What you're talking about isn't rules, it's WotC.  For what it's worth, 3.5/ PF makes my teeth itch these days, but Shadowrun second, Harnmaster, Rolemaster, Hackmaster, it's all good.  There's a large zone between free form Roleplaying and running the entire PF catalog RAW.

Quote from: CRKrueger;748983What you're talking about isn't rules, it's WotC.  For what it's worth, 3.5/ PF makes my teeth itch these days, but Shadowrun second, Harnmaster, Rolemaster, Hackmaster, it's all good.  There's a large zone between free form Roleplaying and running the entire PF catalog RAW.

Fair enough... and I agree that any game you enjoy is a good game.

I've just been overly perturbed lately about D&D specifically, and many of its modern variants, has been hijacked by the type of "game design" I described previously.

The sad part is, I think D&D and other tabletop RPGs have a lot to learn from modern video game design... but designers tend to throw out the strength of the game (live human adjudication), in order to add more math and overly detailed sub components (video games handle this easily behind the scenes, tabletop games can turn into bulky rules beasts if they try to mimic what computer processors can do).

Video games keep trying to add more freedom, player agency and emergent plots to games... D&D had this from the beginning, and seems to be slowly losing it.

If you get my drift?

Quote from: Old Geezer;748908If literally nobody can remember, IT DOES NOT MATTER.

It matters to *me*. The only person that counts when it gets right down to when I GM. I know for a fact that I have made bad, inconsistent calls. I don't want to do that. It isn't fair to the players. It shows a lack of professionalism. I don't want to just let that 'slide'.

Quote from: robiswrong;748941I think the implication is that at the end of the day, all the situations we adjudicate in a session have "rules" associated with them, the only difference being whether they're written in advance or determined on the fly.

Exactly. How he missed that is a mystery.

Quote from: Benoist;748938This statement totally implies that normal people can't handle having a referee making a ruling, that a referee cannot make consistent rulings in a manner satisfying to the participants of the game, and that consequently the rules must play the nanny for the men-children, otherwise they just can't play nice. For some gamers other than yourself, it is factually wrong. I am one of those.



That's... insane. It kind of flabbergasts me to read this, to tell you the truth.

God help you if you apply this kind of reasoning to real-life situations as well. The world doesn't work that way.

Rules adjudicated 'on the fly' will never, ever be consistent. Some folks don't care about that. I do. I have seen far too many situations go bad because situation A was ruled differently from session to session or even within a single session. If we all have the same set of rules that cover the situation, we can all agree on the outcome. Consensus.

I don't see gamers as 'men-children'. I see them as people. And people do best with agreed upon rules that are codified and can be referenced. The rule of law rather than of folklore and anecdote. The hardest rules to change are the unwritten rules. Both in life and gaming.

Quote from: Dunnagin;748980Unfortunately, I find that there more rules you have, the more these creative corner cases are addressed... and subverted.

If the spell is written loosely, there is room for the creativity you describe.

3.5 & Parhfinder spells are written very "tight", specifically in order to curtail the type of play you describe.

Can't be cast under x circumstance
Cannot be used for x purpose
Is limited to x

The descriptions are very clear... like handcuffs.

Yes.  In this particular case, these rules curtail imaginative use.

But, in the same way, more written spells are also rules. And more spells often broaden the imaginative horizons for the players.  Or rules for combining spells would add to the word count and amount of rules, but would still allow for more permutations.
So, it is not one or the other.  In this way, one could look at any rule system and see if the rules are more open ended or close ended.

Quote from: Tetsubo;748994It matters to *me*. The only person that counts when it gets right down to when I GM. I know for a fact that I have made bad, inconsistent calls. I don't want to do that. It isn't fair to the players. It shows a lack of professionalism.

You're a professional GM?

Quote from: DunnaginSolution: Focus the game on more complex Char Ops and entice each player to buy their own players handbook.

Second Gen Solution: Wrap all the books into one core book and sell every player a more expensive book.

Totally the logic behind this but there's also a third option:

Paizo Solution: Make virtually all of the important rules free and easily accesible from anywhere and take pains to update them, illustrate them, and supplement them with optional third party content, again all for free.

