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Made in us
Humming Great Unclean One of Nurgle





In My Lab

So, some people really love GW's bespoke rules approach. I'm not one of them, but I'd be curious to hear what the general thoughts are about why USRs are bad. I feel like a decent amount of ill-will towards USRs might be because GW did them pretty poorly in the past. Missile Lock, I'm looking at you!

Clocks for the clockmaker! Cogs for the cog throne! 
   
Made in au
[MOD]
Making Stuff






Under the couch

I don't think most gamers were opposed to USRs to begin with. GW chose to go the bespoke approach so that they had more freedom to give units unique rules rather than being limited to the 'pool' of available USRs.

Of course, in practice that approach just gives you a confusing bunch of similar rules that should have been a single USR...



So, to answer the actual question - the potential problem with USRs is simply that they can limit unique unit design. That can be mitigated by having a broad range of different USRs, and by introducing unit-specific rules where appropriate and keeping USRs for the bulk of your rules design.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2020/04/29 02:28:00


 
   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka




NE Ohio, USA

There's nothing really wrong with either approach.

Just some people like one or the other more.
And some of them need something to complain/start discussions about on-line.
   
Made in us
Confessor Of Sins





Tacoma, WA, USA

USRs could be good, but it is a matter of execution. There are a number of reasons they are considered to be bad by some:

1. Too many USRs. Look at the 6th or 7th Edition Rulebooks and look at the absolute bloat of USRs. Remember that some USRs are literally, you have these two USRs. And then there are the USRs that are just a better version of a different USR. It was just an absolute mess.
2. The presence of all those USRs still didn't prevent a multitude of unique special rules, some which were just slight adjustments of USRs.
3. All your rules on the data sheet is just better than having a bunch of words you have two look up to determine what the heck your unit does.
4. Units changing via USR adjustments. Wasn't it great when Rending got nerfed by being moved from 6's to Hit to 6's to Wound without adjusting the points cost of any of the Rending weapons?

Now all that being said, GW could really use a few USRs, or keyword rules, to clean up the rules overall. It would be great if Reinforcements was a rule and the various other rules could reference. Then you would never have to decide if a particular unit was Reinforcements and rules that target Reinforcements would also be very clear.
   
Made in au
Dakka Veteran





Nothing. They were a punching bag for people who didn't actually understand what was or wasn't a design problem, and their removal has had a negative impact not a positive one.
   
Made in us
Quick-fingered Warlord Moderatus




Nothing. They were a punching bag for people who didn't actually understand what was or wasn't a design problem, and their removal has had a negative impact not a positive one.


I don't think there's a single accurate thing in that statement ....


In a vacuum, there's nothing wrong with either approach, but if you don't think GW's handling of them was completely botched, then it might actually be you who doesn't understand the design problem. We are in a significantly better place than we were in 7th. It's not even close.

So, some people really love GW's bespoke rules approach. I'm not one of them, but I'd be curious to hear what the general thoughts are about why USRs are bad. I feel like a decent amount of ill-will towards USRs might be because GW did them pretty poorly in the past. Missile Lock, I'm looking at you!


Yeah, like others pointed out, it's largely GW's handling of USRs vs actually having a problem with the concept of USRs. You ended up with pages upon pages of them, and just got silly - "My unit has this USR, so let me turn to that page in the BRB aaaannnnnddddd .... it's a USR that exists for the sole purpose of conveying 6 other USRs that I now have to look up ...

I also feel like of those were getting "made up as they went along" rather than really planning out how they would work, which caused additional problems, and then there's the granularity with corrections - GW: "Ok, we have to nerf unit x, so let's edit the USR that's breaking them. Excellent! That unit has now been brought in line." The player base "Yeah, but you broke three other units in the wrong direction by doing that, so now, one unit is "fixed", and three others that weren't problems now suck. So thanks?" Giving each unit bespoke rules allows for a significant amount of granularity in correcting things without causing unintended consequences. To each his own, but I don't understand the people who think that approach is somehow worse. The ability to fix a unit without breaking anything else is pretty huge. Such adjustments become nearly impossible if you're working with the USR system of old.

