# Why Rules Cyclopedia is the ultimate D&D edition



## rounser (Mar 20, 2017)

I have it on good account that Rules Cyclopedia is best version of D&D.  That includes 5th edition in being inferior to it.

Why?

Two things, basically.  The first is how fast combat runs.  Rules Cyclopedia offers the fastest combat of any edition, so long as you use group initiative.  This is absolutely critical to running long term campaigns.

The second is the amount of splat included in the game.  Excessive numbers of options are the enemy of short preparation times and familiarity with the game.  Rules Cyclopedia has approximately just the right amount of spells, magic items and monsters to keep novelty and support high level play.  *Adding more spells, magic items and monsters offers no benefit.  Do not use the Creature Catalog or the Book of Marvellous Magic with Rules Cyclopedia, they add too much splat.*

Rules Cyclopedia's sweet spot is levels 4 to 24.  Campaigns should ideally begin and end with these level numbers.

D&D Basic/Expert/Companion/Masters Boxed Sets:  Identical to Rules Cyclopedia, but lacking critical optional rules such as the death's door rules and extended demihuman experience tables, and the immortals rules are unplayable.  And the books are prone to wearing out.
AD&D 1E: About as fast combat as Rules Cyclopedia and the BECMI boxed sets (a little slower), but too many broken and routinely ignored rules, too many spells, magic items and monsters.
AD&D 2E: No real problem with the rules, except combat a lot slower than AD&D 1E, and way, way too much splat.  More monsters than you could ever possibly use in a hundred lifetimes, drowning you in options.  About the right number of spells if you don't include the Spell Compendiums, too many magic items in the core rules.
D&D 3E: Very slow combat, a lot slower than 2E, which is bad bad bad.  Way too many monsters.  About the right number of spells and magic items.
D&D 4E: Not really D&D.  Combat even more slow than 3E.  Too many monsters.  Right number of spells and magic items.
D&D 5E: Combat also slower than 3E, even slower than 4E, making it the slowest combat of any edition.  Right amount of monsters.  Too many spells.  Too many magic items.

You may notice a pattern here:  Combat has got slower with every D&D edition, so, shockingly, the game has continually gotten worse.  This is deeply ironic as everyone knows that new editions are supposed to improve the game. 

Rules Cyclopedias are going for over $100 on eBay, and for very good reason.  It's arguably the best RPG in the world.  Buy multiple copies while you still can, you'll never see it's like again.


----------



## Celebrim (Mar 20, 2017)

For certain values of 'ultimate', apparently it is.

I left BECMI rather early on and never looked back.  If you really want 'fast' in a combat, you should just flip a coin.  What you judge combat on is fun per unit of time - that is, did the investment of time I spent on the combat generate a suitably interesting award in fun.   For you, apparently you hit that sweet spot in BECMI, which suggests you don't like combat very much at all (and I hope you don't do very much of it).  For me, the problem with BECMI combat is that while it is fast - especially if you ignore even the light frame work it offers - it's generally very boring.  There isn't enough crunch to offer much drama, and a very large percentage of fights just become straight burn downs.  

The other thing to consider is that 3e goes as fast as BECMI except when certain situations come up that get fiddly - summoned creatures, shapechanging, multiple stacking buffs/debuffs, grappling, etc.   And 4e and 5e go as fast as the others except that they tend to suffer from number inflation (especially at higher levels) that add pointless time to the burn down (slogging, grinding). 

There is one element of BECMI I've considered borrowing though, and that is that combat goes in phases - that is that everyone shoots, the everyone moves, then everyone attacks.   It's not perfect, but it does resolve certain problems that show up in other editions.

I think if anyone takes you seriously, you are quickly going to get caught up in edition warring.   BECMI is perfect for some groups.  And really bad for some other ones.  The same is true of say 4e.


