might honestly not be able to perform unless they had a very well defined system to fall back on. It's also an issue whenever there's a player/DM disconnect. While the DM should have ultimate say on the rules, it can be frustrating in a system like D&D to be told "No, you're wrong", when a player brings forward a different interpretation. If the system requires few rulings, and most of those are edge rulings anyway, great. If a system requires substantial houseruling in order to function, then I probably won't run the system.

[Craft (Cheese)]

Leaving the edge cases to DM adjudication and reminding the DM that any and all of the rules are mutable is not a flaw.

I agree, but that is not the same thing as giving one book to five groups and getting 5 completely different games.

[Fatebreaker]

This is only relevant for two groups of people:
1) Everyone sitting around the same table
and
2) People playing in RPGA events

These are the exact groups I'm talking about.

Seriously, I do not care what you do at home. But when I sit down to play with folks, it's important that everyone is playing the same game. They can all have different motivations for playing, but at the end of the day, if they fundamentally believe that they are playing entirely different games, that's not going to end well.

Beyond that, it doesn't matter if Jim Bob interprets the rules one way in his game and Jane Doe interprets them another in her game and Gary Gygax does it another way in his game. What other gamers do is irrelevant to your table. Other gamers can inspire you, and good ideas tend to pollinate across different groups, but there is nothing at all fundamentally wrong with 5 different D&D groups each sitting down with the same rule book in coming up with 5 different games.

There's nothing wrong with that until they all try to play in the same game. Then it matters very much how they interpret that game. The more you blur the lines between "rules" and "fluff," the more likely they are to come into conflict with one another. Headless Mermaid has some neat examples down below.

THere is never a conflict between fuzzy pseudo-rules, RAW and the world you want to play in because your rules override all the others.

I ran a gaming store. Those conflicts are very, very real.

I'm not going to quote the rest of your post, because it basically repeats the same claim of "there are no conflicts between fluff and rules, because you can make it all up." It's not that I disrespect your viewpoint, it's that this is already going to be a long post as is, and repeating the same comment/rebuttal would be tedious. So here's the overall reply:

The idea that "you can make it all up" is fine, except that at some point, you actually have to sit down and play with other people (I mean, I suppose you don't have to ever play, but then... well, you're not really relevant to a discussion of how the game actually plays, are you?). And when you do sit down to play with folks, you need to have a communal sense of what you're actually playing. A shared and agreed upon alternate reality that functions according to rules everyone can understand and act up. What Gibson described as "a consensual hallucination." Schrodinger's system is fine and good, but when you open that box, something coherent needs to come out.

Using house-rules is fine and dandy, but if the players around the table aren't even clear on what is or is not a rule because the system won't tell them, that is indeed a flaw.

Sorry, but when was that a major draw? At the beginning? Along the way? For 5E?

The way I see it*, D&D is an awful system for worldbuilding. There's so much fluff in the crunch, that without extensive homebrewing and houseruling, you can only produce variants of the generic setting (even if they have an "exotic" feel). Not something new, though.

There are exactly two non setting-specific classes in core: fighters and rogues. Use the rest as written, and you immediately assume a whole lot of things about the setting, the culture, magic, and religion. Use alignment as written, and you assume a whole lot of things about the planes, the gods, the very laws of the universe. Use core races (and monster races) as written, and you assume a whole lot of things about the population, the culture, the mindset. Use NPC classes as written, and you assume a very specific caste system.

Now, don't get me wrong, it's entirely possible to adapt D&D (any edition) to your needs. Infinite worlds, infinite possibilities, imagination runs wild and all that jazz. But you can't do it out of the box. If you want to shift radically from the "generic" setting, you must bend the rules beyond recognition.

Otherwise, your setting may turn out awesome (and distinct and original and very fun to play, I'm not denying any of these), but it won't be far off the vanilla D&D setting, not really.

