Quote from: beejazz;540256Bringing this back to the original point of discussion: Can you point to any actual examples in the rules that you believe could only have existed for this reason?

It's all well and good to attack Skip, and I really don't give a shit about all that, but if you can't demonstrate how his influence affected the design it's not terribly useful.

Read the interview. It's honestly not rocket science to figure out how his experience influences the way he looks at game design and particularly the role rules play in putting "bad elements" (as in, bad people) in check. You can ignore it, or believe I'm just full of crap, whatever, but the fact remains. I won't lose any sleep over it, it's okay.

Quote from: beejazz;540256I didn't really see any point at which min-maxers or rules lawyers were accepted during 3e's run. Never enough to have them kicked out of games, but banned classes/feats/spells/whatever lists followed the rules bits that became problematic.

I think that the min-maxers and rules lawyer types were attracted to RPGA play and passively encouraged by that environment. They didn't exist for long at non-tournament games.

Then again, rules lawyering and min-maxing often failed during Actual Play in my experience. A charop masterpiece doesn't last long if the Player cannot role-play or does not know basic tactics.

Quote from: beejazz;540256See, this is something I actually saw now and again. That fuzzy line of what to roll for and what to roleplay did occasionally become a problem. Personally, I prefer a system where either each option is viable (so the item's in a specific place and searching there will find it, or searching the area has a chance to find it), where roleplay weights rolling odds (think bluff, where the plausibility of the lie determined the DC), and where only things in doubt get rolled / rolls in combat are minimized (game I'm working on tends to take rolls out of movement in combat).

I saw this a lot as well, but think it reflects a more core problem - How do you teach good judgement to DMs? How do you teach common sense?

Quote from: jeff37923;540258I saw this a lot as well, but think it reflects a more core problem - How do you teach good judgement to DMs? How do you teach common sense?

I think I answered this in a previous conversation between us but I can't remember the thread nor the detail of my answer then. Basically it comes down to providing a structure of play that you can comprehend, rules and advice that empower you and teach you how to make choices for your game, the principles of running a game including trial and errors, seeking player feedback, learning from your mistakes, being willing to improve with time, being aware of the different moving parts of a role playing game (the participants, the social event, the game itself, the rules it uses etc) how all these create a superior game than the sum of its parts, and so on.

If you have a communication breakdown, that you are not aware at the game table, in the largest sense possible, i.e. don't know the rules, don't know how to run the game, don't want to listen to the other people playing with you, don't know when to adjudicate and how, et cetera, but instead are selfish, ignorant, oblivious, offensive etc, then the game can go nowhere but down.

You can help people who want to be good at what they do with good game design, advice, a good game community to support your efforts and so on, but if you're a terminally crippled asshole, no amount of rules or advice are going to make you any better, in any case.

Quote from: Benoist;540257Read the interview. It's honestly not rocket science to figure out how his experience influences the way he looks at game design and particularly the role rules play in putting "bad elements" (as in, bad people) in check. You can ignore it, or believe I'm just full of crap, whatever, but the fact remains. I won't lose any sleep over it, it's okay.

Moving past Skip for a minute: Look at 3e. What is in 3e for the sake of rules not rulings (or whatever)? Let's point to some concrete differences in the game itself. Not very useful to point out stupid things some guy said if we can't establish a connection to the game itself. I played with 3e, not Skip, after all.

Quote from: jeff37923;540258I think that the min-maxers and rules lawyer types were attracted to RPGA play and passively encouraged by that environment. They didn't exist for long at non-tournament games.

Then again, rules lawyering and min-maxing often failed during Actual Play in my experience. A charop masterpiece doesn't last long if the Player cannot role-play or does not know basic tactics.

Yeah, that and most attempts at home games are pretty transparent. Monster characters were common in a few games and I remember one player tried a war troll half (bronze?) dragon. Anyway, it was pretty obvious to us at the time he was going for immunity to the only thing that beat his regeneration, so I think that got overruled right out of the gate.

