Houseruling to reinforce themes is better than houseruling to "fix" mechanics

[NichG]

To me, arrogance implies that you're using an assumed property of yourself to make a decision about a thing rather than making a decision based on the properties of the thing. E.g. 'I'm an experienced developer, of course my rules will be better than some house rule' is arrogant. So is 'I've been playing for 30 years, I know better than some newcomer what the game should be'

'This rule is dumb' is under-explained, but not necessarily arrogant. 'This rule is dumb because I say so' is arrogant.

[Cluedrew]

And have you considered that, for that friend, speeding things up while being more swingy is a feature, not a bug?

I see where you are coming from but those effects of the ruling was actually my work analysing after the fact (also, I'm not particularly good at the game so I might be wrong). If they were aware of any of that they did not deem to share it with me.

To NichG: I guess if there was something they forgot to say/couldn't put into words that would be true. I couldn't get an explanation at the time - and I'm pretty sure I asked - so that's all I have to go off of.

[Duff]

I agree with the underlying message of the post:

Houserules to reinforce themes are great, and one could even argue peoples don't talk about them often enough, the only exception being "gritty realism" and other variants for resting which are a recurring subject. And campaigns at my tables are filled with such houserules (last campaign has a stress mechanics to represent that we were not heroes, in the current one we have an astral with a 300 peoples crew to handle, resurrection is almost absent of most of our campaign because of the setting, etc)

But I feel it's unavoidable that those rules are less talked about, as GM who use houserules that reinforce themes are also the kind to heavily modify their settings, when it's not a fully homebrew setting. And as always "my table play like that because that works in the unique circumstances of that table" will always lead to less discussions than "my table do that and I believe most peoples should do the same as it makes 5e strictly better".

But I will disagree on the "better". It's not comparable.
The goal of a "fix" houserule is to help the game to be even better at what it aims to do.
The goal of a "thematic" houserule is to help a game to be better at what it didn't initially aimed to do.

Pretty much agree entirely. "Better than" probably shows limited experience with D&D pre 3rd or other less professional publishers.

Some basically good games have mechanics which are genuinely broken. Not just ""Unbalanced" or "Exploitable", but not actually usable. Some produce jarringly unrealistic effects. Some are so vague that whatever interpretation you're going to use are effectively a house rule (Or at least, if I'm GMing I'm going to write it down to help make sure we all remember which interpretation we agreed on last time). Some don't cover common scenarios or give undesirable results.

And in that case, I'm going to say the patches are more important than theme related house rules because you need them to make the game work, And they'll be of interest because other tables will run into the same issue. I think the OP has only seen tinkering with rules that work well enough to try and make them better. And at that point, it is a matter of taste

Spoiler: Rant about a system with a lot of issues as an example - Green Ronan's Song of Ice and fire

Show

Cavalry use the horse's athletics score.
So by RAW, the best unit to scale the walls of the castle are you cavalry on their horses. That seems silly, right? House rule that horses can't climb walls and suffer penalties for climbing hills.
But, there's 20 men in a cavalry unit. When they dismount they serve as infantry (100 man units). So do the 20 men each fight as 5 men? Do the 20 guys fighting on horses have 80 hangers on who join in on foot but stay out of the way? Maybe the horses are actually 4 men in a panto outfit? - I went with "There's actually 100 men, but they swirl around and only fight from the one square, even if the unit doesn't move the individual soldiers aren't standing and fighting." then increased the transport cost on boats. That seemed the minimum change to get rid of panto horses.
The way heroes work in warfare is OKish for melee heroes. But when a lone archer (creatable as a starting character) can defeat a thousand men in a single turn , you have to ask yourself "Is this how we want wars to be won?
Or the social system, which fails to take into account that a social combat might have more than 2 "sides" and is a bit sketchy on more than one person taking part.
So that's the "patches"
Also, one of the players wanted to have look-out buildings around and through his lands. So I created a system for them, with costs and benefits. Not really a theme rule, but not a flaw with the system either.
Or, given the theme I wanted of "life is hard, any improvement must be won" I took away the default "
+1 per season" form the house rules. And since they were in Dorne I changed the season effects. And that was pure theme.