*Disclaimer: Perhaps I only see it that way because my personal taste in settings somehow, ALWAYS, clashes with the rules. I expect that people who don't get regularly annoyed, frustrated and angered by this whole "fluff in the crunch" thingy will have no problem whatsoever with worldbuilding options in D&D, and won't feel restricted by the rules. It's just a matter of preference.

*chuckle* I never said they were good at it. But one of the draws of a setting-less RPG over, say, a setting-specific RPG (like Shadowrun or Exalted) is the ability to make your own setting. And it's an even bigger draw when compared to movies and books, where you make no choices at all, or video games, where you make only a handful of very limited choices.

Other systems do it better, but D&D certainly puts forward as a positive element the ability of the DM and the players to design their own world. Don't watch someone else's adventure -- make your own!

Of course, then they go and get all their terribad pseudo-fluff in their crunch, and suddenly their delivery is much less than the promise. See my earlier post for examples.

In the ideal D&D in my mind, that's certainly how it would work. I'm with you 100%! But the rules have always been (inadvertedly) connected to a specific setting.

-snip-

Do I like it? Hey, I love D&D! But is it a worldbuilding-friendly system? Not at all. Unless our only concerns are where to place the elven kingdom on the map, and how to subvert this or that trope - without really going beyond it, and without building something really new. IMO.

You are absolutely correct (well, almost, but more on that later). It's worse in older editions (for example, 4e presented monsters as statblocks and let individual setting books provide the fluff), but the intermixing of fluff and crunch is one of the worst aspects of D&D's design because it's an element which pervades everything else. And honestly, it's one of the reasons design by "iconic" elements is a bad thing for 5e. You wind up with all these things that some guy tossed in thirty years ago without actually thinking about the larger effects and implications, and now we're stuck with it.

However, while I agree that the system makes a lot of assumptions, and that the intermixing of those fuzzy ideas to hard rules is a terrible thing, it doesn't actually put forward a setting. There's no map. There's no coherency to it. Those Purple Dragon Knights (Complete Warrior, not Forgotten Realms) I referenced in my earlier post are just the tip of the iceberg.

They do just enough so that when I run a custom setting, I spend a significant amount of time talking about what isn't true. But I can't just say, "Default setting," because that doesn't actually mean a specific setting. It's the worst of both worlds.

-------

As a clarification, I'm not against house-rules or customization. Nor am I against setting-specific games. What I am against, however, are games where the actual rules are poorly conveyed or intermingled with fluff to a degree where it is unclear where one stops and the other begins.

Being able to alter the game to suit your needs first requires that you and your players have a clear understanding of what your needs are and what needs to be changed in order to meet them. A lack of clarity is an obstacle in this regard.

[1337 b4k4]

The idea that "you can make it all up" is fine, except that at some point, you actually have to sit down and play with other people (I mean, I suppose you don't have to ever play, but then... well, you're not really relevant to a discussion of how the game actually plays, are you?). And when you do sit down to play with folks, you need to have a communal sense of what you're actually playing. A shared and agreed upon alternate reality that functions according to rules everyone can understand and act up. What Gibson described as "a consensual hallucination." Schrodinger's system is fine and good, but when you open that box, something coherent needs to come out.

Using house-rules is fine and dandy, but if the players around the table aren't even clear on what is or is not a rule because the system won't tell them, that is indeed a flaw.

Again though, this falls back to rule 1, "Fluff is rules". There is no confusion on what is or is not a rule because everything is a rule until the DM tells you otherwise. It appears to me that some people have a difficult time imagining non stat block elements as rules, but to me a game book which says:

"Spell: Fireball - Sends a ball of fire shooting from the wizards fingers to a fixed point which then explodes and does 3d6 damage in a 20' sphere"

and a book that says:

"Spell: Explosive Burst - Burst 4 - 3d6 Fire Damage"

are both providing clear cut rules. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you but the fact that the first version includes more information (it comes from the finger, flies as a ball and then explodes in a sphere) doesn't mean that those things aren't rules, it just means the second version's designers didn't consider those rules worth having.