----------



## rounser (Mar 20, 2017)

Celebrim said:


> I left BECMI rather early on and never looked back.  If you really want 'fast' in a combat, you should just flip a coin.  What you judge combat on is fun per unit of time - that is, did the investment of time I spent on the combat generate a suitably interesting award in fun.   For you, apparently you hit that sweet spot in BECMI, which suggests you don't like combat very much at all (and I hope you don't do very much of it).  For me, the problem with BECMI combat is that while it is fast - especially if you ignore even the light frame work it offers - it's generally very boring.  There isn't enough crunch to offer much drama, and a very large percentage of fights just become straight burn downs.



I would venture that surprisingly, there is enough combat interest and drama purely in d20 attack rolls, a bit of maneuvering, and spells.  The problem with adding too much crunch to combat is that along with the added combat length it takes people mentally out of the story and into what is effectively a sub-game, a game within the game.  4E is the worst offender in this respect.


> The other thing to consider is that 3e goes as fast as BECMI except when certain situations come up that get fiddly - summoned creatures, shapechanging, multiple stacking buffs/debuffs, grappling, etc.   And 4e and 5e go as fast as the others except that they tend to suffer from number inflation (especially at higher levels) that add pointless time to the burn down (slogging, grinding).



I'm sorry but this is frankly not true.  There's simply too much crunch in 3E for it to be anywhere near as fast as Rules Cyclopedia, from attacks of opportunity to the heavy miniatures reliance (a biggie) to all the bonuses and modifiers adding up.  4E is a miniatures skirmish wargame in disguise, which is why it is so slow, and 5E goes crazy with modifiers so it's even slower.


> I think if anyone takes you seriously, you are quickly going to get caught up in edition warring.   BECMI is perfect for some groups.  And really bad for some other ones.  The same is true of say 4e.



I would argue that everyone basically wants the same thing - a quick game's a good game in order to accomplish anything in the course of a campaign without taking decades instead of years.

With regards to edition warring, note that I've partially complemented other editions in terms of, for example, having partially the right amount of splat.  I'm a fan of most other editions, but think it's important to recognise their limitations where the rubber meets the road, which is combat length and prep time.  The idea of newer editions with more rules and more splat being better is a natural assumption, but mostly an illusion.


----------



## cavalier973 (Mar 20, 2017)

> D&D 4E: Not really D&D.




*Facepalm*


Anyway, I noticed you neglected to mention Moldvay B/X.

What of these excellent rules?


----------



## TwoSix (Mar 20, 2017)

rounser said:


> I would argue that everyone basically wants the same thing - a quick game's a good game in order to accomplish anything in the course of a campaign without taking decades instead of years.



I think you need more supporting information if that's your thesis.


----------



## rounser (Mar 20, 2017)

TwoSix said:


> I think you need more supporting information if that's your thesis.



Okay, here's one:  3E, 4E and 5E combat regularly taking hours, instead of minutes.  Here's another one for you: Higher hp values naturally lead to longer combats, and they have seen continual inflation over the course of the WOTC editions as well.


----------



## Celebrim (Mar 20, 2017)

rounser said:


> I would argue that everyone basically wants the same thing...




Starting from that standpoint gets you to where you are at.  Assuming however otherwise, gets you a very different answer.  I would argue that few things are more self-evident than that not everyone wants the same thing.



> I would venture that surprisingly, there is enough combat interest and drama purely in d20 attack rolls, a bit of maneuvering, and spells.  The problem with adding too much crunch to combat is that it takes people mentally out of the story and into what is effectively a sub-game, a game within the game.  4E is the worst in this respect.




There are two basic problems with this argument.  First, in my opinion the goal of combat is to create story, and to the extent that the crunch of the combat directly creates situation, then crunch puts people into story rather than takes it people out of story.  It would take a rather long discussion to explain to you what I want in a combat system and why BECMI fails in it, but the core ideas is how often does the action precede or substitute for the idea of a mechanical roll.  That is, how often does the player declare to do something, other than pick up a dice and say, "I attack, I rolled a X."   And to the extent that players do do that often, how much support does the system provide for it.

Secondly, not all groups want to prioritize story goals over tactical crunch.  Some groups consider story secondary to challenge.