[Cluedrew]

One way I will agree that theme work is better than fixes is I would much rather spend my time on the former. I'd like a "perfectly" stable base to work off of.

[Quertus]

Actually, I think this is an excellent analogy. Partially because it's the exact analogy I use.

So, a story. My ex wife decided to make chicken Tikka Masala. She had never had or made chicken Tikka Masala. Which is fine, whatever. She had a recipe and I believe some premade sauce. Yay, let's go!

She decided she knew what she was doing and added paprika. And then more paprika. She saw how it was cooking and started tweaking it.

The result was inedible... because she decided to tweak the recipe before understanding the recipe.

So, yeah, tweaking is good, but do so after you understand the game and its rules (and no, experience in another game does not mean you understand a different game). Figure out why the game is the way it is before you start tweaking things. And while there may be some minor edge cases that are just broken, in most cases the core mechanics of the game will have more testing done on them than you have, so they probably work.

Once you understand them and can make an argument for them? Figure out what experience you're trying to get, understand the side effects of the change, and change away.

(Yes, there are cases like prone firing that are just broken, but they're the exception).

I moved this to the top, because I strongly agree. (And also, it's a memorable story)

It's just good science. Establish a baseline, make changes, measure results.

And, because there are interactions, be prepared for, "the operation was a success, but the patient is dead".

By which I mean, even if your experiment demonstrates that adding in an exploding dice crit fumble table makes combat faster, you won't know that it *also* makes people willing to do just about anything to avoid combat unless you had a baseline to compare it to, to recognize the difference.

nah. not even that. a car can go wrong in many ways, and there are real risks at tampering with one.

A better example is cooking, because the worst thing that can happen by messing up a recipe is, it becomes unpalatable. no harm done. and there's no right way to do a recipe, everyone will like different flavoring anyway.
in fact, everyone i know who's a competent cook affirms that you should experiment with stuff and find your own preferences. which is something a doctor or mechanic cannot do, because there is a much greater risk involved.

so, if there are no objectively good or bad rules

No, there are objectively bad rules.

Everything has a measurable complexity; rules which are more complex that necessitated by the problem that they are attempting to solve are objectively bad rules.

Developers can add in expectations, requirements, even themes for their games. When the rules (like 4e skill challenges) fail to meet these requirements, they have objectively failed.

And that's even ignoring dysfunctional rules, that reference nonexistent values and other such insanity.

I agree that cooking is a much better metaphor.

Are those "balance to the table"? well, they certainly are. But balancing to the table entails sitting down and deciding what is ok and what is not and what can be nerfed or buffed. and how is that fundamentally different from houseruling?

That's… not how "balance to the table" works.

king of nowhere's postulate on themes against mechanics: "If you are houseruling to ensure your fluff is consistent with the crunch, then there is no meaningful distinction between an houserule to enhance fluff and a balance fix"
and King of nowhere's corollary: "houseruling is necessary if you want to create a consistent setting that's not a tippyverse"

The postulate is only even potentially true if the fluff contains strict balance; even then, one could create a fluff-defying balance fix.

If you don't understand a rule, you can also skip (1) and (2) and discover why the rule existed in the first place by testing what happens if you change it. Just make sure to do it with a table of peoples that are fine with playing on a broken system. [And by broken I mean significantly more broken than the published one]

Eh… I don't know how to say this, but… whether in game design or in programming, I've seen *lots* of people who were simply too… incompetent?… to successfully notice and comprehend even *obvious* effects of changes. It's not a given that a random member (or even most members) of the population can successfully make changes to learn a rule (citation: 80% of adults fail the "2-4-6" test).

So, while it *might* work for me (as something similar is in fact an important part my debugging toolkit)… most people IME just can't get anywhere positive with that technique.

Even more to the point, if the quality of a rule is a function of the tastes of a given table or group of players, then the efforts of amateurs necessarily have a higher ceiling in how good they can be than the efforts of a professional, no matter how skilled. Because the professional must write a rule for an entire community, but an amateur can write a rule which is tuned to a specific group of 5 people.

