I really do not understand this hate of minutia some people have. I like thinking of tiny details that may just be because I am wierd. So why do people not like minutia or is this such a thing as too much or too little details. Can anyone explain this to me?
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Because it is boring, takes time and is generally pointless and does not add anything to the gaming experience. You do not defeat the BBEG with minutia.
Do you ask your co-worker about every single detail of something he worked on? No, you look at the end result and see if it is good.
If players had to describe setting camp every single time in a two-week trip to somewhere, you bet that they would be annoyed by its pointlessness.
When i say that my character puts on his full plate, i do not care that he has to strap on an x number of straps, lock in an x number of hinges et cetera. All i care is the fact that he puts on his darn full plate.
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I really do not understand this hate of minutia some people have. I like thinking of tiny details that may just be because I am wierd. So why do people not like minutia or is this such a thing as too much or too little details. Can anyone explain this to me?
I think you need to elaborate on what you mean by the little details.
There are some little details in games that I love, like "You find a chest buried halfway into the mud. It is battered and worn with age. Several gold sockets litter the sides, where gems might have laid before they were pried off by grubby goblin fingers, as opposed to "you find a chest."
On the other hand, I really dislike roleplaying certain little things that may detract from the game. The PC's grocery shopping for instance. It could possibly be fun every once in awhile, but doing that every time they enter town can kill a game session for me.
Because it is boring, takes time and is generally pointless and does not add anything to the gaming experience. You do not defeat the BBEG with minutia.
Do you ask your co-worker about every single detail of something he worked on? No, you look at the end result and see if it is good.
If players had to describe setting camp every single time in a two-week trip to somewhere, you bet that they would be annoyed by its pointlessness.
When i say that my character puts on his full plate, i do not care that he has to strap on an x number of straps, lock in an x number of hinges et cetera. All i care is the fact that he puts on his darn full plate.
Why do you assume I have a job? I actually ask a lot of questions no one else asks. The reason I would not ask that question is because I do not like talking to people not because I do not want to know or think it is a boring subject.
I'm here for awesome games of heroism and adventure, not nitpicky accounting.
A major reason I hate it is that people who are into it are only into it within a narrow subject matter. And coincidentally that subject is always something they know a lot about, but not everyone else does.
For example the person who is an architect irl wants to painstakingly detail the structure of the party’s stronghold, the construction worker wants to drone about every material used, the army veteran wants to go on and on about the fortifications and guarding tactics, the historian enjoys pointing out to all of them what is and isn’t ‘period’. Not only does it devolve into everyone monologuing at each other, the computer tech is completely left out. Then in the end none of it matters anyway because the orcs are still going to storm the place and the party is still going to have to fight them off. It is just too bad that we have to wait until next session for it to happen because we spent this session acting like arrogant douches.
It is worse when the GM is into minutiae and then acts like you aren’t ‘playing intelligently’ because you did not know or care that, ‘Well actually blah blah blah. If you had blah blah blahed, everything you touch wouldn’t turn to s$+@ on some small detail.” Yeah, I’m the idiot that got us all killed for not saying I took a piss while facing north because of all that stuff you’ve been explaining for the last ten minutes that I didn’t follow.
Loving minutiae isn’t a bad thing, just talk about that stuff outside of game. People show up to game, not hear half-baked lectures on effective arctic survival tactics or the finer points of microeconomics.
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I really do not understand this hate of minutia some people have. I like thinking of tiny details that may just be because I am wierd. So why do people not like minutia or is this such a thing as too much or too little details. Can anyone explain this to me?
I believe you are discussing minutiae, or the plural of minutia. A single minutia is rarely a problem, and thus rarely hated.
Could you please define this set of "some people"? The answer to your question is likely the result of a common characteristic of this subset of all people.
It's spelled "weird."
Note your change from "some people" to a more general "people" in your third sentence. How are we defining the group of all people that do not like minutiae? Also, the phrase "too much or too little details" itself holds little meaning--unless we happen to hit the sweet spot of detail, all descriptions will have too much or too little detail.
Once these issues have been resolved, then we can start answering your question properly.
(To really answer... different people are interested in different levels of detail. More detail requires more resources in order to properly emulate the effects. Different people are willing to invest different amount of resources, and will see different levels of return to the investment.)
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doctor_wu, when D&D began, some 30-odd years ago, it was a game of resource management. Certainly, things like spells and hit points, which you need to preserve in order to win through the day.
But also gold, and magical resources like potions and wand charges. Ammunition. And, in the earliest days of dungeon delving, practical supplies like food, and lamp oil, and potable water, and rope. (If you want literary references, pay attention to Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, who are in one difficulty after another for not paying attention to details, and to the supplies and resource management between among the Fellowship of the Ring. One does not just walk into Mordor without a goodly supply of sandwiches.)
It's been my experience that each new iteration of the world's favorite role-playing game has streamlined that process. With 2nd Edition, there was a strong drive towards story-driven games, and the models for those stories were wild adventurers like Elric, who certainly didn't bother counting vials of lamp oil when there were souls to sacrifice. In 3rd Edition, designers were more concerned with getting players to "build" a character and fight bad guys than explore a dungeon.