Whether or not complicated character options emerged for economic reasons, there are some who like them for non-economic reasons.

I don't think anyone really disagrees with that last point, but I think a number of people on this board believe that catering to that niche has been detrimental to the broader hobby in general, and D&D in particular.

Quote from: Dunnagin;748984Fair enough... and I agree that any game you enjoy is a good game.

I've just been overly perturbed lately about D&D specifically, and many of its modern variants, has been hijacked by the type of "game design" I described previously.

The sad part is, I think D&D and other tabletop RPGs have a lot to learn from modern video game design... but designers tend to throw out the strength of the game (live human adjudication), in order to add more math and overly detailed sub components (video games handle this easily behind the scenes, tabletop games can turn into bulky rules beasts if they try to mimic what computer processors can do).

Video games keep trying to add more freedom, player agency and emergent plots to games... D&D had this from the beginning, and seems to be slowly losing it.

If you get my drift?

You're preaching to the choir, brother, I'm with you.  That's why I don't play "Modern" D&D anymore.

Quote from: BobloblahI don't think anyone really disagrees with that last point, but I think a number of people on this board believe that catering to that niche has been detrimental to the broader hobby in general, and D&D in particular.

I think that kind of depends on how you feel the state of the hobby is.  Personally I'm pretty happy with it.  I like Pathfinder, but I also like Lamentations of the Falme Princess - I like some of the newer games and I'm also glad that the OSR exists.  I mean, I think that 4E was pretty awful and Next may well be awful too, so in that sense I'd agree that complex char-op rules may have been detrimental to "D&D" interpreted in the most narrow sense, but I don't think they did much real "damage" to the hobby at large.

I think a lot of the disagreement on this subject stems from the fact that there are several qualitatively different kinds of rules in table-top rpg's; the people who hate 'rules for everything' are talking about one kind; the people who like 'rules for everything' are talking about another.

You could probably divide this up in a number of different ways, but I think there are four basic types of rules in all or most games:
-'structural' rules that define what happens in the game in the broadest terms, what a character is, how play proceeds on the time scale of an event/encounter/session/campaign.
- 'procedural' rules that tell you how to resolve an attack, jump a chasm, cast a spell, etc.
- 'situational' rules that tell you what happens when your attack is aimed at an invisible zebra galloping down a ladder.
- And 'content' rules that tell you what a fireball spell is or how many hit dice an orc chieftain has.

Seen this way, most of the anti-rules-for-everything crowd is mostly pissing on situational rules. I would say they have a point — these sorts of rules are what make games hard to learn and run, they often eat up page count for pointless (or at least uninteresting) reasons. And they are the kinds of things a referee should be prepared to adjudicate on the fly. That said, they don't ruin games or force players to behave like mindless goons. This whole line of criticism is a peculiar mix of straw man and ad hominem attacks - 'if you disagree with me you are a fool who doesn't understand rpg's, plus your game play, which I've never seen, is bad in some way I can't really describe'.

Whether you agree with me or not, this sort of breakdown also clarifies what I mean when I critique some old classic, like OD&D. This game is total genius at structural and content rules, correctly (in my view) pays little attention to situational rules, but is a train wreck at procedural rules. e.g., it presents two parallel combat systems that differ radically in mechanics and power progression, one of which isn't really presented, and both of which use ornate table-based mechanics to solve a very simple dice-throwing decision.

Quote from: S'mon;749010You're a professional GM?

This is no game; this shit is serious. Act professional.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;748843Pedantry really irks me.

It's not pedantry. If you're playing a rules light game and treat every ruling as if it were a new rule hard-coded into the game, then you will very quickly no longer be playing a rules light game.

The only way to play a rules light game is to treat rulings as one-offs and get on with it.

QuoteIf consistency is not important to you, then we're not going to agree. Consistency is of high importance to me.

Consistency isn't important to me, we don't agree. Need for consistency is subjective. The problem with this thread is people are arguing about their preferences as if they were objective.

QuoteIf you think it's not worth the potential look-up times, then fine; but for me, it is.