This is more or less why I basically won't play in games where the DM isn't actively creating their own rules content. I know people who can do this well, and I'm somewhat willing to invest time into people who can't do it well yet in order to get them there, but I'm not willing to invest time into something that will never have a chance to be as good as custom stuff can be.

I mean, I'll agree with you that rules for themes is a lot more interesting, but I don't think DMs owe anything to the original creators of rulesets after purchase. And you don't become good at something without trying...

Huh. So… how do you train the clueless beginners how to *not* get in the habit of making dumb rules?

Because *unlearning* is much harder than learning, which is why, in many things, it's understood that it's important to teach people to do things *right* from the beginning, so that they don't have to unlearn bad behaviors later.

[NichG]

Huh. So… how do you train the clueless beginners how to *not* get in the habit of making dumb rules?

Because *unlearning* is much harder than learning, which is why, in many things, it's understood that it's important to teach people to do things *right* from the beginning, so that they don't have to unlearn bad behaviors later.

I think theme over balance is helpful, encourage the GM to 'make things their own' rather then correcting them by reference to external sources, be willing to try things but also call out what worked or didn't, and have a table culture of changing what isn't working once it's clear that it isn't working rather than holding the GM to past rulings. Don't let the table become accusatory or get the GM defensive as that will encourage doubling down on mistakes. Discuss the rules frequently after sessions and the logic of why you made build and action choices in terms of the rules and be transparent about broken things you notice rather than silently avoiding or exploiting them.

'I didn't take the custom feat you made because it's conditional on things I can't control, and this other feat is similarly good without the condition'

'I don't reserve my action points because if I can drop an enemy I can prevent them from acting, which is more efficient than spending AP on defense actions to tread water'

'You do realize that this rule will allow me to create a swarm where each individual insect will give me a stacking +1 on all rolls, right?'

Also, help the GM make rules for what they want to achieve more than arguing they should make rules for what you want to achieve. Don't conflate how much you like a rule with how effective it is.

[Quertus]

I think theme over balance is helpful, encourage the GM to 'make things their own' rather then correcting them by reference to external sources, be willing to try things but also call out what worked or didn't, and have a table culture of changing what isn't working once it's clear that it isn't working rather than holding the GM to past rulings. Don't let the table become accusatory or get the GM defensive as that will encourage doubling down on mistakes. Discuss the rules frequently after sessions and the logic of why you made build and action choices in terms of the rules and be transparent about broken things you notice rather than silently avoiding or exploiting them.

'I didn't take the custom feat you made because it's conditional on things I can't control, and this other feat is similarly good without the condition'

'I don't reserve my action points because if I can drop an enemy I can prevent them from acting, which is more efficient than spending AP on defense actions to tread water'

'You do realize that this rule will allow me to create a swarm where each individual insect will give me a stacking +1 on all rolls, right?'

Also, help the GM make rules for what they want to achieve more than arguing they should make rules for what you want to achieve. Don't conflate how much you like a rule with how effective it is.

So you… *want* the GM to make the dumb rule that creates a thematic swarm where each insect gives a cumulative +1 to all rolls… but train the *table* to discuss this a particular way?

That's… hmmm… I've seen a lot of people who are good at producing a lot of bad content, and who are only as good as their feedback. Who wouldn't be useful in a group not trained to give such feedback. Is there any reason I shouldn't expect this technique to produce them, rather than to produce GMs that will actually make better content to begin with?

I mean, I can see this working well for a GM with a single steady long-term group, where they learn together to do this - in fact, it might even be the *optimal* way for them to produce content *for them*.

But it reminds me of the programmers who write code that never works right, and can only *sometimes* be fixed. When you've worked with them long enough, you know what to assign them, and how to debug their code. But when you first meet them, it's a pain

Do you think that my intuition regarding what behaviors and productivity styles that this advice will produce is faulty? Is there any additional advice that is missing from this that would change the outcome?

