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This whole 'out of the fiction' vs. 'out of character' dilemma, or whatever differentiations gamers have made about this bit of terminology, is the result of me not being aware of the difference. As I'm not terribly interested in whatever difference lies between 'out of the fiction' and 'out of...

Wow, I hear 'dissociated mechanic,' and I think of ideas a lot less specific than that. Aren't critics of both 3.x and 4e always complaining about the 'bonus bloat'? +1 from this source, +2 from that source, -X from Power Attack, etc.. None of which are difficult in and of themselves, but might...

Glad you got a kick out of my post. :) I'm humble about most of my personality traits, but I've found that being able to enjoy new things is a definite advantage when it comes to entertainment, as well as other aspects of my life. It's funny you mention this, because 4e is the one edition that...

Yeah, the required training/feat to PA might be it. In and of itself, lacking a basic 'wild swing' sort of option is something that I personally am happy to leave for the DM to adjudicate on those rare occasions when a player tells him "I don't care about accuracy at all; I just want to smash...

What an odd thread. Did the OP remind anyone else of 'Stay together for the children! If you can't stand each other, argue where they can't hear!'? Mind, I probably wouldn't leave a group because of one instance where the DM was caught fudging. In fact I played through a rather long and boring...

I'm not surprised that you see things this way. Thank you for your thoughts.

When you encounter a group of people who enjoy an antique thing despite the easy availability of a newer and demonstrably more user-friendly thing, and who are again and again unable to articulate what advantage the antique thing has or why they like it beyond 'it's the version I find most fun,'...

The tactical combat is part of it; I do love action, and 4e certainly delivers on it. But I also prefer 4e because it's so...tidy and transparent. Which really helps me as a DM without a ton of experience, and a fairly...literal way of reading. Most of my DMing experience prior to 4e came from...

You kinda just defined nostalgia, with those last three sentences. Since joining the online gamer community, I’ve come to understand why a lot of traditional D&Disms are the way they are, and to see the advantages of some of the quirks which I had originally dismissed as nonsense. Like xp for...

The more I hear how others are disappointed by their expectations, the gladder I am that I have a talent for appreciating the unexpected. The mixed reaction to 4e really drove home for me how variable peoples' tolerance for change is, and how exceptional I am for being relatively accepting of...

Oh, heck yeah! Those 2e settings may have been partly responsible for TSR going under, but man were they kool! Especially Planescape. :) I also miss great art. Maybe it's nostalgia, maybe not, but it seems that the quality of D&D rules has an inversely proportionate relationship with the...

I think all the big word processor programs have find/replace functions.

It has indeed! But your memory hasn't failed; 2e AD&D does have an optional parry rule which requires a character to forfeit not only all attacks, but all movement as well, to get a half-level AC bonus! ...However I've always felt that these various opt-in defense options and even Dex are...

As it happens, I too prize verisimilitude and rules with direct ties to the game world. Since I started gaming in the 90’s, D&D’s amorphous hit points have driven me bonkers! What do they represent in the game world, if anything? Well characters have no other stat to represent dodge/parry skill...

Lol, edition warriors gonna hate! It's funny; despite popular perception, I find hit points and 4e in general much easier to refluff into something resembling a 'real' fantasy world than any other edition. But hey, what do I know? I'm just a 4e fan. One of these days I'm bound to realize that I...

If Old Geezer of RPGnet, who played at Gygax's table, is to be believed, it wasn't a myth at the beginning. Gygax only came up with his explanations for hit points after fans kept asking him what they meant. When hit points were originally implemented, they were just a means to pace the party's...

Personally, I have my cake and eat it too, using 4e's castes -- minion, goon*, standard, elite, and solo. So an 11th level NPC has a different caste -- and different attack/defense stats -- based on the PCs' level. To a low level party, that NPC is a 1st level solo; to a party near 6th level...

I like combat skill to be reflected in attack bonuses and defenses as well, and I suspect that most players do too -- whether because it creates a greater sense of advancement, or lends the numbers a greater sense of reality. But there does seem to be a contingent of D&Ders -- mostly DMs? --...

MoutonRustique clearly realizes how simple it is to adjust attacks and defenses, so you might want to hold off on the condescending comments. Just a suggestion. Adjusting a single stat block is easy, but MoutonRustique wants to adjust many (all?) of them. In the immortal words of Alfred...

MoutonRustique simply wants to eliminate every monster's +level bonus to attacks and defenses. Like instead of the MV1 drider's (level 14) looking like this: AC 30, Fort 27, Ref 25, Will 26 ... Scimitar attack +19 vs. AC Darkfire attack +17 vs. Reflex It'd look like this: AC 16, Fort 13, Ref...