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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Primal" data-source="post: 4110730" data-attributes="member: 30678">No, good for you and bad for your players. That is a fact. See, I can throw these nonsensical and irrelevant "facts" around, too.Feel free to do so. It won't change anything -- I still pity your players. That was just an example, you know. If all your players want to play kobolds or gnomes or hobgoblins, maybe they think they’d make for fun and interesting characters. Then you should at least talk with them about what they’d want out of such characters and such a campaign and is it really the only character concept they’d consider. I don’t have to, because I did not imply that you’ve said so. Read that sentence again. I was using the word ‘you’ in the grammatical meaning, not in reference to you.I only mentioned kobolds as an example, but you seem to a have kobold fetish. It’s not healthy – get rid of it.Actually, it seems you don’t. But feel free to believe it if it makes you feel better.Glad you don’t disagree. That's the first time, I believe?I thought we were talking about designing NPCs and monsters? You know, *most* NPCs in the setting are ‘non-heroic’ commoners and experts (using 3E terminology) so it’s probably pretty relevant to think about how to stat them (apparently as “monsters” in 4E) because sooner or later the PCs will probably come into conflict with them. Been there, done that. Didn’t work. Your turn.They’ve already been there. Your players’ turn.Come again? You absolutely make no sense to me. See below.Oh, I disagree. First of all, it really depends on what the *player* wants to do with the power. Perhaps his idea is closer to the Wavecrusher Archon’s ‘Body of Drowning Water’ than the assassin’s ‘Watery Body – in that case you *should* refer to the ‘Body of Drowning Water’ power and see what level the Wavecrusher Archon is. Then look at the PC powers of similar levels, the resources the PC is willing to spend (Talent/Feat/Power) and make the final adjustments with the player. If you’re designing a completely new PC or NPC or monster power, it’d be wise to check if a monster or NPC already has a similar power. That way you keep everyone in relative power balance (which, IMO, *is* important in D&D). I’m sure that you can tinker with the abilities a lot in 4E – my impression is that you can even lower the other attributes to give a monster powers that it could not normally have at its level (one of the designers mentioned this in his blog, I think). However, I don’t see anything exciting in bringing in 6th level monsters with one ultrapowerful ability (for its level) and 20 HP and crappy Defenses. No, you seem to be. I think you’re confusing terminology now. I was talking about game mechanics and how they could emphasize a certain style of play. Conspiracy of Shadows is a game that encourages narrativist style while bringing in also elements that are very “crunchy” and gamist. Nonsense. Again, your opinion, not a fact. The thing is, if I say that “3E is mechanically what I want out of D&D and supports well enough what I want thematically in a fantasy RPG” you’ll have a hard time proving that I’m “wrong” or don’t know what I want. Sheesh.Can you give an example of mechanical elements from narrativist systems that would work in D&D and make it still feel D&D? Even the designers said that they ended up with many interesting mechanical elements but they didn’t just feel like part of D&D. The trouble is that it's really nigh-impossible to achieve this with a game which has such a long history and so many editions behind it. I'm sure that most players and DMs alike would not like the end result no matter how well you did it. Oh, my. Brother Hong, truly, if only your mouth (and fingers <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />) could keep up with your feverish brain, I think we would all truly feel blessed!Now you're talking about 'story' and 'character immersion', which are not exclusively limited to "narrativist" play only. You can get the same story through gamist, simulationist and narrativist styles. Of course you can use narrativist style to play D&D -- it just isn't an optimal system for doing that. I was talking about implementing *mechanical* elements from systems that encourage narrativist play into a gamist system like D&D, which is tricky at best. Don't get confused.For me, it is. For you, apparently not.And if you started to think harder about fantasy, what works for me would also work for you.</blockquote>

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