Because, as it stands, I'm not a fan for developers, or for *professional* game designers, but could see the argument for a home group finding this an excellent strategy.

And… any advice for convincing / teaching the *group* to give productive feedback? Because I feel that, regardless of any other factors, that would be valuable for almost any group. (Being allergic to feedback and conversations seems rather common these days, IME)

[NichG]

So you… *want* the GM to make the dumb rule that creates a thematic swarm where each insect gives a cumulative +1 to all rolls… but train the *table* to discuss this a particular way?

I mean, I'm assuming from the context of your question that I'm in the role of 'the table' here, describing how, as the table, I'd help a GM get to where I want them to be. As a player, I want the GM to feel free to experiment, and the best way to do that is to avoid them feeling defensive and to avoid them feeling out of control. A GM who doesn't feel confident about the space they're operating in is more likely to make rules only as knee-jerk ways to respond to things they see going wrong, rather than proactively making new rules or modifications to improve the experience. So the main thing is to get past that and say 'look, we know there's going to be ridiculous stuff, we're okay with that, when it happens we'll let you fix it and not insist that we be allowed to keep it'.

I mean, I can see this working well for a GM with a single steady long-term group, where they learn together to do this - in fact, it might even be the *optimal* way for them to produce content *for them*.

That's an ideal circumstance as far as I'm concerned. In terms of my gaming values, I heavily weight achieving a higher peak positive experience over avoiding negative experiences or raising the average quality at the cost of lowering the extreme upper end. If there's no chance for a game to show me or let me experience something that would change how I see the world even if just in some small way, I'm not really that interested in playing just for the sake of having an okay game to play. I'd rather the GM try something ambitious and fail than not try. Then again I'm also the type to wade through fanfiction to find the rare 0.1% of gems that end up being better than the original material the fiction is based on.

Do you think that my intuition regarding what behaviors and productivity styles that this advice will produce is faulty? Is there any additional advice that is missing from this that would change the outcome?

I mean, maybe treat it as a search process rather than expecting a guaranteed result? I do think basically any GM can become competent at rulecraft, but finding a GM who ends up being both competent and creative with rulecraft (and is creative in a way you appreciate, and has the energy to dedicate to actually make that pay off) is a bit harder. I guess other things you can do is if you have GMs who can do this and want more, expose the new GMs to the games of the ones who are already around. Having reference points of how it's possible to do, how it could look, etc are useful for people who aren't making that leap. For example, some GMs may not believe that you can stat an encounter from thin air including new creature types with their own special abilities given 5-10 minutes until they meet another GM who demonstrates it at the table in front of them, and they can start to see it as a real thing that could be learned rather than exaggeration or bragging or whatever.

Because, as it stands, I'm not a fan for developers, or for *professional* game designers, but could see the argument for a home group finding this an excellent strategy.

And… any advice for convincing / teaching the *group* to give productive feedback? Because I feel that, regardless of any other factors, that would be valuable for almost any group. (Being allergic to feedback and conversations seems rather common these days, IME)

I guess the simplest thing is if everyone tries to GM something at least once or twice to be in that seat.

[Quertus]

I mean, I'm assuming from the context of your question that I'm in the role of 'the table' here, describing how, as the table, I'd help a GM get to where I want them to be.

Actually, the "you" in this context puts you in the role of the teacher, who may or may not be part of the table.

So, as a silly example: pretend you are an RPG columnist. You know that, as soon as you submit your column on this topic, everyone who has ever played an RPG will be sucked into another reality. The fate of us and/or the rest of the world somehow hinges on the results of the RPG-ignorant masses following your advice when handed random RPGs.

Or, to flip that, Pixels style, this advice will be all that an alien culture will know about training GMs to house rule, and the results they get will determine whether they approach us as friends or foe.

Under such (silly) scenarios, what advice would you write? (And then "why?" / "What results would you expect to get?") Does that help understand what I was saying / asking?

[NichG]

Actually, the "you" in this context puts you in the role of the teacher, who may or may not be part of the table.

