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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4131165" data-attributes="member: 4937">a) It's impossible to keep people from misunderstanding you.  But, the more you express yourself in shorthand that implicitly requires your audience to already be on the same page you are on, the more likely it is people will misunderstand you.b) Many of the things that designers have said are now fully supported by the rules are not in fact actually rules issues.  For example, the notion of a trap as part of an encounter is not something that is a rule issue, but an encounter design issue.  The notion of an encounter space being larger than a single room isn't an issue of rules, but one of encounter design.  As such, the notion that these are supported by the rules when they aren't in fact rules issues is itself ridiculous so the clarification gets you no where.   c) Many times when designers have claimed some thing is now fully supported by the rules, the cited evidence has been very unconvincing to me.  Plus I've seen alot of claims by fans that 4e will be 'rules light', 'streamlined', 'more flexible', 'faster', 'less preperation time', 'more narrativist', 'more character focused', 'roleplay enabling', 'player enabling', and pretty much anyattribute that someone can project in thier imagination on the new edition, and so far none of those claims seem to be rooted in much more than hope.  There have been similar claims made by the developers, and I'm not the only one that feels the primary evidence presented by the developers has been some variation on "3e old and busted, 4e new hotness".  Given the developers have spent more time on what 3e supposedly couldn't do than they have on what 4e actually can do (especially until recently), I think my pointing out the 3e often can do the thing its claimed not to do is perfectly fair.I could show examples of exception based designed not just in published modules, but in published modules by WotC.  If they now want to tell me that in 4e we have permission to break the rules occassionally as DMs, that's like telling me that thier new blender makes milk shakes.  Swell.  It's a blender right?  Of course it makes milk shakes.Oh @#!$@$ @#%@#$@ !#@$@, this is exactly the sort of ludicrous claim that I'm talking about.  I hate to break this to you, but having a new rules set won't stop rules lawyers at your table from being pricks.  Nor is it going to stop DMs from saying "No" when they could say "Yes".  These aren't rule issues.  They are gamesmanship issues.  Rules can't fix what isn't broken in them.  The new skill challenge 'system' is a rules laywers paradice.  Some people are already claiming its new more legalistic approach is a feature not a bug.  Sheesh.True, there were no guidelines for the size of story awards or non-skill challenges.  Color me very skeptical that any guidelines for doing such are going to be useful as anything but very rough estimations, or that useful at all outside of the narrow constraints of a tournament environment.</blockquote>

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