In other words, the way I approach any game I run or play in is that what's in the book are the rules, unless the DM says otherwise, and that the DM's interpretation of those rules is the correct interpretation. When I sit down at a DMs table, I'm there to play his game, and my interpretations of the rules are worth nothing at the table. If I truly feel strongly about a rule interpretation, then of course we can have a discussion (after the game) but ultimately it's the DMs call, and if I don't like it, I can always run my own game, with my own rules. I've found this approach works perfectly well because I never have any expectations that aren't met, because I always expect to play the DMs game, not my game.

Then again, as you can imagine, I tend to find rules lawyering (or for that matter, any arguments over the rules) distasteful at best, and disrespectful at worst. The DM is the adjudicator, to not allow him or her to adjudicate because I interpret the rules differently is to express distrust in the DM and their ability to run the game. Of course, I also don't play with DMs that I don't trust, regardless of my personal outlook on the rules.

What I am against, however, are games where the actual rules are poorly conveyed or intermingled with fluff to a degree where it is unclear where one stops and the other begins.

I honestly think we're just going to have to agree to disagree, because we appear to be approaching this from completely different world views. To me, there is no lack of clarity between fluff and rules because to me all fluff is rules; there is never a need to distinguish because there is no distinction.

[Seerow]

Again though, this falls back to rule 1, "Fluff is rules". There is no confusion on what is or is not a rule because everything is a rule until the DM tells you otherwise. It appears to me that some people have a difficult time imagining non stat block elements as rules, but to me a game book which says:

"Spell: Fireball - Sends a ball of fire shooting from the wizards fingers to a fixed point which then explodes and does 3d6 damage in a 20' sphere"

and a book that says:

"Spell: Explosive Burst - Burst 4 - 3d6 Fire Damage"

are both providing clear cut rules. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you but the fact that the first version includes more information (it comes from the finger, flies as a ball and then explodes in a sphere) doesn't mean that those things aren't rules, it just means the second version's designers didn't consider those rules worth having.

In other words, the way I approach any game I run or play in is that what's in the book are the rules, unless the DM says otherwise, and that the DM's interpretation of those rules is the correct interpretation. When I sit down at a DMs table, I'm there to play his game, and my interpretations of the rules are worth nothing at the table. If I truly feel strongly about a rule interpretation, then of course we can have a discussion (after the game) but ultimately it's the DMs call, and if I don't like it, I can always run my own game, with my own rules. I've found this approach works perfectly well because I never have any expectations that aren't met, because I always expect to play the DMs game, not my game.

Then again, as you can imagine, I tend to find rules lawyering (or for that matter, any arguments over the rules) distasteful at best, and disrespectful at worst. The DM is the adjudicator, to not allow him or her to adjudicate because I interpret the rules differently is to express distrust in the DM and their ability to run the game. Of course, I also don't play with DMs that I don't trust, regardless of my personal outlook on the rules.

This sort of reasoning is what led to a 400 post or so debate on the WotC forums as to whether a Cleric can cast Shield of Faith on himself in the playtest. Because the fluff text at the start says "Ally" and the Effect text says "Any creature within __ feet" (the same wording as used for the healing spell).

Just saying.

[Stubbazubba]

It appears to me that some people have a difficult time imagining non stat block elements as rules, but to me a game book which says:

"Spell: Fireball - Sends a ball of fire shooting from the wizards fingers to a fixed point which then explodes and does 3d6 damage in a 20' sphere"

and a book that says:

"Spell: Explosive Burst - Burst 4 - 3d6 Fire Damage"

are both providing clear cut rules.

The question is not about which rules presentation is superior; the question is when two different descriptions - one mechanical, one illustrative - do not seem to agree. When one says it explodes in a 'ball of fire' and the other implies that it explodes in a square, well, which one is it? And the DM says it's a sphere, then I go to another game and have incorrect assumptions because this DM decided to go with the other interpretation. I feel frustrated because there was a tactic I used in the first game that I was planning on using in the second, and now I can't. I'm playing an entirely different game, just because the effect was written ambiguously.