So, as a silly example: pretend you are an RPG columnist. You know that, as soon as you submit your column on this topic, everyone who has ever played an RPG will be sucked into another reality. The fate of us and/or the rest of the world somehow hinges on the results of the RPG-ignorant masses following your advice when handed random RPGs.

Or, to flip that, Pixels style, this advice will be all that an alien culture will know about training GMs to house rule, and the results they get will determine whether they approach us as friends or foe.

Under such (silly) scenarios, what advice would you write? (And then "why?" / "What results would you expect to get?") Does that help understand what I was saying / asking?

I guess in that case I'd probably write to GMs directly, not write to players. It's sort of like a game of telephone. The more hops, the more distortion.

[King of Nowhere]

That's… not how "balance to the table" works.

isn't it, though?
when you decide to not play some powerful build but to go for something weaker, aren't you spontaneously nerfing yourself?
When you help the new player make a stronger character, you are implicitly asserting that a certain power level is bad, and a different power level is desirable, and you are adjusting the game according to it.
heck, when your table decides nobody will use shivering touch, that's effectively a ban. And in that case it's even expected, i never heard of anyone using that spell. that's just the more egregious example, but any decision to not play something because it is too broken is basically a ban, and any decision to not play something and use something similar but stronger instead is basically a buff.
we can argue semantics, we can argue details. but the core of the question is that every game at every table has a desired power level which must be respected, and that of all the possible build interactions - from sword-and-board fighter to god wizard - only a few of those, the ones that fall into the desireable power level, will actually be used. this is enforced in many ways, from the hard bans "no, you can't play that" to the soft bans "please, don't play that", from the cooperative "do you think it will break the game if i were to play that?" to the very people playing at those table being so conditioned to accept the system that they wouldn't even dream of playing that. And some of those ways to enforce the power level are healtier and some are more toxic.
Nonetheless, I can't help but notice that the end result is the same: for every table, there are things that are not ok to play at that table. things that are, for all practical purposes, banned or nerfed or buffed.

The postulate is only even potentially true if the fluff contains strict balance; even then, one could create a fluff-defying balance fix.

So, let's consider this fluff
Dwodmaeck Wyvernbreaker is a merchant of silk. he buys silk in the markets of the far east, where they carefuly guard the secrets of its production, and he brings them to the west, after a hard and perilous trip lasting upwards to one year, where they fetch a huge profit.

Why doesn't he pay a wizard to teleport him there directly? you can pack a bunch of silk in a bag of storage. and the price is much cheaper than one year of dangerous traveling.
Why only in the far east are they aware of silkworms? Can't someone cast a few divination spells to find it out?
Why trade silk across the ocean at such a huge price? Can't you make a magic item that creates it?
And so on.
If we play in a RAW world without houserules, this fluff is decidedly stupid.
When I wanted to give a low level party a mission to escort a caravan, I gave some thought on what would the caravan carry. It could not be silk or gold or other high valuable, because then it would make no sense to not teleport it. It could not be grain or cloth or other low value stuff, because then it would not be worth carrying it over long distances. I settled on copper; valuable enough to export it through dangerous terrain, too bulky to be shipped by teleportation (unless one has teleportation cicles, which my world specifically doesn't have). Most players may not notice such details, but I do, and for me they are important. Just establishing that a certain spell exhist or not may invalidate a lot of worldbuilding.
Deciding what magic can and cannot accomplish and who has access to which magic is important to have your fluff consistent.

Let's consider this other fluff
"an army of demons opened a portal and is invading the material plane"
well, there are a bunch of optimized high level builds that could solve this problem single-handedly. Establishing that there is no option to kill the whole army with a fell drain cold snap (i'm probably getting the name wrong, but you know the combo I'm talking about, the one giving negative levels to everyone in a radius of several miles) is important, otherwise it just begs the question, why don't someone do it?
In general, establishing that no lone wizard, no matter how powerful, can single-handedly take on the army, is important. Establishing a power level for the campaign is important, if you don't want your world to be populated with commoners and walking gods among them.
Thinking about it, it is also important if you do want gods walking among the common men, in that case because you establish that yes, those power levels are possible.
Also, what happens if you murder someone on the street? What can you get away with? can you steal from the merchant of magic items? How can there even be a merchant of magic items if every single one of his customer has the capacity to easily cheat him?
those, and many others, are all questions that depend on the power level of the world. and the power level of the world depends on what kind of builds you can find in it.