QuoteI saw this a lot as well, but think it reflects a more core problem - How do you teach good judgement to DMs? How do you teach common sense?

I think GM advice is really the point at which the conversational tone can become extremely useful, because you've not only got to tell people what sort of things to do, but help them analyze their priorities for future rulings. Personally, I've found that making a call quickly, sticking with it, and moving past it are almost more important than the ruling itself. It's the halt in play that tends to take people out of the moment and get them (potentially) looking at specifics like that.

Not to say I haven't made bad calls or anything.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;540211But this (if I understand it) is different from what Skip seemed to be suggesting. You are merely providing tranparent communication between GMs and Players so everyone is on the same page (i.e. I am going to roll this die and on a 17 you will be hit and take damage). Even if you are making on the fly judgment call, this can be done by informating the players about your judgment process. I think this is certainly a valid approach and I do similar things at critical moments where I don't want any misunderstandings. But Skip appears to be more in the strict rules lawyer camp of codifying everything so the players can use that against the GM making his own judgment calls.

Brendan, I was actually thinking of the first post on the old thread Benoist linked, specifically this passage that GameDaddy quotes, from Skip William's interview over at Grognardia:

Quote from: GameDaddy;311285 SW Responds -"It's a huge contradiction. The early designers were wrong. It comes down to this: If you want to be in control of your character, you have to have some idea how anything you might try is going to come out. and you can't know that unless you have some idea of how the rules are going to handle the situation. If the GM is making capricious decisions about what happens in the game, you're always shooting in the dark and you have no real control over your character at all. Think of how hard it would be to, say, learn to ride a bicycle if the laws of physics were constantly in flux. The game just works better if the DM and players have similar expectations about how the rules handle things."

A bit further on Skip also says -
"The referee is there to keep the game moving. As Patton once said, a good answer today is better than a perfect answer next week.

A well-written rules set is the best friend a DM can have. It helps manage the player's expectations and gives the DM a leg to stand on when things don't go the players' way."

The key game design element here is;
If the GM is making capricious decisions about what happens in the game, you're always shooting in the dark and you have no real control over your character at all...

Emphasis mine.

I actually think Skip has a point, but his complaint, as others have pointed out, boils down to "some GMs have a hard time comunicating their rulings". A subset of this group of GMs, which I want to believe ios actually in the minority, might be jerks.

Depowering GMs across the board, because (what I believe, out of sheer baseless speculation, to be) a minority of a minority of GMs are jerks, is throwing the baby out with the bath water.

"Don't game with jerks" is excellent advice but it might not be enough. The way I see it, these things have a learning curve. Since our hobby no longer has a healthy, swelling community like in the halcyon days of old, there's less word-of-mouth, less cross-pollination between different groups and different GMs, and generally speaking, less opportunities for a budding GM to sharpen his skills and expand his repertoire of tips and tricks.

I'd like to think that gaming forums and blogs have a real chance of picking up the slack, but the truth is that probably Old School and New School will probably just grow further apart, each sealed in their own echo-chamber forums and blogospheres. More's the pity.

Quote from: beejazz;540266Moving past Skip for a minute: Look at 3e. What is in 3e for the sake of rules not rulings (or whatever)? Let's point to some concrete differences in the game itself. Not very useful to point out stupid things some guy said if we can't establish a connection to the game itself. I played with 3e, not Skip, after all.

In a sense you were playing with Skip now that all his rulings were turned into actual rules, instead of having to get off-the-wall rulings. In one sense then, 3E is 2E with Skip as GM