Having to re-learn rules to play at a different table is a bad, bad thing and should be avoided. It's like having to re-learn English to communicate in the UK versus US. It's not totally foreign so you assume you'll be OK with your previous assumptions, but then something is different and you experience a communication failure when you don't normally expect one and that's frustrating. Neither country is wrong, it's just a problem with having two similar yet distinct dialects. It discourages people from intermingling and encourages isolationism.

You don't want to encourage tunnel-vision with your game, you want it to be broad, approachable, and accessible to as large an audience as you can, because you honestly think its fun and want people to enjoy playing it. So make the rules clear and concise, not rambling and ambiguously placed besides illustrative description, because at some point, there'll be a disagreement between the two, and at that point you are making your players finish your job for you by deciding which one is correct.

Just because Gygax wrapped up the 'Whatever you think it is' answer in his masterful salesmanship does not mean it's a good idea, or a mature answer, or anything of the sort. Taking care to write solid rules which are clear and unambiguous is a help to your game's success and popularity; it decreases the learning curve and homogenizes play between different groups, which actually strengthens your community.

[jseah]

So make the rules clear and concise, not rambling and ambiguously placed besides illustrative description, because at some point, there'll be a disagreement between the two, and at that point you are making your players finish your job for you by deciding which one is correct.
<...>
it decreases the learning curve and homogenizes play between different groups, which actually strengthens your community.

Um, actually, you can write rules/fluff that are consistent until way way down, but the result is that you end up doing alot of math. The only way you are going to get inter-group consistency (and sanity) on effects like "I attempt to use telekinesis to spin the sword!" is if you bake rotational mechanics into the rules.
Given that it involves integrals, that strikes me as a bad thing.

Many other similar problems abound.

At some point you will have to say, "this amount of rules is enough, if your group wishes to have more detail, here is a helpful description".

Omitting the helpful description is probably not a good idea however.

[Clawhound]

In my life, I have seen rules lawyer twist rules into all sorts of strange shapes that work exactly unlike any sensible reading. If the rules are clear, they start twisting the words themselves into strange definition.

"This spells allows me to deny the target the ability to run. So, I target the raging river in front of us and deny it the ability to run, thereby making it safe to cross."

That which controls rules, first and foremost, is good sense. There are an infinite number of possibilities in gameplay, so writing rules to cover all possible situations is likewise infinite. So, in order to create any RPG, you must trust that the DM and the players can resolve the odd stuff on their own either through adapting a rule or using real-world analogies, and focus the rules on the most common circumstances.

[1337 b4k4]

This sort of reasoning is what led to a 400 post or so debate on the WotC forums as to whether a Cleric can cast Shield of Faith on himself in the playtest. Because the fluff text at the start says "Ally" and the Effect text says "Any creature within __ feet" (the same wording as used for the healing spell).

Clearly it wasn't this sort of reasoning, or else the debate would have ended at post 2 with "The cleric can do whatever the DM says he can do."

When one says it explodes in a 'ball of fire' and the other implies that it explodes in a square, well, which one is it? And the DM says it's a sphere, then I go to another game and have incorrect assumptions because this DM decided to go with the other interpretation. I feel frustrated because there was a tactic I used in the first game that I was planning on using in the second, and now I can't. I'm playing an entirely different game, just because the effect was written ambiguously.

Arguably its the sphere because that is explicit, while the other as you mention was an implication. But for the sake of argument, assuming that you meant that both of these contradictions were given the same exact weighting in the RAW, that's not a problem with rules vs fluff being unclear, that's a problem with two equally weighted contradicting rules and it would be the same if the spells section had a rule at the beginning that says "all area spells burst in a square, no exceptions" and then fireball said "the area spell fireball bursts in a sphere."