Am I the only one who cares about having answers to those questions? Who tries to keep the answers to those questions consistent with both the crunch and the fluff?

[Quertus]

I guess in that case I'd probably write to GMs directly, not write to players. It's sort of like a game of telephone. The more hops, the more distortion.

Another unexpected answer. Huh. I have two hypothesis that seem to match this response:

A) Your initial response assumed that you were part of the group, around to guide and error-correct the growth of the group, and you believe your method would not be as effective without such intervention;

B) your initial response was aimed at more veteran members of the community, and you believe your method would not be as effective if given to noobs.

Are either of these representative of your *actual* reasons for changing your advice for my scenarios designed to highlight my expected role of "you"?

isn't it, though?
when you decide to not play some powerful build but to go for something weaker, aren't you spontaneously nerfing yourself?
When you help the new player make a stronger character, you are implicitly asserting that a certain power level is bad, and a different power level is desirable, and you are adjusting the game according to it.
heck, when your table decides nobody will use shivering touch, that's effectively a ban. And in that case it's even expected, i never heard of anyone using that spell. that's just the more egregious example, but any decision to not play something because it is too broken is basically a ban, and any decision to not play something and use something similar but stronger instead is basically a buff.
we can argue semantics, we can argue details. but the core of the question is that every game at every table has a desired power level which must be respected, and that of all the possible build interactions - from sword-and-board fighter to god wizard - only a few of those, the ones that fall into the desireable power level, will actually be used. this is enforced in many ways, from the hard bans "no, you can't play that" to the soft bans "please, don't play that", from the cooperative "do you think it will break the game if i were to play that?" to the very people playing at those table being so conditioned to accept the system that they wouldn't even dream of playing that. And some of those ways to enforce the power level are healtier and some are more toxic.

Nonetheless, I can't help but notice that the end result is the same: for every table, there are things that are not ok to play at that table. things that are, for all practical purposes, banned or nerfed or buffed.

In "balance to the table", it is possible for a given component to be OK for one character, but not OK for another. So, say, "True Immortality" or "Words of Creation" are OK and balanced on "sword-and-board fighter", but not on "god wizard".

One need not necessarily buff "sword-and-board fighter", nor nerf "Words of Creation", merely evaluate the efficacy of the final product, to follow the path of "balance to the table".

So, let's consider this fluff
Dwodmaeck Wyvernbreaker is a merchant of silk. he buys silk in the markets of the far east, where they carefuly guard the secrets of its production, and he brings them to the west, after a hard and perilous trip lasting upwards to one year, where they fetch a huge profit.

Why doesn't he pay a wizard to teleport him there directly? you can pack a bunch of silk in a bag of storage. and the price is much cheaper than one year of dangerous traveling.
Why only in the far east are they aware of silkworms? Can't someone cast a few divination spells to find it out?
Why trade silk across the ocean at such a huge price? Can't you make a magic item that creates it?
And so on.
If we play in a RAW world without houserules, this fluff is decidedly stupid.
When I wanted to give a low level party a mission to escort a caravan, I gave some thought on what would the caravan carry. It could not be silk or gold or other high valuable, because then it would make no sense to not teleport it. It could not be grain or cloth or other low value stuff, because then it would not be worth carrying it over long distances. I settled on copper; valuable enough to export it through dangerous terrain, too bulky to be shipped by teleportation (unless one has teleportation cicles, which my world specifically doesn't have). Most players may not notice such details, but I do, and for me they are important. Just establishing that a certain spell exhist or not may invalidate a lot of worldbuilding.
Deciding what magic can and cannot accomplish and who has access to which magic is important to have your fluff consistent.

