thread: 2011-05-18 : Ben Lehman: Rules and their Functions
On 2011-06-07, Deliverator wrote:
Sorry I'm jumping late into this thread!
Ben, I've been thinking about this issue for awhile, specifically as triggered by some discussions with Jenskot about 4E D&D, and you've explained it beautifully and succinctly here.
The way I was conceptualizing it before is that recent-edition D&D gamers are actually pretty good at following numerical rules (calculating to-hit bonuses and whatnot), but not so good at understanding textual rules. Jenskot's big peeve, and one of mine too, is when people don't play with the "stunting" rules on p. 42 of the 4E DMG?it's one of the major things that can make the game feel less boardgamey.
I think violating what you call continuous rules is actually much worse than accidentally violating an immediate rule involving dice values. The latter is easy to fix going forward, the former tends to lead to fundamental deformations of how the game is supposed to work. (The example of people setting stakes for conflicts in Polaris comes to mind.)
Matt
