@jgn Yes, but for their fellow players and DMs to confuse them, they must themselves be confused. This confusion has to come from somewhere.

I am not saying that the rules are confusing to everybody.

Absolutely Miniman, who was the first person to be confused? You suppose that it must have been from someone who read the rules and became confused right?

I put forward that dnd 5e does not exist in a bubble, someone coming from a different system may make assumptions about how it works which caused the confusion.

@jgn Your statement 1 is exactly my point. If people are confused by the rules, that means the rules are confusing. That is what the word confusing means. It doesn't mean the rules are ambiguous, or unambiguous.

No, big disagree with that statement

People being confused by the rules DOES NOT mean that the rules are confusing.

So I sorta saw the merits of this discussion when it was about site usage, but now this just seems to devolving into circles

There are a lot of reasons why the rules may confuse someone, only one of which being that the rules are confusing.

Ah, so nothing is confusing, then? People get confused, but there is nothing that is inherently confusing?

@Miniman did I ever say that? I did not.

There are definitely some things that are confusing.

If your definition of the word confusing isn't some form of "confuses people", then sure. By that definition, the hiding rules aren't confusing.

Just because someone is confused by the rules doesn't mean it was the rules that confused them :) I think you have reduced the concept to such simple language that its hard to remember the nuance.

Can I give you an example?

No thanks. I don't think either of you will convince the other that one person's semantics are correct.

@jgn Sure.

Suppose you have played 10,000 hours of dnd 5e, you are a veteran. You have always played that when you Hide your DM tells you something to the effect of "you have hidden successfully".

Now imagine you read the rules and do not find anything saying that the DM should tell you that your attempt to hide is successful. This would probably be confusing, you have played 10,000 hours with these rules, surely you missed something, something doesn't add up!

It was not the rules that confused you, it was your own experience with playing a common house rule.

I am not saying this happened to you, I am saying it is plausible.

I am saying this is an example where someone reads the rules and becomes confused, despite the rules being clear.

Does that sound like a situation that could possible happen?

But by that logic, they were already confused, by their DM.

Well, they were absolutely 100% sure of the rule, so in that sense they weren't confused, but I agree that in a sense they were already confused.

And that's fine, but why was their DM confused?

"They were already confused" Is this the basis of your argument? If so then I understand why we could not reconcile our differences. That is a valid interpretation of English.

@jgn That's not the basis of my argument, no. I don't really care about inherited confusion, I care about the root cause.

@Miniman The DM had played previously with their friend DMing who themselves had played PF for many years beforehand and always found that straight up telling people that their stealth checks are successful or not is a good idea and speeds up gameplay. The second DM never realised that dnd 5e had different rules, and DM 1 had never thought about it too hard since it's the way they'd always played.

In fact, neither DM 1 nor DM 2 had actually read the rules cover to cover and parsed and contextualised all the nouns and verbs used.

They basically assumed that "it works similar to other versions, just a bit different", and unless they realized that they were confused, they didn't investigate further. The Hiding rules unfortunately did not cause "obvious dissonance" with their existing knowledge.

@jgn Sure, that could happen. But a) there are plenty of people who did read the rules and were confused by them, and b) if the rules were sufficiently clear, people's preconceptions wouldn't matter.

There are plenty of rules that are that clear, and don't confuse anyone.

" I care about the root cause. " well, what is the root cause? Is it their prior knowledge of other systems? Is it their lack of will to actively question whether they could prove their knowledge? Or do you blame the rules by virtue of their existence despite never really being given a chance to be read fairly?

@jgn I blame the rules, because people read them, and were confused by them.

"there are plenty of people who did read the rules and were confused by them" maybe, maybe not. You already said you couldn't scientifically prove that. I'm sure at least some were.

" if the rules were sufficiently clear, people's preconceptions wouldn't matter." well, obviously people were confused despite how clear the rules are. This isn't the only case where this happens.

It's like saying a piece of writing is persuasive. What makes it persuasive? The fact that people are persuaded by it. There is no inherent property that makes something persuasive or not. It is a description of the way people react to it.

I think you are incorrectly blaming the rules and oversimplifying a complex situation. If, after all my attempts to explain and show examples, you still honestly believe that, then I don't think I can convince you.

@jgn If people are confused, the rules aren't clear. That's what confusing means.

@jgn How would you define something as confusing?

I disagree, but thanks for chatting!

@jgn Well, you're wrong, but have fun with it.

Oh, I just thought of a good example :)))

Imagine an unambiguous statement like "I like cheese". It's not confusing, it's very straight forward.

@jgn In this context, the word cheese is ambiguous, since it has a different meaning in an RPG context.

I see, even that is confusing huh.

Well, could you provide a statement that is not confusing?

Triangles have 3 sides.

Nice, good sentence, I like how it is axiomatic.

I picked it pretty carefully, yeah.