> I'm sorry but this is frankly not true.  There's simply too much crunch in 3E for it to be anywhere near as fast as Rules Cyclopedia, from attacks of opportunity to the heavy miniatures reliance (a biggie) to all the bonuses and modifiers adding up.




You're continually mistaking opinion for fact.  But even to the extent that I agree with you, attacks of opportunity - being attacks - don't slow down combat.  They lengthen the round, but since they contribute to combat ending (damage inflicted) they don't add a lot of time to the time combat plays out in.   Secondly, I play 'theater of the mind' as often in 3e as I did in BECMI or 1e (you can pretty much always do it when there is just one relatively immobile foe), and to the extent that you don't track position in BECMI it even more becomes pointless burn down.   Movement is part of combat - as even you suggested - and if it isn't happening or isn't meaningful, your combat is pointless and undramatic.  I grant that 3e modifiers can get fiddly in some situations, but in theory this can happen in BECMI as well.  That it doesn't does not inherently suggest good things about the combat (ei, all problems can be solved with a fireball, so why bother, or combat is not compelling so why try to optimize you chance of success?)


----------



## TwoSix (Mar 20, 2017)

rounser said:


> Okay, here's one:  3E, 4E and 5E combat regularly taking hours, instead of minutes.  Here's another one for you: Higher hp values naturally lead to longer combats, and they have seen continual inflation over the course of the WOTC editions as well.



Sorry, I mean your thesis that everyone is looking for quick combats, because "everyone is looking for the same thing".


----------



## Celebrim (Mar 20, 2017)

rounser said:


> Okay, here's one...




I'm afraid you didn't even understand the question.    



> 3E, 4E and 5E combat regularly taking hours, instead of minutes.




How much gaming experience do you have?  Try running a combat with 6 PCs and 7 henchmen versus say 40 ogres of diverse stats and weapons in a 3D environment (ledges, pits, etc.) in any edition and see how long it takes you.   Ironically, depending on how you stat it up, 4e might actually be the fastest play (minionizing most of the ogres).  

Do you think that's an unreasonable example?  

The opening combat of 'WG4: The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun' with its mixed combat involving in total scores of norkers, ogres, hill giants, ettins, and mountain giants (and lots and lots of flaming oil) is potentially much more complex than that.

BECMI does combat really fast in 20x30 rooms with 4 PC's versus a single foe.  It does pure burn down/slog/grinds faster than most of the other editions.   But 3e can be brutally fast in situations like that as well.

But perhaps even more importantly, later editions of the game tend to both dissuade the DM away from creating combats of that sort and even more importantly eliminate the need to bring in that sort of thing in order to have a compelling combat.  There are upsides and downsides to that, but you can't possibly believe early edition combat is significantly faster than more recent editions in practice unless you are building recent edition style combats in older editions and resolving them with the world rules.  If you build old school style combats like the cascading fights with the humanoids of 'Keep on the Borderlands', where soon whole tribes get pulled into the fight or the potential cascading fight with hill giants in G1: Steading of the Hill Giant Chieftain, they bloody well will take hours in earlier editions as well.



> Here's another one for you: Higher hp values naturally lead to longer combats, and they have seen continual inflation over the course of the WOTC editions as well.




I'm not a big fan of number inflation over the years either, but the thing you are neglecting is that hit point inflation in many editions was matched by damage inflation.  If every attack does more damage, the time to burn through a stack of hit points doesn't necessarily go up.  It may even go down.  I had a combat with an 80 hit point cleric last half a round in 3e, and was over in sub 3 minutes real time, because the rogue achieved surprise and won initiative and dealt 80 points of damage before the NPC could even react.

The real question isn't how long the combat takes, but how grindy and uninvolved with the drama it feels.  BECMI all too often feels like it should have a 'run combat' button that you push to get it over with.


----------



## Neonchameleon (Mar 20, 2017)

Celebrim said:


> I think if anyone takes you seriously, you are quickly going to get caught up in edition warring.   BECMI is perfect for some groups.  And really bad for some other ones.  The same is true of say 4e.