Let's consider this other fluff
"an army of demons opened a portal and is invading the material plane"
well, there are a bunch of optimized high level builds that could solve this problem single-handedly. Establishing that there is no option to kill the whole army with a fell drain cold snap (i'm probably getting the name wrong, but you know the combo I'm talking about, the one giving negative levels to everyone in a radius of several miles) is important, otherwise it just begs the question, why don't someone do it?
In general, establishing that no lone wizard, no matter how powerful, can single-handedly take on the army, is important. Establishing a power level for the campaign is important, if you don't want your world to be populated with commoners and walking gods among them.
Thinking about it, it is also important if you do want gods walking among the common men, in that case because you establish that yes, those power levels are possible.
Also, what happens if you murder someone on the street? What can you get away with? can you steal from the merchant of magic items? How can there even be a merchant of magic items if every single one of his customer has the capacity to easily cheat him?
those, and many others, are all questions that depend on the power level of the world. and the power level of the world depends on what kind of builds you can find in it.

Am I the only one who cares about having answers to those questions? Who tries to keep the answers to those questions consistent with both the crunch and the fluff?

Huh. Well, Dwodmaeck Wyvernbreaker prevents nether the übercharger, nor the Monk. This fluff does not create balance. Even the *interpretation* and *implementation* of this fluff does not inherently create balance.

Now, I *partially* agree that this fluff *does* necessitate certain requirements - at the system level and/or from role-playing. Because, in a pre-internet society (like older editions of D&D saw IRL, btw), "nobody's ever though of that before" is a perfectly valid answer. So, if the players are familiar with or at least can grok what older tables actually liked like, with not even 1% of Playground Determinator skill ever actually being seen in the wild (because nobody was standing on the backs of giants, or even stacks of midgets, like real scientists), and can roleplay that correctly, you needn't actually change much in the mechanics.

Alas, role-playing in RPGs is something of a lost art.

Similarly bad role-playing would be assuming that all of the NPCs are themselves Determinator agents, already doing everything in the optimal way.

So there is very little in your fluff that I cannot in good faith implement in some version of D&D, and call it reasonable. Curiously, I lack the vocabulary to describe exactly *how* 3e makes this difficult… I'll have to think about it.

But yes, there are mechanics which make certain world-building elements easier or harder, and certain elements whose inclusion makes little sense given certain mechanics. Which you choose to build first and inform the other, well, that says a bit about gaming style.

[NichG]

Another unexpected answer. Huh. I have two hypothesis that seem to match this response:

A) Your initial response assumed that you were part of the group, around to guide and error-correct the growth of the group, and you believe your method would not be as effective without such intervention;

B) your initial response was aimed at more veteran members of the community, and you believe your method would not be as effective if given to noobs.

Are either of these representative of your *actual* reasons for changing your advice for my scenarios designed to highlight my expected role of "you"?

I don't think I'd disagree with either of those being true, but I'm not sure that's the same as those things being my reasons. My initial response was a description of how I, personally, interact with GMs who are not confident about house-ruling but are willing to give it a try. So in that response I do assume that I'm part of the group because I'm describing my own historical behavior rather than positing a hypothetical. And unlike the case of a hypothetical player and table, I know what happened in those historical attempts, so I can speak more confidently about 'what did happen' than 'what might happen'. I also think that generally good gaming requires a certain degree of maturity (not necessarily the same as experience), so I'm aiming only at the possibility of creating an ideal gaming environment and not trying to idiot-proof things.

But I'd say the 'actual reasons' for changing my advice come down more to, lets say I engage with the hypothetical of having to provide some kind of written record that brings about a result to a wide audience, there's a lot more that can go wrong than if I'm interacting with, say, you directly and advising you what you might try (based both on what I know about you from previous posts, and on potential future iterations where you ask questions or raise counter-points and I elaborate or justify).

If you're familiar with open-loop versus closed-loop control, its like the difference between those two things. If I can talk directly with someone, I can adjust my explanation based on how they seem to be misunderstanding me or based on what I learn about them during the conversation (closed-loop). That means I can engage with complexity and nuance. So I might give different advice to someone who says 'I want my GM to house-rule more' than to someone who says 'house-rules make me uncomfortable because isn't it just the GM trying to railroad the players?' than to someone who says 'There's this other guy in the group who keeps abusing the GM's trust, and as a result the GM has put more and more effort on house-rules to shut that guy down; what do I do?' for example.