Further though you would have to ask whether it really matters in the 90% use case? How often when your casting fireball will it matter whether the boundaries are defined as a sphere or a cube? If its frequent enough that it matters a majority of the time, and the rules are that contradictory, then it's just bad rules period, and whether that's in the "fluff" part or the "rules" part is irrelevant.

Lastly if whether the rule is interpreted A way or B way is that important to your plan for your character, then it's a question that should have been asked at the beginning right after "What classes are we allowed to choose from"

But honestly I think this issue is blown way out of proportion. Sure it looks like a big deal on the internet and in the lobbies of game shops where people can get together and endlessly debate on their pet theories, but in reality, where the pencils meet the paper, this seems like a non issue.

Taking care to write solid rules which are clear and unambiguous is a help to your game's success and popularity; it decreases the learning curve and homogenizes play between different groups, which actually strengthens your community.

Clear, concise rules and fluff as rules aren't mutually exclusive. As the two posters above me point out, rules that cover every possible situation for every possible ambiguity for every possible player wind up as either treatises on chemistry, physics and history or as dense as a formal legal contract.

[kyoryu]

Having to re-learn rules to play at a different table is a bad, bad thing and should be avoided.

Surprisingly enough, people interpret things. That's kind of why, for every single holy book in the world, we've got any number of groups that gets something different out of them.

The solution is to use incredibly precise, sparse language that has well-defined language that is as unambiguous as possible - which was a lesson that WotC took from M:tG and tried to apply to D&D. 4e was the result, and, let's face it, wasn't universally loved. I believe that one of the reasons it's *not* universally loved is that the descriptions of mechanics are in fact so precise and mechanical, and that's part of what has led people to deride it as "videogamey".

So, you can either go the precise, overly-mechanical description of the rules, or you can accept that different tables will have different interpretations. Each of those solutions has different advantages, and disadvantages. I'm not even really going to side with one or the other here.

[1337 b4k4]

The solution is to use incredibly precise, sparse language that has well-defined language that is as unambiguous as possible - which was a lesson that WotC took from M:tG and tried to apply to D&D. 4e was the result, and, let's face it, wasn't universally loved. I believe that one of the reasons it's *not* universally loved is that the descriptions of mechanics are in fact so precise and mechanical, and that's part of what has led people to deride it as "videogamey".

And even then, you don't solve the problem, you just reduce it, it's not like rules lawyers in M:tG are uncommon. For that matter, when you start getting overly precise like that, in order to maintain the precision, you start having to publish more errata as you continually adjust for rules lawyers. See http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...viousRulePatch

Like everything it's a trade off, and the only real difference is how early in the process the game designers declared the rules "good enough"

[Menteith]

And even then, you don't solve the problem, you just reduce it, it's not like rules lawyers in M:tG are uncommon. For that matter, when you start getting overly precise like that, in order to maintain the precision, you start having to publish more errata as you continually adjust for rules lawyers. See http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...viousRulePatch

Like everything it's a trade off, and the only real difference is how early in the process the game designers declared the rules "good enough"

Minor objection - there aren't rules lawyers (at least, not in the D&D sense of the word) in MTG. Judges are available at every event, and every rule is clearly mapped out. While there's certainly power level errata in the game (Time Vault; guess how I work!), that's usually confined to decades old or older cards, which aren't legal in the formats WotC supports most heavily (I love Legacy/1.5, but it doesn't get the same kind of love Standard does). I'm having trouble thinking of cards past Onslaught that have needed to be errated (I've got Oboro Envoy, and that was due to a misprinting). Arguing an incorrect rule in MTG won't work at any sanctioned event, and the comprehensive rules are available to everyone.

[Stubbazubba]

Clearly it wasn't this sort of reasoning, or else the debate would have ended at post 2 with "The cleric can do whatever the DM says he can do."