Its difficult to isolate which of the three designers did what exactly in 3E design, but interesting to speculate. I put lead designer Tweet as the visionary and "big picture" guy, Monte as workhorse (we know he wrote the DMG - also max. Dex for armour and cross-class skills are Rolemaster things, so probably his doing), while Skip is the one responsible for rules tightening and fixing problem rules from prior editions. He wrote Combat and Tactics so much of the combat system is (directly or indirectly) his doing, plus I think most weight and measure stuff; for example, how much armour weighs for Small creatures, weapon sizing, how much Enlarge increases weight (Skip's shown he knows the square/cube law in Sage Advice before), or how many halflings fit inside a behir. He's also said that he's responsible for the Sorcerer.
The Old Geezer comments would lead me to suspect he was responsible for softening the effects of energy drain and perhaps other things through the system (max HP at 1st level ?). I'd also think Skip might be responsible for revision of game rules where it rebalances things from older editions: for example the "offhand weapons get 1/2 Str" and "two-handed weapons get 1.5x Str" is a clear balancing to fix TWF, which was a quite powerful option in 2E. A number of specific spells were probably meddled with by him to fix vague or problem effects, though I couldn't say which ones which doing a side-by-side 2E/3E comparison; I'd guess haste, grease, polymorph, reincarnate to start. The other lead designers wouldn't have had enough specific D&D experience to pinpoint design flaws in this fashion.

I totally hope you're wrong Butcher because if the two main camps are incapable of seeing some value in each other's respective view then the hobby is finished.  Luckily gamers have kids and they may be the bridge the hobby needs.

Quote from: jeff37923;540258I saw this a lot as well, but think it reflects a more core problem - How do you teach good judgement to DMs? How do you teach common sense?

With good advice, for both GMs and players. It's not as obvious as it seems.

Quote from: Marleycat;540298I totally hope you're wrong Butcher because if the two main camps are incapable of seeing some value in each other's respective view then the hobby is finished.  Luckily gamers have kids and they may be the bridge the hobby needs.

I hope I'm wrong too, kitty. But from the admittedly skewed perspective of blogs and forums, it looks like the fucking Tower of Babel.

Quote from: The Butcher;540287I'd like to think that gaming forums and blogs have a real chance of picking up the slack, but the truth is that probably Old School and New School will probably just grow further apart, each sealed in their own echo-chamber forums and blogospheres. More's the pity.

I don't know about being "sealed in their own echo-chamber forums and blogospheres" but I don't expect many old school players to suddenly start enjoying new school games/new school style nor do I expect many new school players to suddenly start enjoying old school style/old school games. They are two very different tastes -- like Coke and Pepsi.

There seem to be a few people around who  like both old school and new -  Halloween Jack, ColonelHardisson, and Spinachcat seem to like 0E and 4E, and Abyssal Maw 1E and 4E.  As a 3E/2E guy I don't really get it, but they're out there.
 
Another thought on Rulings vs. Rules is that the GM doesn't need to be a complete asshole to give rulings that the players think are weird - its easy to not be on the same page. If one GM thinks that PCs are basically action heroes and another sees D&D as Fantasy Fucking Vietnam, they'll have different ideas of what a character should be able to do. (My favourite actual play example of this would be a guy whose PC was on fire from fighting a thoqqua who said basically "well, my character is a trained warrior, so he should be used to this sort of thing, he's going to withdraw cautiously").

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;540374There seem to be a few people around who  like both old school and new -  Halloween Jack, ColonelHardisson, and Spinachcat seem to like 0E and 4E, and Abyssal Maw 1E and 4E.  As a 3E/2E guy I don't really get it, but they're out there.
 
Another thought on Rulings vs. Rules is that the GM doesn't need to be a complete asshole to give rulings that the players think are weird - its easy to not be on the same page. If one GM thinks that PCs are basically action heroes and another sees D&D as Fantasy Fucking Vietnam, they'll have different ideas of what a character should be able to do. (My favourite actual play example of this would be a guy whose PC was on fire from fighting a thoqqua who said basically "well, my character is a trained warrior, so he should be used to this sort of thing, he's going to withdraw cautiously").

depending on how you define new school I would say I am comfortable with both. WHile I am not a fan of 4E, I don't think that is reflective of what modern rpgs are really about.

My take on modern is its games that tend to be streamlined and unified under a core mechanic. Beyond that the variety is pretty endless.

