Author Topic: Codified Rules: Competitive and Cooperative Application  (Read 1322 times)

Offline Childe

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Codified Rules: Competitive and Cooperative Application
« on: December 20, 2011, 07:50:18 PM »
This is a continuation of the off-topic discussion from this thread: http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=2295.0

Recap:
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I'll continue:

A game doesn't have to be competitive to have clear and consistent rules terminology. See the issue in 4e that has gone on for years about what an "attack" is, despite 4e being cooperative.
And we all know how well 4e turned right? ;)
Please re-read what I said. I was not boasting 4e as successful in this endeavor at all, but rather pointing out a clear issue that would be improved in a cooperative game through clearer terminology.

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The DM may very well use different rules. They can all still be very clear up to the one that says, "As DM, it is your right to change the rules." There's inherently no way to make that one simple.

There actually are clear winning situations in D&D. Certain things award you experience. There's no victory line exactly, but it's a fair assumption that the players are trying to succeed at their checks, attacks, etc. instead of fail (succeed and fail are both terms that have been used - not always with great clarity, but they're part of the game's intent).
No. If in a MTG I fail to stop your orc horde, you win and I lose, up to the next game. In D&D if I stop to fail the orc horde, I can still atempt turncoat/ surrender, run to another land like a chicken, be captured and turned into a gladiator, or even die and either come back as a ghost or start a new arc in the afterlife.
You're trying to equate the "game" of D&D (a whole campaign) with a game of MtG, where the proper analog (if there is one) is really a match. Likewise, and this is important later, a combat in D&D is more comparable to a game of MtG than it is to a single attack phase (which we might consider a round).
If you fail to (stop?) the orc horde, then you failed, you don't get XP for that, and, yes, the game moves on. In that respect it's different (which is why the analog in any case is not perfect), because you do not necessarily lose your character by failing to stop someone. However, being killed (and not being raised/resurrected/etc.) is very similar to losing a match.

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Now, as for lasting effects: the rules need not spell out how rainfall affects the terrain and the flora and thus impacts the nearby town through crop gain or through disease. I'm really not sure why you think the rules cannot cover important aspects in a consistent and thorough manner. If the necromancer survives to fight another day, so what? That, in fact, seems like one of the incredibly non-problematic parts of the game. What happens? Well, the PCs might encounter the necromancer again. It's as easy as that. (They might not; it doesn't really matter.)
Hell it matters! First of all, if the necromancer escaped he surely took his gear with him, and thus less treasure for the party. Then the party has an intellegent enemy on their heels, and they may find themselves suddenly ganked by their next enemy and new undeads somewhere in the future, resulting in a higher level combat than would otherwise happen. Or the necromancer may seek revenge in a myriad of other ways that hinder the party in non-combat ways.
None of the thing you say here have impact on the rules. That was the point.
If they run away and take their gear, then what? Then the gear is simply not distributed among the players.
The party having an intelligent enemy on their heels is not necessarily new. Many campaigns involve recurring enemies. Moreover, in this situation, the players seem to have the upper hand, and the necromancer has explicitly fled, so it is actually the reverse: the enemy has players hot on their heels, which sucks for the (already proven to be incapable) enemy, especially if the party has a chance to rest that they hadn't before the first encounter to bring out all of the big guns. If the necromancer does raise dead to serve him, it still doesn't impact the importance of rules: I'd rather there are rules telling me how he raises the dead and how powerful they are than have it be ad-hoc.

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I do not think full simulation is what the rules need. Look again at the example I had given: MtG. The real-world (or alternate world) simulation is actually quite terrible, breaking apart with wurms wielding swords and boots, mouthless creatures breathing fire, and so on. But every effect is very carefully worded to avoid massive unintended effects.
And that's just boring from an RPG perspective. In D&D, if I have a sword, I want to be able to cut down a three with it, or atempt to sunder that magic item, or at least strike the target of my choosing, instead of being forced to auto-attack the big enemy wizard.
I simply said that the rules do not need to cover every eventuality. If you want the rules to tell you how to chop down a tree, fine. In fact, 3.5 already has rules support for that. But do we need the rules for boiling water broken down for every fire spell that might exist, or in terms of fire damage to temperature, so that we can then create a pressurized weapon? Absolutely not, as cool as that might be. The DM can handle some things. But the rules, where they are needed, should be consistent and thorough. That is not the same as the rules attempting to be a physics engine.
Please do not misconstrue my statements.

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Do they still have problems sometimes? Are there still infinite loops? Yes, and yes. Problems will always occur, but you'll notice MtG has far fewer instances of completely broken cards than D&D has of, say, Prestige Classes, or spells.
Is that a bet? Here is the MTG one, which contains hundreds  of cards broken enough to be banned in certain conditions. I dare you to find the same amount of broken spells and prestige classes in D&D 3.5.
First, I'm hoping your rhetorical question isn't a show of defensiveness or antagonism. This is a discussion. Let's remain civil and open to discussion of evidence. Call me on it if I get snappy myself.
As for that point, yes, Magic has many cards in various format that have been banned or restricted (and many unbanned in later environments, or unrestricted, though I'll accept the current list as a fair source). But Magic is also an older medium than D&D 3.5 (though not all of D&D), and Magic is also a medium that carries all the baggage of its beginnings. I will not say there is a clear similarity between some format - be it Extended, Modern, Standard, or whatever - but it is widely acknowledged (and backed up by that ban list itself) that many of the earlier Magic sets were the "culprits" behind unbalanced cards. Design has come a long way since then.
That all said, since D&D 3.5 does not have a easily fetch-able list of "banned" items, a proper response to this will take some time. If you'd like, I can, however, compile a large number of rules items/objects from 3.5 that are abusive and "broken."

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As for the loops, MtG has different balancing mechanisms (mana, cards in hand, etc.) than D&D which makes it hard to compare, but we might look at an analog as something like, "Yes, Player A can deal 400,000 damage, but only if A, B, C, D, and E," where not all of those conditions are or can be brought under the player's control.
Thing is, in MTG each battle starts from a blank start. In D&D, everybody can set up all sort of things in advance, and that makes the whole situation infinitely more complex.
As I mentioned above, I do not believe that a MtG game and a D&D combat are comparable, for the very reasons you state. The exception might be some niche deck using Chancellors or Leylines or similar to "set up" ahead of time. But over the course of a game a player can easily establish board presence and advantage over another player - and in some cases completely shut the other player out of the game, which I think is a fair comparison.

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We observe that many similar ABCDE situations that are problems in D&D are so because the conditions are trivial or can be manipulated by the player. For a comparison with a non-broken element, consider any of the number of Hide in Plain Sight abilities that only function while in contact with stone, or when indoors, or some similar situation that is largely, though not entirely, beyond the player's capacity to manipulate. Further, those abilities are often tempered by, through the levels required to obtain them, precluding combination with classes and abilities that would allow for them to be always-on - not that HiPS is a worthwhile offender in 3.5, but it makes the point.

Altough that's somewhat true, the key diference is, again, that in D&D your character has time to set things in advance. Planar binding a minion army would be just a funny trick if you had to do it during battle. But since you can go to an isolated cave and do it, then well...
I think this point is a continuation of the former, so I'll stand by my opinion that a D&D combat compares to a MtG game rather than attack phase.
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