It's not just the potential look up times, it's the rules-lawyering that goes along with it, and the time and effort it takes to commit the rules to memory. I find it much easier, much more interesting, and more fun, to creatively respond to what the players throw at me. Of course I also have a crappy memory and really, really, like seat of the pants thinking. People whose brains work differently from mine may have different preferences. I'm okay with that.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;748844Oh piss the fuck off.

I want consistency because it's an element I find important in the games I play. Consistency helps me to immerse in the game and think like my character. It has fucking nothing to do with "maturity" or whatever else you fucking think it does, so get off your high horse.

The argument made over and over in this discussion over the years it that rulings turn a game into "mother may I" or "who can best suck up to the GM". In other words assuming that GMs (and players) need to be constrained by rules because they are dicks, or stupid, or naïve and easily manipulated, or otherwise immature.

Quote from: Tetsubo;748997Rules adjudicated 'on the fly' will never, ever be consistent. Some folks don't care about that. I do. I have seen far too many situations go bad because situation A was ruled differently from session to session or even within a single session. If we all have the same set of rules that cover the situation, we can all agree on the outcome. Consensus.

Which is why we never see disagreements over the application of rules. Sports referees are always right, legal cases never get appealed, sentences are always consistent, RPG rules-lawyers won't derail a session with a 45 minute argument over minutia, etc.

QuoteI don't see gamers as 'men-children'. I see them as people. And (SOME BUT NOT ALL) people do best with agreed upon rules that are codified and can be referenced. The rule of law rather than of folklore and anecdote. The hardest rules to change are the unwritten rules. Both in life and gaming.

Fixed your typo.

Less trollishly, people are different. Some need more structure, some less. Your preferences are not universal. Some people do in fact do better with agreed upon and codified rules, some find them infuriatingly constraining. Some are in between.

Quote from: Larsdangly;749024I think a lot of the disagreement on this subject stems from the fact that there are several qualitatively different kinds of rules in table-top rpg's; the people who hate 'rules for everything' are talking about one kind; the people who like 'rules for everything' are talking about another.

You could probably divide this up in a number of different ways, but I think there are four basic types of rules in all or most games:
-'structural' rules that define what happens in the game in the broadest terms, what a character is, how play proceeds on the time scale of an event/encounter/session/campaign.
- 'procedural' rules that tell you how to resolve an attack, jump a chasm, cast a spell, etc.
- 'situational' rules that tell you what happens when your attack is aimed at an invisible zebra galloping down a ladder.
- And 'content' rules that tell you what a fireball spell is or how many hit dice an orc chieftain has.

Seen this way, most of the anti-rules-for-everything crowd is mostly pissing on situational rules.

I'd say this is pretty useful.

QuoteI would say they have a point — these sorts of rules are what make games hard to learn and run, they often eat up page count for pointless (or at least uninteresting) reasons. And they are the kinds of things a referee should be prepared to adjudicate on the fly. That said, they don't ruin games or force players to behave like mindless goons.

Eh, some constraint is good for creativity. Too little, and you can get choice paralysis (too many options). Too much, and you get mechanical play.

Of course, what is too much and what too little varies from person to person, so it isn't exactly cut and dried.

QuoteThis whole line of criticism is a peculiar mix of straw man and ad hominem attacks - 'if you disagree with me you are a fool who doesn't understand rpg's, plus your game play, which I've never seen, is bad in some way I can't really describe'.

I think it's more "people are fundamentally the same, by which I mean just like me, because I can't imagine anyone could need different things than me, so if you think differently you're deluded".

QuoteWhether you agree with me or not, this sort of breakdown also clarifies what I mean when I critique some old classic, like OD&D. This game is total genius at structural and content rules, correctly (in my view) pays little attention to situational rules, but is a train wreck at procedural rules. e.g., it presents two parallel combat systems that differ radically in mechanics and power progression, one of which isn't really presented, and both of which use ornate table-based mechanics to solve a very simple dice-throwing decision.

I actually don't have a problem with that; pick one, or use them all depending on situation.

And I like tables/resolution matrices.

Quote from: S'mon;749010You're a professional GM?

Does he wear a mask?