Quote from: Benoist;546669"Thinking for myself is hard."

Sorry for the uselessness of my post, but that's really how this guy's feedback comes off to me.

To be honest a few posters later on in the thread did seem to get him to admit that he may have made an error. So he might be redeemed with a little coaching and good solid guidelines and advice in the DMG. I more or less was trying to say there's no way to satisfy everyone. One direction lies 4e the other 0e it's going to hard if not impossible to strike a happy medium that doesn't end up making anybody happy.

Quote from: beejazz;546661Using definitions like 1/2, 3/4, and 9/10ths cover does tend to require either some illustration or some method of determination though.

I prefer a simpler delineation like "partial" and "full". Easy enough to tell the difference without much further information.

True, but it's been said a picture is worth a thousand words and in this case I would tend to agree.

Having full and partial is great but if the rules for determining who has what type is long and convoluted you run the risk of washing out the simplicity of having two cover states.

In the 3.0 case, while the modifiers and categories are more complicated the adjudication guideline can be summed up in one informative picture, which is nice. Also having a category for 'almost' total cover (9/10) was handy as you would commonly come up against it, like arrow slits and cracked doors

Quote from: Benoist;5466283.0. had less of that stuff than 3.5 did, though. Part of the edits between the two versions were actually taking away the references to the DM interpreting stuff and how this or that element would be a guideline, not a rule, etc.

I think people tend to forget how much 3.0. was different in tone, in that regard at least.

True.  I actually preferred 3e to 3.5e in many respects, and I think it really sucked when they put out the new half edition, and the impact it had on the 3rd party market.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;546512http://montecook.livejournal.com/254395.html

Found this article interesting. Not only does it touch on a lot of issues relating to the 5E playtest, but connects to lotsof things (mother may I for example). We have been discussing.

Monte Cook did a good explanation of the two main kinds of GMs.  If anyone has problems with his article, I'm guessing it's an English language barrier thing.  Because there is nothing to hate about it.

Quote from: Kord's Boon;546684True, but it's been said a picture is worth a thousand words and in this case I would tend to agree.

Having full and partial is great but if the rules for determining who has what type is long and convoluted you run the risk of washing out the simplicity of having two cover states.

In the 3.0 case, while the modifiers and categories are more complicated the adjudication guideline can be summed up in one informative picture, which is nice. Also having a category for 'almost' total cover (9/10) was handy as you would commonly come up against it, like arrow slits and cracked doors

TBH it wouldn't matter to me much if I wasn't tinkering in my spare time, but I'd almost prefer to call out the "arrow slit" case as total cover against long range. There's a really minimal chance of hitting a guy through a far off arrow slit, but it's no big deal to the guy right there. That's kind of the point of arrow slits.

So total cover, partial cover, and some rules about how some things apply as one or the other only past a certain range.

Don't get me wrong; I prefer the picture over the verbose 3.5 thing, but I also favor rules that are made to be easy enough to express in conversation.

It also really depends on the game. Rules for cover can and should be different in a game with hit locations, for example. That kind of "x therefore y" is probably a lot more common than game designers want to admit.

Quote from: Benoist;546669"Thinking for myself is hard."

Sorry for the uselessness of my post, but that's really how this guy's feedback comes off to me.

My favorite RPG, Marvel SAGA, completely falls apart if you're not willing to think on the fly.

Wowee. Clear rules are great, but c'mon.

Quote from: Benoist;546669"Thinking for myself is hard."

Sorry for the uselessness of my post, but that's really how this guy's feedback comes off to me.

One of my take-aways from helping students in a college computer lab for nearly a decade was that different people think differently and what one person finds easy and enjoyable can be difficult or unpleasant to someone else.  I don't like making arbitrary judgements and, as a result, I roll a lot of dice when I GM to decide things for me and, frankly, I find GMing a chore.  It's something I often tolerate more than enjoy.  I don't really mind rough GM-assessed modifiers in combat, for example, but I can imagine someone finding it a chore without it being a sign of a mental disability or fatal character flaw that makes them worthy of being mocked.  

