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A problem with new school as of 3.x and later. Or is it a problem?
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<blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 5070621" data-attributes="member: 22424"><p>My own experience has differed somewhat. </p><p></p><p>On the one hand, and to a certain extent, merely defining things in the rules has served to constrain players' thinking about some things.</p><p></p><p>For example, without the Improved Disarm feat, no player in one of my games would ever even consider attempting a disarm, despite it being allowed in the rules. (Conversely, the character who <em>did</em> have the feat would always attempt the disarm. Either way isn't a great thing to see.) And, similarly, when coming up with any sort of cool and imaginitve move, there was always a temptation to think "that should be a feat"... from which they quickly leapt to "you <em>must</em> have feat X to do this."</p><p></p><p>In that regard, 4e is even worse (for us) - by tying down yet more cool and imaginitive options in the powers system, the game has effectively reduced the range of options that will even be attempted - if you don't have a power that does it, it probably never occurs to you to even attempt it.</p><p></p><p>(Again, that was just <em>our</em> experience with 4e... and I should also note that that experience was extremely minimal - we played enough to decide it wasn't for us, and left it at that.)</p><p></p><p>At the same time, I have found that the more "mechanically interesting" the characters were, and the more options that were available, the less interest my players had in developing a character, or in interacting with the game world. Again, to a certain extent, they aren't so much playing their character the noble knight, lauded far and wide in song... they're playing a Paladin 7/Noble Knight 3, with the Expertise, Power Attack and Improve Sunder feats.</p><p></p><p>(It also didn't help that system mastery meant that the range of characters that were actually played dropped off quite rapidly as they got to grips with the system, so that we started essentially just rotating the character sheets with each new campaign.)</p><p></p><p>Again, this was just my observation, and it only applied to a certain extent, but I certainly found I was more satisfied with the roleplaying aspect of the game with Vampire: the Masquerade (and then the earlier editions of that) than with D&D 3e, <em>even with the same group of players and DM</em>.</p><p></p><p>It's almost as if the group collectively only had a certain amount of head-space for the game - and so the more interest there was in the mechanics, the less there was available for the roleplay aspect. (Luckily, we have found that both SWSE and WFRP provide an excellent middle-ground for us. So that works quite well. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /> )</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="delericho, post: 5070621, member: 22424"] My own experience has differed somewhat. On the one hand, and to a certain extent, merely defining things in the rules has served to constrain players' thinking about some things. For example, without the Improved Disarm feat, no player in one of my games would ever even consider attempting a disarm, despite it being allowed in the rules. (Conversely, the character who [i]did[/i] have the feat would always attempt the disarm. Either way isn't a great thing to see.) And, similarly, when coming up with any sort of cool and imaginitve move, there was always a temptation to think "that should be a feat"... from which they quickly leapt to "you [i]must[/i] have feat X to do this." In that regard, 4e is even worse (for us) - by tying down yet more cool and imaginitive options in the powers system, the game has effectively reduced the range of options that will even be attempted - if you don't have a power that does it, it probably never occurs to you to even attempt it. (Again, that was just [i]our[/i] experience with 4e... and I should also note that that experience was extremely minimal - we played enough to decide it wasn't for us, and left it at that.) At the same time, I have found that the more "mechanically interesting" the characters were, and the more options that were available, the less interest my players had in developing a character, or in interacting with the game world. Again, to a certain extent, they aren't so much playing their character the noble knight, lauded far and wide in song... they're playing a Paladin 7/Noble Knight 3, with the Expertise, Power Attack and Improve Sunder feats. (It also didn't help that system mastery meant that the range of characters that were actually played dropped off quite rapidly as they got to grips with the system, so that we started essentially just rotating the character sheets with each new campaign.) Again, this was just my observation, and it only applied to a certain extent, but I certainly found I was more satisfied with the roleplaying aspect of the game with Vampire: the Masquerade (and then the earlier editions of that) than with D&D 3e, [i]even with the same group of players and DM[/i]. It's almost as if the group collectively only had a certain amount of head-space for the game - and so the more interest there was in the mechanics, the less there was available for the roleplay aspect. (Luckily, we have found that both SWSE and WFRP provide an excellent middle-ground for us. So that works quite well. :) ) [/QUOTE]
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A problem with new school as of 3.x and later. Or is it a problem?
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