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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Incenjucar" data-source="post: 5847887" data-attributes="member: 6182">A game to me comes down to meaningful decisions. 4E has many decision points in all aspects of the game, and most of them are meaningful. Introducing skill challenges, while clumsily done, made more meaningful decisions available outside of combat. Introducing terrain powers, Page 42 in general, and a host of interesting terrain options opened up possibilities both within combat and with dealing with exploration scenarios. Introducing a host of ways to build things, from characters (some designer talked about getting his kid a Fire Archon PC?), NPC allies (The old sage is high enough level to use that ritual, but he's still a minion!), etc etc etc. 4E contains a number of easily-used tools. It could use more, so many more, but what it has is so quick and easy to apply, and to do so without breaking anything.While I have no personal experience with 1E (monster books aside), everything I've read about it suggests that, aside from the spellcasters, most of the meaningful decisions are made by the DM, and the dice remove decisions from everyone on a regular basis, just as they did in 2E.The combats I run go on about an hour, often less. Half of that time is people RPing. When pressed for time, we can make a round go by incredibly quickly, but that's incredibly boring and is about as immersive as a Pokemon battle.As an aside, I don't know where people got the idea that combat is separate from interaction and exploring, but it kind of makes me sad. It's like when I tried the beta of Everquest and, while grinding skeletons, I started talking in-character, swearing oaths and whatnot, and people were AMAZED and started joining in and suddenly enjoyed the game.</blockquote>

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