The Campaign Builder's Guild

Quote from: SteerpikeI liked this post quite a bit: http://goblinpunch.blogspot.ca/2016/12/how-to-make-rulings.html (http://goblinpunch.blogspot.ca/2016/12/how-to-make-rulings.html)

Quote from: sparkletwistI didn't.

Well, except for the "learn how probabilities work" part. More DMs need to do that.

Quote from: SteerpikeI'm not shocked, though I'm curious what specifically you object to, if anything, apart from the fact that the article is intended for DMs playing versions of D&D that aren't 3.X-4 - that rulings should be fast, simple, and consistent (as opposed to slow, convoluted, and inconsistent)? That player expectations and in-game fiction should align? That complicated mechanics need testing?

Or perhaps just the idea of rulings altogether?

Quote from: sparkletwistStuff like "build and test complex mechanics before using them" is just designing actual rules so it's basically the opposite of what the article purports to be advocating.

Quote from: SteerpikeOh I guess I see. He does differentiate between making a ruling and "writing an ad-hoc rule." I think what he's saying is that sometimes, when you know in advance that the rules aren't going to model a situation well as-written, but you can foresee the situation you'll need rules for clearly, you can make a "ruling" in slow motion, in which case many of the same tips apply, minus speed.

Quote from: sparkletwistRight. So he's advocating the exact thing he claimed to be against: writing rules in advance.

Kemp only puts the stuff about coming up with specific rules in advance at the end.

He's not advocating for a "rules-for-everything" approach here by saying that sometimes you do want to make up rules in advance. The "rulings, not rules" approach posits that because players should be given great freedom in terms of problem-solving, and because looking up rules is a chore, and because memorizing lots of rules is difficult and onerous, and because lots of complex rules tend to bog games down, it can be better to structure your rules system around general, flexible principles, and then encourage a DM to make rulings. But, sometimes, you're designing a dungeon with some very specific incident in mind, where you do want to write down a rule ahead of time - even if we accept the general premise of "rulings, not rules" as a broad design philosophy, that doesn't mean that every single determination must always happen at the table on the spur of the moment. By noting that sometimes you will indeed want to come up with some specific rules ahead of time to suit very particular situations, I don't think Kemp is contradicting the overall philosophy behind a "rulings, not rules" approach, but he is avoiding a reductionist version of that approach by acknowledging that there are indeed some instances where it makes sense to come up with nitty-gritty rules ahead of time.

(Of course, he also explicitly states that in the last section he got a bit carried away, and that readers "should probably just skip it.  Seriously, just pretend the post ends right now.  I can't delete it because I like it, but I also recognize that no one probably wants to read it." So it feels a bit ungenerous to critique him for the bit he identified as "optional" at most).

In the long run you can't avoid having to make some rulings on the fly, no matter what system you use. Exactly how much ground actual pre-written rules should cover is a matter of taste (and when you get to the heavier end of the spectrum, of practical limitations) and specific needs of the game. It's a fair idea to have at least some guidelines on how to craft a ruling, and the advice in the linked blog post doesn't look all that bad to me.

One thing in there I find kind of questionable is the point that rulings should be consistent. While I agree that consistency is a good thing, and worthwhile as a goal, I don't think it's something you should stress over or waste much time getting right with rulings. The reason for this is that I view rulings as essentially one-time throwaway things. You make one up on the fly, use it then and there, and never use it again. If you actually have to call a ruling on the same type of situation twice, it should probably be pinned down as a house rule instead. If you are somehow able to keep your rulings quick and still keep them consistent with the rest of the game system and with each other, that's awesome! It's just not a requirement.

OTOH with actual rules - house rules included - you definitely should strive to be consistent. You've got the time to think about them and to try them out, after all.

I just jumped on that one thing because I was trying to keep my post in the tavern short. Here's a more detailed breakdown of where my issues are.

First, let's start with the common ground:

Quote from: Steerpikebecause players should be given great freedom in terms of problem-solving, and because looking up rules is a chore, and because memorizing lots of rules is difficult and onerous, and because lots of complex rules tend to bog games down, it can be better to structure your rules system around general, flexible principles

I basically agree with this statement. The reason that I'm not really aboard the "rulings, not rules" bandwagon, and, specifically, have issue with that post, breaks down to a few points:

First, a failure to differentiate between abstracted rules and vague rules. In both cases, you could say the GM is going to have to make rulings, but with the abstracted ruleset, the system is designed around this and the core of the ruling is just determining the abstracted rule that best fits the situation. So you're still basically using the rules as written, or, if you prefer, it ties into his suggestion to "use established mechanics whenever possible." Something like OD&D or some other game with vague rules, on the other hand, has few good general rules to extrapolate from, in other words, few established mechanics to draw upon. It has no generalized task resolution system to speak of, let alone any sort of broader abstracted building blocks like the Fate fractal. The ruling is going to be much more about making up a mechanic (or, at least, a way to get an outcome) on the fly. The post specifically mentions OSR, and to say that something like OD&D is structured around general, flexible principles is being quite (in my opinion, overly) charitable.

Second, the is/ought problem. Yes, looking up rules is a chore. Yes, rules can be complex and bog the game down. But why? Can we do anything about these problems, other than just assume this is the way it's always going to be so we have to work around it? One answer is to introduce more abstracted rules, like in Fate. Another somewhat related thing is to try to unify systems and clean up the math, like how D&D 3rd edition made armor class a lot more logical and replaced a lot of weird rolls from AD&D with 1d20 + modifier vs. a DC. And of course we can always try to make looking up rules less bothersome (http://www.d20pfsrd.com). To pick on OD&D again, it actually doesn't even have a ton of rules, but looking up anything is still a pain because the rulebook is not laid out in any particularly coherent way... but that can be and has been improved by various OSR clones. So, I feel like there are ample ways to try to improve a game's ruleset (and the presentation of that ruleset) that don't rely on shifting our mentality to making the DM to come up with the mechanics of the game on the fly, and shifting to a focus on rulings rather than rules ignores most of them.

Third, the fact that rulings are rules, or, at least, proto-rules. Anticipating rulings and writing a mechanic in advance is the most overt case of this, but any time the GM decides how something works, that's essentially adding a new rule to the game. If it's a wonky one-off system for some very specific task, now the game's rules include a wonky one-off system for some very specific task. Add up a bunch of those, and your rules-light game has become a rules-heavy game, and probably a pretty complex mess, at that. A lot of oldschool D&D modules featured one or two challenges that weren't covered by the standard rules, and so the module included its own way to resolve it. Sometimes you'd roll a d6, sometimes you'd roll a d20, sometimes you'd... do something else. Try to apply any of this consistently (i.e., more than once) and you'll end up with something that nobody could really call a "tidy core of mechanics." His example is about digging out of a cave-in that introduces a sort of D&D 4th edition style "skill challenge" system of cumulative successes, probably into a system that never had such a thing before. As a general mechanic that could be added to a system, it could be the beginning of a useful abstracted mechanic. As a specific one-off thing, it's just one more weird subsystem.

Finally, and more subjectively-- and probably the core of why I'm generally for rules rather than rulings-- determining how the nuts and bolts of the game should actually work is not enjoyable for me as a GM. Obviously no rule set can be 100% complete, and there will always be a need for some rulings to make things work, but I generally like, as you said: "general, flexible principles," so there are easy-to-extrapolate mechanics so I don't have to think too much about how to make them work. That way I can focus on the fun parts of GMing: creating locations, fleshing out stories, and playing memorable NPCs.

Quote from: GhostmanOne thing in there I find kind of questionable is the point that rulings should be consistent. While I agree that consistency is a good thing, and worthwhile as a goal, I don't think it's something you should stress over or waste much time getting right with rulings. The reason for this is that I view rulings as essentially one-time throwaway things. You make one up on the fly, use it then and there, and never use it again. If you actually have to call a ruling on the same type of situation twice, it should probably be pinned down as a house rule instead. If you are somehow able to keep your rulings quick and still keep them consistent with the rest of the game system and with each other, that's awesome! It's just not a requirement.

I think you're right about this, although I think the distinction between rulings and house-rules is relatively porous. I'd say that DMs should care about rulings' consistency more as the ruling becomes closer to a house-rule or "ad-hoc rule" as he puts it. Ditto for testing a complicated rule... if it's going to come up frequently or effectively become a semi-permanent or regular rule, it should be more consistent and better-tested, if it's going to be literally a one-off that never arises again, it's better to be quick and not worry so much about consistency.

...

Sparkletwist, looking at your responses, I think there are sort of two ways the discussion could go, and while I'm up for either it probably makes sense to clarify what we're discussing.

On the one hand, we could have a debate about whether old-school/OSR games are worth playing, and whether the associated "rules not rulings" mentality that goes along with them is a valid one. In this case we would definitely get into debates about the merits and drawbacks of abstract rules, why some people still play old games (or games directly based on old games), whether rulings add to the "rules" of a game, and the burden rulings place on a DM. We can totally have this discussion, but I strongly suspect it's going to lead us into territory that's familiar to the two of us - and there will probably be some things we're going to have difficulty convincing one another of. But I'm always up for these things.

OR

We can have a debate about whether the guidelines for creating rulings presented in the Goblin Punch post are useful advice assuming someone is playing an old-school game - that is, taking as a given that for whatever reason, a DM is running a version of D&D from 1st, 2nd, or 5th edition, or one of those editions' many variants and retroclones. This seems to be an assumption of the post; it's not so much making a case for why rulings > rules, it's assuming that the reader is going to be making rulings and sets out to provide guidelines to make a DM better at those rulings. Given this assumption, is the advice to make rulings quickly, consistently, and simply (while saying "yes," making player expectations match the in-game fiction, and learning more about probabilities) good advice, or not? This is quite a different question than the above, I think.

Your post above seems mostly about the first topic, which I'm fine with, but just to avoid a situation where we argue at cross-purposes, is that indeed the topic we should get into?

Quote from: SteerpikeOn the one hand, we could have a debate about whether old-school/OSR games are worth playing, and whether the associated "rules not rulings" mentality that goes along with them is a valid one. In this case we would definitely get into debates about the merits and drawbacks of abstract rules, why some people still play old games (or games directly based on old games), whether rulings add to the "rules" of a game, and the burden rulings place on a DM.

While we could conceivably have a discussion about the merits and drawbacks of abstract rules, I'd also like to point out, as my first objection above also stated, that many OSR games do not even have abstract rules; they have vague rules. This is a different thing and I would say a worse thing regardless of whether abstract rules are good or not.

