Waibel's Rule of Interpretation (aka "How to Interpret the Rules")

The only CORRECT interpretation is the one I say!

The sooner the rest of the world gets that, the sooner we can all sit down and have fun...and end all fantasy rpg forum arguments everywhere.

heheheh.

[Seliousry though, nice chart. ]

 

[Sacrosanct]

That's really nitpicking though. I don't think either of you are really wrong. The important thing is the overall point. That being, "If a rule at first doesn't seem to make sense, evaluate it in the context of other similar rules and the intent of the design. If it still doesn't make sense, do what you want with it and don't let it stop your gaming."

 

[BryonD]

Here's a perfect example in this forum. There's an ongoing discussion on how blindsight works in this thread: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...nd-opinions-after-8-levels-and-a-dragon-fight . Now, I have my interpretation and Celtavian has another one. Which one makes sense? Well, mine makes sense to me and his makes sense to him. Can a creature with blindsight see through doors, for example. No one is being unreasonable but, disagreements do happen.

I'm not comfortable with the idea that "It makes sense to the DM, so, that's what we do". It's not to my taste. I'd prefer a much more consensus approach. Not that I'm saying it's better. I'm not. For some groups, go with what the DM says. Fair enough. Like I said, it's purely a taste thing.

Lets assume Celtavian is running a game and you and I are players.
Celtavian is running a great game.

This (or some other issue) comes up. For sake of argument, presume I agree 100% with you.
If this becomes more than a 15 second conversation, I will be annoyed with you as a player.
Whenever the issue passes, if your engagement and attitude at the table is negatively impacted, I will be annoyed with you as a player.
(If neither of those happens then you are misrepresenting in this thread).

It is not about which side you are on for any given issue. It is about enjoying a great game run by a great DM.

 

[Authweight]

That's really nitpicking though. I don't think either of you are really wrong. The important thing is the overall point. That being, "If a rule at first doesn't seem to make sense, evaluate it in the context of other similar rules and the intent of the design. If it still doesn't make sense, do what you want with it and don't let it stop your gaming."

I guess my problem is that this is sort of like saying, "is your car broken? Well if it is, you should go fix it." It's not wrong exactly, it's just not very helpful.

To good DMs, it's advice so obvious as to be pointless, and to beginner DMs it's advice so vague as to be unhelpful. The difficult parts are in deciding questions like "does it make sense?" or what changes you should make if it doesn't. Changing the rules on the fly is like fixing a car: if you know what you're doing, it works just fine, but if you have no idea what's going on you should probably leave it to the pros.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I guess my problem is that this is sort of like saying, "is your car broken? Well if it is, you should go fix it." It's not wrong exactly, it's just not very helpful.

To good DMs, it's advice so obvious as to be pointless, and to beginner DMs it's advice so vague as to be unhelpful. The difficult parts are in deciding questions like "does it make sense?" or what changes you should make if it doesn't. Changing the rules on the fly is like fixing a car: if you know what you're doing, it works just fine, but if you have no idea what's going on you should probably leave it to the pros.

And yet, as kids in the early 80s, we didn't know what the hell we were doing and we had a blast. Perhaps we should just let people have fun without trying to quantify how "right" they are or aren't. If you (or your table) is OK with a rule, it really doesn't matter if they are experts or novices, does it?

 

[Hussar]

There's still trust involve.
Did you trust her to tell a good story regardless of historical armour beliefs? Then it wasn't really a problem.

Bringing up the terrain of a manticore was a dick move. A reasonable player (who trusted the DM) would not have brought that up, or raised it in a non-confrontational manner. Or a super DM might have slyly smiled and said "yes, that is odd" and used that for a potential story hook.


Which is true for rules, non rules, plot points, NPCs, and lots of other things. Learning to make good calls is part of learning to be a good DM.

Yeah, personally, I kinda think it's a dick move too. But, then, I wasn't the one bringing it up. He didn't think he was being a dick. And, considering the amount of ink spilled over the last couple of years about the importance of D&D canon (cf. anything to do with Planescape or any 4e changes to monsters), I'd say there is a significant portion of gamers for whom this sort of thing matters.

