everybody is ok with character customization, but are we ready with game customization? That is all about.
he state that all these rules if they come official one day will be Variant, and the Dm will add them at will, by hand pick, and not as a balance package.
This is different... how?
This is different... how?
RaW was a 3.x era/PF-offshoot obsession.This is different... how?
It's been 28 years since I first starting playing. In that entire stretch of time I don't think I've even once played a game the was straight RAW D&D.
Is 5e still Exception-Based Design? 4e was very explicit about being Exception Based, and was rife with keywords, jargon, and precise phrasing that read like a technical manual, as a result.Crawford is big on the exception based design of 5E
RaW was a 3.x era/PF-offshoot obsession.
Especially on-line.
3e made so many changes in the favor of players, especially players into builds & system mastery, that the impetus to insist everyone always use the Rules As Written was almost monolithic. And "RAW" was pretty debatable, so there was, well, a lot of debate about how the OneTrueRAW was necessarily the one that enabled this or that rock'n build.
You still see hints of it, when someone will respond to a reasonable ruling with "...but that would be a house rule!"
And, of course, the whole 5e warcry of "Rulings not Rules!" in the cause of DM Empowerment is a reaction against it.
Is 5e still Exception-Based Design? 4e was very explicit about being Exception Based, and was rife with keywords, jargon, and precise phrasing that read like a technical manual, as a result.
I don't really think 5e is that into it, though I guess it might still be an aspect, because well, OT1H, they more emphasized 'Modular' (which they also didn't deliver, but which is subtly different), and OTOH, and more to the point, exception-based design is a very rules-centric, even tight, design philosophy, while 5e is DM-centric and natural-language, so more loose.
The rules are a starting point, the DM picks & chooses options, authors variants, and makes rulings. He needn't parse rules & exceptions to rules & exceptions to exceptions, except in exceptional circumstances... he just makes a ruling.
Ironically, about like 3e, then "Specific beats general."It remains exception based in that particular rules do what they say, and aren't something to be generalized into a laws of physics in the Gameworld.
Ironically, about like 3e, then "Specific beats general."
Except, DM beats specific, general, and nominally exception-based, thankyouverymuch.
Not how it's been used before, at all - if a game uses exception based design, and is written in a clear & consistent enough way, everything will work the same way, because there won't be six ways to parse each thing.Sure. What Crawford means by this, when he uses the phrase all the time, is that people coming along trying to make everything work the same way all the time aren't looking at it right.