Quote from: SteerpikeWe can have a debate about whether the guidelines for creating rulings presented in the Goblin Punch post are useful advice assuming someone is playing an old-school game - that is, taking as a given that for whatever reason, a DM is running a version of D&D from 1st, 2nd, or 5th edition, or one of those editions' many variants and retroclones. This seems to be an assumption of the post; it's not so much making a case for why rulings > rules, it's assuming that the reader is going to be making rulings and sets out to provide guidelines to make a DM better at those rulings. Given this assumption, is the advice to make rulings quickly, consistently, and simply (while saying "yes," making player expectations match the in-game fiction, and learning more about probabilities) good advice, or not? This is quite a different question than the above, I think.

Yes, this is a different thing. In this case, I don't really have any issue with them, other than the one thing that the author himself said to just skip and pretend that the post ends right now. I don't find the advice incredibly useful either, but that's more because I don't like that style of game. It's like advice on how to sit in a three-legged chair without falling over.

So, yeah, the first debate has been done to death and I don't actually even care enough to have anything to add about the second. So we probably shouldn't even bother. :grin:

Ha! OK then. Maybe we'll return to the issue of abstract versus vague rules some other time.

Quote from: SteerpikeMaybe we'll return to the issue of abstract versus vague rules some other time.

Well, I can't resist asking, is there really anything much to say about this? I think a debate about the merits and flaws of abstract rules is a valid one, but I see vague rules as a purely negative thing, so there's no real versus here: abstract rules are a thing you may or may not want, but vague rules are a thing you never want.

I had a long answer, but I deleted it; I think I need to chew on it. I think a lot of our differences might spring from a different philosophy about what rules are for. I think some of the rules you'd call vague I might call flexible or loose or easily interpreted, though perhaps not all. I get the feeling you see the rules of the game a bit like the physical laws of the game's universe - at least, that's sometimes how your descriptions feel when you're describing a rule that frustrates you, as if the game's rules were the source-code for the game-world, the Platonic mathematical substructure that runs things. And because you value storyelling and narrative, you want those rules to facilitate dramatic situations and character development, and not restrict or disempower players. You want to the universe to be rooting for drama. I'm attributing positions to you here that you might not hold at all, I don't know, I'm just sort of basing this on suppositions from things you've said over years of debating this stuff.

As I've drifted away from Pathfinder - over the last 2 years or so, mostly - I increasingly don't think about rules in this way at all. I tend to see them more as very rough heuristics or models, to be relied-on in cases where we need mechanisms for probability or uncertainty, or where description and communication between the DM and players runs out, or as a kind of supplement or embroidery to roleplaying and problem-solving, or to lend certain situations stakes and consequences and suspense they wouldn't otherwise have. But maybe we're closer than I'm guessing, I don't know.

The main purpose of rules to me is to answer questions: "Do I hit that orc with my sword and how badly does it hurt? Can I sneak past those guards? What can a 3rd level cleric actually do?" The GM could just answer all of these questions, but the idea of using codified rules is supposed to be more consistent, more fair, give the players more agency, and be less stressful for the GM. The problem with vague (or flexible, loose, or whatever) rules is that they don't provide definite answers to those questions, which is what the rules are supposed to do. So I think your summary of my view on the matter is correct, but I'd also agree with your idea of using rules "in cases where we need mechanics for probability or uncertainty" and "as a kind of supplement or embroidery to roleplaying and problem-solving."

I like the idea that rules answer questions. I think I agree with that. Or, to put it slightly differently: rules help the DM make decisions. The problem, I think, with what we might call precise rules (as opposed to vague ones) is that either you need lots and lots of them to answer the myriad questions that arise during gameplay, or you're left with lots of situations that fall outside their remit. Precise rules give precise answers to precise questions.

Now you could have abstract rules, and to some degree I think certain forms of abstraction are good and useful and necessary, but lots and lots of very high abstractions tends - for me, anyway - to really inhibit immersion. If I have to always be thinking abstractly, either at a kind of narrative level, or in such a way that I'm constantly having to "translate" a set of very abstract mechanics into concrete particulars, I tend to feel very pulled out of the experience. I think I've described this to you before using the analogy of Brecht's theory of alienation or Verfremdungseffekt, the distancing effect, which reminds us of a play's fictiveness – for Brecht this was a good thing, since he wanted plays that drew attention to their status as plays, as opposed to plays where for those magical moments you almost forget that the actors are actors and perceive the characters as if they were real people. There is some degree of abstraction I can tolerate, but the more abstract a game becomes, and the more it requires me to think and DM using abstract thought, the more distanced I feel from the world, the more false and artificial it feels.

In contrast, sometimes, I find that a little "wriggle room" in the way a non-abstract or less-abstract rule is written can actually facilitate the speed and ease with which I make judgements about things in the game. Since primarily I'm relying on rules to help me answer questions - to help me make judgments, and to help me communicate what's happening - a rule that isn't hyper-precise can actually be helpful when I come across a unique situation that the rule doesn't quite fit exactly but which I can use or slightly modify or reinterpret to meet my ends.

I'm not in favour of making all rules totally vague. If you're vague about how many hit points of damage a longsword does versus a shortsword, I don't see the point of that. There's no point in being vague about how big a modifier an ability score gives you.

But there are situations where the precision of rules acts more like a burden than it does an aid. More rules, and super-precise rules, can greatly expand prep time. Coming up with full stats for a Pathfinder monster, complete with feats and skill points, is exhausting compared to coming up with them for a 5E monster, or a LotFP monster. Making sure that a magic item won't wreck an entire carefully wrought system by interfacing badly with a class mechanic can be a headache. At the table, using a system full of lots of precise rules, sometimes instead of making judgments and moving on I feel compelled to look up precedents and make sure I'm doing everything "by the book," because otherwise it wouldn't be fair – I feel a bit beholden to the rules. And maybe, sometimes, yes, the DM should feel beholden. But that's a balance to strike, and the more rules there are the more the stress not of having to make a judgment but having to find the right rules increases.

Let's take a simple situation to illustrate what I mean by the way that looseness or even a kind of imprecision can be preferable to some styles of DMing, at least in my case. I'll use Pathfinder versus 5th edition to illustrate. This isn't even an especially unique or unusual situation, it's super basic.

[ic=Example: Chasm Fight]The characters are in a cave system full of depraved troglodytic flesh-eating things. They wander into a large cavern resounding with drips from the stalactites above, with a jagged chasm running through the middle. The floor is slightly sloped. There are four cave-dwellers on the far side of the chasm, armed with crude bows. The characters will have to find some way to get across the chasm if they want to engage the cave-dwellers in melee combat.[/ic]

So, how do we resolve this? Unless characters have levitation spells or magic items, they're probably jumping.

Acrobatics in Pathfinder (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/skills/acrobatics) versus 5th edition (http://www.5esrd.com/using-ability-scores/#Dexterity) are very different. I wouldn't consider this a particularly "abstract" skill since it's directly describing the capacity of a particular character to do something specific which we all have a pretty good idea of without having to look up some idiosyncratic definition the system is applying to the noun "Acrobatics."

[ic=Pathfinder Acrobatics Resolution]The Pathfinder rules are exceptionally precise. There are exact DCs for a long jump that tell me precisely how far a character can leap, in feet. So now I need to know exactly how wide the chasm is, or I'd better have mapped this carefully. Hmm, and also, I need to factor in the "uneven surfaces" of the cave... or, wait, no, I see a footnote that says I don't do that for jumping... oh wait, but we're in a "cavern," so that qualifies as "severely obstructed," so that's +5. Ah and the floor is sloped, but is it slightly or severely sloped? I'll have to know that too and factor that in. And I did say it was dripping, so I now have to decide if that is enough to make the floor "slightly slippery." OK, I'm ready to calculate the DC after I've carefully consulted the map and made those sub-decisions... alright, let's say it's 15 base +5 for obstruction +2 for slightly sloped +2 for slightly slippery for a total of 24. Whew! OK. Time to roll... player adds their modifier, which hopefully they've calculated correctly... ah wait, the player is saying they're making sure to make a run at it... yes, so, a running jump, it looks like there's a bonus... oh wait, no, the check assumes a running jump. Alright. Roll. Rats, they only got a 21. So now they fall, right? Can they grab the ledge? Oh look, the rules say, yes they can – oh, but only if they fail by 4 or less, and they've got to make a Reflex save of DC 20. Oops, they failed that, so now they fall... now, do we need another roll to mitigate the fall damage? Hmm, the rules say no, only a deliberate fall allows for that. Result: the player takes 5d6 damage for a 50 ft. fall.[/ic]

OK, so that's how Acrobatics in Pathfinder answers the question "can the character jump to the other side of the chasm." Versus 5th edition:

[ic=5th Edition Acrobatics Resolution]OK, the character needs to jump. How tough do I think this chasm would be to jump? I'd say about medium – it's not a little jump but it's not that crazy. I'll say DC 15. Oh, and it's sloped and probably slippery, so I'll impose disadvantage (which, incidentally, I know from the Goblin Punch post is statistically about the equivalent of adding +4 to the DC). The player says they're making a run, but there's nothing about that in the rules; running doesn't seem enough to me to grant advantage. Player rolls. They get a 14. Rats. But hey, that's pretty close, and I'm using what the DMG calls the "success at a cost" variant, so I'll say they just barely grabbed the ledge, and they're now in a very vulnerable position. That's more interesting than having them fall anyway.[/ic]

Now, this is all strictly theoretical. It's probably not exactly how I'd actually run things. In Pathfinder, there came a point in some of my games where I'd start getting sloppy with the rules, simplifying, ignoring, streamlining, and generally playing faster and looser than the system suggests. But I've played a lot of both editions now - probably something like 200 hours+ of Pathfinder, and around 50 hours of 5th edition - enough to speak with at least approximate accuracy about my thought processes running each.

The 5th edition rules are way, way vaguer than the Pathfinder rules. There are no specific DCs for long jump numbers, there's no list of modifiers, there's no indication of what to do specifically on a failure. But for Pathfinder I either have to have all those rules memorized or I need to have taken extra time in prep to figure out the specific DCs or I need to consult the rulebook during play. I need a lot of very precise information on the exact attributes of the room, like whether the slope of the floor is moderate or severe, how wide the chasm is, etc. And then I need to either remember what happens on a fail, or consult the book again. And I need to remember that the rules assume a running start. If the player got out a pole I'd have to look that up too. Or if they were hasted. Or any number of other things.