And that doesn't strike you as disempowering the player? You can't know what your own abilities do unless you run every single one by the DM and he makes up rulings on the fly? Maybe there was a reason that the designers intended it to be used one way or the other, and by writing it ambiguously, they've lost that effect, whatever it was.

What happens when the DM changes his mind later on but you've already made irrevocable character decisions? What if the DM suspects you of being a power-gamer, so he says no to most anything you say, while his girlfriend gets a yes to all of her requests? Why have rules if the DM has ultimate authority to change them with no recourse for the players other than 'not play?'

As a designer, if 'not playing' is the only way players can get out of being treated unfairly, you have failed. The rules are there to maintain fairness for everyone; why have them if they're useless as an ultimate authority?

What would sports look like if the referee could change rules on the fly? No one would have any idea what to expect; the teams would have to sit down with the referee before every game, get his rulings (which will always be an incomplete list since he may have rulings for rules that you assume wouldn't have rulings), change their entire game plan, and then hope he doesn't change his mind halfway through or simply favor the other team.

I used the Fireball example because it was already in play, and you're right, the difference between a sphere and a square is a very niche corner case, but since this whole thing only came up in the context of 4e powers and disassociation, feel free to replace it with any of the offenders from that category, where the fluff of bonking an opponent on the head would not always lead to the crunch of dazing them (i.e. when you're fighting a headless foe). What happens when you use that power against a Slime? This may not be the majority of cases, but it's definitely going to come up frequently enough to warrant more clarity.

Lastly if whether the rule is interpreted A way or B way is that important to your plan for your character, then it's a question that should have been asked at the beginning right after "What classes are we allowed to choose from"

I don't know about you, but I don't keep a checklist of all the rules which my DM has 'interpreted,' which I would then carry to the next table and ask about every single one before I choose my class. If it was a totally different game (as in not D&D), then this sort of thing is obvious, but when you are ostensibly using the same rule-set to play with a different DM, 99% of players will assume that the vast majority of the rulings from their previous DM are actually the rules, and won't even think about it until it comes up.

In my American vs. British English example, an American tourist in London does not lock themselves in their hotel reading a conversion guide for three days before they feel safe going onto the streets and ordering fish and chips; they dive right in because, as you said, most of the time it won't make a difference, which means you're actually not ready for communication failure when it happens. You are more easily frustrated speaking a significantly foreign dialect of your own language than you are trying to speak a foreign language because you get into a false sense of security the majority of the time.

Clear, concise rules and fluff as rules aren't mutually exclusive.

I agree, but I would argue that the latter is fairly tricky to achieve while maintaining the former, so I would just focus on the former.

As the two posters above me point out, rules that cover every possible situation for every possible ambiguity for every possible player wind up as either treatises on chemistry, physics and history or as dense as a formal legal contract.

That's simply an unrelated strawman; I'm not advocating for rules minutiae, I'm advocating rules clarity. There is no significant difference, for instance, between using telekinesis to 'spin a sword' (if I were the DM, I would reply, "OK, it spins, very nice. What did you intend to do with that?") and to 'attack with a sword,' which I assume was his actual goal. Rules can be perfectly abstract and cover a wide variety of scenarios but still be very clear and concise.

And yes, I do admit that there will be scenarios which the designers never dreamed of and couldn't reasonably see coming, and then is the time for DM arbitration; but a designer should never rest on that fail-safe to make his game playable. If 5 different tables all play 5 different games interpreted from the same rule-set, then the designer used Rule 0 as a crutch and committed the Oberoni Fallacy.

And in regards to Clawhound's example, yes, sometimes you get backed up against the wall of common sense. But in your example if said spell didn't designate what a viable target is (i.e., "any opponent" or "any creature"), then yeah, that's an ambiguous rule if all it says is "it prevents the target from running." That could apply to people, rivers, or refrigerators without more context, even if it was just the name of the spell; if it was "Entangle" then its use would be relatively clear. If it was just the "Stop Running Spell" then you're back at square 1.