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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 4017474" data-attributes="member: 29398">A few stray pebbles to throw in the pond here; pemerton has touched on some so if I may I'll use that post as a jumping-off point...True in mechanics, untrue in flavour.  For example, if a particular DM wants to portray a particular real-world (or fantasy, even) religion or creed as good, or evil, there's nothing to prevent this.  In fact, I'd say the abolition of alignment removes a mechanical check-balance for the players here.If social-interaction rules work out they way it seems they might, this is very true.  That said, the one place in older editions where monsters' reactions *could* be determined - the old morale rules - no longer exists.  Interesting dichotomy there.To a large extent this would be a bad thing, if true.  If the setting is so cut-and-dried that the PCs know a particular place is *always* going to be safe, that detracts from the DM's freedom to desing in a big way...assuming no houserules.  Incidence of adversity should be *somewhat* predictable - the PCs know the mountains are dangerous but the port city is well-defended - but never cast in stone.Mechanics like these are simply ways around randomness-caused bad events.  4e seems to have a built-in dislike of bad events...yet it is part of the DM's job to attempt as hard as possible to cause bad events.  In this respect 4e is very anti-DM.Now, a few other things:1. I see part of the DM role as being storyteller, pure and simple.  Even when the players take over and drive the story, it's still up to the DM to make something cohesive out of it and fit it in with the gameworld somehow.2. There are more ways to customize monsters/opponents than purely mechanical.  The most obvious is to give them some character and let that character come into play during both combat and non-combat situations.  The party meets 6 Orcs.  2 of the 6 charge in and mean it; the other 4 charge in only to impress the first two but if those two go down they'll surrender.  The party only sees 6 charging Orcs, but during melee they might notice that for some of them their heart really isn't in it...  The rules cannot take this away from the DM, nor should they try.3. To counter something said (way) above: 1e did have a rudimentary non-combat "past profession" or "secondary skill" system - you could roll to see if your non-adventuring profession was engineer, or jeweler, or farmer - whatever.  It gave you something to build your character around, reminded you that there was more to the world than adventuring, and sometimes - depending on the DM - could affect gameplay.  A jeweler, for example, would be better able to appraise gem values than a non-jeweler.  3e tried to advance this a bit with craft-profession-perform skills; a fine idea except that "optimum character building" almost always needed those skill points for other things, and c-p-p got ignored.  A better idea, in hindsight, might have been to give each character a number of skill points at initial roll-up, that could be used only for c-p-p skills...if only to provide a non-adventuring background and a bit of flavour.4. When everything gets stripped away, it's the DM's game.  That said, it then becomes the DM's role to design a game/setting/atmosphere that will keep the players interested enough to keep coming back.Lanefan</blockquote>

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