Basically yes. Oddly enough a lot of 4e groups prefer BECMI/RC to other D&D editions (with the exception of 4e). It's because the game was designed to do something and works to that end.


----------



## Celebrim (Mar 20, 2017)

Neonchameleon said:


> Basically yes. Oddly enough a lot of 4e groups prefer BECMI/RC to other D&D editions (with the exception of 4e). It's because the game was designed to do something and works to that end.




Some people are purists for system as an aesthetic value.  It doesn't surprise me that some people who prefer 4e also would pick BECMI as their second favorite, particularly those who - rightly or wrongly - see 4e as an Indy/Forge inspired version of D&D.  Personally, if I was going to do that, I'd head for DungeonWorld or 13th Age instead, but I see the attraction even if I don't feel it myself.

For me, the game is strictly subordinate to the world and the story being created within it and serves the needs of the two.  My aesthetics as far as mechanics go are therefore far more practical (given those goals) than elegant.  If there are a bunch of messy subsystems, that's fine so long as each serves the structure of what is occurring in the story at that time.   Compare the lockpicking mini-game or potion crafting mini-game in Skyrim.  Each of which has a system unrelated to the rest of the game (mechanically, neither shares much with combat or stealth), but each mini-game captures an idea of the imagined world in a way that can be immersive.

I have similar goals in my rules set, which inherently pulls me away from rules light/elegant systems.


----------



## ccs (Mar 20, 2017)

rounser said:


> I have it on good account that Rules Cyclopedia is best version of D&D.  That includes 5th edition in being inferior to it.




And that good account comes from who?




rounser said:


> Why?
> 
> Two things, basically.  The first is how fast combat runs.  Rules Cyclopedia offers the fastest combat of any edition, so long as you use group initiative.  This is absolutely critical to running long term campaigns.




1) Well, if you think so....  Though that's not been my own xp over 36 years.
BECMI/Compendium - all pretty equally quick.
1e/2e & 5e - all about the same.  I'll trade the straight speed of BECMI/C for the overall increased options of these editions. 
3x/PF - can range anywhere from speedy to grindingly slow.  Just depends on the people, options, lvs, etc involved.
4e....

2) LOL: Group initiative as critical to long term campaigns.  This is the 1st sign that you don't know what you're talking about



rounser said:


> The second is the amount of splat included in the game.  Excessive numbers of options are the enemy of short preparation times and familiarity with the game.  Rules Cyclopedia has approximately just the right amount of spells, magic items and monsters to keep novelty and support high level play.  *Adding more spells, magic items and monsters offers no benefit.  Do not use the Creature Catalog or the Book of Marvellous Magic with Rules Cyclopedia, they add too much splat.*




Can't say we ever noticed any downside to using Creature Catalog, Marvelous Magic, Dragon articles, stuff we made up, stuff we added from entirely different games, etc.



rounser said:


> Rules Cyclopedia's sweet spot is levels 4 to 24.  Campaigns should ideally begin and end with these level numbers.




Unless you prefer to play the whole game, lv1-36....



rounser said:


> D&D Basic/Expert/Companion/Masters Boxed Sets:  Identical to Rules Cyclopedia, but lacking critical optional rules such as the death's door rules and extended demihuman experience tables, and the immortals rules are unplayable.  And the books are prone to wearing out.




If those rules were critical they wouldn't be optional.
I will agree that most copies of the Compendium are well made.
Books wearing out?  Well yeah, a 60-some page soft cover book held together with 3-4 staples vrs a properly bound hardback.  Couple that with the fact that a lot of them were in the hands of kids at the time.  



rounser said:


> AD&D 1E: About as fast combat as Rules Cyclopedia and the BECMI boxed sets (a little slower), but too many broken and routinely ignored rules, too many spells, magic items and monsters.
> AD&D 2E: No real problem with the rules, except combat a lot slower than AD&D 1E, and way, way too much splat.  More monsters than you could ever possibly use in a hundred lifetimes, drowning you in options.  About the right number of spells if you don't include the Spell Compendiums, too many magic items in the core rules.
> D&D 3E: Very slow combat, a lot slower than 2E, which is bad bad bad.  Way too many monsters.  About the right number of spells and magic items.