For me, yeah, it's a little awkward conversationally to not be able to refer to a single rule like "Deep-Strike", but we seem to just refer to it by that anyway, so I'm not sure that even matters. I really don't miss the old USR system at all. I think that system works well for a less complex game (something like index 40K for example), but once you start to build it out, it just becomes cumbersome and complicated. Especially when you have rules writers that don't always seem to understand the cause and effect their own rules will have on one another.

Edit: I just googled ablutions and apparently it does not including dropping a duece. I should have looked it up early sorry for any confusion. - Baldsmug

Psiensis on the "good old days":
"Kids these days...
... I invented the 6th Ed meta back in 3rd ed.
Wait, what were we talking about again? Did I ever tell you about the time I gave you five bees for a quarter? That's what you'd say in those days, "give me five bees for a quarter", is what you'd say in those days. And you'd go down to the D&D shop, with an onion in your belt, 'cause that was the style of the time. So there I was in the D&D shop..." 
   
Made in au
Longtime Dakkanaut





GW's current rules work like USR's without the accountability...

Keywords and special unit rules that do almost the same things, but for no reason aren't identical, are just the worst implementation of USRs.


   
Made in us
Quick-fingered Warlord Moderatus




Keywords and special unit rules that do almost the same things, but for no reason aren't identical, are just the worst implementation of USRs.


That's not really correct though. As several people have pointed out - there are very good reasons why the names are different. It always surprises me when people struggle so hard with that concept ...

The part about accountability is especially confusing as it allows them to directly take ownership of mistakes and problems much more quickly. Can you name one or two that you feel specifically bother you? It's one ting to simply say you just personally prefer the older system, but a lot of the objections I see to the new system tend to just be non-specific rants. I'd be interested in hearing specifics as to what you miss about the USRs that you aren't getting in the new system.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/04/29 04:09:06


Edit: I just googled ablutions and apparently it does not including dropping a duece. I should have looked it up early sorry for any confusion. - Baldsmug

Psiensis on the "good old days":
"Kids these days...
... I invented the 6th Ed meta back in 3rd ed.
Wait, what were we talking about again? Did I ever tell you about the time I gave you five bees for a quarter? That's what you'd say in those days, "give me five bees for a quarter", is what you'd say in those days. And you'd go down to the D&D shop, with an onion in your belt, 'cause that was the style of the time. So there I was in the D&D shop..." 
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut







After spending a lot of time switching between Infinity (models have skills, and they're all in the rulebook) and Malifaux (model skills on the cards, even if it's a skill that lots of models have), the issue with USR's is:

- If you put the skill on the dataslate/card/whatever in full text, you don't have to stop and look up the rule in the rulebook if you forget or don't know what it does.
- If you're constantly adding new armies and models that have new rules, designers need to be able to actively update the USR list in order to keep it up to date and relevant.
- Even the names of abilities has a role in giving a model flavor, and USRs don't have the same amount of flavor as multiple similar skills with individualized names.

I lived through the first Chaos Demons codex, where there were unit abilities that were just "This unit has Rending" or "This unit has Power Weapons" under a fancy name. It was sufficiently annoying that I ended up writing my own reference sheet for the army. But now I've been able to witness the "You're killing all of the flavor of that model!" outcries that the Malifaux developers had to deal with when they tried to consolidate a bunch of similar weapons and attacks and skills on different models.

Stop and think about it. You've got a Bloodletter with Power Weapon, and a Terminator with Power Weapon. Obviously they've got two completely different explanations for why they're using the Power Weapon rules. Do you put that in the unit entry, so that Bloodletters have Demonic Swords and Terminators have Power Sword or Power Mace, or do you put that in the unit description where it gets lost?

And, to really harp on the middle point in my list, 40K's big issue is that there really isn't any feasible way for the person writing the rulebook to be able to anticipate all of the rules that are going to be written for armies five or six years later. So you get situations like Poison they write a rule for Poisoned Weapons, correctly guess that the future will want to use 6+, 5+, 4+, etc., but don't correctly guess that the same rule should work for ranged weapons and CC weapons. (I think it was 3rd edition where this happened, with the Dark Eldar...)

The other important thing is that the benefit of USRs is that once you're familiar with all of them, it makes learning what a new unit does easy. But the downside is that you have to invest all of that work in learning all of the various USRs. Until then, every time you see a USR, you have to stop and look it up in the rulebook.

