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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Irda Ranger" data-source="post: 4480231" data-attributes="member: 1003">Ok, ok. Is rules/story cross-pollination a good thing?  For me and mine, no.  I like writing stories and making worlds.  I have no intrinsic love of learning new rule-systems.  So a rule-system that allows me to play in many worlds is better than one that's closely married to just one (or just one genre).  For instance, I bought and played Burning Wheel a couple times.  Very imaginative.  Thought provoking, even.  Quite capable at running some fun games.  But impossible to play in any non-Lord of the Rings situation.  The Tolkien-nesse of the Lifepaths was baked in.  Even just doing a "same world, different campaign", like pirates or ancient civilizations, was not supported.  I'd have to rewrite half the system to play even a variation on that theme. Their answer to this problem was to sell you a new set of books for each genre/theme they feel like supporting.  Blech.What can be done to inject this into any gaming experience?  New rule layers.  The "blandness" of 4E's mechanics make it well suited to being tweaked, because they won't interfere with whatever flavor you're trying to evoke.  You could layer a Sanity or Survival system on top of the 4E system, and then rather than having to learn a whole new game you'd be playing ("4E with Sanity rules").This tweakability is why I think 4E is great for reviving the most flavorful settings, like Ravenloft and Dark Sun.  You could easily layer Horror, Dehydration, Defiling, Corruption, Starvation, Fatigue, etc. on top of 4E, in whatever combination supports the setting you want to invoke.By the way, if there are any 3PP writers/publishers in the audience, this is your queue.One last point though:This is a legit gripe for the "this isn't a Jackie Chan movie" crowd.  I just laughed when I saw these rules and said "No."  In my campaign improvised weapons can only be used for Basic Attacks, and improvised range weapons only do 1 +1/2 Str damage.I guess my game is more "Dungeon Survival" than "only by the book D&D" because of my having read the starvation rules, enforcement of the Endurance skill, and "common sense" rulings on improvised weapons.  I know lots of people hate that sort of thing though, so I understand why it's not default.Maybe you should write a book: The Big Book of Optional Rule Systems To Make 4E More Engaging.</blockquote>

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