So 1e had too many spells & items - but somehow 2e & 3x, wich in the base books had more than 1e, had about the right #?
How's that math work?? 



rounser said:


> D&D 4E: Not really D&D.  Combat even more slow than 3E.  Too many monsters.  Right number of spells and magic items.




No argument about the combat or this one not really being D&D.  Ever play Duck Duck Goose?   Line the editions up & one of them clearly isn't related to the others....




rounser said:


> D&D 5E: Combat also slower than 3E, even slower than 4E, making it the slowest combat of any edition.  Right amount of monsters.  Too many spells.  Too many magic items.




Even slower than 4e?  Clearly you're not playing 5e.  Or maybe didn't play 4e.
Right amount of monsters - and yet you complain about 1e.
Too many magic items - yet 2e & 3x wich had more have about the right amount.
Again, I think you don't understand math.





rounser said:


> You may notice a pattern here:  Combat has got slower with every D&D edition, so, shockingly, the game has continually gotten worse.  This is deeply ironic as everyone knows that new editions are supposed to improve the game.




No, new editions of the game are to meant to increase the companies coffers.  They come about when data shows sales of the previous edition topping off.  Improvements?  Those are optional.  Only fools & the inexperienced swallow the marketing PR about how this new edition is the best ever, blah blah blah. 





rounser said:


> Rules Cyclopedias are going for over $100 on eBay, and for very good reason.  It's arguably the best RPG in the world.  Buy multiple copies while you still can, you'll never see it's like again.




Ah!  Now we come to it.  Indirectly pimping your EBay listing are you?


----------



## Lanefan (Mar 21, 2017)

rounser said:


> Rules Cyclopedia's sweet spot is levels 4 to 24.  Campaigns should ideally begin and end with these level numbers.



I disagree on sheer principle: all campaigns to me are better if they begin at level 1 unless the game has a level 0 (e.g. DCCRPG).  I don't want to start out with my character already a hero (which is something 4e does); I want to watch him/her grow into that status from a start of little to nothing...or die trying.



> D&D Basic/Expert/Companion/Masters Boxed Sets:  Identical to Rules Cyclopedia, but lacking critical optional rules such as the death's door rules and extended demihuman experience tables, and the immortals rules are unplayable.  And the books are prone to wearing out.



The immortal end gets kinda strange, yes.


> AD&D 1E: About as fast combat as Rules Cyclopedia and the BECMI boxed sets (a little slower), but too many broken and routinely ignored rules



Ignoring those rules tends to bring it back toward the simplicity of RC or B/X which you seem to like.  I don't understand why you'd note this as a failing.


> too many spells, magic items and monsters.



There's no such thing as too many magic items. 


> AD&D 2E: No real problem with the rules, except combat a lot slower than AD&D 1E, and way, way too much splat.  More monsters than you could ever possibly use in a hundred lifetimes, drowning you in options.  About the right number of spells if you don't include the Spell Compendiums, too many magic items in the core rules.
> D&D 3E: Very slow combat, a lot slower than 2E, which is bad bad bad.  Way too many monsters.  About the right number of spells and magic items.
> D&D 4E: Not really D&D.  Combat even more slow than 3E.  Too many monsters.  Right number of spells and magic items.
> D&D 5E: Combat also slower than 3E, even slower than 4E, making it the slowest combat of any edition.  Right amount of monsters.  Too many spells.  Too many magic items.



In all cases too many is better than too few, as it's easier to just ignore what you don't want than to dream it up if you don't have it.  Splat in particular: yes there's a ridiculous amount of it for 2e and 3e but you can always choose what of it (if any) you want to use in your game.

You're the first person I've heard saying that combat in 5e is slower than either 3e or 4e.  To fix, maybe look at stripping out feats and-or skills and-or in-combat healing to make things simpler and smoother.