Of course, not using USRs leads to all sorts of different problems: the existence of multiple rules that may or may not have subtle but important differences that are easy to overlook; having to print (and errata) the same identical text in multiple places; and the fact that experienced players are going end up with a de facto USR list in their heads.

There should be a maxim concerning system design which states that complexity can never be destroyed, only swept under a rug. It could use USR as the example.
   
Made in us
Quick-fingered Warlord Moderatus




There should be a maxim concerning system design which states that complexity can never be destroyed, only swept under a rug. It could use USR as the example.


That's pretty perfect. I still think a basic set of USRs can work well for a simpler game, but modern 40k is just too big in every sense of the word, and if you want to keep giving the factions their own unique feel, you probably have to walk away from the traditional USR approach.


Edit: I just googled ablutions and apparently it does not including dropping a duece. I should have looked it up early sorry for any confusion. - Baldsmug

Psiensis on the "good old days":
"Kids these days...
... I invented the 6th Ed meta back in 3rd ed.
Wait, what were we talking about again? Did I ever tell you about the time I gave you five bees for a quarter? That's what you'd say in those days, "give me five bees for a quarter", is what you'd say in those days. And you'd go down to the D&D shop, with an onion in your belt, 'cause that was the style of the time. So there I was in the D&D shop..." 
   
Made in ca
Longtime Dakkanaut






Nothing should have any bespoke rules. Nothing does anything outside of what the main rules already encompass.

USR's should make up the entirety of all rules. Make them concise and named exactly for what they do.

Example:

Melee to hit bonus: +1

In this example a unit gains +1 to hit in melee. Easy.

Shooting defence armour bonus: +2

In this example a unit gains +2 armour save against shooting.

Bespoke rules have brought rules bloat to a new and unimaginable level of tedium. I have to reference 3 to 4 different books just to find out what everything does. It's unimaginably stupid. No one in their right mind would ever organize a game in a way to make things actually more time consuming and complicated to look up and understand how the game is played. It's mind boggling that people would want bespoke rules.

The point about adjusting a single rule when balance needs to be adjusted shouldn't even be an issue if the unit was costed correctly.

Currently we have hundreds of units that do slight variations of the same thing depending on how GW felt at the time, and it's insane to keep track of.

Deep Strike is Deep Strike is Deep Strike.

Have some consistency GW, please.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/04/29 04:30:16


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Made in us
Quick-fingered Warlord Moderatus




I have to reference 3 to 4 different books just to find out what everything does.


You had to do this with the old system too. That has nothing to do with whether they're using USRs or not.

I think the issue with what you're describing is that we ultimately land in a spot like we had at the end of 3rd and 5th edition where the game was really stale and boring, and a lot of armies were very "samey", or like what we had at the end of 6th and 7th where just had USRs on top of USRs, with USRs that only convey other USRs, etc etc.

It's been a while since I played a non-40k wargame, but I can't think of any I've played over the years that were large, complex, and had a successful USR system. I've really only seen that work with smaller, less complex games.

Edit: I just googled ablutions and apparently it does not including dropping a duece. I should have looked it up early sorry for any confusion. - Baldsmug

Psiensis on the "good old days":
"Kids these days...
... I invented the 6th Ed meta back in 3rd ed.
Wait, what were we talking about again? Did I ever tell you about the time I gave you five bees for a quarter? That's what you'd say in those days, "give me five bees for a quarter", is what you'd say in those days. And you'd go down to the D&D shop, with an onion in your belt, 'cause that was the style of the time. So there I was in the D&D shop..." 
   
Made in au
Longtime Dakkanaut




The problem with USRs is GW.

I think the lack of USRs has lead to a lot of Flavorless bloat, rather than better game design.
With often some of them just being the same thing with a different name, or a very similar rule just doing the same thing a different way. Hope you got one that works.

Even games with USRs, often have Unique special rules as well.
with a lot having FactionSRs and even TypeSR.

You can even put the whole USR on the page in a codex, and sell Cards and such with it in ShortText with just the Name.

   
Made in au
Dakka Veteran





Tycho wrote:
Nothing. They were a punching bag for people who didn't actually understand what was or wasn't a design problem, and their removal has had a negative impact not a positive one.


I don't think there's a single accurate thing in that statement ....