In 5th edition, I don't have precision, and yes, I do have to rely on some more gut, snap judgments, unless I've noted "DC 15, disadvantage" ahead of time (something I don't need to consult a book to determine, either). But the whole sequence of events takes very little time. We move from the action's declaration to its result pretty quickly, and I have some room for mercy as a DM – and even the ability to up the stakes dramatically – because there's some wriggle-room (i.e. vagueness) about what happens on a failed jump. I'm not violating any rules-as-written by letting the character just grab the edge. In 5th I can make a ruling, a ruling that was actually facilitated by the vagueness of the rule. In Pathfinder I have to look something up or have it memorized or decide to deliberately violate the rules as written to determine whether the character grabs the edge.

Quote from: SteerpikeIn contrast, sometimes, I find that a little "wriggle room" in the way a non-abstract or less-abstract rule is written can actually facilitate the speed and ease with which I make judgements about things in the game. Since primarily I'm relying on rules to help me answer questions - to help me make judgments, and to help me communicate what's happening - a rule that isn't hyper-precise can actually be helpful when I come across a unique situation that the rule doesn't quite fit exactly but which I can use or slightly modify or reinterpret to meet my ends.

The logic you're using confuses me. How is wiggling around a vague rule any different from using an abstract rule except that the rule isn't actually written to be applied in a variety of situations, so it's probably going to be harder to do? If your problem is being taken out of the game, then how is having to twist rules around in your head not going to do this? I don't even really understand how using Fate's abstract "create an advantage" action is really so immersion-breaking just because you can apply it to a lot of things, from throwing sand in a guy's face to casting a buff spell, because the things you apply it to are still actual game actions that make sense in the narrative. And I especially don't understand how an abstracted rule is in any way somehow worse than trying to adapt some kinda-sorta-but-not-really-equivalent rule like you mentioned. Like, say you're trying to come up with an ad hoc combat maneuver based on the rule for some spell, which means you first have to know how the spell works, then decide how much to nerf it because it's not actually limited like magic, and then maybe not nerf it too much because we want martial characters to have nice things, and so on.

Quote from: SteerpikeIn 5th I can make a ruling, a ruling that was actually facilitated by the vagueness of the rule. In Pathfinder I have to look something up or have it memorized or decide to deliberately violate the rules as written to determine whether the character grabs the edge.

I don't understand your logic here, either. You can make a ruling in Pathfinder, too. Yes, you're deliberately deciding to violate a written rule, but you have the written rule so you can decide what to do. When you diverge from it, you have to think about your reasons for doing so, which I think is a good thing to do because it ensures the game world maintains a logic. Maybe you're running a more cinematic game where you don't really want to worry about whether the floor is slippery or whatever-- you can choose to do that. You're still the DM, you can still set the DC... but you have some guidelines to tell you how the game's designers expected their world to work numerically, and if you don't have any strong feelings on the matter (like if you're trying to run things more-or-less "objectively") then you can just look up a number and use it. On the players' side, there are rules written for haste and the like, so players can feel agency because they know they can cast this spell and it has a concrete effect on making a task easier. And, honestly, the Acrobatics page on d20pfsrd.com takes like under 15 seconds to go look at on d20pfsrd.com and it's all right there; the "rules are a pain to look up" argument becomes pretty weak when the rules are actually pretty fast and easy to look up.

In 5th edition, on the other hand, you don't have a choice. You have to make it all up yourself, without much of anything to fall back on. This hurts player agency, too, because players have very little idea whether or not any given action they took actually has an effect on things, since it all depends on whatever you semi-arbitrarily decide to do, and they more or less just have to guess at the DC you're going to set. Maybe you'll be generous and give them a big bonus, and that's great, but maybe you won't, and then players will wonder if it's because haste sucks or because there was some other factor they didn't account for. Or maybe you will be generous one session and you won't the next, because when nothing much is codified, consistency is hard.

Quote from: sparkletwistHow is wiggling around a vague rule any different from using an abstract rule except that the rule isn't actually written to be applied in a variety of situations, so it's probably going to be harder to do? If your problem is being taken out of the game, then how is having to twist rules around in your head not going to do this?

I don't see it as wriggling "around" the rule so much as interpreting the rule or using the rule as a baseline for a specific judgment. This is not so different, perhaps, from an "abstract" rule, but our descriptions are getting a bit fuzzy. Would you call 5th edition's advantage/disadvantage system abstract, or vague? I'm interpreting it as "vague" in your terms, but maybe it counts as abstract.

Quote from: sparkletwistI don't even really understand how using Fate's abstract "create an advantage" action is really so immersion-breaking just because you can apply it to a lot of things, from throwing sand in a guy's face to casting a buff spell, because the things you apply it to are still actual game actions that make sense in the narrative.

It's not that immersion-breaking, on it's own. With Fate - a system I do like (just as I like the plays of Brecht), and can appreciate the elegance of, but which I just wouldn't want to run a steady, immersion-heavy campaign with - it's not just one abstract mechanic like "create an advantage," it's that there are lots and lots of abstract mechanics. Aspects, zones, Fate points, multiple forms of stress and consequences, approaches, outcomes, sides, challenges, contests, conflicts - I find a lot of these terms pretty abstract.

Quote from: sparkletwistI don't understand your logic here, either. You can make a ruling in Pathfinder, too. Yes, you're deliberately deciding to violate a written rule, but you have the written rule so you can decide what to do. When you diverge from it, you have to think about your reasons for doing so, which I think is a good thing to do because it ensures the game world maintains a logic.

Isn't this the Oberoni Fallacy? "The rules of the game aren't flawed because they can be ignored." Yeah, I could ignore the Pathfinder rules, but if I prefer to consistently ignore them, remind me, why am I playing Pathfinder again?

Reading through and then choosing to ignore or violate the rules takes time. That's adding an extra judgment on top of the pile of judgments Pathfinder already asks me to make.

Quote from: sparkletwistMaybe you're running a more cinematic game where you don't really want to worry about whether the floor is slippery or whatever-- you can choose to do that.

Yes - like by playing something like 5th edition instead of Pathfinder, where the rules are broad enough that I can bundle negative conditions like a slippery floor and uneven ground together into "disadvantage," and where I don't need to worry about the exact width of the chasm in feet, I can just decide if it's difficult to leap or not.

Quote from: sparkletwistOn the players' side, there are rules written for haste and the like, so players can feel agency because they know they can cast this spell and it has a concrete effect on making a task easier.

There are relatively precise rules for haste in 5th edition.

Quote from: sparklewtwistAnd, honestly, the Acrobatics page on d20pfsrd.com takes like under 15 seconds to go look at on d20pfsrd.com and it's all right there; the "rules are a pain to look up" argument becomes pretty weak when the rules are actually pretty fast and easy to look up.

15 seconds to load the page, then, what, another 30 seconds to read everything, then maybe 5 seconds to make a calculation (or decide to just wing it and ignore this stuff), then I have to refer back if the player falls... and all to answer a pretty simple question, "can I jump the chasm." 5th gives me the means of answering the question, too.

Quote from: sparkletwistIn 5th edition, on the other hand, you don't have a choice. You have to make it all up yourself, without much of anything to fall back on.

This seems a bit reductive. Loose rules aren't the same as no rules at all. Loose rules aren't the same as pure DM fiat all the time. In OD&D, yes, I'd be making it up all by myself. In 5th I have a pretty reliable core mechanic - make an ability check with a d20, add proficiency bonus if applicable, impose advantage/disadvantage as needed. There's no need to guess at different sorts or sizes of bonuses or penalties to the roll. The only "hard" part is figuring out a DC.

Quote from: sparkletwistThis hurts player agency, too, because players have very little idea whether or not any given action they took actually has an effect on things, since it all depends on whatever you semi-arbitrarily decide to do, and they more or less just have to guess at the DC you're going to set.

Or I could describe things carefully with words. "The chasm is pretty wide - you think you could probably leap it, but there's a serious chance you'd fall. It doesn't look impossible but it'd be pretty risky." I'm coming around to the possibility of sharing DCs a bit more than I did in Pathfinder, too, something I used to be more reluctant to do.

Mostly, in my experience, players tend to listen more to words than numbers anyway. The game is made of words, the numbers are suggestions.

Quote from: sparkletwistOr maybe you will be generous one session and you won't the next, because when nothing much is codified, consistency is hard.

I am totally willing to capitulate that a hyper-codified, precise system with very carefully spelled out rules, followed to the letter, will absolutely produce a more consistent game than one with vaguer, looser rules. It will also be far slower, and far more prep time will be taken up working out specific mechanical details. This is a trade-off. In the hands of a DM who dislikes making judgments, who communicates things poorly, who doesn't describe adequately, or who makes little effort to be consistent in rulings, this will be especially egregious. This is why I liked the Goblin Punch post. It gives advice about making judgments so that DMs can become better at this process.

Some DMs may be just fine at making rulings but still won't enjoy the process. Some people will prefer the rules-heavy, precise system, even if it is slower. Some will find lots of abstraction less distracting and immersion-threatening than I do. I have nothing against those preferences. I certainly would not want my point to be construed as "rulings are better than rules for all groups and all DMs" or that "5th edition is objectively superior to Pathfinder" or that "old school play will always generate more enjoyment than other styles." None of those are my position.

EDIT: I refreshed myself on creating advantage in Fate, and yeah, that's a super complicated rule, and a very good example of why I wouldn't personally prefer Fate for long-term play. You're not just adding to a roll, there's all this stuff about renaming aspects of environments, or creating new ones, and trading away invocations on failures... so it's not just one abstraction, it's hooked into lots of Fate's other abstractions. And that's before we even get to approaches.

In terms of setting difficulty, I have to say I really don't see that big a difference between deciding on difficulty ranks for passive opposition and setting a DC in 5th edition. The difficulties they suggest in 5th (easy, medium, hard, very hard, etc) sound an awful lot like the Fate adjective ladder, to me. Is deciding that a task is hard (DC 20) really that much more onerous or less arbitrary than deciding that a challenge's passive opposition is Great (+4)?

Slightly less nuanced perspective:

No rule system is perfect, true.  The purpose of a rule system should be, in my mind, to facilitate the game in such a manner as to provide for consistent results from the kinds of events and circumstances it specifically contemplates.  For example, a typical Dungeons & Dragons campaign need not have rules on hacking space stations or judging an interdimensional pop singing competition, because those events, while within the confines of a human imagination and therefore fair game in somebody's game, aren't within the scope of the system as its designers intended, and most people approaching the system would not need those rules.  (brb writing SO YOU WANT TO BE AN INTERDIMENSIONAL IDOL sizzler) To avoid bloat and provide a sleek, useful play experience, it is perhaps best if those kinds of rules are contained outside the core ruleset.