It's possible - and not all that difficult - to make a very playable and long-lasting game by starting with 1e, stripping out some of the fiddly stuff, then lobbing in a few of 2e's better ideas and swiping a few other things from B/X or RC.

Lanefan


----------



## Raith5 (Mar 21, 2017)

rounser said:


> AD&D 1E: About as fast combat as Rules Cyclopedia and the BECMI boxed sets (a little slower), but too many broken and routinely ignored rules, too many spells, magic items and monsters.
> AD&D 2E: No real problem with the rules, except combat a lot slower than AD&D 1E, and way, way too much splat.  More monsters than you could ever possibly use in a hundred lifetimes, drowning you in options.  About the right number of spells if you don't include the Spell Compendiums, too many magic items in the core rules.
> D&D 3E: Very slow combat, a lot slower than 2E, which is bad bad bad.  Way too many monsters.  About the right number of spells and magic items.
> D&D 4E: Not really D&D.  Combat even more slow than 3E.  Too many monsters.  Right number of spells and magic items.
> ...





There is no way that combats in 5e are slower than 4e (or 3e). I really like the long combats of 4e - the tactical detail is a lot of fun. But I totally understand that looong combats are not everyone cup of tea. 

But for me though 5e combats are snappy if a little bit hollow at times - but surely if you cut down on magic items/ ban feats and weird classes and races and squint a bit you could emulate BECMI? 

FWIW I also think there is strong conceptual overlap between 4e and BECMI with the similar way they dealt with epic play. Epic play worked very well in 4e (but combats were very long - because, well, Orcus or Lolth are not going to die in 3-4 rounds). I never played Master/Immortal so I cant compare.


----------



## Neonchameleon (Mar 21, 2017)

Celebrim said:


> Some people are purists for system as an aesthetic value.  It doesn't surprise me that some people who prefer 4e also would pick BECMI as their second favorite, particularly those who - rightly or wrongly - see 4e as an Indy/Forge inspired version of D&D.  Personally, if I was going to do that, I'd head for DungeonWorld or 13th Age instead, but I see the attraction even if I don't feel it myself.




There is a huge difference between BECMI and 4e and DungeonWorld and 13th Age. BECMI and 4e are both games about killing monsters and taking their stuff. DungeonWorld and 13th Age are much more recursive games about being/playing some idealised version of D&D.



> My aesthetics as far as mechanics go are therefore far more practical (given those goals) than elegant.  If there are a bunch of messy subsystems, that's fine so long as each serves the structure of what is occurring in the story at that time.




Mine are also practical; my objection to subsystems is a simple one. Any time spent looking rules up in a rulebook or questioning these weird rules is time where immersion and flow are broken, and that's a steep cost to me. Therefore to justify themselves subsystems need to be used extremely regularly (e.g. damage mechanics) - if it doesn't come up more than one session in two it doesn't belong.


----------



## Celebrim (Mar 21, 2017)

Neonchameleon said:


> There is a huge difference between BECMI and 4e and DungeonWorld and 13th Age. BECMI and 4e are both games about killing monsters and taking their stuff. DungeonWorld and 13th Age are much more recursive games about being/playing some idealised version of D&D.




Which is about killing monsters and taking their stuff.  I don't want to get into edition/game engine arguments though, at least at that level where people tend to have emotional commitments and loyalty to one system or the other.



> Mine are also practical; my objection to subsystems is a simple one. Any time spent looking rules up in a rulebook or questioning these weird rules is time where immersion and flow are broken, and that's a steep cost to me.




I don't deny that there is a tradeoff.  Resolution time/complexity is steep price to pay.  The other issue is the learning curve for the GM.  The more rules you have, the longer it takes the DM to get comfortable.  But I would argue that the price on the learning curve to subsystems isn't as steep as you think, because it neglects the cost the GM has in learning how to ad hoc functional solutions to problems that come up routinely when you don't have rules guidance.   That cost is just as and maybe even steeper than having more rules.  This is because being a good rule smith is a skill, and not everyone has it, and certainly few or no novice GMs are going to have it.



