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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6141841" data-attributes="member: 42582">My very rough impression is that some AD&D players were interested in system mastery (and would eke out what could be done with the system) and others were not. And that these two groups had quite different early experiences with 3E.I remember playing an AD&D campaign in the mid-90s, using Skills & Powers, and teaching a new player how to build a strong PC using the points-buy options. Likewise, as I mentioned upthread, I have memories of using the OA martial arts build rules back when these first came out. So the idea of system mastery certainly wasn't invented with 3E. But perhaps 3E - simply in virtue of having more stuff to buy (each level gain in effect becomes a points-buy decision, not to mention spells, feats, items etc) - widened the gap between those with and those without system mastery.I think "step on up" gamism has always been part of D&D PC building. In the early days it was mostly about how well you rolled on the stat gen dice - a gambling style of "step on up". In 3E it shifts almost totally to elegance of build (and 4e maintains that aspect).My own view is that it's a big deal, as far as design goes, to build an RPG with a pretty overt "step on up" component to PC building, and then to make "winning" depend heavily on an esoteric knowledge of obscure elements and combos which are, from the point of view of the game's story elements, somewhat counter-intuitive. I'm not going to say this is bad design - certainly not in all games (eg a game like Magic depends heavily on exactly this sort of "step on up" in deck design), and not necessarily in an RPG. But I think if you do design this way you can't then be surprised if a Char Ops culture grows up around your game, and if the experiences of your player base become very different depending on what sort of group and playstyle they are enculturated into.I personally prefer a more transparent build system (eg in Rolemaster you can't really go wrong if you put most of your build points into the skill that reflects what you want to be good at). 4e is not quite as transparent as I like, but I feel that they tried harder for transparency than they did in 3E, and tried to make "elegance" rather than "power" of build something that you could aim for to try and "win" the PC build aspect of the game. The "role" idea also helped a bit here, by meaning that often players won't be competing on exactly the same turf of effectiveness.I would have liked it if D&Dnext went evern further in this direction - eg get rid of the stat mod for attack bonus (but not damage) altogether, which is a reform that 4e badly needs - but they didn't.When I was playing Skills & Powers AD&D I barely knew what the internet was! (I was a Law/Arts student, not a Sci or Eng student.)</blockquote>

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