I play with a bunch of lawyers (imagine the rules lawyering) so the following is to be taken as one might, with many grains of salt.  The rule system is something like a constitution; it is freely entered as a social compact and, as amended perhaps by agreement, serves as the foundation for the interactions of the game.  There are, of course, philosophically sound reasons for wanting your constitution to be as enumerated and detailed as possible, to protect the players from a capricious DM who makes everything up on the fly.  There are, however, points where it can be useful to have an abbreviated rule, so that the rulebook doesn't require five indices, a database cross-check, and twenty minutes of dead play time trying to figure out what exactly does happen when an otherwise unique or highly implausible scenario comes to pass.  

In this role, I imagine the DM serving as something of a common law judge. She takes the information available to her, the facts of the player's descriptions, dice rolls, and the scenario as laid out, and applies the rules as she best she can.  The rules, much like the law, are not exhaustive, and the DM must occasionally "discover" existing principles behind the rules and apply them ad hoc.  That ruling is then precedent, which should be adhered to henceforth as long as the interest of justice - sorry, fun for the whole gang - is served.

I just feel like there's a balance between the two philosophies that has to meet at some middle point, and where that point is has to be determined on a per-group basis, based on the social contract the collective enters into (which should, in my estimation, in turn derive from which kind of play is most engaging for both the ruling-maker and ruling-receivers).

Saying nothing useful or new,
Your friend,
Elven Doritos.

That's a very good analogy, Elven Doritos.

I'm tempted to say (without the expertise to really do so) that sparkletwist prefers a rules system as civil law for her regular games, and I prefer a rules system as common law (or like Roman law versus English law, to trace those systems backwards).

According to this Economist article (http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/07/economist-explains-10) I just googled (you can tell I'm such an expert here), in civil law "codes and statutes are designed to cover all eventualities and judges have a more limited role of applying the law to the case in hand." For those in a civil law system, "past judgments are no more than loose guides," and "legal minds in civil-law jurisdictions like to think that their system is more stable and fairer than common-law systems, because laws are stated explicitly and are easier to discern." Civil law appears to work from "abstractions" and "general principles."

In contrast, "although common-law systems make extensive use of statutes, judicial cases are regarded as the most important source of law, which gives judges an active role in developing rules." Common law was created "by drawing on customs across the country and rulings by monarchs," rulings which "developed organically and were rarely written down." The English "take pride in the flexibility of their system, because it can quickly adapt to circumstance without the need for Parliament to enact legislation."

That more or less sums up the two systems in the abstract, though each legal system is of course different (the English, Canadian, and US Constitutions, all of which are 'common law' systems, are wildly different, as an example, but share varying degrees of reliance on precendetial judge-made law.  More recent trends have ceded certain areas of law, such as, say, rules governing criminal procedure, to legislatures in an attempt to codify those things that as a matter of policy shouldn't be assembled from a patchwork of old and potentially poorly written decisions.  I could go on, but basically it's a corrective measure within some common law jurisdictions to avoid the potential for capriciousness and uncertainty that can accompany rule-making after the fact, which is the reality, even if a legal fiction of "finding existing law" is used as a rationale for court opinions.)

Of a lesser jumble of words: important to note is also the distinction between "adversarial" systems and non-adversarial systems.  Some civil law jurisdictions use the law more as a tool for collectively finding the truth rather than the arbitrate between opposing parties, and the parties are expected to act somewhat in comity and concert (this is a gross overgeneralization, but I'm sparing you guys some boredom.  Someone better versed in, say, the French legal system might be able to find more insight).  These courts may also decline to extend or interpret laws outside of the strict construction of the legislature, not buying into any argument that they have authority to interpret the law beyond strict statutory language.  In such a circumstance, a legislature or administrative body may be compelled to modify the existing laws if such a deficiency or gap is discovered.  In our case, this is akin to petitioning the publisher of the rules to issue errata or a supplement to cover our game's instant need, which is obviously rather impractical.  I imagine the counterargument is to have as comprehensive a ruleset as possible to avoid the need to broach the subject, but I just feel it's one of those things you have to counterbalance.

The point of this follow-up being: I think the distinction can be drawn that rules systems that attempt to encapsulate every possible circumstance are those that favor more collaborative "truth-finding" while rules systems that focus more narrowly on certain mechanics (like combat) and leave others vague or underdefined (like diplomacy) are attempting to shape the game experience into a particular form, for better or worse, and if the tools the system require significant degrees of patching or house-ruling, perhaps it is time to find or build a better system.

In short, I think both of your design philosophies, when taken in moderation, have their merit.

Also, this appears to be a common topic in gaming philosophy, and at the risk of re-inserting the outside source conversation that started this, some extra reading might be helpful to understanding additional design philosophy perspectives:

https://fate-srd.com/fate-system-toolkit/rules-vs-rulings

http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/sage-advice/philosophy-behind-rules-and-rulings

http://johnwickpresents.com/games/rulings-not-rules/

Steerpike, I honestly found your previous post kind of irritating. I don't even know what you're trying to say any more.

I mean, you're rattling off a list of Fate terminology and seemingly acting like the fact that Fate has unique terminology and you have to learn it in order to play is somehow some bizarre Fate thing that makes it this weird abstract game that you can't get immersed in. Levels, hit points, hit dice, squares, spell slots, ability modifiers, proficiencies, feats, inspiration... what's your point? Every system has words that it uses to describe the concepts that you need to know how to make the system work, and those are often pretty abstract things in whatever system.

I'm sort of getting the feeling from this discussion that you have a number of severe misconceptions about how Fate actually plays. Creating advantages is definitely not a "super complicated rule." It's a little strange for someone not used to how Fate works, I'll definitely concede that much. So let me try to explain more simply. All that really happens is that creating an advantage lets you create a new aspect, or rename an old aspect to be more beneficial to you. You also get a free invocation of that aspect. That's seriously all it does. Approaches are not really relevant because they're specifically from Fate Accelerated and aren't even a thing in most versions of Fate.

Also, you're acting like the process of looking up and following the rules as written in your example is some kind of awful burden... and yet by your own reckoning the whole process takes under 1 minute. There are some egregiously bad rules in Pathfinder, sure, but this isn't one of them. You're correct that if you prefer to consistently ignore a large portion of the Pathfinder rules, you're better off not playing Pathfinder, but it's overly extreme to derive the idea that you "consistently ignore the Pathfinder rules [as a whole]" from a suggestion that you don't necessarily always have to follow the Acrobatics DC guidelines precisely. Saying "you don't always have to follow the rules if they don't work for you" isn't the Oberoni Fallacy, either. I mean, it would be if you said "there's nothing wrong with the Pathfinder rules because you don't have to follow them if they don't work for you," but I never claimed there was nothing wrong with them. The reason I'm so ardently in favor of things like the list of sample DCs for Acrobatics and whatnot is because I do like them and they do work for me, as a matter of fact. You're absolutely right that OD&D doesn't even have a standardized way to determine if you succeed or fail at a given task, but that's an extremely low bar. Coming up with a standardized set of DC's that model a world relatively consistently takes a fair bit of design work, and I think you're trivializing the task. I appreciate that Pathfinder (and D&D 3.x) have it and I miss it in 5th Edition and consider it a significant failure on the part of the designers.

I'll grant that I have not played nearly as much Fate as you have, and that if I played a lot of it the terminology might seem less opaque. But I'm a bit confused by your response, because I thought it was the very abstractness of Fate that you were praising, in contrast with the "vagueness" of something like 5th edition D&D. Are you in fact arguing that Fate's rules aren't abstract after all? Or are you arguing that 5th edition D&D is actually abstract, not vague? It's possible we're just at cross-purposes because of definitions.

I figured we were characterizing the rules systems more or less like this:

Fate: abstract (a few abstract rules are used as the basis for decisions)
Pathfinder: precise (lots of specific rules are used as the basis for decisions)
5th Edition: vague (a few loose rules are used as the basis for decisions)
OD&D: practically non-existent (so few rules, and such incredibly vague rules, that you're basically at sea)

Obviously these are very broad characterizations, but would you disagree with that taxonomy? I understand there are some abstract things in 5th edition and that not everything in Fate is absolutely abstract, but this is how I was organizing the different systems in my head. Please do correct me if this is not what you had in mind!

I was listing Fate's abstractions because I thought we agreed it was a very abstract game, in contrast with something like 5th edition, which I thought by your terminology is not abstract but vague. Is it mostly the way I see abstraction in tension with immersion that is giving you pause?

Quote from: sparkletwistAlso, you're acting like the process of looking up and following the rules as written in your example is some kind of awful burden... and yet by your own reckoning the whole process takes under 1 minute.

It's not just that one thing though. It's not just one extra minute. Those judgments and lookings-up and mullings-over add up. Pathfinder combats compared to old school combats are quite long.

Quote from: sparkletwistThe reason I'm so ardently in favor of things like the list of sample DCs for Acrobatics and whatnot is because I do like them and they do work for me, as a matter of fact.

That's great! I'm not trying to convert you to playing 5th edition, honestly! I'm not trying to get you to admit that rulings are objectively better than rules. I'm not trying to tell you that the Pathfinder approach is wrong. I'm not trying to tell you that Fate's approach is wrong. I'm not trying to tell you that my preferences are superior to yours. I'm just trying to explain why I like to play the way I like to play, why my particular preference for long-term games isn't for a system predominated by abstract rules or a system with lots and lots of specific rules but one with loose, adaptable rules.

That's really my only goal. If it seemed like I was implying anything else, I sincerely apologize. And I'm sorry if I got a little snarky about Fate.

I also don't think that 5th is perfect. I agree with you that more sample DCs for tasks would have been very, very good to include. But I think there's a difference between sample DCs and what Pathfinder does, which is require a whole series of micro-judgments and modifiers to figure out how to resolve tasks. Individually looking these rules up and calculating and applying them may not seem like a big burden, but it does add up. There's a reason 3.X-4 are considered slower than other editions of D&D, and that's linked to the hyper-granularity and specificity and raw quantity of their rules.

EDIT: I am still curious about the adjective ladder in Fate and the DC guidelines in 5th. They feel so similar to me that I am puzzled by your praise of the former and dislike of the latter.

To clarify a bit about the Fate terms and why I'm rattling them as a list of abstractions: it's not just that Fate has a lot of nouns used in very specific ways, it's that the mechanics and ideas attached to those nouns are for fairly abstract concepts.

To compare/contrast using some of the core terms from Fate and D&D:

Aspect: "An aspect is a phrase that describes something unique or noteworthy about whatever it's attached to."