Obviously, it didn't matter to me. Heh, I was shocked to read the climate/terrain bit in the Monster Manual for 2e. I had been using manticores for years in all sorts of situations and never gave it a moments thought. But, the point here is, I was wrong. It's no different than trying to drop a tiger in Africa. I was 100% wrong here. Manticores, by the rules, don't live where I put that one. So, is the player really wrong for bringing this up? At the time, I was kinda peeved, since it ground the game to a screeching halt. But, looking back at it, it's not cut and dried.

 

[Authweight]

And yet, as kids in the early 80s, we didn't know what the hell we were doing and we had a blast. Perhaps we should just let people have fun without trying to quantify how "right" they are or aren't. If you (or your table) is OK with a rule, it really doesn't matter if they are experts or novices, does it?

Obviously if everyone is fine with a rule/interpretation, it's best to go with that, and overthinking it can make things unnecessarily difficult. The issue, though, is when not everyone is fine with a rule/interpretation. IME that's where new groups usually run into trouble

 

[Hussar]

And yet, as kids in the early 80s, we didn't know what the hell we were doing and we had a blast. Perhaps we should just let people have fun without trying to quantify how "right" they are or aren't. If you (or your table) is OK with a rule, it really doesn't matter if they are experts or novices, does it?

To be fair though, as kids in the early 80's, we had a LOT of crap games too.

 

[Authweight]

To be fair though, as kids in the early 80's, we had a LOT of crap games too.

Haha yeah. I was a kid in the early 2000s, but I figure it was similar then. I had way more games brought down by dumb rules arguments than brought down by trying to cling to rules none of us liked. The difficult part was not in realizing that the rules are malleable, the difficult part was resolving disputes over how the rules should be interpreted.

These days we mostly don't argue over rules any more. When we do, it's with a sense of humor and a willingness to compromise to keep the game flowing. But we're mature adults (well, sort of), and we understand that 1) it's not worth fighting over and 2) if we don't like it, we can always just leave. But we're also much better at navigating disputes so that everyone comes out happy instead of digging our heels in and refusing to acknowledge that other people's opinions matter.

 

[Mistwell]

Or, another time, I bombed the party with a manticore. I love manticores. One of my favourite critters. A player piped up and complained that I was using a manticore in a completely wrong terrain - manticores in 2e were desert monsters and we were in a temperate forest. Now, he was 100% right, but, I stuck to my guns. It wound up being a rather lengthy argument at the table, so it stuck in my mind. I often wonder if I had of just admitted that I screwed up and skipped the encounter, if it wouldn't have been a better solution.

And again, DM's good and bad are sometimes wrong. It happens. AFAIC, a good DM knows when to step back and relax.

No player should ever be arguing you're using a monster in the "wrong" terrain. This is a good example of "no arguing at the table, leave it to after the session" type thing. I mean come on now, players shouldn't ever be bringing up that sort of information.

 

[Hussar]

No player should ever be arguing you're using a monster in the "wrong" terrain. This is a good example of "no arguing at the table, leave it to after the session" type thing. I mean come on now, players shouldn't ever be bringing up that sort of information.

I largely agree, but, there's a voice in the back of my head that says, "Why not?" Why shouldn't the player bring this up. Let's not forget, I was wrong here. I've had players argue with me when I was right, and that probably irks me far more. I have no problems with the player questioning me, heck, I'm not that strong on mechanics as it is, and I can play things pretty fast and loose sometimes, so, having a player get me back on the road isn't a bad thing IMO. But, when I can point to chapter and verse in the rules and prove that I'm right, that should always be the end of the discussion.

I recall having one player argue that since in 3e a ring of sustenance cuts down on sleep time, and elves don't really sleep at all, combining the two would mean that his elf wizard would be able to re-memorize spells after something like 1 or 2 hours of rest. When I pointed out that this was 100% wrong, the player quit the game. Aw shucks. I was totally bummed out. ((note the sarcasm here))

But, in this particular case, I was wrong and chapter and verse showed that I was wrong. Why should the fact that I'm sitting in the DM's chair mean that my mistakes don't matter. If a player pulled a stunt like this - using something completely wrong by the rules - we'd call him a bad player. Particularly if he insisted that he could continue to use whatever, even though it's wrong, just to "get on with the game". I'm not sure if DM's should get a pass here.

OTOH, just to argue against myself, there's a LOT to be recommended for the idea of "shut up and play" and sort things out later.