On the other hand when they want hard on the game-language in 4e, people hated that too.As usual, "natural language" fails to save the day.
PF2e, I think, benefited from the experience of others failures in striking a middle ground.
On the other hand when they want hard on the game-language in 4e, people hated that too.As usual, "natural language" fails to save the day.
I mean, I don't think anyone has ever meaningfully defended the presentation failures of 4e.On the other hand when they want hard on the game-language in 4e, people hated that too.
PF2e, I think, benefited from the experience of others failures in striking a middle ground.
I think one can make clear and comprehensive rules with natural language. But if one wants rules to be complete and cover everything, it can get a bit dense and wordy.It turns out, when you're playing a game that has rules, being clear about what you mean is really important. Who knew?! How could designers and playtesters have ever discovered this deep wisdom?!
Yeah, I know common sense is sometimes not so common. But sometimes you have to use it or at least appeal to it.There is no specific rule about Petrification preventing starvation, the same way there is no rule that says you go Unconscious when you lie down for bed every night.
You just have to wing it.
I am skeptical of the first claim, and outright reject the latter claim. The really severe problem with "natural language" is precisely the same as the really beautiful strength thereof: different people understand common words differently. A poet can do so much, express so much, with such a severe economy of words, specifically because natural language is vague and subtle, because natural language is a many-to-many mapping. But many-to-many is exactly what a rule should not be. It can be many-to-one (e.g. an extensible framework, which I'll get to in a sec, or mere basic abstraction, e.g. HP abstracts such that losing 20 hit points has no specific meaning or anchor, while AC abstracts such that "14 AC" could come from many different origins, high dex, natural armor, plate, etc.), but it should never be one-to-many (a single situation which correctly points to multiple results).I think one can make clear and comprehensive rules with natural language. But if one wants rules to be complete and cover everything, it can get a bit dense and wordy.
Again: No. Extensible frameworks and other forms of abstraction can get you there. As stated, that doesn't guarantee that these results are good--but there's also nothing saying they'll all be bad either. Which means the ball is now in the critic's court, to show that abstraction-in-general is unacceptable, in order to pitch the ball back the other way so the proponent of abstraction has to defend why this abstraction is good. However, that's something the critic will usually struggle to do, because D&D (every version, doesn't matter which one you've played, every single one) contains abstractions. Since very few are willing to throw out absolutely all abstractions (mostly because there would be hardly any game left if they did!), it thus becomes a matter of the critic needing to show how the proposed abstraction must be bad in general...which is an extremely tall order, one I've never seen happen.Unless the game is very simple, no ruleset will cover every situation. Even less open-ended rules like boardgame rules written with "game language" will miss some things. This is more errata than a failure of natural language.
In which case, they can (and should) override the rules. As they have always been able to do. Nothing has ever taken away that power. Ever.The creators of 5e chose to leave some rules open to interpretation, which I think has contributed some to its popularity. Think about the various debates over rule interpretations we have just here on ENworld. Despite sometimes very strong differences of opinion, all participants are playing 5e. If the rules had a definitive answer for all those, some people would feel the rule goes against balance, fairness, worldbuilding, and/or the fiction of their game.
But that's precisely my point. "Natural language" was explicitly sold to us as avoiding having to talk about edge cases. As preventing rules debates in their entirety, because folks would already know what all the words meant and wouldn't ever be confused about what was intended. That's why I said they promised the world; they essentially claimed that "natural language" would let them speak both briefly and precisely. That was quite openly their intent.I think in this particular case (exhaustion and petrification), the 5e authors probably did not think they needed to clarify further, and common sense and familiarity with petrification from myths and stories would serve. I think natural language could cover this issue with another sentence or two, building on some of the Pathfinder text:
While petrified, your mind and body are in stasis, so you do not age or notice the passage of time, and you do not need to eat, drink, breathe, or sleep. Your petrified body is an inanimate object.
Does this actually happen?The point of using standard English is to discourage people from legalistic interpretation of the rules. The rules don’t need to spell everything out because game world logic is the more important determinator.
I mean, I don't think anyone has ever meaningfully defended the presentation failures of 4e.
But a significant number of the places where 5e falls down...are the ones where the designers went 'eeeeew, 4e cooties' and assiduously avoided doing anything that 4e did. They promised the world with "natural language," and then it ended up being really not that great. To the point that 5e itself actually does (falteringly) strike a middle-ground, because going "hard on the [natural]-language," to steal your phrase, would have been an actual disaster.
It turns out, when you're playing a game that has rules, being clear about what you mean is really important. Who knew?! How could designers and playtesters have ever discovered this deep wisdom?!