Ability Score: "Is a character muscle-bound and insightful? Brilliant and charming? Nimble and hardy? Ability scores define these qualities—a creature's assets as well as weaknesses."

Of these two, for example, "aspect" seems far more abstract to me than "ability score." Ability scores describe particular physical or mental qualities possessed by distinct individuals.

Aspects encompass a whole range of possible attributes and qualities and ideas - everything from a belief to a profession to a relationship to something as abstract as a problem or conflict or objective. And they don't just adhere to individual characters, they can attach to places and objects and situations, some of which are themselves quite abstract. And some can also be "boosts" (or, rather, boosts are a sort of variant of them), which are "temporary, free-floating invocations that happen when you get a momentary benefit that isn't lasting enough to be an aspect" - and sometimes those boosts can be promoted to become aspects - and also consequences, which "[are] more permanent than a situation aspect, but not quite as permanent as a character aspect."

So there's this whole range of different kinds of aspects ranging from a personal code to a physical quality that can adhere with different degrees of temporal persistence and in different sorts of categories to different kinds of things in the game, not all of which have any "real" existence in the actual world (like, there's no such things as "scenes" in real life - this is another abstraction, a "unit of game time lasting anywhere from a few minutes to a half hour or more, during which the players try to achieve a goal or otherwise accomplish something significant in a scenario").

To me at least, thinking about a character's ability scores seems intuitive and relatively concrete, even if there's some degree of abstraction or generalization going on, whereas aspects feel holistic and sprawling and interconnected and tied into the narrative and dramatic fabric of the game in an important way.

It's not that Fate makes me throw my hands up in the air hopelessly, or that it's unplayable. My problem here isn't comprehension of the rules, and my point isn't that these rules are objectively bad or difficult to use. It's that the rules make me think about things in very abstract terms, which makes me aware of the game qua game, which draws my attention to the act of playing. Instead of thinking about the details of what's going on and what characters are doing to an environment and how the world responds, I'm thinking about narrative arcs, objectives, histories, personal beliefs. I'm thinking about intangible things, about demarcating scenes. I'm thinking whether to use a compel. I'm thinking at a meta-level. I tend to find this somewhat tiring, but also I find it undermines a quality I like in the sorts of games I play regularly, which is verisimilitude - the appearance or feeling or illusion that the imaginary world of the game is real.

Quote from: SteerpikeI'm a bit confused by your response, because I thought it was the very abstractness of Fate that you were praising, in contrast with the "vagueness" of something like 5th edition D&D.

The issue I was having was that it seemed like you were just rattling off a list of Fate terminology, and using that to make the point that it was somehow too abstracted to you. My point was that every system has certain abstractions. For example, I don't think it's particularly fair to pick on stress and consequences as being abstractions if you play with a system that has armor class and hit points. Sure, Fate is more abstracted, and I do see that as a strength... but I feel it's a strength largely because it's not egregiously so.

Quote from: SteerpikeObviously these are very broad characterizations, but would you disagree with that taxonomy?

I might describe 5th Edition less favorably... :P but I don't disagree with the basic taxonomy you're using.

Quote from: SteerpikeIs it mostly the way I see abstraction in tension with immersion that is giving you pause?

I don't disagree that when you're thinking about abstracted game mechanics it's a lot harder to be thinking in-character. However, this process has never really felt any worse in Fate, at least for me. Part of this could be because, as my preference for specific rules might suggest, even in systems like Pathfinder or D&D 5e without so much abstraction I'm still going to be thinking in terms of mechanics more often than you may be.

Quote from: SteerpikeThose judgments and lookings-up and mullings-over add up. Pathfinder combats compared to old school combats are quite long.

That's true, but, as I said before, there are plenty of other things that could be done to speed resolution other than simply throwing out formal mechanics and seat-of-the-pantsing it, and I think those options are sometimes overlooked. For example, modern (i.e., 3e, 4e, and 5e) D&D AC is just plain easier to use than OD&D/AD&D AC, so the hit resolution portion of Pathfinder combat is actually quicker and easier than in old school D&D. Pathfinder's CMB and CMD has its problems, but it's more streamlined than how maneuvers worked in D&D 3.x. And so on.

Quote from: SteerpikeI'm just trying to explain why I like to play the way I like to play, why my particular preference for long-term games isn't for a system predominated by abstract rules or a system with lots and lots of specific rules but one with loose, adaptable rules.

That makes sense, and I certainly don't begrudge you your own preferences. I'm not trying to say that a certain way of playing is better for everyone all the time, or anything like that. However, just because you like something and it works for you, that doesn't mean that it's perfect, of course. There still may well be room for improvement. I mean, you may like one thing, but there may theoretically be some other thing that you like more. In pointing out the flaws of doing things with a "rulings, not rules" approach, I'm not trying to promote one true way or anything like that. You might, at the end of the day, just not care about the problems it introduces, because the effect those problems have on the fun of your game is negligible. But maybe there is some thing you never thought of that could make your game even better, who knows.

Quote from: SteerpikeI am still curious about the adjective ladder in Fate and the DC guidelines in 5th. They feel so similar to me that I am puzzled by your praise of the former and dislike of the latter.

I talked about this a bit in the 5th Edition thread, but it comes down to two things. Firstly, Fate's guidelines are actually more specific, and, secondly and more importantly, I think that it's apples and oranges anyway. Fate is a system based around scenes, narrative, aspects, and such, and the main role of the mechanics is to drive the narrative. The difficulties are being set from a "narrativist" perspective. On the other hand, in something like D&D, the game is driven more by events and DCs are supposed to be based on circumstances. For example, in Fate, it's very likely that there could be some door that doesn't normally even merit a roll but, as a result of a compel, suddenly becomes Good (+3) opposition. That kind of hand-waving magic doesn't happen nearly as often in D&D because it's not that sort of system, so more or less objective DCs are more important to have.

Quote from: SteerpikeIt's not that Fate makes me throw my hands up in the air hopelessly, or that it's unplayable. My problem here isn't comprehension of the rules, and my point isn't that these rules are objectively bad or difficult to use. It's that the rules make me think about things in very abstract terms, which makes me aware of the game qua game, which draw my attention to the act of playing. Instead of thinking about the details of what's going on and what characters are doing to an environment and how the world responds, I'm thinking about narrative arcs, objectives, histories, personal beliefs. I'm thinking about intangible things, about demarcating scenes. I'm thinking whether to use a compel. I'm thinking at a meta-level. I tend to find this somewhat tiring, but also I find it undermines a quality I like in the sorts of games I play regularly, which is verisimilitude - the appearance or feeling or illusion that the imaginary world of the game is real.

I guess that makes sense, though I don't really agree with it. Personally, having a list of character aspects helps me define and play a character better, while in other systems I may be grasping a bit to really "feel" the character. Situational aspects are good descriptors for an environment, too. I generally don't dwell too much on the meta-constructs that these things create, so they don't really hurt verisimilitude. That said, my idea of immersion is probably pretty strange anyway because I have no trouble at all playing two or more characters at once.

Quote from: sparkletwistThe issue I was having was that it seemed like you were just rattling off a list of Fate terminology, and using that to make the point that it was somehow too abstracted to you. My point was that every system has certain abstractions. For example, I don't think it's particularly fair to pick on stress and consequences as being abstractions if you play with a system that has armor class and hit points. Sure, Fate is more abstracted, and I do see that as a strength... but I feel it's a strength largely because it's not egregiously so.

Fair enough, I got into a bit of rant-mode, and wasn't being very clear. I totally understand why you see it as a strength, and in a certain sense I think it is a strength, at least insofar as it runs a particular kind of game, the sort you really like, and which I myself do enjoy now-and-then.

Quote from: sparkletwistHowever, this process has never really felt any worse in Fate, at least for me. Part of this could be because, as my preference for specific rules might suggest, even in systems like Pathfinder or D&D 5e without so much abstraction I'm still going to be thinking in terms of mechanics more often than you may be.

I think this cognitive difference is at the heart of it. I know you have quite a mathematical mind, and I think this might be part of it too. I'm reasonably good at math, but it doesn't come naturally to me. The math and mechanics tend to fade away a lot when I'm playing, and for my everyday games I like it when they're very unobtrusive.

Quote from: sparkletwistThat's true, but, as I said before, there are plenty of other things that could be done to speed resolution other than simply throwing out formal mechanics and seat-of-the-pantsing it, and I think those options are sometimes overlooked. For example, modern (i.e., 3e, 4e, and 5e) D&D AC is just plain easier to use than OD&D/AD&D AC, so the hit resolution portion of Pathfinder combat is actually quicker and easier than in old school D&D. Pathfinder's CMB and CMD has its problems, but it's more streamlined than how maneuvers worked in D&D 3.x. And so on.

I'll agree with that. I'm certainly not in favour of throwing out all formal mechanics entirely, or of going entirely ad-hoc, or free-form.

Quote from: sparkletwistThere still may well be room for improvement. I mean, you may like one thing, but there may theoretically be some other thing that you like more.

Totally. There was a time when I was very set-in-my-ways with Pathfinder, for example. But I gradually became aware of the things about it I didn't like - it's emphasis on system mastery and balance, on level-appropriate encounters, the density of its rules. I also realized that my favourite moments in playing Pathfinder were moments where my players went "off-book" and started rigging up crazy traps or pursuing schemes and strategies the rules didn't anticipate - when they stopped just using class features and started thinking outsider of the box ("off-sheet"). I increasingly found myself ignoring big swathes of the rules. The sorts of items I was coming up with weren't the sort of items Pathfinder expected PCs to receive. The sort of encounters I was planning weren't the ones Pathfinder expected PCs to face. I was very skeptical of 5th edition, but it really won me over. It's deeply flawed, but like you said, I find I can overlook a lot of its rough edges.

Quote from: sparkletwistI talked about this a bit in the 5th Edition thread, but it comes down to two things. Firstly, Fate's guidelines are actually more specific, and, secondly and more importantly, I think that it's apples and oranges anyway. Fate is a system based around scenes, narrative, aspects, and such, and the main role of the mechanics is to drive the narrative. The difficulties are being set from a "narrativist" perspective. On the other hand, in something like D&D, the game is driven more by events and DCs are supposed to be based on circumstances. For example, in Fate, it's very likely that there could be some door that doesn't normally even merit a roll but, as a result of a compel, suddenly becomes Good (+3) opposition. That kind of hand-waving magic doesn't happen nearly as often in D&D because it's not that sort of system, so more or less objective DCs are more important to have.

