![]() And how it changed everything about how people play RPGs. Now, I recognize just how brilliant, elegant, and revolutionary the D&D 3E was. Now, I didn’t have the design chops that I have now – says the amateur, armchair game designer who has one minor credit and one dumb book to his name – I didn’t understand design then as I understand it now. And when the game came out, it was revolutionary. For example, back in the late 1990s – after I had been playing and running AD&D 2nd Edition for more than a decade – lots of people were pretty nervous about the death of TSR, the acquisition by Wizards of the Coast, and, most importantly, by what they were seeing of this scary, new upcoming 3rd Edition of Dungeons & Dragons. In fact, I used to be pretty damned supportive of what they did. The thing is, I ride D&D’s design team pretty hard. ![]() Let me start this rant off by being uncharacteristically charitable. But first, let’s talk about how they’ve evolved. Let’s talk about ability scores in D&D and in everything else and why they need to evolve. I need an easy article I can crap out without half trying right now. And how I’d handle things differently if I were making a role-playing game.įine. You wanted to hear me talk about how screwed up ability scores are in modern D&D. So, naturally, the consensus from the peanut gallery – that’s all of you – was that you really wanted that article. I made it part of my series about becoming a better GM. So much so that I didn’t even classify that article as a BS article. Well, thinking past.įunny thing is that I was actually pretty happy that the article I’d originally intended to write – ranting about ability scores and how I’d do them better if I were writing an RPG – I was happy that article got swallowed up by something that provided what I thought was actually useful advice. And that’s a frustration I’ve been dealing with for a while. Because the other issue with the beautiful, elegant, universal core mechanic underlying the d20 System is that its’ bogged down by a really crappy set of ability scores that no one seems to be able to think past. Originally, I wanted to rant and rave about ability scores in D&D. WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT I FREAKING SAID!Īt the end of that article, I admitted that the article I’d written wasn’t the article I sat down to write. Hell, it took a lot of discussion before anyone recognized that the things I was saying weren’t house rules, but part of the core approach of the game that was actually written in the rulebooks and then buried or overlooked. Which just goes to show how serious the problem actually is. And it also really broke a few brains, based on the comments. Remember that? If not, go back and check it out. Which is a problem because (a) handling things not spelled out in excruciating detail is precisely what RPGs have to do in order to open the open-ended, do-anything gameplay that makes them a better choice than a video game or board game, and (b) because the GMs and the books both therefore train the players to not think outside their skill lists. But it was also about how that nice, elegant rule got buried in all sorts of crap so it’s hard to see clearly and how many of the GMs I talk to have a sort of “skill check first” mentality when adjudicating actions which makes it harder for them to figure out how to handle anything not specifically defined in the books. The Open content displayed above has been reproduced with permission from the copyright holder.Last month, my ranty, pointless, rambling, pontificating BS article was about action adjudication in D&D and Pathfinder and how those games have this pretty good system for very easy action adjudication at their heart: the ability check, AKA the Core Mechanic, AKA the d20 System. Rateliff, Thomas Reid, James Wyatt, based on original material by E. Authors Jonathan Tweet, Monte Cook, Skip Williams, Rich Baker, Andy Collins, David Noonan, Rich Redman, Bruce R. Source Copyright: System Reference Document Copyright 2000-2003, Wizards of the Coast, Inc. Once the book is read, the magic disappears from the pages and it becomes a normal book. If anyone reads this book, which takes a total of 48 hours over a minimum of six days, he gains an inherent bonus of from +1 to +5 (depending on the type of manual) to his Dexterity score. This thick tome contains tips on coordination exercises and balance, but entwined within the words is a powerful magical effect. Manual of Quickness of Action +4 Manual of Quickness of Action +4
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