In a vacuum, there's nothing wrong with either approach, but if you don't think GW's handling of them was completely botched, then it might actually be you who doesn't understand the design problem. We are in a significantly better place than we were in 7th. It's not even close.


I didn't say GW's handling of it was fine. I'm saying people complained mindlessly about "USR's are a problem!" and now they are gone when the problem was never USR's, it was GW's bad design choices. USR's would be a very useful addition to the current state of 40k as this thread and another recent one about the ridiculous body guard rules demonstrate. USR's didn't have to die at all, but people complained about the wrong stuff until GW listened.

It reminds of that time in the real world where we had this great idea for the refrigerator, but then the first refrigerator design was too clunky, so we all raged and raged about the audacity of them thinking the refrigerator was a good idea, and collectively decided to stick with the icebox and meat salting from then onwards.

Oh wait, no, we didn't do that, because that would be absolutely idiotic.





"throwing out the baby with the bathwater" is the idiom I believe.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/04/29 08:04:15


 
   
Made in au
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Versteckt in den Schatten deines Geistes.

I've worked on a number of books that had a heady dose of Universal Special Rules.

These were, specifically, the Skill/Talent rules and Weapon Quality rules from the 40K RPGs. These were in big important sections of the core rulebook, and everything that was written was based off of those.

Over time more of these were added, meaning that you ended up with some rules that were only in expansion books rather than the core book. But it was also based on time, so by the time you reached the latter core rule books, all the previous "expansion only" rules were consolidated into their big skill/talent/weapon rule sections.

The aim was to use the central rules as often as possible as to avoid giving every new piece of equipment a unique rule. It didn't always work, some items (especially things that aren't weapons) can't work in a one-size fits all environment, and most units (basically elite units and above) had one special rule that was unique to them to give them flavour, but otherwise everything operated off this central set of rules and abilities.

40k needs something like this. Writing out the rule for each thing over and over again is a waste of page space, and given how often we see little variations it hasn't helped the speed of the game as you need to keep checking what each unit does as it might have something similar but not exactly the same as another unit.

Things like plasma weapons' ability to kill you should be codified as a single rule, so we don't have some that cause mortal wounds, and some that kill the user outright (like Chaos Rhinos can die instantly from a combi-plasma rolling 1, which makes zero sense).

40k would be better served with a central set of common rules. Keywords are not a substitute for this.

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Made in ch
The Dread Evil Lord Varlak





USRs were fine, if it weren't for the fact that there were USRs nt explained in the unit aswell as USRs in the BRB that referenced other USRs.

Like why even bother just give them the two corresponding ones and be done with it GW...


https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/766717.page
A Mostly Renegades and Heretics blog.
GW:"Space marines got too many options to balance, therefore we decided to legends HH units."
Players: "why?!? Now we finally got decent plastic kits and you cut them?"
Chaos marines players: "Since when are Daemonengines 30k models and why do i have NO droppods now?"
GW" MONEY.... erm i meant TOO MANY OPTIONS (to resell your army to you again by disalowing former units)! Do you want specific tyranid fighiting Primaris? Even a new sabotage lieutnant!"
Chaos players: Guess i stop playing or go to HH.  
   
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Longtime Dakkanaut




I find this discussion amusing. Back in the day, 40k had very few USR's, and many units had their own special rules described in the Codex as armywide special rules, or unit entry as unique special rules. Many WM/H players bemoaned how PP approach of very large number of USR's which covered everything was much better.

So then GW moved towards that approach and most units and armies lost their special rules and they were moved to core rulebook. Result: people started moaning how there was 'USR bloat' and way too many USR's...

As for 40k RPG's, I wouldn't really use it as a positive example as I thought the system was horribly bloated towards the end, and completely unmanageable.

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Made in gb
Dakka Veteran





I’m not opposed to them and they really do streamline the game.
My take is that they just aren’t for everything.

Sometimes you need layers of something in order for it to actually be effective or worth using.

Take old WHFB for example.
It had USRs for light and heavy armour, shields, mounts etc.
It then also had additional separate rules for units that had particularly strong armour or better mounts.