This is an interesting point. There is a bit more scaffolding in Fate, but the "apples and oranges" idea is interesting. I'm not sure 5th or even the old school as a whole is totally at odds... like a door might not always merit a roll in 5th because the characters have a lot of time and aren't under any pressure and can just break it down. Or, for example, on page 236 of the DMG, they talk about how "the players might describe how they search for a secret door, detailing how they tap on a wall or twist a torch sconce to find its trigger. That could be enough to convince the DM that they find the secret door without having to make an ability check to do so." But maybe if the PCs are stuck or in a hurry you do allow a roll. It's not quite the same thing as the way Fate handles things - Fate is probably more abstract still, and it's more that the world itself is being reshaped on-the-fly - but is this a difference in kind, or degree?

Quote from: sparkletwistI guess that makes sense, though I don't really agree with it. Personally, having a list of character aspects helps me define and play a character better, while in other systems I may be grasping a bit to really "feel" the character. Situational aspects are good descriptors for an environment, too. I generally don't dwell too much on the meta-constructs that these things create, so they don't really hurt verisimilitude. That said, my idea of immersion is probably pretty strange anyway because I have no trouble at all playing two or more characters at once.

Yeah, I think this is really interesting - it's not just that different systems produce different sorts of experiences, it's that different players will experience different systems differently.

It's interesting that while 5th doesn't have aspects it does suggest that characters choose a background with a personality trait, ideal, bond, and flaw, and the backgrounds do have some mechanical heft. It's not the same as aspects and nowhere near as extensive, but I do think 5th is probably the most "narrativist" of the D&D editions.

Quote from: SteerpikeThe math and mechanics tend to fade away a lot when I'm playing, and for my everyday games I like it when they're very unobtrusive.

I find this hard because the math and mechanics are ultimately the way that the characters interact with the world. I mean, they interact through the story as well, so the story is important; I'm definitely not the tactical sort of gamer that just doesn't care about roleplay at all... but, on the other hand, any point in the story where there is going to be danger or risk is going to probably involve a die roll, and then it becomes something quantifiable, and I like to know what those numbers are going to be, or at least have a good guess.

Quote from: SteerpikeI'm certainly not in favour of throwing out all formal mechanics entirely, or of going entirely ad-hoc, or free-form.

I didn't even mean anything that extreme. I meant more that the solution to lacking rules, bad rules, or badly presented rules isn't always to just decide "rulings, not rules." I mean, imagine, hypothetically, that you managed to collect all of the rulings and various judgments that you made in a game into a formalized and elegant set of house rules and stored them in an index as well organized as d20pfsrd.com at its best. In this hypothetical game, you'd probably rely on your rules as written a lot more and on rulings a lot less. In the real world, you're not going to be able to do this, but the fact remains there's also a place for improving rules and improving the presentation of rules that sometimes gets neglected because just leaving it to on-the-spot DM judgment is easier. That's the core of my complaint with 5th edition; the designers slacked off on a lot of design work and just pushed it on the DM to make a ruling.

Quote from: SteerpikeI also realized that my favourite moments in playing Pathfinder were moments where my players went "off-book" and started rigging up crazy traps or pursuing schemes and strategies the rules didn't anticipate - when they stopped just using class features and started thinking outsider of the box ("off-sheet"). I increasingly found myself ignoring big swathes of the rules.

I got my start with AD&D and V:tM, neither of which were particularly strong on strict rules. So crazy improvisation and going "off-book" were never a big thing for me, rather. I was actually kind of a latecomer to the whole D&D 3.x way of doing it. So, instead, the big thing for me was Fate, which had abstracted mechanics and meta-points to adjudicate that ephemeral crazy stuff that was, in other systems, just up to the GM to decide.

Quote from: SteerpikeI'm not sure 5th or even the old school as a whole is totally at odds

Definitely not. Fate actually harmonizes pretty well with the rules-light spirit of the old school, and the emphasis on player creativity over raw mechanical power. I've run some old school dungeon crawls using Fate rules and the experience was quite fun for everyone involved. The big advantage of Fate, to me, was that it provided abstracted mechanics to adjudicate situations that would be left entirely to DM fiat in OD&D or have only vague rules in 5th edition.

Quote from: SteerpikeIt's not quite the same thing as the way Fate handles things - Fate is probably more abstract still, and it's more that the world itself is being reshaped on-the-fly - but is this a difference in kind, or degree?

Another way I think that the setting of difficulties in Fate works differently is the interaction with the narrative power inherent to Fate aspects, which makes the difficulties set relative to the character's own power. For example, let's say that we're playing a superhero game, there is a tall building, and the heroes are needed on the roof. A superhero with super-athleticism, supported by appropriate aspects, tries to leap to the top of the building. He probably has an Athletics skill of at least +4, possibly boosted by a stunt as well. The GM is probably going to make this challenge have opposition of around a 4, to make it potentially risky but not really a big deal for our super athlete. On the other hand, I don't feel like this difficulty of 4 is at all objective in the way that a D&D DC usually is. By this math, a mundane person with an Athletics of 0 has a 1% chance rolling all +'s and leaping to the top of this building.... which is still way too high.

Quote from: sparkletwistI find this hard because the math and mechanics are ultimately the way that the characters interact with the world. I mean, they interact through the story as well, so the story is important; I'm definitely not the tactical sort of gamer that just doesn't care about roleplay at all... but, on the other hand, any point in the story where there is going to be danger or risk is going to probably involve a die roll, and then it becomes something quantifiable, and I like to know what those numbers are going to be, or at least have a good guess.

This is understandable, and up to a point I agree. Obviously you do need math, and math absolutely helps to model the way characters interact with the world. How much math you need and how granular or specific that math needs to be are the questions where we might part company.

Quote from: sparkletwistI mean, imagine, hypothetically, that you managed to collect all of the rulings and various judgments that you made in a game into a formalized and elegant set of house rules and stored them in an index as well organized as d20pfsrd.com at its best. In this hypothetical game, you'd probably rely on your rules as written a lot more and on rulings a lot less. In the real world, you're not going to be able to do this, but the fact remains there's also a place for improving rules and improving the presentation of rules that sometimes gets neglected because just leaving it to on-the-spot DM judgment is easier.

I do see what you mean, and I don't want to let the 5th edition designers totally off the hook. But on the other hand a lot of the time these rulings are relatively one-off. One of the things I like about old school play is the way it tends to emphasize using your environment or objects at hand and outside-the-box thinking rather than relying primarily on-the-sheet character abilities. So imagine we come up with 5th edition rulings for the following situations, all of which are the sort of things I could potentially see happening in the kind of games I like to run:

- A character is trying to tip over a huge, heavy cauldron of acid in such a way that it hits a particular group of enemies. Also, another character is using a fire spell to boil the acid and so make it even more deadly (maybe a Strength check to tip it, and then a Dexterity saving throw to avoid, and then I'd have to figure out extra damage from the boiling could work).

- A character is trying to escape a rapidly swirling whirlpool and another character has tossed a rope to try and help them; meanwhile, enemies shoot crossbows at the swimmer (so I'd probably go for an Athletics check, plus a Dexterity check from the thrower - on a success, the swimmer gets advantage on the roll; also, I'd have to determine the number of rounds it takes to be sucked under; also, probably disadvantage to the ranged attackers).

- A character is trying to light a giant's match as big as a large, unwieldy spear, and then hurl the resulting "ranged weapon" to light the tail-fur of the giant's enormous pet cat on fire (some maybe Strength to strike, then a ranged attack allowing spear proficiency, fire damage on a successful hit, then give the kitty a Dex saving throw on subsequent rounds to put the fire out).

- A character is trying to re-program an ancient civilization's mind-switching device so that instead of switching two consciousnesses around it creates a duplicate of a character's mind and "overwrites" the second consciousness; they're using comprehend languages to figure out the alien glyphs on the control panel (probably some crazy Arcana check with a high DC, but with advantage due to the spell).

I mean, yes, we could write all these down in a compendium and have a big codex of house-rules, but how often are these sorts of situations going to be repeated? Is it realistic to expect 5th edition to provide detailed rules for such circumstances? I think that some of 5th edition's rules really are too vague, and I'd have liked more example DCs for common tasks, sure, but it's the above kind of thing that really requires rulings beyond figuring out whether a given check should be DC 10, 15, or 20. When you have loose, easily adaptable rules on the level of "just make an ability check" or "just make a saving throw" or "add advantage," these sorts of rulings, I think, become easier. You could totally also do these things in Fate using a narrativist or abstract system, but if you're not using that system for various reasons, I'm not sure very precise rules actually help much in these sorts of instances.

Quote from: sparkletwistSo, instead, the big thing for me was Fate, which had abstracted mechanics and meta-points to adjudicate that ephemeral crazy stuff that was, in other systems, just up to the GM to decide.

This definitely makes sense to me.

Quote from: sparkletwistHe probably has an Athletics skill of at least +4, possibly boosted by a stunt as well. The GM is probably going to make this challenge have opposition of around a 4, to make it potentially risky but not really a big deal for our super athlete. On the other hand, I don't feel like this difficulty of 4 is at all objective in the way that a D&D DC usually is. By this math, a mundane person with an Athletics of 0 has a 1% chance rolling all +'s and leaping to the top of this building.... which is still way too high.

I'll grant that this is a significant difference. D&D would probably handle it by giving him a much, much greater bonus and setting the DC crazy high.

Quote from: SteerpikeI mean, yes, we could write all these down in a compendium and have a big codex of house-rules, but how often are these sorts of situations going to be repeated? Is it realistic to expect 5th edition to provide detailed rules for such circumstances? I think that some of 5th edition's rules really are too vague, and I'd have liked more example DCs for common tasks, sure, but it's the above kind of thing that really requires rulings beyond figuring out whether a given check should be DC 10, 15, or 20.

It's not realistic to expect 5th Edition (or any system, except maybe GURPS...) to provide detailed rules for such specific situations as a whole, but I also think that most of those maneuvers could be abstracted at least partially into a series of simpler tasks that should be represented in the system because they are the sort of things that come up in gameplay all the time. I'm not just bashing on 5th edition here, but you used it as an example so I will too, because it illustrates pretty well where the culture of "rulings, not rules" falls flat on its face for me. It's perfectly reasonable to expect the DM to make a ruling on which simple semi-abstract task (that is explained in the rules) best suits the situation, but it's not reasonable to say "just make an ability check" or "just make a saving throw" without indicating what stat to use and what the DC should be in even a generalized way, because then the DM is forced to make up some pretty extensive ad hoc game mechanics.

