A brief history of the [rules-as-written] tag (though all the discussion is ~2 years old):
What, exactly, is the RAW tag for? (A good summary of what the tag's for and other meta Q's related to it)
The [rules-as-written] tag is a good tag, but we've made it sick. Let's cure it (newer, but I don...
@SevenSidedDie For what it's worth, I was aggressively RAW for a good chunk of my eight-year time in D&D 3.5 and 4e (though for most of that time I was unaware of the specific phrase), so I am speaking from one individual's experience with the concept.
@BESW Oh, the irony! I am anti-RAW-as-approach-to-playing, and I find myself its defender, while you have known what it's like to be aggressively RAW from the inside in a way I never have, and you have written an answer that would throw it out. :)
(And, interestingly, my experience is a strike against the idea that "nobody who uses the concept of RAW is naïve about its meaning." I used the concept for years without knowing the phrase.)
@BESW Ah, hm. Yeah, I think I meant more there the concept of RAW while knowing it by name. I think anyone who uses the concept without knowing the Internet-common term for it will probably describe it fine without reference to the tag.
@Smurfton It depends on the game you start with I think. Many games don't even have the appearance of being complete, so starting with a thorough reading of those actually results in the opposite approach.
I feel like the whole RAW-in-D&D issue is "these rules make no sense as a whole, what should we do with them? Well, the only certainty we have is that they're written in English, let's parse them"
@Shalvenay Ironically, I find that Fate encourages a fiction-first approach while letting you be completely RAW about it. I think maybe what people call a RAW style of play/interpretation is more about running a world mechanics-first instead of fiction-first.
@SevenSidedDie yeah. what I find is that I'm don't fit well into either the mechanics-first or the fiction-first camp -- I find myself going for more of a "world-simulation-first" approach, and that tends to be problematic from the viewpoint of both the mechanics-first camp (as it requires rule-bending just like a fiction-first approach does) and the fiction-first camp (because it doesn't facilitate any given concept of "good story")
Zach's punching to the core of it, I think: RAW is only a useful distinction when applied to games for which other distinctions yield notably different results.
@BESW exactly. it's something that I think is mostly peculiar to a few trad games -- the 3.x family, and perhaps a bit in SR because of its severe handbook dysfunction
RAW in Fate, or Roll For Shoes, or even something like Call of Cthulhu, approaches uselessness because the rules aren't structured in a way to make it a usefully different lens compared to other ways of reading the rules.
I recently found the game Roll to See if I Have Shoes On and decided to give it a try.
There is something I was wondering though, can XP be used immediately after receiving it?
Consider the following two rules:
For every roll you fail, you get 1 XP.
XP can be used to change a die into a 6 for...
@Smurfton I'm running HeroQuest right now: it's actually impossible to play rules-first because they don't have enough interconnections. It requires a fictional situation to hang together, bringing in the rules only when necessary to resolve something already happening.
On the other hand, systems like CthulhuTech and Eclipse Phase, anything derived from the d20 System, the 1985 Doctor Who game--the more sprawling an engine gets and the more distinct subsystems it invokes, the more a literal reading of the rules diverges from an intentional reading.
Speaking as someone who only wants RAW answers to most of their questions, the tag indicates "Don't give me any of your crappy suggestions, I'm perfectly capable of coming up with my own rulings, I just want to know what the rules actually say so that I'm ruling from an educated perspective."
In Roll For Shoes you gain a new related skill if you roll all 6's on your dice roll, however you can spend xp from failed rolls (you gain 1 xp per failure):
XP can be used to change a die into a 6 for advancement purposes but
not for success purposes.
Does that mean if I roll a 3 and a 2...
@Shalvenay Don't you know? Source books live on the internet. You search wikipedia for a list, then you search it's name in google, with the word pdf on the end, and, like magic, you have your very own source book.
@Miniman Yeah, and that's a valid restriction - it's just not what that tag is being used for, and if the majority aren't using it that way and the community's not bothering to enforce it that way, then "it could mean that" doesn't help us
@Shalvenay well, yes. And I managed to find Armored Kilt (PF) somehow, despite not knowing the source book when I went to answer a question about it. I'd still like to avoid discussing how to do not-so-legal things, though.
@Smurfton It only works in the search box with [] around each tag name, so it's hard to find: not clickable. It doesn't help if you want to favourite "raw D&D 5e questions" though…
@Shalvenay I was a 3e and 3.5e DM so it might be possible I already know how to DM there but I'm somewhat comfortable with 4e paradigm and I want to see how the rest of the campaign plays out (but I don't want to redo statblocks to play iut under different rules)
While @SevenSidedDie's solution is clever and might work, it feels like "hide the tag from the noobs" and I'm not sure that's an attitude I'm comfortable asking the Stack to adopt.
@Shalvenay Any well kept wiki will either have references to source material, or, in the case that certain source materials are important, like, say, source books, categories for them.
...Heh. I remember a question about a free-to-download system whose rules cover half the front of a sheet of typing paper, that got multiple answers that had obviously not even glanced at the system.
Access and convenience do nothing if there's no will.
(There was even one answer which said "I'm not familiar with these rules but I'm going to guess about them" and then went on about specified damage for a system that had no damage mechanic at all.)