I think there’s only so much you can streamline with USRs before you dull the game too much.
   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut






We know exactly why GW decided to ditch USRs, because we were told it in White Dwarf articles - they wanted to make the core rules as short ('accessible') as possible (quite why they wanted to do that isn't as clear...)
   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut




USRs would absolutely help 40k and I genuinely don't get why people object to them so strongly. There are a couple of caveats first though:

1. The presence of USRs does not preclude the existence of unique rules for units
2. USRs should be genuinely universal and not bundle up other USRs

For a good example of why the current approach is stupid you only have to look at 40k's first big FAQ. That was the one where they had to change how FNP saves worked by restricting you to only taking one of these type of saves. In order to do this they had to basically list a whole bunch of those types of saves "Disgustingly Resilient, Black Rage, Delightful Agonies...and y'know, sort of anything else that's kind of similar". With a USR system they could easily have changed that entire rule at once while making it easily referenced rather than hoping your readers understand what you're talking about. Also, I suspect if they'd have had a USR system they wouldn't have even made this mistake in the first place because they'd have caught the issue of stacking rules with the same name before it became a problem. In fact, previous editions of the game had a specific callout for USRs that stacked, with the default being that they didn't.

USRs make parsing rules easier. The argument that you have to remember what each USR does is kind of a strange one when we're talking here about true universal rules, not any random rule that applies to a handful of units. This sort of system is used in different types of games to great effect. Besides that we already have USRs with Fly and the whole Angels of Death set of rules and they don't cause problems. USRs tell you at a glance what a unit can do. I can see immediately that a unit can Deep Strike and has a re-roll aura instead of having to figure out what the hell Manta Strike means. It's bad enough that it took me 3-4 reads of the new Lemartes datasheet to spot that he still gives re-rolls to Death Company units by default - again, because the rule's called something unique rather than being easily spotted at a glance. I can also more easily explain units to people unfamiliar with them by using USRS. I could even just hand them the datasheet and they could take in all the info in about 5 seconds instead of having to read through 5 individual rules only to find that by the time they get to the last line it's identical to a rule from their army but called something unintelligible to them. USRs also prevent bloat by restricting design space to only the things you need and any system that uses USRs needs to think very carefully before breaking them. This was one of GW's big failings in the past. Restricting design space is a good thing because it makes balancing easier by preventing some weird wording of a rule that's functionally identical to a whole bunch of others from having an unintended interaction that can break the game.

Perhaps most telling of all in favour of USRs is that even new gamers in my group who didn't play any 40k prior to 8th edition are happy referring to rules as Feel No Pain and Deep Strike.
   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut






Backfire wrote:
I find this discussion amusing. Back in the day, 40k had very few USR's, and many units had their own special rules described in the Codex as armywide special rules, or unit entry as unique special rules. Many WM/H players bemoaned how PP approach of very large number of USR's which covered everything was much better.

So then GW moved towards that approach and most units and armies lost their special rules and they were moved to core rulebook. Result: people started moaning how there was 'USR bloat' and way too many USR's...


That just shows that the problem is GW - because GW are bad at writing rules - and not USRs themselves.

Prior to 4th edition you'd get situations where you had Furious Charge, Furious Assault, and Berserk Charge all having different effects to represent the same thing (and good luck remembering which version did what on which unit).

4th edition introduced USRs, but GW being GW couldn't stick to a single design philosophy for more than a year, and so we ended up with loads of unit-specific special rules again, and then by 7th edition we had USRs which were just other USRs bundled together, or USRs which were never actually used by more than one or two units (this is essentially the same problem which resulted in formations made up of other formations, which were made up of OTHER formations!)

   
Made in ch
The Dread Evil Lord Varlak





I mean the bunding up wasn't that bad in some cases, like scout which granted infiltration and a movement. if i member correctly.

stuff like infiltration, deepstrike, scout movement, FNP's of various degrees, could easily and better be handled with USRs then now.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/766717.page
A Mostly Renegades and Heretics blog.
GW:"Space marines got too many options to balance, therefore we decided to legends HH units."
Players: "why?!? Now we finally got decent plastic kits and you cut them?"
Chaos marines players: "Since when are Daemonengines 30k models and why do i have NO droppods now?"
GW" MONEY.... erm i meant TOO MANY OPTIONS (to resell your army to you again by disalowing former units)! Do you want specific tyranid fighiting Primaris? Even a new sabotage lieutnant!"
Chaos players: Guess i stop playing or go to HH.  
   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut






I preferred USR. It was much smoother to me that units shared a universal rule, rather than having their own specific one. It's come up a few times in games where the game has stalled for one of us to looks something up, and the other says "I think that it would be "X" because my unit has a rule like that written as "X", but we can't know for sure."