To use your given examples-- for the cauldron of acid, there should be a general rule to push heavy objects (including some specified DC's) that the DM can use to make a ruling, because pushing heavy objects is a common enough adventuring task it should probably be represented in the rules.  There should be rules to swim around in very turbulent water, because that's also likely to come up. Tossing the rope seems like it'd be just a help action, which actually is a thing, but it works differently from the way you suggested in that it doesn't require a roll at all, so I don't know if that's an intentional divergence or that you're just so used to 5e not having rules for things you didn't even check. Using weapons that are the wrong size for you should probably have some sort of a rule, because this will come up often enough. Reprogramming an ancient civilization's mind-switching device is a rather specific task, so in this case I'm actually fine with the DM just winging a DC, although winging a DC would of course be easier if there were example DC's given so you had some reference point. These "building block" mechanics are the cases where better rules would benefit a lot more than just saying "rulings, not rules." That feels like a cop-out to me. There really should have been more underlying design work by the people who made the system.

Interesting analysis. Let me ask a follow up question. Apart from maybe the rope thing and the Help action (see below), do any of my rulings seem wildly arbitrary or off-base to you? Obviously there are specific DCs to set, which I haven't included, but is it fundamentally the DC-calculation process where the problem lies, or is there anywhere in my list of rulings where you think I've made some obviously unfair or counter-intuitive use of the mechanical elements (i.e. ability checks/skills, advantage/disadvantage, saving throws, proficiency)?

I mean I agree with you that a system should have building blocks, it's just that that's what those things feel like to me. When 5e tells me that I should use a Strength check to "model any attempt to lift, push, pull, or break something," that feels like a building block for tipping the vat of acid. When it tells me that a saving throw "represents an attempt to resist a spell, a trap, a poison, a disease, or a similar threat" and that Dexterity is used to "model any attempt to move nimbly, quickly, or quietly, or to keep from falling on tricky footing," those feel like building blocks for how to avoid the acid.

Basically, does it come down to DCs, or do you feel there are more "structural" problems in how those rulings function? Does the choice of abilities or skills or when to apply advantage/disadvantage feel wildly off?

Quote from: sparkletwistTossing the rope seems like it'd be just a help action, which actually is a thing, but it works differently from the way you suggested in that it doesn't require a roll at all, so I don't know if that's an intentional divergence or that you're just so used to 5e not having rules for things you didn't even check.

I'm aware of the Help action, and had it in my head when making the ruling, but added the check due to the particularly crazy conditions. I could see an argument for just letting the Help action proceed without a check, though.

Quote from: SteerpikeBasically, does it come down to DCs, or do you feel there are more "structural" problems in how those rulings function? Does the choice of abilities or skills or when to apply advantage/disadvantage feel wildly off?

Well, I wouldn't say wildly off, and I will say that choosing the DC is going to be a significant issue here (and, as I've said before, I think you may be trivializing the task of choosing consistent DCs a bit) but, yes, there are some problems beyond just choosing a DC. For example, with the acid, how much damage does it do? Should the save be for half damage or no damage? And, yes, what's the save DC, and how is this determined?

I'd also say that these are relatively intuitive skill uses, and not every skill works this well-- there's no indication given what skill or save to use to oppose social skills like Persuasion and Intimidation, for example. Perception and Investigation are both called out as skills applicable for finding hidden objects, which is certainly a common adventuring task, and no explanation is given as to when to use each one. On the topic of hidden things, the Stealth skill has a bunch of problems, but I've already delved pretty extensively into that (http://www.thecbg.org/index.php/topic,210417.msg233090.html#msg233090).

Anyway, the big problem I have with advantage and disadvantage is that the criteria for when to apply advantage or disadvantage are pretty vague and the ways they interact with numerical bonuses are often unclear. To go to back to the example of the acid cauldron, what if a character ducked behind a heavy piece of furniture to try to avoid the deadly acid? This seems like it might be a case for advantage, but it's actually not-- this is probably best expressed as three-quarters cover, which grants a +5 bonus to the save. Your case where the ranged attackers had disadvantage because they were shooting into the turbulent whirlpool might be valid, or it might count as half cover which would be a -2 penalty. Who knows?

Yeah, for acid damage I'd probably use the spell acid splash and/or throwing an acid flask as a rough model, so 2d6 acid damage, but with a larger area near the vat - any creature within roughly 10 feet, and then I'd add 1d6 fire on top of that for the heat. Save would be to totally avoid. The save DC is just another DC to calculate.

I'd agree that there are some skills in 5th that work less well than others. With social skills I will usually give players more latitude as to what skill to use on someone and then just make an opposed Charisma check using the same skill. I do think there could be more scaffolding for this. That said I tend to be pretty generous if people can sound convincing or intimidating without rolling well.

Like I've said before, I think a list of sample DCs would be a fantastic addition to 5th. I'm picturing basically a big page - or two, or three - with lots of tasks on it, organized either by difficulty or by the type of task, so that we know that breaking down a wood door is DC 10 and a metal one DC 20 or whatever. But I don't think we need lots of granular, individual, precise rules for figuring out exactly how big a penalty slipperiness should impose. The thing with the DC list is, there's nothing magic about the judgments of the designers - there's no sense in which the DCs they'd come up with would really be more accurate than the ones I do. So while yes, it would be just great to have that list, I personally don't feel its lack deprives me of something essential I need to make the game work. It adds a slight cognitive burden to rulings when I have to pluck a DC out of thin air, but in general I will pitch DCs low in such cases, to facilitate the PCs doing cool things and to avoid a feeling of unfairness. I might go higher when I'm prepping ahead of time and have thought a lot about how difficult a task should be.

Quote from: sparkletwistAnyway, the big problem I have with advantage and disadvantage is that the criteria for when to apply advantage or disadvantage are pretty vague and the ways they interact with numerical bonuses are often unclear.

I tend to say that advantage/disadvantage covers anything where there isn't an obvious numerical bonus instead. But your examples are productive to consider from my point of view. Maybe we could consider the whirlpool half cover, or the piece of furniture three-quarters cover, or whatever. But if you compare those to advantage/disadvantage (statistically + or - 4) they're all pretty close. We're talking about a difference of 1 or 2 here, and obviously any sort of cover mechanic in virtually any game is going to be pretty rough anyway. So a lot of this stuff falls under the "close enough" umbrella for me. It's a very easy-to-use mechanic. It's sloppy, but it's easy. What are the real consequences of this sloppiness for the actual experience of players and DM at the table? Those consequences have to be weighed against the consequences of a more complex, precise set of rules, and/or a more abstract set of rules. Do we prefer a slightly less-consistent game that asks DM to make more judgment calls, or a more consistent but slightly slower one that requires a bunch of smaller decisions and consultations of the rulebook? I'd prefer the first and you'd prefer the second, at least if we're playing some variant of D&D.

Quote from: SteerpikeLike I've said before, I think a list of sample DCs would be a fantastic addition to 5th. I'm picturing basically a big page - or two, or three - with lots of tasks on it, organized either by difficulty or by the type of task, so that we know that breaking down a wood door is DC 10 and a metal one DC 20 or whatever. But I don't think we need lots of granular, individual, precise rules for figuring out exactly how big a penalty slipperiness should impose. The thing with the DC list is, there's nothing magic about the judgments of the designers - there's no sense in which the DCs they'd come up with would really be more accurate than the ones I do. So while yes, it would be just great to have that list, I personally don't feel its lack deprives me of something essential I need to make the game work.

There's nothing "magic" about the judgments of the designers, but, at least in theory, they've put a decent amount of effort into creating a functional system. They're going to be very aware of how their world works and how the math works that drives the game representation of their world, so they can create a coherent and consistent model and have DCs that fit that model. They'll have researched what the 50th percentile of mundane humans can actually do, and, if they were attempting any sort of realism, made sure that DC 10 tasks in the system roughly corresponded to this. There's a good analysis here (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/587/roleplaying-games/dd-calibrating-your-expectations-2) about how well the numbers in 3e actually tend to fit together. If you think you can do this well on the fly, Dunning and Kruger would like a word with you. (As an aside, the same guy who wrote that other thing also has a rant about rules vs. rulings (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/3924/roleplaying-games/rules-vs-rulings) that I rather like)

All that said, in practice, you're probably right. 5e is lazy and slipshod. Enough of the DCs that they do provide are nonsense, so maybe any comprehensive list of sample tasks with sample DCs might well be incoherent garbage anyway, and if it existed, I'd just be ranting about how it makes no sense. Oh well.

Man, you just have such exacting standards for DCs compared to me. These days I definitely am not remotely that simulationist when it comes to things, despite a preference for verisimilitude. The vast majority of DCs I'd put would be 10, 15, or 20. Is there a ton to be gained from deciding that a door is DC 13 to break down instead of DC 10 because it's made of slightly-harder wood or it's swollen with water? Is it vital that I know a vat of acid weighing X number of pounds should be DC 21 or 23 or 18 or whatever to push instead of DC 20? I dunno, for you I guess so?

I actually ran into the Alexandrian piece awhile back. I don't particularly buy his account of old school versus new school players, like his suggestion that the new school player is as likely to employ the old-school description-heavy approach to searching for traps, or his suggestion that rulings and talking between players and DM are simply identical with GM fiat. But there's a lot of ways in which I just really differ from the Alexandrian in my whole approach to gaming. He can be an interesting read, but his way of approaching the roleplaying process - scenes, "bangs," frames, story-beats - is a bit alien to the way I tend to DM.

Quote from: SteerpikeMan, you just have such exacting standards for DCs compared to me. These days I definitely am not remotely that simulationist when it comes to things, despite a preference for verisimilitude. The vast majority of DCs I'd put would be 10, 15, or 20. Is there a ton to be gained from deciding that a door is DC 13 to break down instead of DC 10 because it's made of slightly-harder wood or it's swollen with water? Is it vital that I know a vat of acid weighing X number of pounds should be DC 21 or 23 or 18 or whatever to push instead of DC 20? I dunno, for you I guess so?

I think it's fair to say that the actual numbers that are generated by the game are more important to me than you, at least on some level. I mean, it's not as though the fluff is unimportant to me, but it's the mathematical outcomes of rolls and such that often model how important events turn out, so I do tend to focus on them a bit. I don't think it's misrepresenting anyone's position to say that I care more about the, for lack of a better term, "mathematical integrity" of crunch than you do. So, when contemplating a game's systems, I try to give them inputs that are consistent and coherent. This means that there is something to be gained, at least for me, because reducing everything down to three multiples of 5 only gives you three possible difficulties for the world, and I'd usually prefer it if things were more nuanced (or at least had finer granularity) than that. I also feel like this helps with verisimilitude, actually. If the DC of a door or hazard or whatever can basically only ever be 10 or 15, that rules out a lot of incremental possibilities in between.