As I've already mentioned one can run a role-playing game simply by having the players describe their characters to the GM and rolling freeform dice.  When I played a few games that way, the rule was "high rolls are good and low rolls are bad", but one could just as easily call that each turn, too.  That most people don't role-play that way even when they could suggests that there is something unsatisfactory to simply rely on GM-logic to run a game.  And if you think that's a reductio ad absurdum (even though I've played that way), as I've recently mentioned, not looking rules up was a design goal of Fudge and it's possible (and was even somewhat encouraged) to play Fudge in a very freeform way, yet few people actually seem to play it that freeform.  

Yet another problem with that is when GM-logic does not match player logic.  Sure, the player might decide to swing from the chandelier and land in front of their opponent, but if the GM's logic determines that such an action gives the player's opponent the opportunity to set their weapon and fatally skewer the PC as they fly toward them unable to stop, the player might not be all that pleased with the outcome(*).  And if that sort of thing wasn't ever a problem (in case you again wander down the road of talking about what the majority of the hobby does or wants based on your own anecdotal experience), we wouldn't have advice like "Say 'Yes' or roll dice" or, on the flip side, stories of pushover Monty Haul GMs who never say no.  

Please note that I am not advocating a system where the players and GM can only do what's explicitly spelled out in the rules.  My point is that there are some very real liabilities to using GM logic, just as there are liabilities to having comprehensive or detailed rules, and a reason why the really rules-light games that rely primarily on GM logic such as freeform Fudge, Risus, Over the Edge, and so on don't dominate the hobby even though they've been out there for a while.  In fact, there is no shortage of really nice very rules-light dungeon crawl systems out there like Dungeonslayers or Warrior, Rogue & Mage for people who want to get their GM logic freak on.

(*) The main way to get players to have their characters do things like swing from chandeliers is to not punish them for it.

The article is rather laughable considering the author's actual history. Monte is king asshole of Ruleslandia or are we all supposed to forget 3e existed?

Ah, the beauty of new edition wars. Red Team is now Blue Team! And of course, Monte has always been at war with Oceania.

Is there a vetting process for deciding who gets to write the rules for new editions of D&D?

Quote from: Spinachcat;546769Monte is king asshole of Ruleslandia or are we all supposed to forget 3e existed?

I don't recall 3e being near as bad as 3.5e and the culture that grew up around it, especially CharOp. Silly internet,

It is interesting how much of the general thought process most here seem to work with he has glommed onto.

'Rulings not Rules' is easy, but the mention of teaching GMs, the power of creating your own game and table, the idea that the Old games were designed this way...there is a lot that is common to this place.

I do not think he is right about the combat rules, BTW.  Any area of the rules where you write more rules becomes more the focus of the game.  Write a lot of rules for mercantile interaction and improving these abilities...players will spend time in mercantile pursuit.

Quote from: Spinachcat;546769The article is rather laughable considering the author's actual history. Monte is king asshole of Ruleslandia or are we all supposed to forget 3e existed?

Ah, the beauty of new edition wars. Red Team is now Blue Team! And of course, Monte has always been at war with Oceania.

And for a while now I thought you were Kevin/Piratecat/Vikingcat.  I am pretty sure, now, that you're not.

Quote from: Mistwell;546901And for a while now I thought you were Kevin/Piratecat/Vikingcat.  I am pretty sure, now, that you're not.

Hm. No. Definitely not.

Quote from: Mistwell;546901And for a while now I thought you were Kevin/Piratecat/Vikingcat. I am pretty sure, now, that you're not.

Don't feel bad I thought to same while lurking and then went to ENworld to compare them. And nope.

The first rules question in the Hulks and Horrors playtest came in the other day.

Someone wanted to know if the Omegans, who communicate visually by color, would thus be effectively "deaf" to Omegan speech if a photon flash blinded them.  

I answered, of course, yes.  Makes sense to me.  And that to me is how things are supposed to work.  You follow the logic of the setting and questions like that, if the information is there, are easy.