Quote from: The Butcher;540287I'd like to think that gaming forums and blogs have a real chance of picking up the slack, but the truth is that probably Old School and New School will probably just grow further apart, each sealed in their own echo-chamber forums and blogospheres. More's the pity.

I think this is more edition warring than anything else. Outside of that I'm pretty optimistic. I think it's only a matter of time before the macro-level game structures and the clean core mechanics meet. I think that'll be the trend in design soon, if not necessarily in D&D in particular.

I also really really hope games adopt a higher default difficulty than they have. Murder hobos in fantasy Vietnam who become warlords, kings, and gods is a good formula.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;540291In a sense you were playing with Skip now that all his rulings were turned into actual rules, instead of having to get off-the-wall rulings. In one sense then, 3E is 2E with Skip as GM

Its difficult to isolate which of the three designers did what exactly in 3E design, but interesting to speculate. I put lead designer Tweet as the visionary and "big picture" guy, Monte as workhorse (we know he wrote the DMG - also max. Dex for armour and cross-class skills are Rolemaster things, so probably his doing), while Skip is the one responsible for rules tightening and fixing problem rules from prior editions. He wrote Combat and Tactics so much of the combat system is (directly or indirectly) his doing, plus I think most weight and measure stuff; for example, how much armour weighs for Small creatures, weapon sizing, how much Enlarge increases weight (Skip's shown he knows the square/cube law in Sage Advice before), or how many halflings fit inside a behir. He's also said that he's responsible for the Sorcerer.
The Old Geezer comments would lead me to suspect he was responsible for softening the effects of energy drain and perhaps other things through the system (max HP at 1st level ?). I'd also think Skip might be responsible for revision of game rules where it rebalances things from older editions: for example the "offhand weapons get 1/2 Str" and "two-handed weapons get 1.5x Str" is a clear balancing to fix TWF, which was a quite powerful option in 2E. A number of specific spells were probably meddled with by him to fix vague or problem effects, though I couldn't say which ones which doing a side-by-side 2E/3E comparison; I'd guess haste, grease, polymorph, reincarnate to start. The other lead designers wouldn't have had enough specific D&D experience to pinpoint design flaws in this fashion.

I don't know how energy drain was handled earlier, but it almost never got used in 3. Mostly because of the book keeping. It would be interesting if he took out some of the spell balancers to avoid rulings-confusion, especially because Monte tends to get blamed by 4e fans for 3 being a "caster edition."

Quote from: beejazz;540438I don't know how energy drain was handled earlier, but it almost never got used in 3. Mostly because of the book keeping. It would be interesting if he took out some of the spell balancers to avoid rulings-confusion, especially because Monte tends to get blamed by 4e fans for 3 being a "caster edition."

The main difference between AD&D and 3E is that Energy Drain is resolved immediately; the character loses hit points, class features, etc. straightaway instead of getting a "negative level" and then getting a saving throw to remove it. Also, Restoration to fix this magically is a 7th-level spell (in a game with a much slower experience progression generally) and ages both the caster and the recipient 2 years, i.e. both must pass system shock rolls or die.
 
It would not surprise me if Skip was responsible for many of the spell changes. I'm having a look through Sage Advice atm ( http://jgrimbert.free.fr/add2/advice/?order=id&debut=0 )to see whether there's any insight here as to rationale behind specific revisions, though some of this is going to be pre-Skip (if he started in 1987, that would be somewhere between issues 117-129 I think).
 
EDIT: according to (un)reasons thread he starts in 119 (March)
EDIT2: I give up. Reading through all the ridiculous Sage Advice questions ("can I wear one gauntlet of Ogre Power and be really strong in one half of my body? Which monsters have infravison? How strong is rope? How long do iron rations last? when do 3/2 attacks occur etc. etc. ) I feel some pity for the man. If he thought Sage Advice correspondents were representative of D&D players as a whole, its completely unsurprising the extent to which weights, break DCs, subtypes, bonus types, lines of effect etc. are spelled out in 3E.