> Therefore to justify themselves subsystems need to be used extremely regularly (e.g. damage mechanics) - if it doesn't come up more than one session in two it doesn't belong.




That speaks to precisely the core of my problem with not having subsystems.   Imagine you are building a new engine for a typical fantasy RPing game where player characters may be challenged with problems like evasion, stealth, skillfulness, diplomacy, magic and combat.   Typically you see a design like this:

a) Evasion: Give a yes/no answer to the question, "Did he get away?"
b) Stealth: Give a yes/no answer to the question, "Did he go unnoticed?"
c) Diplomacy: Give a yes/no answer to the question, "Did he get what he we wanted?"
d) Skillfulness: Give a yes/no answer to whether he can passively hurdle some challenge - "Repair sinking boat, yes/no?", "Find clue, yes/no?", "Translate ancient rune, yes/no?", "Find safe shelter in wilderness, yes/no?" etc.
e) Combat: Provide a system for combat that allows for tactical motion, weapon use variation, armor use variation, dodgy targets versus relatively invulnerable ones, compare defensive tactics to offensive tactics, allow for granularity of wounds, the use of various stunt and maneuvers in combat, differences in combat with creatures of different sizes and shapes, fatigue, inflicting statuses, pain, shock, blood loss, etc., etc., etc.  
f) Magic: Provide a robust system for situational breaking of the rules of the game and the imagined reality.

So you put that system in to play, and completely unsurprisingly players invest in combat abilities, see combat as a more reliable solution, see combat as a more rewarding and more enjoyable solution and non-combat scenarios only come up extremely irregularly and are not the focus of play.  You'll also not unsurprisingly find that being the guy that does magic is a lot more rewarding than the guy that tries to rely on the gated 'yes/no' subsystem, and the DM tends to find the gated 'yes/no' subsystems so broken (or so evades the good fun stuff) that he weights the system in some fashion to always give a 'no', or that the designers ended up doing the same thing. 

Alternatively, you see systems where the designers do something like this:

a) Combat: We've built an elegant system for combat resolution that allows us to compare defensive tactics to offensive tactics, allow for granularity of wounds, the use of various stunt and maneuvers in combat, differences in combat with creatures of different sizes and shapes, inflicting statuses, etc., etc., etc.  
b) Evasion: We'll leverage the combat system to imagine running away as a form of combat.
c) Diplomacy: We'll leverage the combat system to imagine negotiation as a form of combat.
d) Stealth: We'll leverage the combat system to imagine hiding as a form of combat.
e) Skillfulness: We'll leverage the combat system to imagine a skill challenge as a form of combat.
f) Magic: We'll leverage the combat system to imagine magic as a form of skillfulness.

This produces a really fun rules system to read.  It's really elegant on paper.  It's really unified.  It's typically filled with little examples of the system working.  And it lasts about 30 minutes of real play before you realize all the little examples of the system working were very carefully chosen (perhaps without realizing it) to illustrate happy situations where the system works, and that in the real world it's just not so pretty and doesn't offer any answers and often little in the way of compelling resolution.   The problem I have encountered is that the fundamentally important ideas in each different sort of situation that can come up in play are not abstract, but pertain to concrete positioning within the fictional space.  In combat for example, such things might be, "Is the target flanked or not?", or "Can I grab hold of the target and hang on, and if I do, what happens?"  The combat engine in order for it to be compelling has to take those concrete attempts to interact with the fiction and turn them into resolutions that fit the situation.   But if the subsystem isn't built for that, what you end up with is nothing but abstract handling of abstract interactions.  And that means very quickly, the players stop interacting with the fiction and start interacting with the rules.  The worst offender for me is attempts to make social interaction work like combat, where the player learns to stop roleplay and starts declaring rules actions.  The thing being simulated starts less and less being represented by the simulation.  Previously, we might have actual conversations and dialogue at the table.  Now we have, "I make a savior-faire check to implement my cutting remark maneuver... a 17, that should surely overcome his indifference, yes?... I inflict 8 ego damage, and his minions have to make a loyalty check."   There are of course ways to work around those problems and things you can do, but they become ways of handling the system and thinking about the system and in effect 'house rules' to cope with system limitations.