If I have to pre-define a control policy where I don't actually get to look at the system (open-loop control) then there's more that can go wrong the more indirect I'm trying to be. I have to simplify the number of moving parts. And that means it'd be more effective to write a screed aimed at GMs: 'don't be afraid to house-rule, your game can be better for it, here's stuff about finding players and making sure they're willing to go along with your experiments, etc' - e.g. just try to directly advise the GMs who are already aligned enough with what I write to find it interesting - rather than writing a screed aimed at telling players how to teach their GMs.

[King of Nowhere]

In "balance to the table", it is possible for a given component to be OK for one character, but not OK for another. So, say, "True Immortality" or "Words of Creation" are OK and balanced on "sword-and-board fighter", but not on "god wizard".

One need not necessarily buff "sword-and-board fighter", nor nerf "Words of Creation", merely evaluate the efficacy of the final product, to follow the path of "balance to the table".

yes. it depends on whether one chooses to consider "you can take words of creation in this build but you cannot stack it with this other resource in that other build" as a kind of houserule.

Huh. Well, Dwodmaeck Wyvernbreaker prevents nether the übercharger, nor the Monk. This fluff does not create balance. Even the *interpretation* and *implementation* of this fluff does not inherently create balance.

Now, I *partially* agree that this fluff *does* necessitate certain requirements - at the system level and/or from role-playing. Because, in a pre-internet society (like older editions of D&D saw IRL, btw), "nobody's ever though of that before" is a perfectly valid answer. So, if the players are familiar with or at least can grok what older tables actually liked like, with not even 1% of Playground Determinator skill ever actually being seen in the wild (because nobody was standing on the backs of giants, or even stacks of midgets, like real scientists), and can roleplay that correctly, you needn't actually change much in the mechanics.

Alas, role-playing in RPGs is something of a lost art.

Similarly bad role-playing would be assuming that all of the NPCs are themselves Determinator agents, already doing everything in the optimal way.

So there is very little in your fluff that I cannot in good faith implement in some version of D&D, and call it reasonable. Curiously, I lack the vocabulary to describe exactly *how* 3e makes this difficult… I'll have to think about it.

But yes, there are mechanics which make certain world-building elements easier or harder, and certain elements whose inclusion makes little sense given certain mechanics. Which you choose to build first and inform the other, well, that says a bit about gaming style.

I agree with the broad strokes. and yes, i overstated my case a bit, there are some high power builds that invalidate setting choices, but not so commonly.

But for the "nobody's ever thought of it"... well, it is absolutely reasonable in some circumstances. except for some obvious stuff, because if you're an elf wizard several centuries old and magic is your job, you can't be too incompetent. Similarly, the merchant depends on his trade, and he has competitors, and if teleporting wizards can be found in major cities, it's unconceivable that nobody will think of trying to do business with one.
the main problem with this approach, though, is that the players know to optimize and will optimize. so, if you forbid the npcs from optimizing, your players are quickly going to become godlike. At level 10 they will already trash the most powerful enemies around. And it will look like the whole campaign world is populated by dumbasses. and there's no sense of accomplishment.
I don't like that, neither as dm nor as player. being too powerful is boring. the whole world being made of helpless children is bad for immersion. In my experience, the players are more likely to get invested into the world and care about it if they are a part of it, not if they are above it. In my previous campaign (our dm had poor mechanical skill and was unable to challenge us), two of us intentionally nerfed ourselves not because we were overshadowing the other players, but because we were overshadowing the rest of the world. the feeling of invincibility is good for a session of two, then it gets boring.

I'm sure your table has its own ways to deal with this problem of power gap between pcs and npcs. perhaps it's just not a problem for you guys. But for us, fun requires that powerful npcs are passably competent. If the whole world is powerless against the demon army, but the party smashes through them in an afternoon... no, it does not work for us.