I almost hijacked tdd's thread, but caught myself playing Rainman.  In his thread here, he's talking about T2000 and says...

Quote from: thedungeondelverstat generation is much like D&D's (roll 4d6 for each). However you drop 4 - so if you roll, say, 19 - 5, 4, 5, 5, - it becomes 15.

Now what he meant was that the generation system is (4d6)-4.

However, the numbers he chose to use in the example and the phrase "drop the 4" also means that the bog-standard means of D&D chargen also fits.
5+4+5+5
Drop the 4 (lowest) so,
5+5+5=15

This doesn't work with all combinations, like
6+3+5+5=19
Drop the 3 so,
6+5+5=16

Now he clearly stated it's not D&D StatGen, I understand that.  However, he used specific numbers and phrasing that means the standard 4d6 drop lowest also works with his example.  Saying "drop 4" when 4 is one of the die results and happens to be the lowest wasn't the best way to describe this as not D&D StatGen.  "Subtract 4" and not having 4 be one of the numbers would have been perfect.

Yeah I know, thanks Rainman for being a useless pedantic fuck, but this is a pet peeve of mine - mechanics that aren't clear simply because the example isn't one that sufficiently excludes alternate interpretations.

For the designers here on the site, is this something you specifically look for in your editing process?

For anyone else have you run into mechanics that are clear as day, yet the explanations themselves leave ambiguity that has you going :idunno:

Quote from: CRKrueger;592578I almost hijacked tdd's thread, but caught myself playing Rainman.  In his thread here, he's talking about T2000 and says...

Now what he meant was that the generation system is (4d6)-4.

However, the numbers he chose to use in the example and the phrase "drop the 4" also means that the bog-standard means of D&D chargen also fits.
5+4+5+5
Drop the 4 (lowest) so,
5+5+5=15

This doesn't work with all combinations, like
6+3+5+5=19
Drop the 3 so,
6+5+5=16

Now he clearly said the first, I understand that.  However, he used specific numbers and phrasing that means the standard 4d6 drop lowest also works with his example.

Yeah I know, thanks Rainman for being a useless pedantic fuck, but this is a pet peeve of mine - mechanics that aren't clear simply because the example isn't one that sufficiently excludes alternate interpretations.

For the designers here on the site, is this something you specifically look for in your editing process?

For anyone else have you run into mechanics that are clear as day, yet the explanations themselves leave ambiguity that has you going :idunno:

This is something that infuriates me as well.  When a perfectly good example that could have illuminated how a rule works is sabotaged by a confounding choice of words or numerical value.