I would have any roll-based USR be a rule with a bracketed number - EG "feel no pain (5+)" or "reroll to hit (1-)", "reroll to hit (2-)", "reroll to hit (all)". (reroll 1's, reroll 1's and 2's, reroll all)
"Fast Charge (1)" - +1" to charge moves
Fast Charge (2) - add 2 to charge moves
"Furious charge" - charge after advancing
Disengage (shoot) - can shoot after falling back
Disengage (charge) - can charge after falling back
Disengage - can act normally after falling back
Fleet of foot (2) - add 2" to advance moves

etc.

I would prefer this so much - it would need intuitive names, which may be less "cool" but far easier for rules reference.

This way when someone says "my unit has Fleet of foot(2), I'll just look it up and see what it does", there's a fair chance their opponent will know - and they won't have to know a slew of unique rules, word for word, for their opponents codex. Game goes faster, and everyone's a winner.


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Made in gb
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The dark behind the eyes.

Jackal90 wrote:
I’m not opposed to them and they really do streamline the game.
My take is that they just aren’t for everything.

Sometimes you need layers of something in order for it to actually be effective or worth using.

Take old WHFB for example.
It had USRs for light and heavy armour, shields, mounts etc.
It then also had additional separate rules for units that had particularly strong armour or better mounts.

I think there’s only so much you can streamline with USRs before you dull the game too much.


I think this approach is absolutely fine.

My issue is with having 400 rules with different names that all do the same thing.

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 the_scotsman wrote:
Yeah, when i read the small novel that is the Death Guard unit options and think about resolving the attacks from a melee-oriented min size death guard squad, the thing that springs to mind is "Accessible!"

 Argive wrote:
GW seems to have a crystal ball and just pulls hairbrained ideas out of their backside for the most part.


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 insaniak wrote:

You're not. If you're worried about your opponent using 'fake' rules, you're having fun the wrong way. This hobby isn't about rules. It's about buying Citadel miniatures.

Please report to your nearest GW store for attitude readjustment. Take your wallet.
 
   
Made in es
Grim Dark Angels Interrogator-Chaplain




Vigo. Spain.

GW doesn't know how to write USRs. They always make new USRs that just appear on one unit so they stop being USR and instead of using generic USR they make slighly different USR.

So they stopped trying to do that, accepted their inability and just wrote what the rule does on each unit.

 Crimson Devil wrote:

Dakka does have White Knights and is also rather infamous for it's Black Knights. A new edition brings out the passionate and not all of them are good at expressing themselves in written form. There have been plenty of hysterical responses from both sides so far. So we descend into pointless bickering with neither side listening to each other. So posting here becomes more masturbation than conversation.

ERJAK wrote:
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 vipoid wrote:
Jackal90 wrote:
I’m not opposed to them and they really do streamline the game.
My take is that they just aren’t for everything.

Sometimes you need layers of something in order for it to actually be effective or worth using.

Take old WHFB for example.
It had USRs for light and heavy armour, shields, mounts etc.
It then also had additional separate rules for units that had particularly strong armour or better mounts.

I think there’s only so much you can streamline with USRs before you dull the game too much.


I think this approach is absolutely fine.

My issue is with having 400 rules with different names that all do the same thing.




I think as long as 3+ units in the game have a rule that does exactly the same, USR it.
They have to put it in the army book as well though.
Nice to not have to dig through a huge book for rules when against new armies or when a new edition hits.
   
Made in au
Longtime Dakkanaut





Tycho wrote:
Keywords and special unit rules that do almost the same things, but for no reason aren't identical, are just the worst implementation of USRs.


That's not really correct though. As several people have pointed out - there are very good reasons why the names are different. It always surprises me when people struggle so hard with that concept ...

The part about accountability is especially confusing as it allows them to directly take ownership of mistakes and problems much more quickly. Can you name one or two that you feel specifically bother you? It's one ting to simply say you just personally prefer the older system, but a lot of the objections I see to the new system tend to just be non-specific rants. I'd be interested in hearing specifics as to what you miss about the USRs that you aren't getting in the new system.