I think your idea of mathematical integrity is a good one for describing the difference between us. I basically don't care about mathematical integrity so long as the system is fast, usable, unobtrusive, has a surface illusion of verisimilitude, and doesn't provoke complaints from players. But I can understand why you do care without directly sharing in the feeling.

Sparkletwist, how do you feel about something like Lamentations of the Flame Princess' Skill system?

The skills are: Architecture, Bushcraft, Climbing, Languages, Open Doors, Search, Sleight of Hand, Sneak Attack, Stealth, and Tinkering. Everyone begins with a 1 in 6 chance of doing these things, and abilities help, so Strength helps with open doors, for instance. For skills like Climbing, it's assumed most people can climb a regular rope or wall with handholds without rolling, rolling is only for "walls and other sheer surfaces without obvious handholds." A similar philosophy applies to other skills. Only Specialists, the Rogue equivalent, can improve their skills at all.

Here's what a sample skill looks like:

Quote from: StealthStealth  allows  a  character  to  sneak  around  and hide. In order to use the Stealth skill, those that the character wishes to hide from must not already be aware of the character's presence, and there must be somewhere to hide. Stealth is not invisibility! For example, if the character hears enemies coming down a bare hallway, he would not be able to simply hide because of the lack of available cover. In a room with furniture, the character would be able to use Stealth to hide, but if someone were to conduct a search of the room, the character would be found. If a  character  attacks  after  successfully  using Stealth, that attack is always considered to be a Surprise attack, even if the enemy is already engaged in battle.

You can read the rules here. (https://paulgorman.org/roleplaying/dnd/misc/LotFP_Rules_and_Magic_Free_Version_without_Art.pdf)

So here, we don't have DCs at all. Difficulty is flattened, and so are character abilities. Only the skill-monkey gets better at skills.

My guess would be that this would seem hopelessly vague to you, and the lack of incremental possibilities thing would be exacerbated, but I'm curious. Is this far worse even than 5th edition?

EDIT: I'll also add that I totally agree with you that Pathfinder or something like it is indeed better at verisimilitude than 5th edition. There might be some cases where the Pathfinder RAW has weird, immersion-breaking implications (the infamous bag of rats strategy comes to mind) that 5th edition's vagueness might conceivably avoid, but usually I do think the granularity of Pathfinder is a virtue insofar as verisimilitude is concerned, and this is why I stuck with it for a long time. In practice for me, 5th edition essentially trades a bit of verisimilitude and consistency for simplicity, speed, and a description-heavy approach that inclines itself to "saying yes" a bit more and rolling less.

So, unless you're a specialist, an action either has a 100% chance of succeeding (because it's a thing you can just do) or you only have a 16.7% chance, at all, ever? Or a 0% chance if the DM decides that it's just not a thing you can do, I guess, but it's not like you're going to be rolling a die unless it's pure desperation time anyway. Or there's no consequences at all of failure but then why are you even rolling.

So... yeah. You're right. I dislike it and find it far worse than even 5th edition. :P

I figured yeah.

I mean it's also a game filled with save-or-die effects and level drain and "gotcha" effects and a very nasty dungeon design philosophy. I like it a lot  :P. But I figured we'd have a more productive conversation about 5th, so I used that in examples instead.

Ok, so i've been meaning to ask this for a long time, and since Steerpike brought it up in the LotFP thread, I thought I'd just bring it here. How do you two differ with your game design philosophies? I'm mainly asking, because I don't know what mine is yet.

Well, I'll talk mostly about myself, because I don't presume to speak for Steerpike.

My game design philosophy is basically based around the idea that the crunch is the "engine" that drives the world, so it has to have logical inputs and produce logical outcomes. I like elegant mathematics and I like systems that aren't readily exploitable. I have somewhat of a preference for rules-light over rules-heavy system, but in favor of abstracted but still relatively comprehensive rules rather than simply leaving blank spaces. I feel the role of the GM is to create the world and play as the NPCs, so as GM I prefer to "automate" most of the determinations about the nuts and bolts of how things happen. I dislike large amounts of GM fiat, both as GM and as a player, because I am also a big advocate of player agency.

I think that sparkletwist and my differences are actually smaller than they seem given the amount we rant at one another. We've both played in one another's games and had a good time doing so. Indeed, sparkletwist's character Dagny in Fimbulvinter is one of the absolute highlights of the game, and I like to think I've done a reasonably good job of DMing to let sparkletwist have fun with the character. I've had very good fun in some of her games as well, like when playing Morwen in her drow game, or a ghoul sniper in her Sixguns & Cyclopean Horrors one-off.

I'm not even sure I'd go so far as to attribute to myself a fully coherent gaming philosophy, but what I do have are a bunch of tastes. There are some elements of these things that could very roughly be described in relation to the so-called "OSR" or Old School Renaissance, but there's a lot of old school stuff I really dont like at all, and plenty of new games that I do really like, so I wouldn't use that label for myself, at least without a lot of reservations and caveats. But that said, some of the things I like in games:

- I tend to emphasize description and communication over dice-rolling. I see most events in the game-world as transpiring due to a collaborative conversation between players and the DM. I don't like DMs who railroad players or make totally arbitrary decisions. I think the most important thing players and DMs can do at the table is listen carefully to one another.

- I like a gaming style which emphasizes freedom for the characters - the players should feel encouraged to go anywhere, approach problems from any angle they like, have their own goals, and make their own story. I like organic, character-driven and location-driven stories that touch on bigger plots rather than pre-scripted story-paths or narratives.

- Usually, however, I also like games where the characters themselves aren't super-powerful and where the possibility of character death, mutilation, cursing, mutation, or other negative outcomes is high, as a consequence of interactions with the game-world rather than a player's choice to alter the character. So, like, if a trap gouges out someone's eyes, that's not a thing the player "wanted" to happen because they fancied playing an eyeless character, it's a consequence of events.

- For long-term campaigns I prefer a style where the players have freedom primarily over their characters' actions rather than the reshaping the setting or NPC behaviour through outside-of-character mechanics. They can affect the world in big ways, but through their characters.

- I prefer practical, easy-to-remember rules that aren't overly complicated and are open to hacking or house-ruling or ad-hoc use. I like rules that "get the job done" or that can be adapted on the fly, and which feel reasonably fair, transparent, and intuitive to players. Ideally, players should be able to just say what their characters do, and then I tell them what to roll, and the game is still perfectly playable.

- At the same time, I like rules that are relatively unobtrusive and which interfere minimally with verisimilitude and immersion, since I like feeling like the imaginary world being explored has an air of reality or plausibility to it. I don't need rules that create a super-granular, accurate simulation, but I also don't like rules that feel super "gamey." Some is OK, but too much becomes immersion-breaking.

- The players in my regular face-to-face gaming group really like solving puzzles and mysteries, scheming, planning complicated heists or attacks, and messing with odd things they find. They like exploration and wandering, and they like it when they walk into a bar in the game world and I already have a list of drinks ready for them to choose from, or when they turn down an alleyway and find an encounter they didn't expect. They like maps and handouts and secrets and awkwardly funny situations and weird monsters. They are not huge fans of long, drawn-out combats and care less about history or lore than I do. With one notable exception they don't care much about character optimization and generally find it stressful and/or pointless, but they like being able to do cool things like cast interesting spells or use unusual items.

EDIT: For a very rough description of what an "old school" style entails, check out "A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming." (http://www.lulu.com/items/volume_63/3019000/3019374/1/print/3019374.pdf) I don't agree with everything in it 100% (like, I don't mind the idea of Perception checks, for example, and there are lots of things about OD&D rules that just suck) but I share many of its broad sentiments.

Quote from: SteerpikeI think that sparkletwist and my differences are actually smaller than they seem given the amount we rant at one another.

Very true. Or at least we're just not so set in our ways that we can't have fun with whatever... I actually agree with a lot of elements on Steerpike's list, for example.

Quote from: SteerpikeI also like games where the characters themselves aren't super-powerful and where the possibility of character death, mutilation, cursing, mutation, or other negative outcomes is high, as a consequence of interactions with the game-world rather than a player's choice to alter the character.

This one is perhaps my strongest point of disagreement. I definitely like games where characters aren't super-powerful, but I also believe that players should have ownership over their characters, and that includes having a degree of control over what misfortunes the character has to endure. The game is ultimately for fun and some people just don't find certain things fun for whatever reason; I'm not going to play a game where I consistently feel marginalized, frustrated, or squicked out. As such I completely agree with Steerpike's first point about communication and I feel it should extend to this sort of thing as well. I like Fate's consequence mechanic in that it encourages the GM and the player to collaboratively determine what sort of trauma befalls a character that must take a consequence.

Quote from: SteerpikeFor a very rough description of what an "old school" style entails, check out "A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming." (http://www.lulu.com/items/volume_63/3019000/3019374/1/print/3019374.pdf) I don't agree with everything in it 100% (like, I don't mind the idea of Perception checks, for example, and there are lots of things about OD&D rules that just suck) but I share many of its broad sentiments.

For reading material, I'd also recommend http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/3924/roleplaying-games/rules-vs-rulings as a sort of "retort" to that. Just like Steerpike, I don't agree with everything in it 100% but I share many of its broad sentiments.

Quote from: sparkletwistThis one is perhaps my strongest point of disagreement. I definitely like games where characters aren't super-powerful, but I also believe that players should have ownership over their characters, and that includes having a degree of control over what misfortunes the character has to endure. The game is ultimately for fun and some people just don't find certain things fun for whatever reason; I'm not going to play a game where I consistently feel marginalized, frustrated, or squicked out. As such I completely agree with Steerpike's first point about communication and I feel it should extend to this sort of thing as well. I like Fate's consequence mechanic in that it encourages the GM and the player to collaboratively determine what sort of trauma befalls a character that must take a consequence.

Yeah, I think this is a very good distinction. Usually in my games there are one of two broad principles in play:

(1) Everyone has agreed ahead of time that horrible things are potentially possible consequences and are OK with it. So everyone knows we're playing LotFP and there are save-or-die effects or things that will make you deformed or whatever, and this is part of the fun, but I don't need to secure individual "consent" for each horror as it happens in the game.

OR

(2) I may do horrible things to characters, but virtually everything is reversible, either through magical remedy or even time travel. This is true in my Hex game, set in a big magical city, where unexpected and unpleasant things happen to my players all the time, but they can pretty much fix any of them with enough time/magic/ingenuity.