“Behold, it cometh, and shall be done.”

I think this point boils down to being (or very nearly being) an issue of semantics:

- I believe that thinking about game design makes you a better GM for a number of reasons, including the fact that it gives you the insight to make changes (like removing Evard’s) with more confidence and a fuller understanding of the rules.

- You believe that thinking about game design doesn’t make you a better GM for a number of reasons, including the fact that any GM — whether she thinks about design or not — is capable of removing Evard’s from the game based on seeing it in play.

I’m not saying I don’t value your opinion (I do!), just that I don’t think there’s any profit in continuing this aspect of the discussion.

To put it another way, GMs are empowered to fix rules on the fly that get in the way of good play, either by stifling creativity, the plot, or causing meachnical problems. They need not have any inherent skill in design to recognize, and correct, these faults. Being skilled in design makes it easier to correct these faults, I will grant you, but it doesn’t make said person a “better GM.”

Good point on “broken” rules. If you understand the design points of the game, it’s easier to pick out a broken or otherwise bad rule (not all bad rules are broken, for example, Arcana Evolved rules for PC races which can get bite attacks, which if they use cause ALL attacks to be at -2 is a bad rule, the Monster Manual already has a perfectly good rule for this, the bite attack is at -5 and doesn’t affect the weapon use, and there’s feats to reduce the penalties). With such understanding, it’s easy to say the rule just doesn’t fit the rest of the design, and therefore you’re eliminating it (spell which is too “broken” to be worth trying to fix), or using a different rule that fits the system better (my treating a PC race bite just like a monster who can bite and swing a sword).

Oh, and that looking at the secondary natural weapons bit pointed out another place where D20 has some nice rules consistency. The penalty for secondary natural weapons is -5, the same delta that’s applied to iterative attacks (though the natural weapon penalty can be reduced to -2 with a Monster Manual feat, and further to no penalty with a Savage Species feat – but that’s fine, feats are for adding rules exceptions).

Frank

However, I will say one of the ‘darker’ reasons to think about how the game was designed is to look out for holes or exploits. I happen to play with someone who is a master of the “Grey Area” when it comes to rules. Oddly enough, he’s also one of the best role-players in the whole group, so its a tale of 2 players: On one hand youve got the dreaded “Rules Lawyer” and on the other, the “True Role Player”. Not saying its impossible or anything, but the fusion of ‘Ultimate Meta-gaming’ and great role playing seems pretty rare to me. Yin and Yang, perhaps? Anyhow, the point is, you might see a possible exploit that was not intended by design.

For example, Evard’s Black Tentacles is an incredibly broken spell in 3.5. The target(s) realisitically have no chance of escape (a raging barbarian would still need an extreamly high roll, no save to resist, and if you did get lucky enough to break the grapple, you still have to get out of the area (at reduced speed) or you get grappled again. Stack something like “web” (reduces speed further) or acid fog on it, and a 8th level wizard/sorceror has the ability to take down a huge number of combatants at his own level. This was probably not the intended design, but the 3.0 version made combat twice as long (each tentacle was a seperate entity), but more balanced. So, in an attempt to make the spell “faster” they removed the parts where the victims could fight back, the dispersion of the individual tentacles, removed the saves, etc. This was very short sighted (no saves for a 4th level spell??) and creates an imbalance. As a DM you choice is to either fix the problem or get rid of it altogether.

I will admit that in this case, I took the easy path and simply removed the spell from the game. I was just citing at least one example. I wont even mention the “Spiked Chain + Improved Trip + Combat Reflexes + Five Foot Step every round = I am God” exploit.

Maybe I’m just obsessive*, but even when a game works well I find it interesting to try and tease out its underpinnings — and that goes for pretty much any kind of game, not just RPGs. I often get more enjoyment out of a game when I can appreciate it not just as a fun thing to do, but also for the bits of brilliance that go into its mechanics.

* Okay, it’s probably pretty obvious that I’m obsessive.

Of course there can be other motivators. You may decide that a somewhat radically changed D20 might be easier to get players for than some indie game (or possibly worse, a homebrew). You might not want to go to the effort of writing a complete homebrew system.

Of course it’s worthy noting that even chess does get played in alternate forms. I never quite understood a version of doubles chess I saw where one black and one white player formed a team, and somehow the white player could use white pieces his black teammate had captured. And then another friend played in a league of 4-way chess. In college I saw some people playing some bizarre chess variants (one was called mirror chess – don’t remember all of it, but it seemed like rooks could turn corners somehow). Oh, there’s also variants as to how timed chess works, and how much lenience in taking back a move a player has.

Monopoly has been mentioned as a game that often (almost always?) is played with house rules.

One could claim that poker is really just a set of formalized house rules (especially when you get into adding wild cards to almost any poker game).

The way we played pinochle in college doesn’t match any of the variants mentioned in Hoyle’s.

Contract bridge is pretty formal, but even bridge has some variation in play and how to bid properly.

So really, RPGs are not unique in this aspect. What they are is way over on the far end of the scale. Part of this can also be attributed to complexity (some of the variations in other games I’ve mentioned above arise from complexity issues, others arise from a lack of formal rules). Another factor, which is very strong with RPGs is rules being passed down by example rather than every new player reading the formal rules set (that is one of the reasons why Monopoly often is not played by the formal rules – people have missed bits of them, and then passed on their way of play by example).

Of course in RPGs, many players deliberately set out to change rules, and not just to try a slightly different game today (which is probably what is behind some of those bizarre chess variants I’ve seen).

Given that people do have urges to change rules, understanding some design theory is important. Also, understanding design theory can improve one’s understanding of why a game is set up the way it is, and why some games are good and some are bad. Monopoly, by luck or design, is set up so that certain spaces are at particular distances from other spaces such that they interract with the curve of 2d6 (roll doubles again) in interesting ways. Understanding a bit about probability and how that works with game design can help you understand why this makes Monopoly work well as compared to some slapdash similar game which might suck, because the designer didn’t understand how probabilities meshed with his game (for example, it may be desireable from a design standpoint to put a particularly good space 7 spaces away from a particularly bad space, it would probably be a mistake to put two particularly good spaces 7 spaces apart).

Frank