Or is it? Understanding that sentence obviously requires you to know how to read English and parse English grammar, it requires you to be able to count (at least to 3), and know what a 'triangle' and 'sides' are. It also requires you to be able to figure out the context. What is 'triangle'? I think it is the shape, but it could be the triangle button on a game controller, it could be some enemy in a game that are named or nicknamed 'triangles', it could be a proper noun, a person or a place?

I have to assume that your grammar is correct, that 'have' was not meant to he 'has', etc.

There is an endless list of possible confusion that could arise from even such a very very simple sentence.

To me that does not mean "Triangles have 3 sides." is a confusing sentence.

Perhaps if my dear Aunty, on her deathbed, pulled me close and whispered "triangles have 3 sides" into my ear before drifting away, then I would find it confusing.

You're describing a situation where context is required to understand something.

But I do not believe that "Triangles have 3 sides" is a confusing sentence.

And context is absolutely required to understand the hiding rules.

Context is ALWAYS required to understand language.

Yes. But people who have that context still find the hiding rules confusing.

And to be clear, there are degrees of confusingness.

Maybe, but put that aside.

Can we now agree that just because someone is confused by a statement, it doesn't mean the statement itself is confusing?

@jgn Sure.

ok :)

I'm glad to hear that haha.

That isn't to say that the Hiding rules are confusing or not confusing. Just that maybe, perhaps, like 1 in a billion, it's possible that the rules are not responsible for some people being confused about how Hiding works.

It's possible right? It could definitely happen?

Yes, there are definitely instances where the rules did not cause the confusion.

10 minutes ago it seemed like we would never reach consensus on anything!

No, that's perfectly fair.

As long as you accept that they're not responsible for 0%, either.

I accept that, the cost of writing rules down unfortunately :)

Thanks for the chat. Frustrating at times but it was enjoyable to be able to resolve our different opinions by finding common ground.

@jgn Same, and sorry - I got a bit carried away.

No worries, me too

@MikeQ Late response, but this tl;dr is inaccurate. The only case (to my knowledge) in which the accepted answer isn't listed first is when it's a self-answer (as in jgn's case on the question linked earlier). I've seen several accepted answers (by someone other than the asker) downvoted into the negatives that still appear at the top of the page.

(Ah, I see Miniman already pointed that out.)

Now until October 31st, pick up both Dead Planet and The Icarus Incursions for Trophy with the Science Fiction Double Feature! Two Incursions for the price of one, from now until Halloween!

@Rubiksmoose aha, I just realized that it was suggested to bring the interpreted thing to main site, not meta. (pursuant our discussion a day or so ago) That clears it up for me.

@jgn No, there is no mechanism for forcing users to vote at all.

@jgn an example of a question there the accepted answer had about 1/3 of the votes of the answer with the most votes. Here's something for you to ponder: both are right, neither is right, one is more right than the other, both are wrong.

Maharhar makes small, cozy, thoughtful tools & games based on music, theatre, psychology, and Philippine culture.

@jgn peeling back the first layer of the onion skin, the accepted answer had 44 up votes and 10 down votes, the highest voted answer had 124 up votes and 1 down vote. And there were other answers with varying degrees of support.

The issue isn't which answer was right, I don't think, but which one was useful to more people. And here's a kicker for you: I up voted the accepted answer and two of the other answers. Why? I felt that what they conveyed was useful.

@KorvinStarmast The answer that is "correct" is the one that was accepted. Your answer, while being valuable information that would be useful to a lot of people, doesn't answer the question. I believe there is space for additional information, but having an answer that actually answers the question is the first priority. If someone wants additional information they can always ask a new question, there isn't an urgent need to anticipate questions.

I agree with the idea of voting for every useful answer, regardless of guidelines I think it is best. I'm don't think downvoting useful and accepted answers is a good thing :P

I'll agree that downvoting useful answers is not productive and don't think that is a controversial stance.

However, there is no cure for stray downvotes that isn't way worse than those downvotes

@Someone_Evil yeah, and that's I think a pretty consistent position network wide

How's everyone doing today? :)

crickets

does 5e actually offer any effective way to defend one's party from scrying?

short of getting an amulet of nondetection for everyone

@Carcer The spell nondetection

@MikeQ If none of the answers to a question of mine are satisfactory, I assume that means I haven't actually explained--or, likely, understood--the actual problem I'm having =)

@Someone_Evil for 8 hours for one person for 25gp a pop

mind blank?

@Carcer Just always be talking and thinking about completely repulsive topics. Basically, the conversation in my seventh-grade son's bus back from a soccer game.

@Carcer I like the question, and I am puzzled at why people down voted the answer. Incomplete solution?

@KorvinStarmast Poorly formatted block of text?

@Someone_Evil I tried to remedy that with an edit.

A short thread on how to get your D&D group to play other games, by Dee Pennyway.

Dream At High Noon, by Amr Ammourazz, is a poker based Tabletop Role-playing Game, focused on telling stories in the cowpoke fiction genre.