(It's now sitting at 3 deleted answers and three undeleted answers with a score of less than zero.)
I recently GMed my first real role-playing game with a few friends who are also new to tabletop RPGs, and it went quite well except for a few parts. Here's an example; the basic scenario was (a few parts left out for brevity):
Me: "Okay, so you shoot the lock of the door. It's made of strong ...
@Shalvenay Aye, but in this case it doesn't matter if they're Sciencing Right or Wrong, the problem is that they're putting Sciencing in front of the things the game actually wants to do.
I've just finished statting up the terrain and NPCs for tonight's dramatic fight with pony-sized crystal termites empowered by energy drained from the living Atlantean engine they've turned into their hive.
My last couple sessions: the party fought a series of novel snippets turned into alien shadow monsters in an underground space station that was dimensionally-displaced as a result of a sloppy cosmic retcon someone in the "prime" timeline invoked.
I'm just glad to have finally introduced some of the background elements into the game, after like eight months of sitting on them thanks to slow pacing and missed sessions XD
I should probably sleep. Was nice saying hi. Have a good one all
> I remind my occult investigators that I'll be waiting for you today at 2:30 PM for the last part of the King in Yellow quest. Always remeber: 1d6 investigators per round.
Tonight we fought part a lightning-throwing termite queen the size of an elephant, and her pony-sized soldiers, in order to fix Umdaar's power problems.We then reversed the polarity of the Vril flow to destroy all the termites, and Umdaar is now heading safely toward Earth.
Along the way Baker got a pet soldier termite of his own, which he rides.
Note to myself. Very probably, if instead of enjoying the narration and waiting for the DM to introduce elements in the scene I just go at the door he still has to describe, cutting the scene short and wanting to get things done, I'm no better than my players telling me what they do before I'm done telling them what's in a dungeon room, and maybe I shouldn't touch character introspection with a 10 foot pole.
I only know this guy three weeks, so I'm a bit tentative on my feelings about the game. I like it overall and find it worth playing without any changes
Now the thing is: that GM comes from practice. He knows what he's doing, he has a plan, he has a style and plays very much like an old D&D lover, though I know he has experience with Fate and other systems too.
I come from theory. I didn't GM as much as others, but I think a lot before each game, about what I want to do and how to accomplish it. I might be a bit sloppy with delivery (like, descriptions) but I like to believe my games have structure and story.
But further than that, he does not feel the need to explore "table consensus" as a formal idea
Also, he awards XP like I was awarding it 10 years ago.
Specifically everyone gets a set amount for participation, then players vote for the Man of the Match in terms of usefulness and the best RP performance of the night, who get a bit more (you can't vote for self).
I don't think there is any harm to it in this particular setup but it just rubs me the wrong way.
So my thoughts are that I should voice my concerns, but I don't quite know how to address them without going too far into theorycraft and GMsplaining
I definitely don't want to undermine his position and also I don't want to be seen as the guy who comes as a player and teaches the GM his only righteous way
@eimyr If there's something you are truly not enjoying, I don't think it would hurt to mention it when the GM specifically asks for feedback. If he doesn't want to open himself up to potential disagreement, he probably shouldn't be asking for feedback at all. But I'd do so gently, especially because, as you say, you "find it worth playing without any changes." Also think carefully about exactly what is bothering you and how the other players seem to feel about it.
@eimyr Isn't the disconnect coming from the fact that the way in which the xp is distributed strikes close to home (you used to do it, he's still doing it).
Are you wondering why he hasn't moved past it?
Potentially this could be a different people, different glasses type of thing?
what the 2e group I'm in does is has everyone vote on everyone else's training costs when they level up -- that way, missing a session isn't as big a deal, and power sync/XP isn't actually in play, but it still rewards players for participating/RPing
although I realized I have a more fundamental issue in play here, especially when I'm working with somebody else's premade thing as opposed to having a high degree of narrative control myself
@BESW talking about this, I think I'0ve focalized things I don't like in D&D 4e
Feats or features that remove tactical complexity.
- Feats to avoid having to get into position to gain combat advantage
- Feats that allow you to have a monotematic character (only pyromancy spells! Bwahahaha, fire! Burrrrn!)
- Feats that take a situational option and make it way too strong (charging? Good for when you need the extra move and trade it off with the power of your attack. Enters Essential classes and the feat that gives you bonuses when you charge)
- Feats and items that make you ignore AoO for using ranged or area powers in melee
I recently found the game Roll to See if I Have Shoes On and decided to give it a try.
There is something I was wondering though, can XP be used immediately after receiving it?
Consider the following two rules:
For every roll you fail, you get 1 XP.
XP can be used to change a die into a 6 for...
In Roll For Shoes you gain a new related skill if you roll all 6's on your dice roll, however you can spend xp from failed rolls (you gain 1 xp per failure):
XP can be used to change a die into a 6 for advancement purposes but
not for success purposes.
Does that mean if I roll a 3 and a 2...
I recently GMed my first real role-playing game with a few friends who are also new to tabletop RPGs, and it went quite well except for a few parts. Here's an example; the basic scenario was (a few parts left out for brevity):
Me: "Okay, so you shoot the lock of the door. It's made of strong ...