Witness the fall from grace of the venerable skill of "mapping". In original D&D and in 1st Edition, the players (not just the PCs, the actual players at the table) are always making maps of the dungeon, in order to get out when the party's hit points run low, or when their burdens of silver pieces strain their encumbrance.
Witness the passing of level-training, where characters take days or weeks out of their adventures to get have training montages. (Or to seek some mentor willing to teach them...)
Witness the increased ease with which PCs can recognize magic items and use them (In 1st Edition, an identify spell was expensive, debilitatiing, and only incrementally useful in helping a party determine the powers of an item. In Pathfinder, it's hardly necessary. The party pretty much knows that it's found, say, a wand of metal and mineral detection, with a Spellcraft check. The fighter can use Appraise to dtermine the magical strength of an opponent's suit of armor. Pathfinder wands don't have hidden command words that need to be researched.
Note the end of "wandering monsters", the random encounters that parties used to have in the wilderness or in abandonned lairs. It was disfavored in 2nd Edition (story, people! Stick to the story!) and even further relegated in more recent editions.
These changes are all of a kind, and point to a distinct change in focus. Nowadays, most of the time that players spend at most gaming tables is a running string of fight scenes against foes with treasure, because that's been the fun part for the people who decide what's fun.
Being an adventurer in D&D / Pathfinder is a lot like being Batman. In early editions, the game mechanics focused on slaying monsters and winning treasure, but also on all the little support work, research, training, etc. In subsequent editions of the ruleset, designers wanted to focus on "the fun parts", which I think has distorted the view of adventuring life. If you read an year of Detective comics, you might be forgiven for thinking that punching criminals and escaping from deathtraps is all Batman does. But the comics mention, every once in a while, that much of Bruce's mission involves physical training, running down leads, keeping the utility belt in good condition, and patiently prepping for a host of unlikely scenarios before they happen.
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I agree, thejeff. The introduction of nonweapon proficiencies and then a robust skill system to the game is certainly a factor.
The details are subsumed into the skill rolls.
Not that I'm saying this is any better a way to run a game. I admit that I like figuring out what magic rings do, and mapping, and discussing the way that my character goes about disarming potential traps. (In Robrt Plamodon's 1982 book, through Dungeons Deep, he explains how his characters "open" chests. First, they shoot arrows at the chests from another room. Then poke them with spears. Then lasso them and drag them into the hallway. Then tip them on their front sides, and open them from the bottom with a crowbar. Then scoop out the treasure with a trowel and heavy gloves, into triple-thick bags. After they get outside, they put the coins over a fire, to cook off any contact poisons.)
See, that sounds like more fun to me than rolling a Disable Device check.
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Do you ask your co-worker about every single detail of something he worked on? No, you look at the end result and see if it is good.
Ummm...no. My irl job, i would get fired in a heartbeat if i just looked at the bottom line and accepted it. Sure that space shuttle sounds like a steal at a billion dollars, but unless you look into that billion dollars, why did that bolt cost you $500,000 and that toilet seat cost you $250,000.......
But I do agree with you on the camping thing though. We do a campsite once the first night and it's assumed to be the same every night after that. We tried to do a nightly camp set up playing Kingmaker, and the players really did get tired of it after two or three of them. But they still kept track of food/water, even for the horses. But I'm a big stickler, being a contracts person and all, for the details though. I prefer to have my players actually list their equipment on their character sheets, and lord forbid, if they actually bother to put a height/weight, or name for that matter (and yes, i don't know how many character sheet printouts i've seen recently from herolab that had 'unknown hero' for the character's name). I have a big rule at my table, House Rule #1 I call it...if it's not on your character sheet, you do not have it.
I really do not understand this hate of minutia some people have. I like thinking of tiny details that may just be because I am wierd. So why do people not like minutia or is this such a thing as too much or too little details. Can anyone explain this to me?
I do enjoy keeping track of minutiae when they are relevant to the context of the game.
Depending on the nature of the game and the abilities of the characters, not all minutiae have the same relevance, but throughout a whole campaign, most minutiae will be particularly (if momentarily) relevant at one point or another.
For example, I won't ask the players to keep track of water supplies if the characters include a ranger and they are traveling in an area where water is readily available. But if the characters enter a desert or a place where clean, drinkable water is harder to find, then it become accountable in my games.
I find that this was both rewarding the story (as new opportunities were discovered on the hunt for water) and rewarding the ranger (who could contribute to the group's survival via his skills).
'findel
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Why do you assume I have a job? I actually ask a lot of questions no one else asks. The reason I would not ask that question is because I do not like talking to people not because I do not want to know or think it is a boring subject.Because it is boring, takes time and is generally pointless and does not add anything to the gaming experience. You do not defeat the BBEG with minutia.
Do you ask your co-worker about every single detail of something he worked on? No, you look at the end result and see if it is good.
If players had to describe setting camp every single time in a two-week trip to somewhere, you bet that they would be annoyed by its pointlessness.
When i say that my character puts on his full plate, i do not care that he has to strap on an x number of straps, lock in an x number of hinges et cetera. All i care is the fact that he puts on his darn full plate.
Well, that's your problem. I did not assume you have a job. I just gave an example.
Next time you ask a question nobody else asks, look around the room at the faces of other player. Do they seem annoyed? If the question is yes, maybe you ought to not ask that many questions that nobody asks.