Accountability because they don't have a standard to measure against so they can throw out almost identical but not quite rules, which excuses poor work. Very few of these almost the same rules are importantly different. They're different for their own sake.

A USR simply creates a standardised measure for a mechanic in the game.

They can still be printed on unit cards, they can also appear in rulebooks. they can also appear as an update in chapter approved every year if needed.

But they mean that when you tell me you're deep striking, I can look at my own units rules to see what it does and know it does the same thing. They mean that you won't have to keep rereading each new rule that comes out because it might be worded different and create an effect no one expected.

What USRs won't do is:

Constrain the number of special rules in the game. All they do is ensure that you aren't duplicating the same thing over and over again and provide standardisation
Require you to look in more places than currently - you can replace every rule in every current location in the game with a standardised version of said rule and no extra burden is at hand
Require you to stack special rules inside each other - this was a choice for USR implementation, not a requirement.

All a USR is, is the standardisation of a particular way of doing the same thing, regardless of what unit it is. Just as Rolling to hit is a USR, so should deep strike, characters, aircraft etc be a USR.

USR's aren't about their name, they're about rule standardisation. So long as the mechanic is identical for that purpose, it doesn't matter what they're called - hell they could make INVISIBLE USRs, whose sole purpose is back end development consistency and only the designers need ever blight their eyes with such horrors...







   
Made in de
Ork Admiral Kroozin Da Kosmos on Da Hulk






There have been plenty discussions on the USR topic and a consent of how USR could work for 40k.

A rough summary:
People want to have keyworded rules for things that appear in many codices, like explosions, deep strike, melta, overheating weapons, ignore damage or bodyguards.

The rules should still be on the datasheet, but the wording should be absolutely identical for all of them.
Variable parts of those keyworded rules should be visible at the first glance, explosions are the perfect example of how to not do it. Instead, something like Explosion(6+, 6", d3 Mortal Wounds) followed by the detailed explanation we have now would be preferable.

Bespoke rules can replace keyworded rules when the are different enough. These get different names to clearly show to the reader that something special is going on. If a bespoke rule partially does the same thing as a keyworded rule, it should be split in two.

The main argument against such a system is that GW will most likely feth it up anyways and leave us with a mess worse than we have now.
An obvious advantage of the current system is that no matter how bad they screw up, it will never affect more than one codex.

You could probably rewrite the current rules with little effort into using no more than two pages of USR and lose little to nothing in the process while making the rules easier to learn and remember.

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2020/04/29 10:58:07


7 Ork facts people always get wrong:
Ragnar did not win against Thrakka, but suffered two crushing defeats within a few days of each other.
A lasgun is powerful enough to sever an ork's appendage or head in a single, well aimed shot.
Orks meks have a better understanding of electrics and mechanics than most Tech Priests.
Orks do not think that purple makes them harder to see. They do think that camouflage does however, without knowing why.
Gharkull Blackfang did not even come close to killing the emperor.
Orks can be corrupted by chaos, but few of them have any interest in what chaos offers.
Orks do not have the power of believe. 
   
Made in lu
Rampaging Khorne Dreadnought






Same have said it before, the issue is GW. I like USRs but it was getting out of control and was looking forward to what bespoke rules could be..until we got them.
You'd really need a good mix and clean.

We even have some pseudo USR in rapid fire/heavy and such. They could have given guns bespoke rules too but luckily they didn't.
The vast majority of effects can be summarized in some kind of stat/modifier rule, like you had with say, poison (X) or FNP.
You can still have fancy bespoke rules and previous editions also still had those despite USR.
You just need to standardize a bit and not just give everything a USR or bespoke rule.
   
Made in gb
Norn Queen






 JNAProductions wrote:
So, some people really love GW's bespoke rules approach. I'm not one of them, but I'd be curious to hear what the general thoughts are about why USRs are bad. I feel like a decent amount of ill-will towards USRs might be because GW did them pretty poorly in the past. Missile Lock, I'm looking at you!
Nothing wrong with USRs, it's how GW uses them.

USRs that grant multiple USRs, and the tendency to make bespoke rules so rules that ignore USRs don't ignore them is what the problem is.
   
 
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