Perhaps an even more clear example is handling 'jump' - something that involves a granular range of results - with a linear pass fail or linear resolution.  D&D in 3.Xe RAW is really bad about this, returning totally dysfunctional results about how far a person can jump, because the size of the random modifier (1-20) is much much larger than the typical jump modifier.   With no way to expect to know how far he can jump, and the consequence of 'fail' on the 'yes/no' gate being so high, no player realistically tries to jump the chasm.  It's much easier to magically fly, and this is primarily a consequence of shoe-horning jump to the uniform D20 mechanic that determines 'yes/no' across the board!  Elegance is the enemy here of practicality.

And it doesn't come up because we've more or less (inadvertently) deprecated it in the name of elegance.  And that justifies to a large extent athletic ability also not mattering and not being worth 'wasting' resources on.


----------



## Neonchameleon (Mar 22, 2017)

Celebrim said:


> Which is about killing monsters and taking their stuff.  I don't want to get into edition/game engine arguments though, at least at that level where people tend to have emotional commitments and loyalty to one system or the other.




Fair enough. All I'll say is that DW, 13thA, and 5e all strike me as J. J. Abrams style reboots.



> But I would argue that the price on the learning curve to subsystems isn't as steep as you think, because it neglects the cost the GM has in learning how to ad hoc functional solutions to problems that come up routinely when you don't have rules guidance.   That cost is just as and maybe even steeper than having more rules.  This is because being a good rule smith is a skill, and not everyone has it, and certainly few or no novice GMs are going to have it.




For that matter a lot of professional RPG designers don't have it. (Not at all thinking of experiments with RIFTS here). That said I consider it to be one of my major skills.



> That speaks to precisely the core of my problem with not having subsystems.   Imagine you are building a new engine for a typical fantasy RPing game where player characters may be challenged with problems like evasion, stealth, skillfulness, diplomacy, magic and combat.   Typically you see a design like this:
> 
> a) Evasion: Give a yes/no answer to the question, "Did he get away?"
> b) Stealth: Give a yes/no answer to the question, "Did he go unnoticed?"
> ...




Typically. I'll grant. One of the things I look for in a new system is that it doesn't just give yes/no answers, and that reads like a game from the mid 80s to the 90s or any Fantasy Heartbreaker. But why would I want to go with a merely average system? 



> Alternatively, you see systems where the designers do something like this:
> a) Combat: We've built an elegant system for combat resolution that allows us to compare defensive tactics to offensive tactics, allow for granularity of wounds, the use of various stunt and maneuvers in combat, differences in combat with creatures of different sizes and shapes, inflicting statuses, etc., etc., etc.
> b) Evasion: We'll leverage the combat system to imagine running away as a form of combat.
> c) Diplomacy: We'll leverage the combat system to imagine negotiation as a form of combat.
> ...




And that reads like a game from around the turn of the millennium  Again, why take an average system?



> Elegance is the enemy here of practicality.




On the other hand you're pointing out flaws that not all systems have. The D&D 3.5 issue is in part because a physics engine has serious problems - especially as you pointed out with the variance of the d20 (that makes tightrope walking next to impossible). Systems with a whole lot less variance (which is what Fudge Dice/Fate Dice are about) are an improvement here. As are systems where the likely outcome is _success with consequences_ meaning you probably will jump that pit if you think you can. And fundamentally one thing a lot of rulesets are missing is the ability to push yourself rather than have your effectiveness be purely at the mercy of the dice.

Elegance is _in tension with_ practicality. I'd say that Fate, Apocalypse World. D&D 4e (oddly enough), Cortex Plus, Blades in the Dark, and a few other systems manage to be both without being oversimplified.


----------

